Married to a Stranger (Danger and Desire 3)

Her face crumpled as though she was going to cry and then, with a visible effort, she had herself under control again. ‘It was a nightmare. You were having a nightmare about the wreck.’

Somehow he stopped the shivering that was racking his body, got himself under control. ‘I’m sorry. I must have frightened you.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Lie still. Let me get you warm.’ She pulled the covers up over their bodies, wriggling close to him. He felt silk slide over his skin, warm hands, cold feet. His wife. Yes, that was it, his wife. Cal shook his head, tried to drive away the remnants of the dream and find reality. He must have fallen asleep in her bed after they made love.

‘I should have gone. I didn’t mean to expose you to this. I thought I had got it under control.’

She had snuggled down, her head on his shoulder, her body wrapped around his, but at that she came up on to her elbows and stared down into his face.

‘You mean you dream like that every night?’

‘At first,’ he admitted. ‘Since we married, less.’ He could not tell her that the dreams now were as often of her, of losing her, as they were of the wreck. Her face was appalled. ‘It is all right, I am not going mad,’ he said to reassure what must be her greatest fear. ‘I spoke to doctors, they said the dreams would fade in time. You needn’t worry, I won’t

stay again.’ He tried to get up and found himself entangled in soft, determined resistance. Without hurting her he could not move.

‘Yes, you will stay,’ Sophia said fiercely. ‘Don’t you dare suffer this by yourself, Callum Chatterton. Go to sleep now. In the morning you will tell me all about the wreck, every detail.’ Her voice cracked. ‘You are very brave, and very pigheaded, but you can’t fight everything by yourself. You have me now. Go to sleep.’

He had never tried to sleep after a nightmare. Always he had got up, walked or read or worked until dawn. Cal tried to fight the heaviness in his body, the warmth, the limbs twined around his, and felt himself sliding into darkness.

Cal woke to a clatter of china and hushed voices. He opened his eyes and found himself in his wife’s bed and Sophia, in a ridiculous confection of flounces and frills, seated at the little table in the window pouring tea.

‘What time is it? And what are you wearing?’

‘Nine. And it is a morning undress gown according to Dita, who nagged me into buying it.’ Sophia smiled, but her eyes were anxious. ‘I sent a message to Leadenhall Street to say you were detained. Come and have breakfast.’

‘Like this?’ He scrubbed one hand over his unshaven chin.

‘You had best put your robe on first,’ she said with a smile.

‘I can’t—’ He got out of bed. ‘I need a bath, a shave—’

‘Please, Callum.’

He looked at her sitting there, fresh and lovely and anxious and something in his heart turned over. He could feel her anxiety, her distress for him, so strongly. Where Dan’s feelings had once touched him, now he could sense Sophia’s emotions. It was different; he and his twin had been born with that link. This was something else, felt different, an empathy that had grown because he knew her now so well. Cared about her. No wonder he was dreaming.

He got up, pulled on his robe, ran his hands through his hair and sat down at the table.

‘Drink your coffee,’ Sophia said. ‘They will bring food up very soon. And then you will tell me about the wreck.’ She shook her head in answer to his instinctive movement of rejection. ‘You have told no one all the details, have you? Not even Will? Your mind has to let go of the horror somehow, I think.’

‘How can I burden you with it?’ Cal demanded.

‘Because I am your wife,’ she said simply. ‘And I care for you.’

You do? He didn’t ask it out loud. The footmen came in with more coffee, covered plates; the moment was lost. But when they had eaten and he sat nursing his third cup of coffee Sophia murmured, ‘Callum?’ So he told her everything, every detail, from the lurch when the anchor began to drag and how Averil’s laughter at one of Dan’s jokes had broken on a gasp of shock to the moment when he had opened his eyes to find himself being nursed by Dita in the Governor’s House on St Mary’s on the Isles of Scilly and had realised that he was, for the first time in his life, alone.

Sophia was silent for several minutes when he finished and he wondered if he had been too graphic, too frank. How much had he revealed about himself, about his weaknesses? He had to be strong for her, that was what a husband owed his wife. But the relief of speaking, of pouring it all out, was almost shattering.

‘When you came to tell me that Daniel was dead you asked me to forgive you for not saving him,’ she said at last. ‘Do you still blame yourself? Do you truly believe there was anything that you could have done that would have saved him?’

‘No,’ Cal said and, by some miracle, he believed it. He had told himself over and over again that he had done all he could but, even as he had recovered, some small nagging part of his brain told him that there must have been something. He drew in a deep, ragged breath. ‘For the first time I do not feel guilty.’

Sophia smiled and he leaned across the table to run the pad of his thumb gently over the dark circles under her eyes. How much sleep had she had last night? ‘You go back to bed and rest. Thank you, Sophia.’

There was more to the way he felt than that burden of guilt lifting, Cal told himself as he rode eastwards. There was a new anticipation, a new feeling that was not quite pleasure and not quite apprehension that unsettled his mind and was giving him butterflies in the stomach, a sensation he did not recall feeling since the day he stood on the deck of an East Indiaman and watched the English shoreline vanish into the haze.

‘Damn it, is this how marriage makes every man feel?’ he demanded under his breath. Would his nights be utterly consumed with dreams of losing her now? The gelding, confused by his tone, sidled and curvetted across the road into the path of a mail coach and Cal jerked his attention back to where he was and what he was doing.

‘What’s the matter?’ As Cal entered the office George Pettigrew looked round from the huge wall-map of India that he had been studying.