Impulse

“My dear girl, really, you can’t mean you still have your predilection for low types. I would have thought you had lost that by now.” He sighed. “Ah, well, one would have hoped that Jeremy, at least, would have more thought to the Stanhope name.”

“What do you care about the Stanhope name? It is none of your business who is visiting us, anyway.”

“It is my business when my wife—all right, my former wife—is rumored to be marrying a servant. How do you think that looks, for you to go from me to a stable lad?”

“I don’t care how it looks! It has nothing to do with you!”

“Ah, but everything about you has to do with me,” he replied, reaching out and stroking his knuckles down her cheek. Angela flinched instinctively. “I see you still remember.”

“Of course I remember,” Angela replied in a choked voice. “How could I possibly forget?”

“Then you must remember how completely I owned you, my dear. I still do. Whatever other man might have you, you will always have my stamp upon you.”

Bile rose in Angela’s throat, and she swallowed hard to keep from gagging. Dunstan, watching her, smiled.

“I wouldn’t mind having you back,” he continued. “It takes so many years to school a woman as adequately as I had schooled you, you know. ‘Tis such a chore, having to train others. And, I find, there are few who are quite as … titillating as you are.”

Angela could not hide the convulsive shiver that ran down her spine at his words. She felt pinned between Dunstan and the arbor bench behind her. She wanted to run around the bench and up the path to the house, but she hated to turn her back to him almost as much as she hated facing him. Besides, it galled her to let him know how much he scared her. That had always been one of the things from which he derived the most pleasure.

“You will never have me back.”

“Won’t I?” Dunstan’s mouth twisted in a smile. “I told you, it is all over London that Jeremy is on the threshold of debtor’s prison. Everyone knows you are for sale to the highest bidder. Why else would Jeremy entertain the notion of allying your family to that of a servant? I should think he would be grateful to me if I were to save him from denigrating the Stanhope name in such a fashion. I can pay off his debts, and I would think he would be suitably grateful to me. Don’t you? Of course, marriage would be out of the question now. An Asquith could have a divorcée as no more than a mistress, say.”

Angela sucked in her breath and stiffened. A white-hot rage swept through her. Dunstan watched her with a faint smile on his lips, enjoying the reaction his words had caused in her.

“Angela?” Her brother’s voice came across the yard.

Angela whirled. Jeremy was hurrying toward her along the path from the house, a worried frown on his face. Cam Monroe was beside him, looking wonderfully solid and safe. A feeling of power surged up in Angela. Suddenly she felt stronger and more confident. She glanced at Dunstan. There was something in his eyes that told her the thought of her marrying Cam Monroe galled him. It was pride, she decided, pride and possessiveness. He hated to think that another man—worst of all, someone of lowly birth—might own something that had been his, for that was the way Dunstan had thought of her, as one of his beautiful possessions.

“Ah, and this must be your swain,” Dunstan commented, his mouth curling into a sneer.

“Yes, it is,” Angela said loudly, turning toward the approaching men and holding out her hand. “Cam, I would like for you to meet Lord Dunstan.” She turned toward her former husband, lifting her chin in a gesture that was both defiant and triumphant. “Dunstan, this is my fiancé, Cameron Monroe.”

Jeremy stopped dead, his mouth dropping open. Cam’s eyes widened slightly, but he gave no other sign of his astonishment as he went to Angela and took the hand she offered.

“Good morning, my love.” He bent and gave Angela a peck on the cheek, then turned to the other man and bowed. “Lord Dunstan.”

Dunstan’s nostrils flared, and a deadly light flickered in his eyes. Angela thought for a moment that he was going to refuse to return the acknowledgment. But polite behavior had been bred into Dunstan more deeply than morals, and, after a moment, he sketched a stiff bow. “Monroe.”

“I presume Lord Dunstan was about to leave,” Cam went on pleasantly, glancing from Angela’s pale face to the man’s. “Sorry that we did not get to talk, my lord. Why don’t I walk you out? That way we can chat a little.”

“Perfectly all right,” Dunstan said smoothly. “I know my way.” A knowing smile touched his lips as he went on. “I have been here before you.”

Cam’s smile was more a baring of teeth. He understood the double meaning that the other man intended to convey, but he refused to acknowledge it. “However, I am sure it is no longer familiar to you. I insist on escorting you to your horse.”

He moved to Dunstan’s side, and the only way the other man could avoid Cam’s taking his arm and propelling him along was to turn and voluntarily move forward, though it was clear from the chill on his face that it galled him to do so.

Jeremy moved over to his sister and slid a comforting arm around her shoulders, asking in a low voice, “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” Angela nodded. But the momentary flush of victory she had felt was fading. She felt sick and weak in the knees, and her mind was whirling. “Oh, God, Jeremy, what have I done?”

Cam was certain that Angela was regretting what she had said. He carefully avoided her for the rest of the day, so that she would not have a chance to withdraw her hastily uttered words. Instead, he spent the time closeted with Mr. Pettigrew and Jeremy, drawing up the terms of the marriage contract and making sure that the announcement of the impending marriage was sent to the Times. At dinner, Jeremy announced the engagement to his mother and grandmother. Angela looked a trifle trapped, but she made no demur. Cam went to bed that night feeling pretty well satisfied with himself.

