Stone peeked around the foliage as the blasts sounded overhead. How had they found him? His heart raced and his limbs trembled with the flood of vitality pumping through his veins. Christ, he had to get away. Had to find a way to get help and circle back to save the women. A woman’s cry pierced the noise, followed by a child’s wail. Too late! He was too late, again.

Despair had him hanging his head, though the tears made it hard to see anyway. No point in watching the horrors beyond. But then something soft and feminine wiggled beneath him. A woman. He had saved one! Relief pierced his sadness and gave him a renewed sense of purpose.

“Stone?” The fear in the woman’s voice upset him.

“Do not fear. I shall protect you with my dying breath. I swear it. You will survive this night.” And he knew she would, because he refused to let it be otherwise.

“Stone, what are you going on about?” She pushed against his chest as though she wanted to dislodge him from his protective stance.

The hiss and whine followed by a loud boom of each mortar stopped, and darkness fell. A smattering of applause and cheers sounded in the distance. He assumed the sepoys were celebrating their victory. A perfect opportunity to slip past. He rose up to crouching and helped the lady up as well as she rearranged her hoops and skirts. He couldn’t understand why women insisted on such ridiculous clothing in such a hot dry place as India. But nonetheless, she was in full regalia, and so would move more slowly than him. He would have to tow her along or possibly carry her if she couldn’t keep up.

“Stone.” The woman’s voice sounded vaguely familiar, though somewhat scared and annoyed. “Stop this nonsense this instant.”

“Silence, before you get us both killed.” Women could be more trouble than they were worth, which was why he liked finding professionals or experienced widows to take the edge off.

“Achilles Denton, Earl of Stonemere, you will listen to me this instant.”

She was getting more demanding, and how in the hell did she know his name? Or part of it, at any rate. She seemed to think he was his father. “Nice try, sweetheart, but I ain’t the earl, nor will I ever be. I suggest you squash whatever dreams of a title you harbor and focus on surviving.”

She grew very still and stared at him. In the moonlight, he could see her lovely face full of confusion, and something tugged at his memories. Had he bedded her before? Then the woman did the strangest thing. She stepped into him and cupped his face in her small hands. He hadn’t noticed before, but she was quite tall for a woman, which made her the perfect height to kiss. And he suddenly wanted very much to kiss her. “Stone, I need you to look at me.”

Her blue eyes seemed bottomless as she held his head steady and forced him to meet her gaze.

“It’s me, Theo. Your wayward pet. Master, you must look at me. See me.” Tears filled her bold sapphire eyes and spilled down her cheeks. The urge to hold her and comfort her grew strong. And stronger yet, with each tear that fell down her creamy face.

“I-I. Do I know you?” His confusion rankled, but somehow he knew he could trust this woman.

“Stone, it’s me. Your wife. You aren’t in India any longer. You’re here, at Hawksbury Grange, with me. In England.” She leaned up against him and pressed her lips to his as she did the same with her trembling frame. Her kiss was sweet and salty, but beyond that, her taste was familiar. Warm, welcoming, and not part of his past, but part of his present and his future.

She stepped back from him and stared for a long, tense moment.

“Zeus.” She said the word firmly and clearly.

He blinked and stared at her again, and then, as if a fog had drifted offshore, he could suddenly see everything clearly. His wife stood before him, her heart in her eyes as she stared at him with tears streaming down her face, having just said her word to bring all things to a stop. “Theo? Darling, what’s wrong? What have I done to you?”

She let out a breath and a whispered “Thank the heavens.” And then she promptly wept.

Confusion reigned as he tried to sort out the last quarter hour in his head while he took his wife in his arms and attempted to comfort her. He remembered walking on the back lawn after dinner and having a conversation with Theo. But then nothing coherent. Little wisps of details, like the brush obscuring his view and fussing with her hoop skirt.

A hallucination. Dear God, he’d had a hallucination. It was a lucky thing he hadn’t hurt anyone. Particularly his wife. If he had not already hauled her into his arms, he would have done so at that moment to ensure she was yet unharmed. And so he could hide his own embarrassing tears. The unfortunate truth was he didn’t know if they were tears of joy that he hadn’t hurt anyone, or tears of despair that he didn’t know how to hide the truth from his wife any longer. He was, in fact, not a whole man in the mental sense.

Tears subsiding, she stepped back from his embrace and locked gazes with him. As though she bore a hole straight through his soul, she looked, assessed, and then nodded. “May we go inside now?”

“Of course. I believe I’ve had enough socializing for the evening.” His head still felt fuzzy, as though the past continued to attempt to intrude on the present, but the comforting feel of his wife’s hand in his helped him keep the waking nightmare at bay.

Once they reached their chamber, without a word she stepped away from him and reached behind her to find the laces to her dress. With a few strategic tugs, she managed to pull her gown off, and then her remaining petticoats followed. Next, she removed what was left of her stockings, which left her dressed in her chemise, corset, and bloomers. Still silent, she sank to her knees before him and finally spoke. “I am yours to command, Master.”

Thrilled by her open display of submission to him and terrified that he might hurt her in yet another hallucination, he took her hand and helped her stand. “You are an angel of mercy. And while I would like nothing better than to sink into your welcoming heat and ignore what has happened tonight, we need to sit down and discuss events. Mayhap after I understand what happened, we can revisit your lovely display.”

