Page 21 of For The Love Of A Widow

She dropped beside the tangle of limbs, clothing, and forgotten weaponry, but was uncertain where to begin or how to disentangle the mass of moaning, wounded cries.

Lettie reached out and rolled a body from the top of the pile. It continued to roll until she heard a thud as it settled in a large, muddy puddle. She worked furiously, her arms ached at the dead weight, but she’d yet to find the man who called to her for help.

He must be close. He still said her name, but it was louder now—growing with intensity as she worked faster.

The ground trembled once more as if a cannon had been shot right beside her, but no other sound filled the air other than her ragged breathing and the shout of her name.

Blessedly, she pulled a limp arm away to reveal a familiar face. His mouth formed her name one last time.

Just as quickly, all life drained from his eyes.

Lettie was too late. She hadn’t moved fast enough. She hadn’t known the true urgency of the matter.

Daniel!

“Daniel!” the single word ripped from her, breaking the silence as Lettie’s eyes snapped open. Above her, Daniel stood—mercifully alive—staring at her with great worry, his hands holding her shoulders firmly against the lounge. “Daniel,” she sighed, allowing the terror to drain from her, and her body to go limp, no longer fighting his hold. “I must have fallen asleep.”

He released her and took a step back, permitting her to sit. She pressed her hands to her coiffure to make sure her pose hadn’t ruined her maid’s handiwork, but belatedly, she remembered her locks were shorn too close to her scalp to afford any style beyond an unassuming clip.

She breathed deeply, attempting to slow her erratic heartbeat enough to stop the trembling of her hands before Daniel noticed.

“You were calling out in your sleep.” He took a seat next to her on the chaise. “I came to meet with your father, but I heard you yelling all the way in the foyer. You sounded as if you were in great pain, and the servants were acting as if they did not hear anything amiss.”

Great pain was not a strong enough phrase to encapsulate the hellish night terrors she’d suffered since Waterloo. Only this time, something had changed. The wounded, dead, and dying were as they were every night when the dreams came. The eerie quiet—except for the moaning of the wounded—was as it always was. Even her name reaching her on the breeze, calling her forth, deeper and deeper into the blood-soaked battlefield—and farther from camp—was the same.

However, the mound of breathing bodies had been larger.

As she’d moved the final limb to discover who’d been calling to her for help, it had not been Gregory’s cold, unmoving eyes staring at her, but those of…

Daniel.

He stood quickly and moved to the sideboard, pouring her a healthy goblet of watered wine before returning to her side. “Here, have a drink. You are as pale as a freshly laundered bed sheet.”

Before taking the offered glass, Lettie ran her damp hands down her legs to her knees. The added time would hopefully stop their shaking and enable her to hold the wine without spilling it on both of them.

“Thank you,” she said with a feeble smile. It had been nearly a week since she’d spoken with Daniel. He’d come and gone from Carrolton House but he’d never pressured her to accept his presence as she adjusted to being back in London and under her parent’s care. Oddly enough, a part of her longed to see him, speak with him, and be close to someone who knew her well. “It was only a dream, nothing more. I am much better now.”

“How long have the nightmares plagued you?” he asked.

His matter of fact tone told Lettie that lying would do her no good. Yet she wondered what Daniel had lived through to know anything about the nightmares that visited her during sleep.

Her brow furrowed. “How do you know it was a nightmare?”

“You were thrashing around.” He lifted his arms where a red welt had formed. “Your fist knocked me before I was able to get a handle on you. If you were dreaming of kittens and rainbows, you would not have been so…” He paused to find the exact word to describe the scene he’d walked in on. “…out of control and filled with terror.”

She stared into her cup, and Daniel regretted inquiring about her fitful sleep. Since that early morning at Phineas’s townhouse, the same terrors had infiltrated his once peaceful slumber. Endless hours spent running and searching the stables, trying to locate the boy as Daniel heard the whip hitting him repeatedly, over and over, while Charlie wept for his mother.

Daniel was never able to stop the beating, only locating Phineas by his deep chuckles of pleasure when they echoed through the stables. And each morning, Daniel had awoken feeling like the failure he’d proven himself to be.

Every night, it was the same.

It was his penance.

He deserved the nightmares that visited him every time he closed his eyes.

But Lettie…Lettie deserved none of it.

And she certainly deserved a better man than Daniel had proven himself to be.