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hands to his mouth and brushed them with his lips. Her eyes shone, then she averted her gaze, and he released her hands. “Go take those wet clothes off and have Molly bring us her tasty supper.”
    “I will.” She gave him a small smile and made her way up the stairs.

    “The mast! The mast is breaking! Watch out! No!”
    Justine dashed down the stairs in the dark, holding her nightdress close, almost tumbling down the last two steps, and charged into the parlor. Brandon thrashed on the floor from side to side, gulping for air, his features twisted in the moonlight which streamed through the partially opened curtains.
    “Give me your hand…give me…” he choked, his every muscle strained, his back arched, the veins in his neck corded.
    Justine bent over him and pressed down on his arms. “Brandon!”
    He fought her attempts to stop his movement and shoved her to the side. She placed a cool hand on his forehead and leaned over him.
    “Brandon, wake up. It’s only a dream. Wake up!”
    He shuddered and his shoulders fell back, his chest rising and falling rapidly. His eyebrows were deeply knit, his skin was covered in a sheen of cold perspiration.
    “Brandon, t’was just a dream, a bad dream,” Justine murmured. She wiped locks of his damp hair from his scarred temple. His eyes twitched opened, and he rubbed them with his palms as he tried to focus on her in the darkness.
    “Justine?” he choked out through ragged breaths.
    “Yes, Brandon, you’re all right.” She rubbed his arms. You were having a nightmare about the shipwreck, I think.”
    “God…yes,” he stammered through short breaths. He pressed his eyes closed and reopened them. He bent one knee up, planting his foot on the floor. “Bloody hell, it was so real.”
    “Do you want to talk about it?”
    “No.” He gulped in air, his head rolled to the side.
    She darted to the kitchen and brought back a wet cloth and wiped his face with it. He moaned softly as she stroked his shoulders, neck and chest.
    “Try to relax,” she whispered, tossing the cloth on the corner table. He sat up and leaned against the settee. She pushed the hair back from his face, and he reached out and pulled her down next to him. His arm wrapped around her tightly, and her oversized nightdress slipped off her shoulder. He slid his hand down over her ribs settling just under the swell of her breast for a moment then back up to her shoulder. His breath began to even out.
    Hers was racing.
    “I haven’t thought about that night for a very long time. Images here and there, but not the whole of it.”
    Justine wrapped her arms around his trembling torso, her fingertips pressing into his damp flesh. “It must have been horrible,” she said against his neck.
    “Did many people survive, Justine? Did you ever hear?”
    “Not many, only a handful.” Her one hand roamed over his taut abdomen in an effort to soothe him. “The ship got caught in a storm and the crew lost control of her. It’s truly a miracle that you survived, and finding you was quite another.”
    She pressed herself deeper into him as the memories of those horrible days snaked through her. The servants had whispered and cried in the hallways, Molly bent over her kitchen table, her head in her hands, her bony body racked with sobs. Richard wandered around the house aimlessly gibbering to himself, everyone had stopped paying him any mind. William had drunk himself into a stupor in the drawing room and sat in a chair in the center of the room the entire day staring out the large main window. Justine had weaved around them as if it were all happening in slow motion in a land of fantasy. She couldn’t face Lord Jeremy bedridden in his room just then, none of them could, but she knew they expected her to do it.
    Instead, she had run outside to escape from them, to escape from the suffocating hopelessness of death once more. She had run as fast as her legs could take her up and down the hills until she had reached