Chapter 21

CHAPTER21

Emma awoke with a start, a roar shuddering through the night-still air. A roar so loud and so close that her hands flew to her ears to try and block out the sound.

The mist of her deep, contented slumber burned away like morning fog on a hot summer’s day. Her gaze flitted down to the figure lying beside her, tangled in the bedlinens, sweat glistening across his bare, muscled body. He thrashed and grappled with the sheets, as a mournful bellow rose from some pained well within him.

She twisted around and grabbed his shoulders, trying to remember what the valet had done. But shaking him and slapping him did not seem like the right thing to do, despite what she had witnessed before.

“Silas, wake up,” she urged, throwing her leg over him to sit astride his hips. “Silas, it is just a nightmare. Silas, come to me.”

She shook him as gently as she could, rubbing soothing circles against his broad chest, smoothing his damp hair out of his face, squeezing her thighs against him to try and urge him out of his dream.

“Silas, wake up,” she pleaded, resorting to drastic measures as everything else failed.

With a grimace, she pinched his nose and put her hand over his mouth. It used to work on her sister whenever she had suffered from nightmares, but there was always the risk that Emma might accidentally suffocate him. That would be a scandal she would not be able to run from.

His eyes flew open, his hand snatching at her wrists, pulling them away from his face.

She sat back at once, putting her hands up in a gesture of surrender as she explained, “I could not get you to wake up. I was not trying to kill you, I swear.”

He spluttered and rocked upward, his arm encircling her waist. “Do not ever do that again,” he wheezed, eyes glazed as if he were still somewhere between dreaming and reality. “Slap me, kick me, punch me in my unmentionables, but please, do not do that again.”

“I was trying to be gentle,” she protested mildly, comforted by his strong arm around her waist. It had felt almost instinctual, for him to pull her closer instead of shoving her away, and it had not gone unnoticed.

He closed his eyes, drawing in a few deep breaths. “Your methods are, as ever, fascinating.” He opened his eyes again and when he did, they were clearer. “How many have you rendered unconscious with that technique?”

“None, as of yet,” she replied, searching his face. “It used to help Lydia. She had the most horrendous night terrors when she was younger. She grew out of them, but… I suppose that brought back a few memories.”

He settled his other hand upon her thigh. “Lydia?”

“My younger sister.” A pang struck her in the chest. She had written to Lydia, but Lydia had not yet written back.

My father’s intervention, most likely. It would certainly explain how he had come to learn of her visit to Silas’s residence. It had been troubling her ever since the letter arrived, how he had come to know of her whereabouts. Now, she supposed, she had the answer.

“Tell me about her,” Silas said.

Emma shook her head. “You do not want to hear childhood stories. I know you are not fond of my babbling.”

“Distract me,” he urged, his voice tight. “Talk of everything and nothing. Babble as you please. This might be your only opportunity to do so.”

She had to laugh. “I would seize upon it, ordinarily, but speaking of my sister is… somewhat sensitive, at present. I miss her terribly and I fear I have put her in a dire situation with my antics. Indeed, I fear that my father might rush her into marriage because of me.” She paused. “That is one of the reasons why our… arrangement was not one I could refuse.”

Is it still an arrangement? Oh goodness, we have trodden into very perilous territory, I fear, she neglected to add, for although what they had done together had altered her irrevocably, there was a comfort and a thrill to the casual intimacy he was showing her in that moment. In a way, that felt even more dangerous than the things he had done with his tongue and hands.

“You care for her.” His thumb stroked her thigh absently, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“I do. Deeply.”

He nodded. “I do not know that feeling, between siblings.”

“I suspected,” she said, offering a smile. “Might I ask why?”

Silas frowned at her shoulder. “It is difficult to say. He was always… more cherished. He was sickly as an infant, you see, and for years my mother and father were worried that he was going to die, so they lavished their affections upon him. I was left in the care of tutors and the estate steward, before I was sent away to Eton.” He paused. “Luke grew in health and vigor, and I expected some manner of change from my mother and father, but it did not come.”

“You were bitter?”

“Not bitter,” Silas replied thoughtfully. “Indifferent. If they did not want me in their presence, I did not want them in mine—that sort of thing.”

Emma nodded. “I can see how that might have bred a difficult relationship. Was there reconciliation before your father passed?”

Silas barked a laugh. “Goodness, no. I was in London bringing shame upon the household when he died.” Something akin to pain pinched his eyes. “He had been unwell for years. I never thought the bastard would actually die.”

“Bastard? He was unkind to you, beyond the obvious neglect?” Emma’s heart ached with sympathy.

Silas shrugged. “I think he would have preferred it if Luke was his heir. He never… looked me in the eyes.” His voice caught, but he cleared his throat as if he had something stuck. “I cannot explain why. For years, I tried to gain his attention by doing good—being studious, well-read, adept at riding, shooting, etcetera—and then I tried to gain his attention in the opposite fashion. When neither worked, I just pleased myself.”

