turned. “I hope that nothing more enters my dreams.” And, I thought, as I left
her standing there, her hands clasped over her ample bosom, that more than
likely she would doubtless tell the servants at dinner that who knew what had
really happened to the new Countess of Devbridge in the middle of the previous
night? Ah, who knew? A dream, an aberration, perhaps a vision? Who knew? The
servants would talk and speculate, and perhaps one of them would know something
and I would hear it.
I had never felt so alone in my life.
Chapter Sixteen
It was John who found me standing yet again in the middle of the small, empty
room?Caroline’s music room. I was thinking that Mrs. Redbreast had forgotten to
lock the door again after all the commotion yesterday.
He came into the room. I didn’t have to see or hear to know that it was him.
There was a new spark in the air itself.
“I was told that you have changed your tale. Now you are agreeing with everyone
that the old woman in your room last night was all a nightmare.”
“That’s right,” I said easily as I turned to face him. I didn’t move from the
window. I wanted to keep my distance from him, particularly after last night.
“Well, then, if you truly believe it was some sort of dream, then there doesn’t
seem to be any reason for you to hie yourself back to London and to safety.”
“No, a knife in a dream can’t stab you.”
“Not to my knowledge.”
I smiled at him then. “If one were to wonder, however, why it took you so very
long to open your bedchamber door, I wonder what you would say?”
“I was naked.”
I looked down at his body. I simply couldn’t help myself. And he knew, damn him,
he knew what he had evoked in my mind.
“Yes, you do know of naked men, don’t you, Andy? And it distresses you.” Then he
shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. As I said, when you pounded on my door, I was
naked and thus had to get my britches on.”
My eyes were strictly on his face now, and they would stay there.
I said, “Lawrence told me that Caroline resented you and Thomas. She wanted to
bear the heir, you see.”
He accepted my shift and said readily enough, “I just don’t remember. Caroline
was?” He paused and looked toward the long windows, perhaps seeing something
that was no longer there.
“Was what?”
“She was like a fairy princess. I was a boy, all of twelve years old. Thomas and
I had only lived here for about six months before Uncle Lawrence married her.
Neither of us minded in the least. Caroline was kind, it seemed, and her
laughter was the sweetest sound I had ever heard in my young boy’s life. There
was something else, of course. She was all of eight years my senior. Even then
Uncle Lawrence wanted a very young wife.”
“You saw nothing at all wrong with her?”
“You’re speaking of her madness. That came later, after she and my uncle had
been married awhile, perhaps a year or so. I remember the servants wondering
aloud at some of the strange things they had been told she had done. I remember
Uncle Lawrence telling me that my stepmother wasn’t feeling well. And I can
remember telling him that she was breeding and that was obviously why she wasn’t
feeling well. I told him that ladies occasionally vomited when they were
breeding.”
“You, a twelve-year-old boy, knew that? Actually said that to your uncle?”
“Oh, I was thirteen then, perhaps fourteen. Yes, I told him that, and I got
clouted for it. To be honest, I remember Caroline as laughing, as carefree,
nothing more, nothing less. But I was rarely here during their marriage or
afterward. Are you jealous of my uncle’s second wife?”
I didn’t say anything. I stared at him hard now, and said, “If one were to
imagine, just for a moment, mind you, that the old woman really happened last
night, it occurs to me that you are the only person in Devbridge Manor who would