He was awakened by screams. He was out of the bed and headed toward the door before he was awake enough to realize what had happened. He paused, shaking his head to clear it, thinking for an instant that it must have been a dream. But then he heard a woman’s voice again, raised in fear, saying, “No, no, please.” in a way that sent chills down his spine. It was Angela’s voice.

It was the same as always. She was running down a long, dark corridor, her heart pounding, her breath rasping in her lungs. She was fleeing the thing behind her, the faceless horror that followed her. She didn’t know exactly what it was, only that it was monstrous and terrifying.And it was after her.It would not rest until it had her.

She ran on in terror, careening around the corner and rushing down the stairs. The stairs went on forever, around and around until she was dizzy. And then suddenly she was outside, and now she knew where she was: the formal gardens at Gresmere, Dunstan’s estate. There was the statue of the satyr, hidden deep within the maze. He was grinning lasciviously down at her, hands on hips, hairy and goatish, but extending from him a huge and human male member.

She was running now through the lanes of the maze, the close-growing, suffocating green hedges that often twined together at the top, blocking out most of the sunlight. Every corridor she took, every twist and turn she made, brought her back to the middle and the evil grinning satyr. Her lungs burned, and she was crying. Her legs ached, and she was so scared she wanted to vomit. She staggered and lurched along, shivering in the cold. Hands reached out, touching her, plucking at her. Then she realized she was naked. She wanted to stop, to hide, but there was no place in the thick green bushes. She had to run on, because the nameless thing was behind her, reaching for her. It would not stop….

She fell to her knees and crawled on, sobbing and begging. Suddenly, instead of the bushes, there were people lining the way, all of them watching her silently. She cried out to them to help her, to save her, but no one moved or spoke. They all just watched her with avid faces, eyes alight and mouths twisted into grotesque smiles just like the satyr’s. There was a pounding, and she thought they were clapping. Or maybe it was the thing stomping after her, for it was right behind her now, reaching for her, and she could no longer move. She began to scream. The pounding drowned out her cries.

Her eyes flew open. She was awake, out of the horror of the dream, yet still wrapped in darkness. The pounding continued, confusing her further.

“Angela!” a man’s voice roared outside her room. “Damn it, open this door.”

A shudder ran through her, and she glanced around, horror-stricken, thinking for an instant that she was still married, that it was Dunstan outside demanding entrance. But she recognized the furniture, and she knew it was her room at Bridbury. The pounding stopped, followed by a metallic crash against the doorknob.

“Wait! No!” That was Jeremy’s voice. “Angela, it is I, Jeremy. Are you all right?”

The first voice spoke again, a deep male rumble of anger, followed by Jeremy’s agitated answer. Angela slid out of bed and hurried through the dark to the door, still trembling and dazed from the terror of her nightmare.

She put her mouth close to the door. “Who is it?”

“Angela? It’s me, Cam. Open up. What the devil is going on?”

She opened the door a crack, trying to control her shivers. “It’s all—”

Her words were cut off as Cam shoved the door back and stepped into the room, casting a swift, encompassing glance around the dark room, then sweeping her up into his arms as if she were a child. Under normal circumstances Angela would have shrunk from such an embrace. But now, still half-spellbound by the powerful nightmare and without her usual conscious defenses, she curled her arms around his neck and clung to him, burrowing her head into his chest. She wanted shelter, and he was large and warm, a safe haven.

“There, now,” he murmured, his voice rumbling in his chest, beneath her ear. He kissed the top of her head. “It’s all right now. I’m here.”

He turned back to the door, where Jeremy and the others were edging in. Cam scowled at them. “I will take care of it.”

He reached out with his foot and shoved the door closed, then turned and strode across the room, still carrying Angela, to the large, comfortable chair by the window. He sat down in it and cuddled her on his lap. She snuggled closer to him, pushing her toes down between the cushion and the chair to keep them warm. Cam smiled a little at the gesture and curled his arms around her even more tightly. He laid his cheek against the top of her head.

“What happened?” he asked after a moment. “A nightmare?”

“Yes. Sometimes I have them. Not much anymore.” At first, after she left Dunstan, she had had them almost every night. It had been so bad that Kate insisted on sleeping on a cot in Angela’s room, so that she could wake her mistress when she was in the throes of one of the dreams. But as the years passed, the nightmare had come less and less often, and after a time Kate had agreed to return to her own more comfortable bed in the servants’ quarters. It had been almost a year now since Angela had had the nightmare.

“You want to tell me about it?” he asked.

“No.” Angela shook her head decisively. She had never told anyone what happened in the dreams. She certainly wasn’t about to start now, with Cam. She could not bear for anyone to know how scared she was and how little it took to reduce her to such a state. It was not, in the telling, she knew, anything particularly scary. The terror of the nightmare was in the feeling, in the knowledge of how awful and evil was the thing that chased her. And that she could not convey without talking about Dunstan. And Dunstan was something she refused to talk about.

“That’s fine.” He stroked his hand down her hair soothingly. “You know, I remember having nightmares when I was a child. In one of them I took a step off these really high stairs, and then I was falling and falling. I would always wake up before I hit the ground.”

“When I was little, I used to have bad dreams about the Gypsies that came every spring. Do you remember them?”