Chapter 26

Twenty-Six

THE DREAM

That day the wind was more like a breeze.

The sun was out.

At long last, winter had passed.

The warmth thawed the bones.

It was spring.

I heard children’s laughter, and I turned my head from gazing at the moors.

He was there with them frolicking about him, on his back on the blanket, the detritus of our picnic littering the wool, our youngest gurgling and giggling as he tossed him in the air and caught him.

I saw this beauty before me, but my mind was on that morning. The vision of his dark head buried between my thighs, the love he made to me with his mouth, the rapture he gave me replete on his face in just watching the culmination of it, knowing it was him who gifted me with that, and I hadn’t yet given the same in return.

My breasts were heavy with the longing for more.

Five children, and my hunger for him wasn’t close to slaked.

I used to fear it.

It lived in me now, alongside my days, seen to in our languid nights, our indolent mornings.

He put our son down, rolled to his side and got up on an elbow, facing me, as if he felt my regard.

Our youngest scampered into the heather, but he lounged there, that long firm body, so full of energy always, now at rest, his gaze on me…heated.

Basking in it, I could feel the phantom touch of his fingers, his tongue, his shaft surging inside me.

And I could see the promise in his eyes of what was to come.

I knew, if our children weren’t there, if he hadn’t insisted, under the censorious eyes of the nannies and the tut-tutting of the staff that we were taking them out of the schoolrooms and onto the moors on this, our first warm day in what had seemed an interminable winter, he and I would still be here.

But both of us would be on that blanket.

No, I would be. He would be covering me, moving inside, gazing in my eyes, in as many ways as he could, telling me the vastness of his love for me.

I thought of that morning. Of the time after he pleasured me. Of turning him onto his back. Of pitching my leg over his hips. Of watching the carnality saturate his expression as I lowered myself on him and took him inside.

And I thought of that evening, when I would ask him to sit on the edge of the bed, and I’d kneel before him, worshipping with my mouth the long, thick shaft he used to pleasure me. Of taking it in my hand when I heard he was close and stroking it with my head tipped back in awe, in wonder, watching his handsome face as I coaxed the pearls of his love for me to jet onto my breasts, my neck.

He loved that.

He loved everything.

And I gave him everything.

There was no opening he hadn’t breached without my heartfelt invitation and welcoming of him inside. There was no fantasy he could whisper in my ear that I would refuse him.

I gloried in the memory of when, not long after we were wed and he’d already thoroughly introduced me to our lovemaking, how I tempted him, teased him, pushed him beyond the endurance of his control, forcing him to snap and bend me naked over the desk in his study in our rooms, pressing oil up my backside with his fingers before he invaded it with his cock.

Oh, the growl that came when he sunk completely inside, his grip on my flesh leaving bruises I wore proudly for days. The power I had over him, and he over me, him and me, always.

I gloried in every time after, when he’d turn me to my belly and fill me there.

I thrilled in remembrance of the heady looks he sent my way at Marlborough’s ball, before he secreted us to a dark parlor, pressed me against the back of a settee, sunk to his knees and dove under my skirts.

I rejoiced at recollecting the night he ordered the staff out of the dining room, swept my wedding china to shattering on the floor, my beef and sauce a stain for the maids to clean, and he’d planted me on the table at my setting. He’d tossed my skirts up, and I watched the savage intensity of his face as he held me still just at the waist and pounded inside. And I delighted in his surprise when I climaxed for him, simply with the brutality of our lovemaking. How he’d then torn my bodice down and pulled at my nipple, making the sensation last for hours, days, decades.

Eons.

Oh, how I reveled in him enjoying the fruits of our love, our children who raced to him every time he was anywhere near their vicinity with excited cries of, “Papa! Papa!” their arms stretched out for his touch.

But I cared not what it said of me as a woman, a mother, a lady, that as much as I loved this, what was ours, only ours, what we’d created, our family.

It was him.

Only him.

I had nothing in this world that was mine. Even my children would grow and leave me.

But I had him.

I would always have him.

“Addie,” he called, stretching a long arm to me.

“Coming, my love,” I called in return, not hesitating to make my way across the moor to my husband, my lord, my love.

Augustus.

* * *

My eyes snapped open to see only dark, and I felt the slumbering heat of Ian’s body spooning the back of mine.

And I lay there, at first feeling good and right, perfectly both, the like I’d never had in my life. This faded to feeling funny, strange, right and wrong, knowing and bewildered, scared and safe.

I remembered. I remembered the dream.

No.

I remembered everything.

I remembered the memory.

I remembered that day on the moors. I remembered the morning orgasm. I knew that night I’d have another…and another.

And I knew I hadn’t been dreaming.

Nor had I been remembering.

I’d been possessed.

No. That wasn’t right either.

It was me doing the possessing.

I had been Lady Adelaide.

And she had been me.

Ian and I had returned earlier and gone right to the Conservatory for one last drink.

Lady Jane had stopped in to say goodnight, the first time I’d seen her in that space. Portia chose to text from wherever she was in the house to do the same. We saw nothing of Richard or Daniel.

I again started feeling off, unable to put my finger on how, but I put it down to all that had gone before, and a belated reaction to it now that I had a chance to process it after an uneventful and pleasant day.

I told Ian how I felt, though, and he decreed it was bed for me. He came up with me, and because he wasn’t sleepy, told me he was going to do some work.

I got ready for bed and went to him in his sitting room for a goodnight kiss that became somewhat of a make-out session before he scooted me to the dais and kissed my cheek after he tucked the covers around me.

Now he was here, and I was here, but I’d just been there.

Two hundred years earlier, on the moors with my husband, her husband, thinking her thoughts, feeling her feelings.

And I lay there in the dark, cradled in Ian’s body, for the first time since I got to Duncroft House, genuinely and completely terrified out of my brain.