instead of the bushes, there were people lining the way, all of them watching her silently. She cried out to them to help her, to save her, but no one moved or spoke. They all just watched her with avid faces, eyes alight and mouths twisted into grotesque smiles just like the satyr’s. There was a pounding, and she thought they were clapping. Or maybe it was the thing stomping after her, for it was right behind her now, reaching for her, and she could no longer move. She began to scream. The pounding drowned out her cries.
Her eyes flew open. She was awake, out of the horror of the dream, yet still wrapped in darkness. The pounding continued, confusing her further.
“Angela!” a man’s voice roared outside her room. “Damn it, open this door.”
A shudder ran through her, and she glanced around, horror-stricken, thinking for an instant that she was still married, that it was Dunstan outside demanding entrance. But she recognized the furniture, and she knew it was her room at Bridbury. The pounding stopped, followed by a metallic crash against the doorknob.
“Wait! No!” That was Jeremy’s voice. “Angela, it is I, Jeremy. Are you all right?”
The first voice spoke again, a deep male rumble of anger, followed by Jeremy’s agitated answer. Angela slid out of bed and hurried through the dark to the door, still trembling and dazed from the terror of her nightmare.
She put her mouth close to the door. “Who is it?”
“Angela? It’s me, Cam. Open up. What the devil is going on?”
She opened the door a crack, trying to control her shivers. “It’s all—”
Her words were cut off as Cam shoved the door back and stepped into the room, casting a swift, encompassing glance around the dark room, then sweeping her up into his arms as if she were a child. Under normal circumstances Angela would have shrunk from such an embrace. But now, still half-spellbound by the powerful nightmare and without her usual conscious defenses, she curled her arms around his neck and clung to him, burrowing her head into his chest. She wanted shelter, and he was large and warm, a safe haven.
“There, now,” he murmured, his voice rumbling in his chest, beneath her ear. He kissed the top of her head. “It’s all right now. I’m here.”
He turned back to the door, where Jeremy and the others were edging in. Cam scowled at them. “I will take care of it.”
He reached out with his foot and shoved the door closed, then turned and strode across the room, still carrying Angela, to the large, comfortable chair by the window. He sat down in it and cuddled her on his lap. She snuggled closer to him, pushing her toes down between the cushion and the chair to keep them warm. Cam smiled a little at the gesture and curled his arms around her even more tightly. He laid his cheek against the top of her head.
“What happened?” he asked after a moment. “A nightmare?”
“Yes. Sometimes I have them. Not much anymore.” At first, after she left Dunstan, she had had them almost every night. It had been so bad that Kate insisted on sleeping on a cot in Angela’s room, so that she could wake her mistress when she was in the throes of one of the dreams. But as the years passed, the nightmare had come less and less often, and after a time Kate had agreed to return to her own more comfortable bed in the servants’ quarters. It had been almost a year now since Angela had had the nightmare.
“You want to tell me about it?” he asked.
“No.” Angela shook her head decisively. She had never told anyone what happened in the dreams. She certainly wasn’t about to start now, with Cam. She could not bear for anyone to know how scared she was and how little it took to reduce her to such a state. It was not, in the telling, she knew, anything particularly scary. The terror of the nightmare was in the feeling, in the knowledge of how awful and evil was the thing that chased her. And that she could not convey without talking about Dunstan. And Dunstan was something she refused to talk about.
“That’s fine.” He stroked his hand down her hair soothingly. “You know, I remember having nightmares when I was a child. In one of them I took a step off these really high stairs, and then I was falling and falling. I would always wake up before I hit the ground.”
“When I was little, I used to have bad dreams about the Gypsies that came every spring. Do you remember them?”
“Of course. They came for the shearing, and they would camp on the edge of town. And Mother would always say, ‘Stay away from the Gypsies. They will steal you away.’”
“That’s what Nurse always said, too. She said they took little children and sold them.” It was pleasant talking to him; it took her mind away from the nightmare. And his hand on her hair was soothing. “Do you think they actually did? Would there be a market for children?”
“I have no idea. With all the children in the workhouses and orphanages, I cannot imagine why one would have to steal a child from his family in order to acquire one.” He rubbed his cheek against her hair, noticing the faint scent of roses. Her hair was soft, and the scent and texture of it stirred his senses. This was something he had dreamed of, he remembered, when he fell in love with Angela so many years ago: being married to her and able to sit like this of an evening, Angela snuggled up on his lap, lazily discussing their day or whatever took their fancy.
“I can’t, either. But the thought of it used to terrify me. For weeks afterward, I would have nightmares about it.”
“I would steal away with some of the other lads, I remember, and go down and spy on their camp. They would play instruments around the fires, and sometimes they would dance. They looked so exotic to me, and at the time I thought how wonderful it must be to travel as they did. To see the whole country, to be free of constraints. I didn’t consider the hungry stomachs they must often have had, or the towns they were chased out of, or the lack of a home.”
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