Mary awoke with a start and sat up, blinking into the gray light.

Five o’clock then. Odd how her body kept to such a staid routine, even when her world had been shaken inside out. She stretched, feeling sore in strange, new places. Embarrassment rose as her nudity registered. But as she turned her head to see West’s rumpled blond head, lying on the pillow they’d shared during the night, the embarrassment receded.

This was her husband.

And she was now well and truly a wife.

West seemed dead to the world, snoring in a soft, gentle patter. She smiled to think she now knew such an intimate thing about him. She filed the small fact away, tucking it tenderly beside the dreadfully short list of things she knew about her husband.

But . . . hadn’t he once told her he was plagued by nightmares? At the moment he looked peaceful in slumber, the planes of his face relaxed and unguarded. The sheet had slipped down to his waist, and she was able to see the muscled ridge of his chest muscles, the gold dusting of hair that wanted to catch the morning light. The scar on his shoulder.

She reached out a hand to touch it. Yesterday, he’d refused to divulge its origins when she had asked. A product, perhaps, of the duel he was rumored to have had?

Or something more sinister?

After all, the man carried a pistol around in his pocket like it was a pocket watch.

Old, cold fears tried to creep back in, whispers of what she feared might still come, but she forced those withering thoughts to one side. She couldn’t go into this marriage paralyzed by the fear she was going to lose him. Each day, each breath, was a new start, and she needed to cast off her fear of the past and concentrate on the present. It didn’t matter if he’d had a dozen duels, or how many women had come before her. She was here now. She was the one in West’s bed. She was the one he had kissed last night.

The one he had called his future.

The least she could do was trust the man he was proving himself to be.

And at the moment, he was proving himself to be a solid sleeper instead of a gun-wielding philanderer, and so Mary set her bare feet on the plush carpet and pondered her next steps. She had no books to read, no journal to write in. Her trunks with her things had been put in the room next door, when she had foolishly still imagined this might be a marriage of convenience. That meant that she lacked a wrapper or even a nightrail to pull over her head.

But perhaps, given the early hour, she might have a chance at fetching a few things before any of the servants began to stir.

She slipped from the bed. Taking the top sheet with her, she wrapped it around her body as best she could, tripping over the long, dragging trail of it. But as she passed the bureau, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her hair stood out in a wild halo about her face, and there was a pink, fresh-scraped look to her cheeks. But worse—far worse—there was a distinctive reddened mark on her neck where West had laid his claim last night. She stepped closer to the mirror and peered at it, rubbing with a frantic finger.

It didn’t come off.

She began to tug her fingers through her hair, wishing she looked less like a demented hedgehog and more like a radiant, well-pleasured wife. She began to hunt for a comb amidst the items that littered West’s bureau top, pushing aside a silver case with West’s initials engraved on the top. But instead of finding a comb, she stilled as she saw something else entirely.

Clutching the sheet to her chest with one hand, she lifted the medal up with the other, gasping in awareness. Even in the early light of morning, its distinctive blue ribbon and square points were unmistakable. A Victoria Cross. She’d seen a likeness of it printed in the London Gazette, had read about the men who had been given this newly created honor, just last year, for the most heroic deeds performed at the Crimean front.

She swung around to stare at his sleeping form. West had spent time in Crimea?

Just who was this man she had married?

But like a puzzle, the missing pieces slid into place. The lines of his body were muscled, hinting at hours spent doing something more than drinking with friends or playing at future viscount. Her gaze pulled to the glint of the revolver on the bedside table. She’d seen him wield it with precision, checking the chamber as though it was long-standing habit. She remembered how at the cathedral he’d asked about her opinion of the war, even as he’d withheld his own.

He was a soldier. Or had been a soldier.

Her fingers tightened around the Victoria Cross. It was Britain’s highest honor, newly created by the queen. Why was he so reticent to talk about it?

A noise from the bed jerked her gaze away from the revolver and back to West. He gave a low moan, a sound of anguish, and she darted toward him as he began to thrash about the bed.

“West,” she hissed, suddenly afraid.

