Scoundrel in My Dreams

by Celeste Bradley

  Laurel nearly closed her eyes in the pleasure of his hand on hers and of hearing her beloved nickname from his lips. He hadn’t called her that once since he’d come back. Encouraged by her progress, she flashed him a mischievous smile. “Catch me if you can!”

  The first few steps of her crossing went surprisingly well. Then she began to teeter slightly, but she stepped boldly on. Nearly there. It wasn’t until she turned to flash a victorious smile at Jack that she lost her balance, only two steps from the other side. With a squeak of alarm, she slipped between the crossbeams and plummeted into the storm-swollen river.

  How foolish. What a terrible idea. Now I’m going to die and I didn’t even have the chance to tell him I love him.

  The river agreed with her summation. It tossed her so violently that she had no idea which direction the surface was. The fabric of her skirts and spencer took on so much water that she could scarcely move her limbs to swim.

  Then a powerful arm wrapped about her waist and pulled her upward. Her head broke the surface just as she was about to lose her breath forever. Jack towed her toward the bank, making perfectly good progress with a single arm stroke. He pulled her up onto the grass and held her there tightly against him while he caught his breath.

  Laurel choked and gasped and furiously tried to fight her way free of her tangled hair. A large, warm hand came to gently smooth it away from her brow.

  “Those braids would have come in handy today,” said a low voice in her ear.

  With a gasp, Laurel realized that she lay in Jack’s arms. When she turned to face him, his lips were a mere inch from hers. Her body pressed front to front down the length of his. She swallowed and blushed, even as she vowed to herself that she would not redden.

  “H-hello.” What a moronic thing to say.

  “Hello, Bramble.”

  “You saved my life,” she said huskily.

  “Not that you deserve it.” He picked a blade of grass from her wet cheek. “You might have died, you idiot brat.”

  She’d been incredibly stupid and she knew it. Feeling like an idiot, she bit her lower lip in embarrassment.

  “Don’t do that.” His voice turned odd, sort of deep and rough. Was it the choking in the water?

  Laurel released her lip instantly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I won’t do it again.”

  His grip on her tightened for a long moment. He couldn’t seem to take his gaze from her mouth.

  Laurel wanted him to kiss her, which would be entirely appropriate and romantic, since he’d just saved her life. It was a well-known rule and even Amaryllis would have to abide by it. There wasn’t anything Laurel could do to make it happen, however, for her knowledge of such matters was extremely limited.

  Then Jack abruptly rolled away from her and stalked away, leaving her soaked and muddy and bewildered on the bank of the river. For a long moment, she simply lay in the wet grass and cherished the memory of his big, warm body pressed to hers and his hands as he’d touched her face. It was by far the most romantic moment of her life.

  After a few minutes of this, she became uncomfortably aware of her soaked gown and petticoats and her nastily muddied hair. Sitting up, she sighed at the state of her new clothing.

  Jack was leaving tomorrow. If she’d learned anything from this experience, it was that she ought not to put things off for one more moment. Amaryllis wasn’t interested in Jack any longer anyway. Laurel had heard Amaryllis complaining to her friends that he’d grown so boring she could barely stand him.

  She should tell him. Tonight. He usually avoided the evening entertainments. She would find him in his room and she would confess her love.

  Renewed by her decision, Laurel stood and brushed the mud and grass from her skirts as best she could. Then she straightened, looked about her, and frowned. Wait a moment—

  She was on the wrong bloody bank of the river!

  It isn’t enough to simply remember past feelings.

  Laurel went from dream to wakefulness with the effortlessness of simply continuing a thought.

  Her once-upon-a-time love for Jack had been genuine but wildly ardent, built of hopes and fantasy.

  Now, it was more complicated. She was a different person, hammered into a different shape by the events that had followed his disappearance from her life.

  He was different now as well. Not as lost. Not as empty.

  She could admit that she was happy to see him coming back to life. It didn’t mean she loved him still.

  Laurel opened her eyes. Someone was kicking her in the ribs.

  She reached her hand down to find a chubby pink foot poking into her side. “How extraordinary,” she commented sleepily, and tickled it.

