I blink hard. This isn’t solving the kitten mystery. I circle the room, studying the walls. They’re in perfect repair without a baseboard gap big enough to let in a mouse. I look behind the dresser and vanity and bed. No holes there.
I walk to the windows. They’re shut tight, the smell in here guaranteeing this room wasn’t aired out with the rest of the house.
I turn to look around again, and I spot the kitten peeking from under the bed. I lower myself to the floor. When she mews, I stay where I am and dangle my fingers. A pause. Then she takes one tentative step. Another. She makes her way across the floor until she’s sniffing my fingers. Then she rubs against my hand. When I go to stroke her head, she hops right onto my lap and purrs up at me.
I chuckle under my breath. “Not a stray, are you?”
She is adorable, a puff of long, soft fur, her back and head abstract stripes of black and orange, her belly and paws snow white. As I pet her, she rubs against my hand. A house cat, then, raised with people and a mother who trusted those people to handle her babies.
I lift the kitten as she motorboat purrs. She really is tiny with an oversized head and huge blue eyes. I know kittens are born with blue eyes, so does that mean she isn’t old enough to be weaned? Either way, I’m sure she’s not old enough to be exploring on her own. So, where did she come from?
As I pet her, I lift my phone in my free hand and thumb to the browser to see how old kittens are when their eyes change color. When I get a message that I’m not connected to the internet, I glance at the signal strength icon. It’s flat. I had a signal on the drive here, but I haven’t checked my phone since I arrived at Thorne Manor.
I push to my feet. I hold the kitten just tight enough that she can’t jump to her doom. I needn’t have bothered. She isn’t going anywhere, and when I tuck her into the crook of my arm, she snuggles onto the convenient boob perch.
I take the kitten downstairs and give her a plate of water. There’s a cold chicken in the fridge, and I tear off tiny bits, which she ignores. When the grandfather clock chimes, I expect it to be three or four in the morning. Instead, it gongs twelve.
Only midnight? How early did I go to bed?
Maybe I didn’t fall asleep at all. Or not as deeply as I thought. That might explain that phantom touch. One explanation for ghosts is hypnogogic and hypnopompic hallucinations, where you think you see something while you’re falling asleep or waking up, but you’re actually asleep and dreaming without realizing it.
Overtired and unsettled by a long day of travel, I’d fallen into a restless sleep and thought I woke to someone leaning over my bed . . . but it was the dream-hallucination that actually woke me. And the dream itself was precipitated by the eerie sound of a trapped kitten.
Even with the explanation, I’m not eager to return to the master suite. Also, it makes a fine excuse to reclaim my former bedroom. I find the old mattress wrapped in storage and drag it in while the kitten watches in fascination. I put the oversized master suite sheets and comforter on my narrow bed. One corner sags, but I can fix that tomorrow. For now, I settle the kitten into a blanket-filled cardboard box, and by two a.m., I’m drifting off to the music of tiny kitten snores.
I wake to the call of a mother cat. As I surface, I catch scents that don’t belong in my bedroom—the perfume of sandalwood, and the musk of horse and the tantalizing aroma of a smoldering fire. Which means I haven’t woken at all. I’ve tumbled into a dream where the kitten’s mother anxiously searches for her lost baby.
In the dream, someone sleeps beside me, and when I shift, a hand slides onto my hip. A broad, masculine hand tugs me closer, and I ease into the heat radiating from the other side of the bed. My legs bump his, and his reach forward, inviting me in, our feet and calves entwining.
It isn’t Michael. Not his scent or his touch or even his still familiar breathing. That doesn’t make me pull back in alarm. It’s been eight years. I no longer suffer pangs of guilt on the rare occasion that other men invade my dreams. Michael still visits them often enough.
The man’s fingers splay over my hip, pulling me closer. A nuzzle, then lips parting against my forehead in a whispered, “Bronwyn.”
I hesitate.
I know that voice.
No, I know that inflection to my name. I do not know the voice. The man’s scent, equally familiar and yet not familiar, smelling of sweat and horse and sandalwood, teases me with hints of familiarity.
I touch his hand on my hip and slide my fingers over the hard muscles of his forearm, making him shiver against me. He exhales through his teeth as my fingers trace up his biceps to his shoulder. That shoulder shifts under my hand as his mouth drops to the crook of my neck, kissing there, whispering words I can’t catch, just the sound of a British accent, again both familiar and not, a voice in my head, insisting I know him yet refusing to fill in the missing piece with a name.
I crack open my eyes to see jet-black hair curling over pale skin. He’s still kissing my throat, tickling kisses as he murmurs my name.
One hand still rests on my hip. The other slides underneath, gripping and pulling me closer, until I feel the hard urgency of him against my stomach. I ease up, breaking his kiss to adjust my position to a more satisfying one. He chuckles and shifts to accommodate me.
I arch my hips into his, and he lets out a low groan, the sound ending in my name. I try to see his face, but it’s buried in my hair. He’s tall, then. Tall, dark and possibly handsome, but I’m not terribly concerned about the last. This is quite enough, a well-built man groaning my name, his body hot and hard against mine, perfect fodder for a midnight fantasy.
Our legs entwine further, and I realize he’s naked. I’m still wearing my nightshirt and panties, and he seems to be in no rush to relieve me of those. I’m in no hurry, either, enjoying the journey, the destination inevitable. He presses against me, and I part my legs, and he groans again, his hands gripping my hips.
Then the cat yowls.
His eyes fly open. The room’s too dark for me to catch more than a flash of light eyes, blue or green. Before I can get a better look, he shoves me away with, “What the bloody hell?”
That voice . . .
No, not the voice. The accent. A proper upper-crust London accent, one that isn’t actually heard in London anymore, a relic of a bygone era.
He scrambles out of bed, realizes he’s naked, and yanks the coverlet with him, imperfectly draped over his front.
“Who are you, and what the devil are you doing in my bed?”
I don’t answer. I’m waiting to wake up. That’s what will happen next, obviously. Two dreams overlapped—the anxious momma cat and the lovely sexual fantasy—the former inexcusably interrupting the latter.
Or perhaps the dream will restart. Yes, I’d like option two, please. Silence the cat, and return this shadowy cursing figure to his proper place in bed.
“Are you deaf?” the man snaps. “Dumb? I’m asking you a question!”
Any time now, Morpheus. Rewind ten minutes please, and hold the cat.
The man stands there, half-lost in shadow but presenting a very fine figure, broad shouldered and naked except for the unfortunate coverlet.
“I asked you a question,” he says.
“Two.”
His shadowed face scrunches. “What?”