“I am sorry,” Emma said softly. He had never spoken so much, nor with such vulnerability, and she longed to keep him talking.

But he seemed to realize that he had said more than he had intended. “Goodness, I must still be half asleep. Listen to me, prattling on.” He shook his head. “Luke and I are friendly enough. It is undoubtedly different between brothers anyway. Rivalries are encouraged in a way they are not with girls.”

He had retreated back behind his protective façade, and she did not know how to bring it down again. Still, the slow caress of his thumb against her thigh was a brush of hope that it would not be the last time he opened up to her.

“Why are you sat astride me?” he asked, a twinkle in his eyes. “Are you in the mood to beg?”

She rolled her eyes. “I was going to shake you awake and thought this might give me a better foundation. Of course, you are like a mountain—I had no hope of shaking you awake, hence the nose pinch.”

She moved to clamber off him, but his arm tightened, and he shook his head. “I did not say I wanted you elsewhere.”

“No, but I would hate to encourage you,” she replied. “I told you, I will never⁠—”

The bedchamber door blew open and a figure rushed inside, panting and pale. “I’m sorry, Silas. I was doin’ me circuit of the gardens when I heard ye, but someone had locked the front door and nay one was answerin’ at the kitchen door, so I had to find another way in, and—” The valet stopped abruptly, blinking at the scene before him.

Emma quickly gathered a blanket around her, though she had put her nightdress back on, partially buttoned, when she had turned to leave after the…morsel, and Silas had said “Stay”. “Do you not sleep?”

The valet’s mouth hung open.

She eyed him suspiciously. “Perhaps, you are nocturnal?”

“M’ lady, a thousand apologies,” the valet blurted out, at last. “I dinnae realize that His Grace had company. If I had, I wouldnae have intruded on… uh…” He waved a descriptive hand at the bed.

Just then, the swift clickety-clack of nails on the floorboards interrupted the stilted awkwardness, and a dark blur barreled through the door and charged between the valet’s legs. The valet tried to grab the puppy, but Snowy was too fast, running for the bed.

“You found me! Good boy!” Emma cried, shuffling off Silas.

She hung over the edge of the bed and scooped the ball of fluff into her arms, kissing him all over his face as she called him a good boy again and again. The valet seemed to see his moment to leave and backed out of the bedchamber without another word, closing the door behind him.

“Take the dog with—never mind,” Silas grumbled, sitting up against the headboard. “You can return to your bedchamber, though. I said that you could stay to sleep, but not that little beast. I have not forgiven it for what it did to my boot.”

Undeterred, Emma placed Snowy in Silas’s lap. “How can you possibly resist? Do you not know that dogs give you unconditional love?”

“I know that they are messy and ruin leather,” Silas replied, grimacing as the puppy began to climb up his chest.

Snowy strained, tail wagging, and licked Silas’s face as if it were the tastiest thing in the world. At first, Silas tried to avoid the vigorous kisses, but that only seemed to make Snowy more determined, the puppy practically jumping up and down to reach Silas’s face.

Then, suddenly, wonderfully, Silas burst out laughing—a true, warm belly laugh—and scooped the puppy into his arms. “Is that where the word ‘dogged’ comes from, hm? Is it because you and your ilk will not be refused?” He tipped the puppy, so Snowy was on his back, cradled like a baby, and rubbed the pup’s plump belly. “You are certainly tenacious, little beast.”

Snowy panted contentedly, lavishing licks on Silas’s hand.

“See?” Emma said. “Some things might be messy and beyond your control, but that does not mean they cannot bring you joy. Not all surprises need to be bad.”

Silas looked at her intently, and though she was no longer straddling him, her body yearned for him as if she was. Indeed, as her heart raced and her skin tingled, losing herself in the dark pools of his eyes, she feared she might give herself to him then and there because of that one, intoxicating look. The way he was holding the puppy certainly did not help dampen her desire.

“But you are right,” she said hurriedly. “I should return to my own chambers before anyone else bursts in and finds me here.”

She shuffled off the bed and, with a pilfered blanket still wrapped around her, she padded for the door.

“Are you not forgetting something?” Silas called out, gesturing down at the puppy as Emma turned to look at him.

She smiled, wrapping the blanket tighter around herself. “I think you might need him more than I do—for tonight, at least.”

With that, she walked out, and as Silas did not try to follow her to shove the puppy back into her arms, she had a feeling that she was correct—Silas did need Snowy more than she did tonight. And as long as the puppy did not relieve himself in Silas’s bed, she sensed they might be about to begin a firm, enlightening friendship.

But what about me and him? What are we now? She shook the question away. It was too great to answer in one night, and impossible to answer while her head was still full of him and the things he had done.

All she knew for certain was that she was no longer the Emma Bennet she had been before she had gone to his room, and she was quite content with the woman who walked in her place.