  She’d never known that a child could giggle in her sleep. Laurel closed her eyes again, savoring this knowledge. There was so much to learn. She was like a desiccated sponge, interested in soaking up every drop of knowledge about children in general and this sleepy, pink little person in particular.

  Laurel pulled the tiny foot closer and kissed it. Then she blew a rude sound on the sole of it. Melody giggled again, no longer asleep. “Mama, y’silly.” She stretched like a kitten.

  Laurel realized that she was not at all comfortable and reached beneath her back to discover the grubby ball of Gordy Ann. “Good morning,” she greeted the doll politely. “If it’s all the same to you, milady, I think you’re going into the washbowl.”

  Melody rolled onto her belly and kicked her little feet into the air. “That’s what Pru says. She makes Gordy Ann go swimming every time I take a bath.”

  “Well done, Pru,” Laurel murmured. She sat up and stretched herself, feeling tired and a bit stiff from sleeping with what felt like a dozen monkeys. She rubbed the back of her neck.

  A dozen very busy monkeys.

  Who were members of a marching band.

  She wouldn’t have traded a second of her night for her weight in gold. She smiled at Melody. “I think I smell bacon!”

  She looked up and froze. If she hadn’t been so distracted by waking up with her baby, she would have realized at once that things were very different.

  Her attic cell had transformed into a luxurious chamber.

  “Luxurious” wasn’t adequate.

  It was bloody posh! There were books stacked upon a finely detailed rosewood bedside table that hadn’t been there before. A matching writing desk stood across the room.

  Jack’s large wingback chair now sat throne-like next to the hearth. Richly worked hangings, almost like tapestries, hung from the laundry hooks, nearly covering the two longest walls. She and Melody lay under a thick layer of velvet coverlets.

  And there, by the window, was something that made Laurel’s heart melt with the thoughtfulness behind it. Her fingertips traced the smile on her lips as she gazed at it. Somewhere in this madhouse of a gentlemen’s club, he’d managed to find a Windsor rocking chair. Or had he filched it from some woman’s garden in the middle of the night?

  Laurel could scarcely wait to try it out, but her stomach growled. It sounded as though someone had let a bear into the room. She gave the doll a mock glare. “Gordy Ann! I’m surprised at you!” Melody collapsed into giggles.

  Breakfast for two lay beneath the silver cover on a tray. With the usual eggs and bacon there was a bowl of porridge. Laurel peered at it. “Oh, dear. It has lumps in it.”

  Melody climbed into the chair like a monkey. “I like lumps!” She wiggled her bottom until she was right up to the edge of the table. Her chin barely cleared the tabletop. The stack of books came in handy at once.

  They broke their fast sitting in the bright, warm, luxurious room in their chemises, giggling and sipping tea with their pinkies ridiculously raised.

  Afterward, Laurel rocked her daughter on her lap and sang every song she could think of. Melody sang one as well, about riding a little pony. Then came a very imaginative tale about bandits and rolling pins and barrels of ale.

  Laurel smiled. Her daughter was s
o creative.

  With a start, Jack opened his eyes in the dimness of his closed bed curtains. For an instant, the rich brocade pattern jumbled in his vision without meaning, then resolved itself into draped fabric and silk fringe. He forced himself to truly look at it, to note the tiniest of details, hoping to distract himself long enough to allow the dream to fade far away. The fringe was becoming a bit tatty in one spot. He looked closer. The stitches that held it on the curtain had popped. The longest one swayed slightly in his vision. He blinked slowly, just so he’d have to seek the thread out once more. Concentrate on the thread.

  After several minutes, he tentatively checked his memory for the details of his dream. Faded, blurred, without terror, the merest memory of a memory that slipped away even as he focused on it.

  Gratefully he sat up and rubbed his face with both hands. Another close escape.

  Last night he’d slept alongside his lover and his child. Those few hours had been the purest and most restful sleep of the last few years. He’d awoken rejuvenated in the middle of the night. He’d tried to express his gratitude with a few more gifts for the room. Then he’d found his own bed, hoping for yet more of that refreshing rest.