She’d suffered from an occasional nightmare herself as a child, especially in those terrible months after her brother and father had died, but she had never seen someone caught in the grips of a nightmare like this. West was trapped in something terrible and unseen, his eyes a flutter of motion beneath his eyelids.

Kneeling on the bed, she tried to wake him, but finding a handhold proved difficult in the flurry of motion. Dodging a flailing hand, she added her voice to the mix. “West.” She placed a gentle hand against his chest, startled by the rapidity of the pulse she could feel there. “West,” she said again, more firmly. “Wake up.”

He gasped, followed by a long inhalation. His eyes opened. Tossed about. Settled on her. “Mary?” he breathed out. “You are here?”

“Yes,” she said simply, placing a hand against his damp brow.

Without warning, she found herself crushed against his bare, muscled chest, her ear pressed too close to the scar on his shoulder. She let herself go limp, knowing he needed something of comfort from her but not entirely sure how to give it.

She felt him smooth a hand over the top of her hair. “I dreamed . . .” His voice was hoarse. “Well, I dreamed you weren’t here. Not anymore.”

She shifted, pressing her lips against the salty tang of his skin. “I am here. I am safe.” She hesitated, pushing up and away from him and holding up her hand. “Thanks to you. My hero.” She smiled, almost shyly, then held up the medal she’d carried with her from the bureau. “You were a soldier. Why did you never tell me?”

His demeanor abruptly changed. The look of relief on his face was kicked aside, and resolve settled into the line of his jaw. “You’ve got it wrong.” She could feel him stiffening. Retreating. “I wasn’t a soldier. And I certainly wasn’t a hero.”

Confusion swept through her. The whispers of who Eleanor thought he was poked at her. “Did you steal this then?” she asked, confused. “As one of your jokes?”

“No.” There was a moment’s hesitation. “I was a sailor, not a soldier. Rank of lieutenant. But only because I bought the honor, not because it was a position I properly earned.” He made a rueful sound. “And I didn’t earn the medal, either, so you can cease with the starry-eyed debutante routine. I am not a national hero. I am a national joke.”

She bit her lip, unsure of why his words sounded so bitter. He’d shown dramatic flashes of heroism, to her, at least. He’d plunged into the shadows of St. Paul’s Cathedral, chasing a possible traitor. He’d married her to save her from an assassin’s threats. If she was honest with herself, he’d even tried to save her from her own stupidity that night in the library, trying to shield her from the ruin she’d so naively stumbled her way into.

“Someone must have thought you were a hero,” she murmured. “The queen, most especially. Won’t you tell me what happened?”

Christ above, she wanted to talk.

West wanted to do something entirely different. He’d awakened in the grip of a ferocious nightmare, and was only now settling into the reality that his new wife hadn’t died at the hands of an assassin’s bullet. He wanted to sink inside her, bury his nose in the fragrant mass of her hair. Convince himself she was real, something more than a dream.

And Crimea was . . . best forgotten. The medal was ridiculous.

Nearly a prank in and of itself, to be suspected of such bravery.

“West?” She loosened his name like a question, stumbling into the silence.

“You don’t understand,” he ground out, not wanting to talk about it. In fact, he’d rather move on to more enjoyable tasks. Such as tipping her onto her back and tying her up this time.

“I would like to understand.” She clutched the edges of the white sheet to her throat. “I promise you, I am a very good listener.”

That made his teeth clench. He didn’t deserve her patience, any more than he’d deserved the damned Victoria Cross. But if a brief explanation would help them move onto more pleasurable things, so be it.

“My time in the navy was nothing more than a lark. Grant and I left university when we were twenty, seeking a bit of adventure, the same as many of the men who signed on.” He reached out a hand to tug against her clutched fingers. The sheet slid down a promising inch or two. “We spent our service aboard the HMS Arrogant, with little enough action to impress anyone,” he murmured, focused only on the business of uncovering her, one delectable inch at a time. “We didn’t even see the front lines. Sevastopol was where most of the action was. We were sent to Fort Viborg instead.”

She frowned. “One doesn’t receive a Victoria Cross for unimpressive actions.” She batted his hand away, her brow furrowed in concentration. “There was vigorous fighting at Viborg, too. I read the accounts in the papers.”

