His Californian Countess

He stared up at her, now engulfed in delirium. She decided to play along. What difference did it make if a delirious man thought she was someone else?

“It wasn’t your fault,” she told him. “It was someone angry over his mining interests.”

“Not sure,” Jamie whispered. “Gowery said … but … I wonder—” His eyelids slid closed.

He was gone again, but he had been lucid for a longer time than he’d been in nearly a week. Since the day he’d pushed her to marry him.

Amber plunked down on the stool next to the bed. Lord above! She’d married him. She’d come to care for him. And he could still die. His fever kept spiking toward sundown. She wanted to believe he’d live so badly, but even his recovery posed a huge problem for her—for her heart. While he’d been lost in delusions and delirium, she’d seen the honorable man his unguarded mind revealed him to be. And more and more she became ensnared and enthralled by a pair of fevered violet eyes.

Several hours later Jamie’s fever spiked again. It raged for hours as if in response to her refusal to give up hope. Then he began sweating and she prayed the fever would break for good.

Exhaustion pressed in on her as she blotted his forehead to keep the sweat from running into his eyes. He tossed and turned and once again muttered names and the occasional coherent phrases about his terrible upbringing and his need to protect his child from the same man English law would have made her guardian.

It surprised her that he was such a good man considering his life under his uncle’s cruel tutelage. No matter what happened between them in the future, she was at peace with her decision to marry him for Meara.

His skin had begun to peel quite severely a few days earlier and, according to the healing book, the disease had about run its course.

The sweating continued into the long, hot afternoon. She changed his soaking sheet several times. The crew had refused to get close to the diseased bed linens, but they did bring her fresh buckets of water so she could wash them. After she changed the bed, she dropped the sheets into a bucket of vinegar and water. After they’d soaked for a while, she rinsed them in a second tub of clean water, then gave them a soak in baking soda. That was how the book, which had almost become as precious to her as her Bible, said to clean everything that came in contact with him.

Their quick wedding seemed forever ago. In her weariness she’d lost count of exactly how many days that was. That she’d become Lady Adair that day seemed impossible. She looked down at herself and chuckled. She’d certainly set the entire aristocracy on its ear if right then they could see the woman the Earl of Adair had married.

Jamie finally quieted and the profuse sweating lessened. He was cooler to the touch than he’d been since the day she’d entered the cabin. By sunset her back ached and exhaustion licked at her heels. Though he’d not awakened since morning, he finally slept comfortably. She was no longer in the least squeamish about the personal nature of the tasks the doctor had pushed her to perform. She bathed him thoroughly, and found it difficult not to admire the beauty of him.

At last she had a few minutes for herself. Behind a blanket she’d hung in the corner, she washed in cool water and changed into one of Helena’s silk shifts. After pushing the buckets of dirty water out to the cabin boy for disposal, she sank onto a pallet she’d made on the floor. Praying they’d both sleep all night and that Jamie was on the mend at last, Amber fell into exhausted sleep.

Soft breathing came from somewhere next to Jamie. From below and next to him. He glanced down and found his golden sprite curled up on the floor amid twisted sheets and blankets. It was the pixie from his dreams.

He must still be dreaming. Only in a dream would someone so lovely and innocent be there, ready to fulfill his most deep-seated wishes. If only she were real.

But whatever she was, wherever he was, he was drawn like a moth to a flame. Wondering which of them would be singed, he slipped from the bed to the floor and reached out to touch her golden hair. As he tangled his fingers in her wavy tresses, he waited, anxious for the burn.

But the fire was only in his blood.

She sighed and turned her face into his hand. He hardened and melted at once. It seemed the most natural action in the world to sink down next to her and pull her close. He captured her chin as he settled his lips over hers. The moan that escaped her called to him. Captured him.

Made him want.

Her.

Made him need.

Only her.

He parted her lips with his tongue and she granted him entrance with another sigh. He tasted sweetness and hunger and prayed it was hunger for him. Sliding his palms lower, he found her fine-boned, delicate shoulders and ever so gently kneaded them. Then he stroked downward over her back, her gently rounded buttocks. Her warmth heated his blood, especially when he realized that only a thin silken shift separated them. That knowledge tempted him as nothing before ever had. Finally his fingers found the hem of her shift.

His palms came in contact with her thighs and he was amazed that her skin was silkier than her shift. He was obsessed with her. “So silky. So soft,” he whispered. He had to have her.

He skimmed his fingertips upward over her thighs and feathered them over her hipbones. She shivered and made strangled little sounds, tempting sounds that provoked a desperate need in him. He wanted to hold those perfect hips and mount her, but he fought the urge. There was all that enticing territory above to explore and he had all day and night. That was the beauty of a dream. He had as long as he wanted or needed. He trailed his fingers over her flat belly. It was even softer than the rest of her.