  Not quite, but one had to be grateful for small graces. At least he hadn’t woken up screaming.

  When he rose from the bed, the air chilled his naked skin. He’d learned to sleep in nothing. Otherwise, his dreaming mind might turn the collar of his nightshirt into a noose, or the twisted nightshirt into piled bodies that he lay beneath.

  Now, stretching, he treasured the freedom of his nudity. He only wished he had Laurel naked with him.

  Outside, he could hear the noises of a spring dawn in the back garden as he tied his dressing gown about his waist. Birdcalls tempted him closer to his window, and he thrust back the draperies to reveal the restoration of the once fine garden in full progress. The graceful figure in the hat, leaning over a flower bed, was either Madeleine or Prudence. A flash of red hair braided down the woman’s back. Ah, that would be Pru. She poked enthusiastically, if a little amateurishly, at the young green plants in the bed. Jack saw Madeleine hurry forward. He could imagine the gentle way Maddie would explain the proper handling of seedlings. She was inherently kind.

  Following the flight of a bird she disturbed with her dancing steps, she looked up then and waved to him, grinning. Pru straightened and waved as well, smiles on their lovely faces.

  Abruptly Jack felt a wash of strange and unusual welcome. How odd. Brown’s was his house, in effect. He was one of the few living descendents of the original charter members. Redgrave men had occupied these very rooms since the building itself was completed.

  Yet standing here basking in the glowing smiles of the Ladies of Brown’s Club for Distinguished Gentlemen, he’d never felt so at home.

  Down in the garden, Pru waved and smiled back at Jack standing in his window.

  “There’s something strange going on with him,” she muttered without altering her smile.

  “Oh yes,” Maddie replied cheerfully, waving. “I’ve never seen him so warm . . . so . . .”

  “So human?” Pru asked dryly.

  Maddie turned to her in surprise. “Precisely!”

  Pru sighed. “Colin is thrilled. He thinks we should delay searching for Nanny. He wants Jack to keep coming back to life.”

  Maddie frowned. “That’s dangerous, don’t you think? If . . . if we lose Melody, we’ll all be devastated, but Colin and Aidan have us to turn to. What will Jack do?”

  Pru contemplated the club with a tiny frown line between her auburn brows. “I don’t know what it is, precisely, but there’s something about that man. . . .”

  Maddie nodded. “It’s as if he keeps forgetting that Melody might be leaving us. Do you know I actually heard him laugh yesterday?”

  “Really?”

  Maddie shrugged. “Well, nearly.”

  Pru rubbed the back of her arm across her brow, for her gloved hands were too dirty to use. “Forgetting or . . . have you ever noticed how he simply gets up and leaves the room lately? As if he cannot bear to sit still.”

  “Or as if he has somewhere important that he needs to be.”

  “And he disappears for hours.”

  Maddie leaned close, though they were alone. “I saw him carrying a Lementeur box to the rubbish bin,” she whispered. “A big one.”

  Pru’s eyes widened. “It must have been one of ours, an old one.” Her expression was comical in its doubt. “Mustn’t it?”

  Maddie shook her head. “It was an awfully big box. And he’s an awfully big man.”

  Pru looked at her in horror for a long moment. Then a snicker broke from Pru’s lips. Maddie cracked up as well, hooting with laughter.

  If Jack had looked out his window at the garden at that moment, it would have mystified him greatly to see the lovely Ladies of Brown’s Club for Distinguished Gentlemen cackling like geese in the garden.

  Twenty-three

  Jack trotted down the stairs to the main club room to join Aidan and Colin for the day’s Nanny hunt.

  He’d just gone up to the attic to release Melody and to thank Laurel for letting him stay last night. He’d not slept long, but it had been deep and refreshing.

  He’d found Laurel stretched out on the bed, napping, and Melody playing tea party with Gordy Ann and the breakfast dishes.

  “Mama says I sleep like a monkey band.”

  Jack didn’t know what a monkey band was, but he’d spent a night or two with Melody in the past and knew that it was both enjoyable and exhausting.

