The Sherbrooke Bride - Catherine Coulter [128]
Douglas told McCallum to send the men home. He arrived back at Northcliffe Hall at four o’clock in the morning.
He found himself going into Alexandra’s bedchamber. He lay down on her bed in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling, exhausted but wide awake. He remembered every harsh word he’d ever said to her. He remembered the hurt in her eyes when he’d spoken of Melissande and how she would have acted the lady and done as her husband told her.
He felt pain wash through him, deep aching pain and an emptiness that was at once unusual yet not unexpected, not now, now that he’d finally come to realize that he couldn’t live without his wife.
He heard her speaking French, saw her sitting at his desk, looking so very young, her voice clear and precise, her accent atrocious. He smiled even as the pain ebbed and flowed deep inside him.
He would find her; he had to. He couldn’t now imagine facing a life without her.
The following day the storm had become a gale. No one was going anywhere. Rain splattered the windowpanes, and thunder shook the earth. Tree branches on the poplars were pressed nearly to the ground by the force of the wind. Douglas prayed that Georges had gotten Alexandra to France safely. He laughed harshly even as he prayed for that.
As for his mother, Lady Lydia sensed that the upstart wife who had been unknown to her son before she’d thrust herself into their lives had shifted in his regard. She wasn’t stupid; she kept such thoughts as let the twit stay gone behind her teeth. As for Sinjun, she tried to keep her brother occupied.
It was no good. The storm raged outside and Douglas raged inside. Even Hollis was looking thin about the mouth. The entire household was tense, silent.
That night Douglas slept in Alexandra’s room. He slept deeply simply because Hollis had slipped laudanum in his wine. He dreamed of Alexandra and she was standing there at the stables, laughing, patting her mare’s nose all the while, telling Douglas that she loved him, loved him, loved him . . .
And then he was awake and Alexandra was standing there beside the bed, speaking to him.
CHAPTER
22
HE STARED THEN blinked rapidly. It wasn’t so very dark in the bedchamber and that was surely strange for it had been black as pitch when he’d gone to bed. But no, there she was, standing next to the bed, and he could see her clearly, too clearly really, and she was smiling gently down at him, saying, “She is all right.” But she hadn’t really said anything, had she? Yet he’d heard those words clearly in his mind.
It wasn’t Alexandra. He reached out his hand and she stepped back very quickly, yet she hardly seemed to move, but he knew that he’d touched her sleeve, though he’d felt nothing, just the still air.
He felt a deep strangling fear, fear of the unknown, fear of ghosts and goblins and evil monsters that lived in cupboards and came out at night to bedevil little boys.
“No,” Douglas said. “No, you’re not bloody real. I’m worried sick and my mind has dished you up to torment me, nothing more, nothing, damn you!”
Her hair was long and straight and so light a blond that it was white, and the gown was billowing gently around her yet the air was still and heavy with the weight of the storm. He had, of course, seen her before, rather his mind had produced her before with a goodly amount of fanfare. She’d come to him that long-ago night when Alexandra had tried to escape him. She would have succeeded in escaping him had his mind not brought her to him.
Suddenly, without warning, Douglas saw Alexandra in his mind’s eye. She was in a small room lying on a narrow cot. Her gown was wrinkled and torn. Her hair was straggling around her face. She was pale but he saw no fear. Her wrists and ankles were tied with rope. She was awake and he could practically see her thinking, plotting madly for a way to escape, and that made him smile. She had guts. Then he saw just as clearly