He hoped his delay wouldn’t hurt her, but just as when she had a bad experience or reaction to their play and they needed to discuss what happened, he needed to do the same. Determined to assess what had occurred, he took her over to the bed, where he helped her out of her corset and then took off his own coat, shoes, and necktie. The rest he left in place in order to temper his ever-present desire for his wife.

Once they were settled on the bed with her in his arms, he asked her to fill in the blanks from their conversation on the back lawn. She told him what had happened, and he knew immediately what the cause was. The damnable flashiness of such a display annoyed him, but Hawksbury clearly did not realize it might set him off. Nor could he have predicted it before it happened.

As Theo told him everything that occurred, he winced and absorbed the memory of not saving the women and children. Of not being able to retrieve help fast enough to stop the massacre. It was like having it happen all over again. He reached up and wiped the sweat beading on his brow with a trembling hand. Taking a deep breath, he tried to settle in and come to terms with both the reality of his flashback occurring in such a public way and the fact that his mental state was a battle not yet won.

“Stone, how have you been coping with the hallucinations until now?” Theo’s question prodded him.

“I sleep in small stretches, a few hours at a time, to avoid the nightmares. Sometimes I drink until I pass out to ensure I do not dream, or at the very least I do not remember.” He drew a deep breath. Here was the part he had neglected to tell her. “And I went to The Market to dominate women. It helps me remember the sense of control that I lost. Somehow, it has helped keep the demons at bay.”

“Until I came along and kept you away.” His wife sounded so dejected and sad.

“Not true.” He hugged her close. “You have helped me keep the demons at bay, and with you in my bed every night, I have far fewer nightmares. You have been a steadying presence in my life, which is why I am all the more disappointed by what occurred tonight.”

“I imagine the sounds of the fireworks and the bright lights in the sky touched a bit too close to those of battle, which one could expect would give most former soldiers issues. But add to the mix whatever horror you experienced in India, and it stands to reason that you would have a nasty reaction.” She held him tighter and refused to let him leave, even when he tugged a bit.

“I should tell you what occurred in India. It will help you understand and cope should something like this happen again.” He drew a breath and dug deep for the fortitude to tell her what had happened. “You know of the Sepoy Mutiny a few years ago?”

“Of course, we all heard of the atrocities that occurred.” Her matter-of-fact statement made it a little easier for him to continue.

“Well, I was located at Cawnpore with my cantonment. When the mutiny arose, things went badly very quickly. The East India Company was not prepared to deal with the kind of insurrection they faced. In some locations, we were simply too small in number to face off against what had once been our own troops. At Cawnpore, when the garrison was under siege, things were bad, but General Wheeler believed a peaceful departure could be arranged through a surrender.”

Theo shuddered but made an encouraging noise, so he continued his tale.

“Things were going along. We were moving everyone out and to the Ganges river bank to be loaded on boats and taken to Allahabad. But something went wrong. A few boats were set ablaze, and then someone began firing. I was in the general’s boat already, toward the middle of the river, when shots were fired. We could neither help nor escape. We floated and watched all our men be cut down.” He drew a deep breath and absorbed the warmth and solace from his wife in his arms.

His shirt had grown damp where his wife pressed against him. Her quiet sharing of his pain eased his own burden a bit, and made it possible for him to continue. “As we floated, all I could hear were the screams of the women and the cries of the children as their men were cut down before their eyes. Later, some of the men and I fought off various rebel attacks on the boat and eventually got separated. We ran from the rebels after that and even swam for hours along the river until we were attacked one last time. In the end, only five of us were found by the Rajput matchlock men.”

Theo rose and then knelt before him. “My God, Stone. No wonder you have nightmares. It must have been awful.”

“It was. And for a while, I wondered why I survived. But then the letter came recalling me home, and it seemed I had been spared in order to ensure our family’s succession.” And to find you.

She took his face between her palms. “I am certain there is more in store for you than merely standing stud.”

“You are always so optimistic.” He offered her a wry smile.

“Do not dismiss me, Stone. You were lucky to survive. All that you must consider is how best to spend this extra time granted you.”

Bitterness welled within him and burst forth on a half laugh. “Yes, well, since I’ve spent much of it debauching women and now have tainted a woman such as yourself with my—”

“Stop it this instant, Stone. You are a victim, but you are so much more than that. You merely have to see yourself as others do.” She hesitated, and then pressed on. “As I do.”

He set her aside and rose from the bed to stride across the room. He pressed his hands to either side of one window, letting the wood bite into his palms. He couldn’t understand, now that she knew the truth, why she hadn’t pushed him away. “How, after tonight, can you see me as anything other than a broken man?”

“How can one strong enough to tame me, to make me wish to be a better woman, be considered broken?” She clambered from the bed and darted across the room to press herself against his back. “How could half a man have survived all that you have and lived to tell of his experience? How could he find a way to continue to contribute to society, to gather other strong men of excellent character, and give them an example to live by?”

Stone groaned and turned around to embrace her once again, reveling in the feel of her curves against his own harder form. “I do not know what I did to deserve a woman such as you.”

“Well, I do have my own drawbacks, but I like to believe it all balances out, more so now with your steadying influence.”

Stone looked down, and their gazes met while her lips trembled as she attempted to smile.

“Take me to bed, Master.”

“Not tonight, Theo. Perhaps I can simply hold you?” Exhaustion, mental and physical, pulled at him.

“Whatever you need. I am here to support you.”

And with her last declaration, hope blossomed in his heart. Because if any woman could look past his deficiencies, it would be this one.