  He’d ushered Melody out and surreptitiously locked the door behind them. “Leave Mama be for now, Melody. If you want to see her, come talk to me. And . . .”

  Melody wasn’t very good at secrets. He hated to ask her to lie.

  Melody danced down the attic stairs ahead of him. “I have a secret mama,” she sang. “She’s the queen in the tower.”

  Jack paused, considering, and decided that that would do nicely.

  Now he was running late to meet Aidan and Colin, and he preferred not to draw attention to his frequent “absences.”

  As he turned the corner of the stairs at the second floor, he was forced to back into the corner. Bailiwick, even as large as he was, was overwhelmed by the giant stack of parcels in his arms.

  “Have you been shopping, John?”

  Bailiwick peered around the pile in his arms. “Oh, sorry, milord. Didn’t see you there. Couldn’t fit meself into the servants’ stair. It’s Fiona what’s been shoppin’ for the ladies. She said there’s naught feminine in the place. Don’t know what all, but creams and mirrors and whatnot.”

  Jack nodded, since he could do little else, still pinned into the corner as he was. “Tools of the trade, I suppose?”

  Bailiwick brightened. “Oy, that’s what it is! I didn’t think o’ that, milord. Every craftsman has to have his tools!”

  Jack cleared his throat, but the hint was lost. With a scowl of concentration on his broad face, it appeared that Bailiwick was taking a small vacation in order to think.

  “What d’y think a lady’s maid might need in the way o’ tools, then?”

  Jack gazed at the ceiling. “Well, gowns of course, but those would be for the lady, really.”

  “Them would be the costumes, right enough.”

  Costumes? Ah, the lovely Fiona had a background in the theater, didn’t she?

  “And props, I suppose. Fans and . . . things.” Jack frowned. Ladies were complicated creatures, weren’t they?

  Bailiwick pondered that. “And the stage, that would be the ballroom, eh? Nothing a lady likes better than a ball.”

  Yes, that was true enough. At least, all the ladies of Jack’s acquaintance seemed to like them.

  Bailiwick frowned. “Seems like there ought to be somethin’ I can give her for her new position, like. I want her to like it here. I want her to stay.”

  Jack gazed up the stairs thoughtfully. “If I had the answer t
o that one, my friend, I’d be a very happy man.”

  Bailiwick continued up the stairs at last, muttering to himself, “Costumes, props, stage . . .”

  Jack went on down the stairs, freed at last.

  Nothing a lady likes better than a ball.

  Another thing he’d stolen from Laurel.

  As the horses pulled the carriage away from Brown’s, Jack gazed back at the brownstone façade of the club, realizing that he didn’t want to go looking for Nanny.

  He wanted to stay with Laurel.

  Actually, he wanted to climb into her bed in the luxurious attic and wake her with his mouth.

  Nevertheless, this search was meant to help that cause. He hoped to bring back some answers for her. She ought not to have to live with her questions unanswered, with her truth shadowed by others more concerned for their reputations than for her heart.

  Eventually the carriage rolled into the neighborhood of Mrs. Pruitt’s abandoned house.

  Aidan thought they were wasting their time. “The woman is long gone, I’ll wager. She dumped Melody and left the city to avoid just this sort of confrontation.”

  “I know that the trail leads here,” Colin insisted. “Someone must know what happened to Mrs. Pruitt.”

  Aidan looked around them as they left the carriage to go on foot. “This is an awfully long way from the club. She’s old. How could she have walked there with Melody?”

  Just then a cart full of casks trundled past them. As the cart headed away, they could see a couple of girls, dressed in gray work gowns and wearing the sort of scarf that factory workers donned, riding facing backward on the back of the cart with their feet dangling. Though their faces were gray with fatigue, one of them noticed Colin watching and sent him a saucy wink.

  Aidan grunted. “I suppose that answers my question.”

  Colin blinked. “Did you see that little vixen? I’m married! Couldn’t she tell I’m married? I look married, don’t I?”

  “You dress like a bloody grampapa.”

  Jack glanced at Colin. “Or a white-haired accountant.”

  Aidan and Colin snapped their gazes to him, startled. Their expressions said it all. The stone speaks!