Page 25 of Beyond Dreams

Or rather, she tried to. It was laced in the back and entirely too tight for her to simply lift over her head. She twisted and squirmed but could not reach the ties. Seething and silently cursing—using really bad words inside her head—she kept at it, knowing she’d be damned before she asked him for help. Finally, she gave up trying to reach the laces and simply wrestled the thing over her head. The rending of fabric was possibly unmistakable.

“Shit,” she grumbled.Oh, the hell with it.She then used more frantic, less careful motions to rid herself of the stupid dress, tearing more of the indecent gown, and then treating herself to a glorious, unrestrained large breath when it was gone. Briefly, she actually sighed with some pleasure. Ah, freedom.

When she turned again, she found Duncan had rolled over and was watching her with another of his heavy frowns.

“What?” She snapped at him, almost daring him with her black look to say something, anything. She blew the hair off her forehead.

Wisely, he said nothing, and shifted again, presenting her with his back once more.

Recalling then how the numerous skirts had annoyed her earlier when she’d climbed into the surprisingly cozy bed, she removed the next layer, until she was dressed in only the sleeveless, long chemise.

As she pulled back the blankets on her side of the bed, Duncan said over his shoulder, “Tamp the fire, lass.”

“I would, if I knew what that meant or how to do it.” But because she did not, she got into bed and covered herself up to her neck, turning her back to him as he had.

Her husband grumbled something now—that’s all they’d done this first night of marriage; how charming—and threw back the covers with some annoyance. Holly didn’t turn or lift her head to see what he was about but did notice the room grew dark after a moment so that she supposed he’d made the fire smaller and safer.

The bed shifted with his return, and she thought he might be on his back now, since his breathing sounded a little closer in the otherwise silent room.

She yawned long and noiselessly, understanding what people spoke of when they talked about emotional exhaustion. She shouldn’t have been tired, having slept a few hours, maybe more earlier, but she was, was simply drained of energy. “What time is it?” she asked over her shoulder.

She was so still she was pretty sure she could feel his head swivel on the pillow, as if he’d turned toward her, as if he were surprised by the question, or that she spoke at all.

A full ten or fifteen seconds passed before he answered.

“After midnight by now, I would imagine.”

A scratching noise followed this, and Holly pictured him grazing his fingers back and forth over his superb chest.

“I shouldn’t be tired,” she said then, pausing to yawn once again, “but I am.”

“Aye.”

Holly bit her lip, wondering when was the last time she’d shared a bed with someone. Two and a half years ago, she realized, when she’d—thankfully briefly—dated that loser, Jason Imus. Actually,loserwas a bit harsh. Jason was a gifted engineer, super smart, and with a great social personality. But he’d also been condescending, of Holly’s job, her small apartment, her career, and so many other things about her that she’d been compelled to ask him why hewasdating her. It had been his inability to come up with a reason—even one—for a full ten seconds that helped her break it off.

Even during that short-lived romance, Holly had spent a full night with him only a time or two, so now it felt strange to share a bed with someone. That the someone in question was her husband was something she hadn’t yet wrapped her brain around. It was a little hard to process relatively small considerations such as this when her whole world had turned upside-down, thrusting her back in time more than seven hundred years. So far she’d managed to get by merely by going with the flow, taking whatever Fate threw at her, but definitely she felt as if she were caught in a tidal wave, and was just being swept along on a giant sea swell, at the mercy of the water.

Only briefly had she thought of her parents. She’d known some solace for the fact that they knew she’d be gone for two weeks on her Scotland trip and wouldn’t expect to hear from her every day. Even if she hadn’t been home, they were not a family that was in constant communication and thus the lack of it would not alarm them right away.

And when they did understand that she was missing....

Holly could not rightly imagine what the response of her parents would be. This struck her as particularly sorrowful, that she couldn’t picture her parents carrying on in grief over her mysterious absence. Not that she didn’t believe herself loved, but her parents had not shown affection readily enough that she could imagine them distraught over this. Her brother and sister were quite a bit older than her, had been moved away with families of their own for years. She saw them twice a year at most, and didn’t keep in constant contact with them. She had friends, but not one true and great friend that might wonder where she was after another week or so, that she began to seriously wonder if, aside from her job, her absence would even be noticed anytime soon.

Her brain would not allow her to escape this unrealistic possibility, that no one would miss her or mourn her if she never returned. Against her will, but led by her tortured mind, Holly dived down that rabbit hole, a very bad idea which had her fighting back tears in the next minute. What if no one did miss for her or search for her? What if this alternate reality had them not knowing she’d ever existed? Had she been wiped off the face of the earth and people’s memories in the twenty-first century? Quickly, she began to lose control, trembling and crying.

And because the room was so still and silent, the bed unmoving as she and Duncan had been, she couldn’t imagine that he didn’t know she was crying—another flight of ideas whose path she followed. Would he acknowledge her tears? Would he comfort her? He was a big, strong man. His shoulders seemed capable of being able to absorb her fear and her tears—good God, but when was the last time someone had held her with compassion?—but were his head and heart made that way, to offer comfort to his just-met, grief-stricken wife?

Over the sound of her weeping, which she tried to muffle in the lumpy pillow, Holly was aware of him shifting behind her, probably turning onto his side. When she carried on, unable to rein it in, he began to toss and turn with greater agitation, the mattress yielding and vibrating beneath his weight and the increasing gruffness of his motions.

And while he did all this twisting and turning behind her, not bothering to hide his displeasure, and while she felt as if her heart were breaking with despair, Holly understood that at this moment she really wanted him, this man of her dreams, to take her in his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right.

Instead, when the mattress shifted once more, it did not bring him closer to her and reveal any tentative hand reached out to console her. Her husband of less than a day flung back the covers and left the bed completely. Boots scraped against the floor and clothes were snatched from the chair as he gathered his stuff.

And then he left her, closing the door with a pronounced thud after him.

***

Duncan stormed fromthe chamber, his clothes, sword, and boots in hand, and stomped down the corridor to his own chamber. He told himself he didn’t care about his bride or what had triggered her crying bit. It was neither his fault nor his concern. Ah, but her tears were so pitiful, and her attempts to disguise them fruitless. Truth was, they’d affected him more than he would have guessed or cared to admit.

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