A Mistress for Major Bartlett (Brides of Waterloo)

‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘I had been thinking about Gideon. That he might have lain there, alone and broken, like all the others I saw. And then, when I went to sleep, what I’d really seen got all jumbled up with the things I’d been fearing.’

She was shaking. Trembling all over, as though gripped by a fever.

His heart went out to her. He’d already established that she wasn’t in any real danger from him tonight. Even if his conscience couldn’t keep his lustful nature in check, in his weakened state, she’d have no trouble tipping him out of bed if he forgot himself. Besides, he wanted to comfort her, not seduce her. To repay her for all she’d done for him. Couldn’t he, just once, give a woman something apart from an orgasm?

‘Stay here with me for the rest of the night,’ he breathed into her ear. ‘Let me keep your nightmares at bay, the way you kept mine from me.’

‘Did I? I didn’t think so. They didn’t seem to stop.’

‘They didn’t entirely. But somehow, the scent of you reached me even during the worst of them. The scent of violets will always remind me of you. Of the feeling of security that came from lying in your arms.’ He breathed in deeply. ‘For I knew the hellish landscape couldn’t be real, because surely violets couldn’t bloom in such a place. Even when I couldn’t recall how I’d got there...’ He shook his head.

‘Oh, dear. The surgeon said you might never fully recover your memory.’

‘I know I’d been in the thick of fighting all day. My ears were ringing. But to be honest, I can still only recall bits and pieces. The noise and the smoke. I know there was thunder, the night before we fought the battle in which I was injured. In my dreams, that thunderstorm got all jumbled up with the thunder of the guns. And the smell of the smoke became the flames from the pits of hell.’

‘I’m not surprised you got dreams like that. We could hear the guns as far as Antwerp, on Friday. It did sound like a distant thunderstorm. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have actually been there.’

‘You shouldn’t have to,’ he said fervently. A shiver went through him as her hand slid across his chest and came to rest, trustingly, over his heart.

‘What else did you dream about?’

‘I dreamed I was dead,’ he said bleakly. ‘And buried in my grave. Of course, I was only pinned down by all the stones from the wall that fell on me. But in my half-conscious, confused state, the men roaming the field by night looking for plunder became demons, collecting the souls of the damned. I wasn’t totally convinced I wasn’t dead until morning, when birds started singing. I knew birds wouldn’t sing in hell. But even they got muddled up in my nightmares. The singing birds, and the wraith-like looters, merged into great black crows. There are always crows after battles, pecking at the bodies. I felt as though every cut of mine, every bruise, was evidence that they’d been there, feasting on my flesh.’

‘Oh, Tom!’ She flung her arms round his waist, hugging him tight. ‘All those odd things you said make perfect sense now. It must have been dreadful.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m such an idiot.’ Heaven help him, he’d just planted a whole new set of images in her head. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken about all that. It can’t have helped.’

‘It did, actually,’ she retorted, ‘because you’re a man. And a soldier. If even someone like you can have dreams like that, then it makes me feel that I’m not such a poor sort of creature, after all.’

‘Everyone has nightmares after a battle,’ he said grimly. ‘Nobody knows how to stop them. And nobody speaks of them.’ He gave a puzzled frown. ‘Not usually, anyway.’

Without warning she pulled out of his arms, got up and disappeared behind the screen.

He sighed. Just when he thought he’d been making progress he went and said something that sent her running for cover. As though she didn’t she trust him.

He snorted in derision. Of course she didn’t trust him. Which was just as well. Every chivalrous impulse he felt towards her was almost immediately countered by an appallingly lustful one.

To his amazement she reappeared with one of the blankets from her bed draped over one arm.

‘Just for tonight,’ she said, climbing on to his bed beside him, on top of the sheet that covered him, ‘we’ll hold each other. I will keep your nightmares away from you,’ she said, snapping the blanket open and arranging it over her legs. ‘And you will keep mine away from me.’

She snuggled down next to him, tucked her head in the crook of his arm and draped her own arm over his waist. ‘What do you say to that?’ She twisted her head to look up at him.

It sounded like heaven.

It sounded like hell. It had been bad enough when she’d been across the room, with a screen and four foot of empty space between them. Now she was in his arms, close enough to kiss if she moved her face just a fraction further.

‘I say yes.’ He groaned and moved his own face just the necessary fraction.

His lips brushed hers lightly. Surely, just once wouldn’t be such a terrible crime, would it? A kiss goodnight.

She gasped, and for a moment he thought she really was going to tip him out of bed. But then, miraculously, she pressed her own lips against his. Clasped him more tightly and wriggled closer.

‘Don’t do that,’ he gasped.

‘Am I hurting you?’

‘No. Yes. It’s agony,’ he growled, burying his face in her neck. He hadn’t been so aroused since his first fumbling encounter with a willing chambermaid. But this was no chambermaid. This was Sarah. An innocent. An angel.