West’s hand fell away. Of course she would have read the details of the war. The woman never met a paragraph she didn’t like. He knew her well enough by now to know she would not leave off until she had what she imagined was the truth out of him.

Still, he hesitated.

He wasn’t even sure he knew what the truth was.

“It was all a misunderstanding. Something about a bomb and the ship.” He still felt too close to the clench of his nightmare, and her gentle probing was making the dark edges peel back on a day he preferred to forget. He could nearly hear the sound of the live shell, rolling across the wooden planks of the lower deck. The laughter of the sailors, thinking it was just another one of his pranks. He’d reacted on instinct, tossed it overboard just in time.

“I am no hero,” he repeated gruffly, opening his eyes to face her. He’d never told anyone—not even his family—what had happened. Some pieces were buried too deeply to explain. “I was fortunate, that is all.” That fact, at least, was indisputable. Two seconds’ hesitation, and the shell would have gone off in his hands.

He saw the carnage that should have been nearly every time he closed his eyes.

But she was looking at him strangely now, as if she didn’t quite believe his dismissal of the events in his past.

“I didn’t deserve the medal, Mary,” he insisted. And he didn’t deserve her either. He felt dismantled by her questions, the look of pride he’d seen shining in her eyes when she’d waved that medal about. He was more comfortable, perhaps, with the confusion he saw flitting across her features now.

She bit her lip, her eyes lowering. And then her hand reached out to take up his own fingers. “In due time, then. I can understand being hesitant to talk about the darker things in one’s past. But you shouldn’t be ashamed of the medal, West.”

“If you like it, then you should keep it,” he said, trying to soften the gruffness that wanted to linger in his voice. God knew it ought to be kept by someone who appreciated it. He wanted to push back against her presumption that he would eventually offer her a better explanation for what had happened that day, but he held his tongue, not wanting to talk about it anymore. Better to let it lie. She was so damnably innocent . . . what did she know of darker things?

But her fingers felt warm and reassuring, curled into his, and he knew—because he was no gentleman—that he would take this empathy she’d allotted him and twist it to whatever advantage he could. He drew a breath. Repositioned his thoughts.

Time to seduce his wife.

“I am sorry if I awakened you with my thrashing about this morning.” He ran a questing finger up her pale, perfect arm. “I am afraid my nightmares aren’t pretty, but I’ve never had to worry about someone else in my bed before. You are the first woman I’ve ever had here, and this is the only place I suffer them.”

“Oh.” She breathed out, almost shyly. “You didn’t wake me. I was already awake. I am a dreadfully early riser.”

“Dreadfully?” he teased, his finger moving higher, hovering against the reddened mark his teeth had left on her neck the night before. “How early do you usually wake?” he said, imagining the dreadful hour of seven. Or eight.

“At five o’clock every morning.”

“Good God.” He tried to imagine it, and the havoc such a schedule would wreak upon his life. “Every morning?”

“Like clockwork,” she admitted. “I try not to disturb the household. At home, in Yorkshire, I usually go outside to the garden in the summer, read a book.”

Understanding trickled into him. “Is that why you were out in the garden that first morning we met?”

“Yes. I was hoping my sister’s garden might prove a similar retreat. In the winter, when the light comes late and the weather is foul, I am forced stay in my room, and those are long hours, indeed. I . . . that is, I am afraid my habit will disturb you. Eventually.” She bit her lip. “That’s why I put my trunks in the room next door.”

“There is no need to apologize.” In fact, he ought to apologize to her. He felt suddenly ashamed of how he’d treated her that morning when she’d been standing in the garden. “And there is no need to keep your trunks next door, either.” The idea of her sleeping somewhere other than his bed was appalling, and not only because he needed to make sure she was safe. “This dreadful habit of yours sounds promising.”

Her eyes met his, wide and questioning. “It does?”

He cupped her chin and lifted her face toward him for a tender kiss. “More time to spend with each other, I should say.”

“Oh,” she breathed, and he could feel her smile against his lips. “But, what shall we do that early every morning?”

With a grin, he flipped her onto her back and pulled away the sheet. “You’ve got a vivid imagination, Mouse. I am sure you can think of something.”