When he cupped her smooth, tempting breasts, she moaned again and a whispered word burst from her lips. “Please.” And then again, “Please.”

“I know,” he murmured, hoping to soothe her. He didn’t know how he knew what she wanted—what she needed. But this was his dream so, of course, what he wanted she wanted. And he wanted to pleasure her. A dream lover like his pixie deserved his best efforts.

He sought and found her warm, hot center and stroked her moist core, first one finger, then two. With his thumb he circled the one spot he knew would drive her wild.

It did. She cried out and tipped her hips as if seeking more, rocking against his hand. “Please,” she sobbed. “I … I need—I need….” She tossed her head and held her arms out to him.

She might not understand all he’d made her feel, but he did. “Oh, yes, sprite, I do, too,” he assured her. They needed to lose themselves in each other. He gave in to all his secret desires. He shifted over her and covered one of her sweet nipples with his mouth and suckled her till she cried out again. Her scent—a combination of flowers and musk—seemed to surround him, then desire overwhelmed him.

He pulled her hips toward his and entered her tight core.

She made a small distressed sound and he tensed. Even a dream lover deserved care and consideration. “It’s all right. Don’t worry. I’ll make it good for you.”

Something was different about this coupling from those he’d had with his wife. Try though he might, his mind was too clouded with passion and need to identify what he’d missed or to consider anything beyond the desire this dream woman had stirred in him. He was no longer sure of even who she was—the sprite or Helena, he could no longer tell.

Knowing he had to coax her back to him, he covered her mouth with his and caressed her lips with his own. When she opened them on a gasp, he twined his tongue with hers. She was soon with him again and he rewarded her trust by carefully pressing forward, then pulling back. He rocked on her till he was buried to the hilt in her sweet depths. “Better? My God, tell me it’s better!”

She nodded, sucking in a breath. “Better than better. Perfect,” she breathed. Her tightness caressed him and rapture called, but he struggled to hold himself in check. He supported his weight on his forearms as best as he could, but soon, shaking with need, he lost himself. All thought fled his mind when she circled his waist with her long, slender limbs.

Somehow he managed to fight back from the precipice of satisfaction, desperate to ensure pleasure for the magical woman in his arms. Sweet breath puffed from her lungs in the rhythm of his thrusts. Then when he could no longer hold off reaching for the ultimate rapture, her muscles began to pulse around him and he gave himself over to the wonder of the dream. Her cries of ecstasy tore through the little room and he gladly followed her. As he emptied his seed into her keeping, he cried out her name.

Helena.

Feeling as if she’d drained every ounce of strength from him, he rolled to his side to keep from collapsing on her. Chilled, he flipped the blanket over them both, and then pulled her along his side, settling her head against his shoulder. Exhaustion closed in on him, but he managed one more coherent thought. Who would have thought Helena would be so passionate a lover? This dream was better than any he’d had before he’d given up the idea of marriage between them.

As the fog in his mind closed in on him, Jamie felt a tear drop on to his shoulder, then another. But he couldn’t manage to ask why she’d cry.

Amber tried to hold on to her emotions, but one tear fell then another and another. How could a heart break and allow the owner to live with such pain? She would rather die than have him know the destruction one word—one name—had wrought within her.

It had all seemed like a dream at first. Indeed, she had had similar dreams for days. With every fiber of her being Amber had believed this was a dream, as well. He’d been so sick and she’d been so afraid to believe he was on the mend that awaking in his arms had truly felt like a secret wish come true.

A fantasy.

A dream.

Then, when things she’d never imagined or heard of began to happen between them, she’d fully awakened and thought the real Jamie had come to her, wanting to make their desperate unromantic marriage a real one. And God help her, after all her protestations that she wanted no man in her life, in her exhausted sleep-deprived mind she’d wanted him. She’d believed the beautiful act they’d performed together came from feelings in each of them that matched perfectly.

Those traitorous emotions had grown against her will while she’d nursed him. Now she’d have to use all her willpower to obliterate them. Because he’d turned the dream she’d awakened to from beautiful reality to a nightmare with the shouted name of the woman he believed her to be.

Not Amber. Not even Pixie.

Helena.

Beautiful, wealthy and proper Helena.

So now Amber lay, silently weeping, unable to move away without risking his awakening and seeing how deeply he’d wounded her. The abyss of troubled sleep claimed her before she could stem the flow of her tears. While she slept in his arms, her dreams were full of confrontations that featured Jamie and Helena with Amber in the role of their child’s governess or some other lowly servant.

Jamie stirred and Amber woke with a start. Morning light flooded through the porthole, illuminating the cabin and sending reality crashing in on her like a mighty wave, assaulting her heart and soul. Everything between them last night had been a fraud.