Torture watching her fingers seek the black handle of the fan he’d given her, just peeking out from beneath her pillow, until she found it and made another drowsy hmmm before drifting back under.
Torture keeping Cy from drowning in his own doggie-style euphoria as his tail thumped and he grinned at the lady occupying the big bed—alone.
Finally, after more than one unsuccessful attempt to gently rouse her, too impatient to wait any longer, Daniel released his hold on Cy’s collar and pointed.
After a running start, the lumbering dog cannoned onto the bed.
The echo of his landing likely shook the walls downstairs.
It certainly shook Thea awake.
Drippy licks met her cheek, an excited bark, her ear.
But it was the husked, “Cy, don’t d-drown her,” that lured Thea from the depths of slumber.
She wiped at the cool wetness coating her ear and encountered a moist muzzle. “Cyclops?” Heavy eyelids shuttered open to the music of exuberant pants. Only to find the dainty chair painted with trailing roses across her chamber occupied by one very un-dainty masculine specimen.
“Lord Tremayne?” Thea jerked upright. Daniel was here?
The opposite of her suddenly tense posture, he lounged—as much as a powerful presence could upon such feminine furniture. By candlelight, she drank him in. His tailcoat was discarded, hanging haphazardly from the arm of the chair. In shirt, simple neckcloth and burgundy waistcoat, thick hair decidedly mussed, shadow of whiskers on his jaw temptingly dark, he devastated her senses.
Kiss now. Hold now. Love forever, was all Thea could think. Notions she had no right to.
You’re here for his convenience. His. She reminded herself of one of Susan’s less bawdy teachings.
Oh, but he was in her room, looking for all the world as though he had no intention of ever leaving. That made her smile. “I must be dreaming.”
She had to be, surely, if she was starting to convince herself he belonged here. With her.
His paid whore. That unpalatable reminder made her wince. Self-conscious now, she brought a hand to her cheek. Rubbing back the strands of hair that’d stuck to the side of her face, she felt sleep creases in her skin. “I must look a fright.”
“Nay, not now nor the last t-t-two t-times you awoke. Here.” He rose and brought her a glass. “And it’s D-Daniel, lest you’ve forgotten.”
“Thank you.” Last two times? Groggily trying to remember, Thea sipped.
“There’s a tray t-too, when you’re hungry.”
The expectant glint sparking from his eyes put the glow of the hearth to shame. Her brow pinched as hazy scenes surfaced. “It’s all murky. But I seem to recall you talking, telling me of your grandfather and…and…”
Fresh new memories swirled in her rapidly clearing mind, the fog of sleep blurring some, but she pieced together enough to summon the truth.
He’d told her how, a scant year after his beloved twin fell to his death, both his mother and older brother succumbed to a fever that decimated the townsfolk near their estate. How a young Daniel and even younger Ellie had been left to the “miserable mercy” of a grieving and inconsolable father.
A sire who hired a tutor and forbade Daniel the private school education every other boy of his rank experienced as his due. A sire who blamed a neighboring boy, one who grew to become his brother-in-law Lord Wylde, because he’d brought the fever from the village to the outlying estates.
A sire who punished every misspoken word.
A child who learned ’twas better to keep silent than risk inciting his father’s wrath. Wrath that was sometimes visited on his innocent sister as well.
Just when Thea felt the bitter salt of welling tears, she recalled his stories of a loving and aged grandfather, father to his deceased mother, a man confined to a wheeled chair, eventually to a bed. A relative who’d expressed more than once his desire to raise Elizabeth and Daniel but who recognized his own limitations. So he’d done what he could, Daniel had told her, setting aside funds for both of them, encouraging whatever they’d shown an interest in. Inviting them for visits until their father discovered how ill the old man had become and put a stop to it.
A short time later, their treasured grandfather was gone too.
Daniel had shared how fighting—boxing—proved his salvation. The one place he could be surrounded by his peers and feel a part of the camaraderie. When he used his fists, he didn’t have to say a word. He’d been liked, respected even, for his prowess. And with every punisher he’d received, he’d considered it deserved—paying the price for daring David to climb up after him…
He’d glossed over his childhood but she’d gleaned enough in the flat telling of what he revealed, in the stark look he couldn’t hide, to discern what had been a disheartening existence. She’d learned of a young man escaping his father’s restrictive rule the moment he was big enough to fight back, of how he’d set up his own home in London, his only regret the sister he couldn’t lure to join him. A sister who by now was their father’s caretaker as much as his prisoner.
As though commiserating with his master, Cyclops plopped his woebegone-expressive muzzle on her shoulder. Thea paused her racing thoughts to give a big scratch on his damp chin.
Words. There’d been so many. Hordes of them. Syllables—too many to count. The blessed, cherished sound of Lord Trem—of Daniel’s voice, telling her so much of what she’d longed to hear.
“I remember now.” She placed the empty glass on the night table and reached for his hand. “Tell me I didn’t imagine it all.”
“’T-tis all true.” He nudged Cyclops aside and sat on the edge of her bed. “You fell asleep during the telling of it.”
“I would never!” Drat her to Dartmoor, he finally opens up and she goes off to nod?
“You d-did.”
Avoiding what looked suspiciously like a smirk to her, Thea reached behind her to plump the pillows. “Well. I
