The brandy was gone.
And still, he had no answers. None save one, and it was not the one he wished to have.
“I did something bloody foolish last night,” he blurted, then promptly felt his cheeks and ears go hot.
“You got bosky and went about the house in the nude, frightening the servants?” Northwich guessed.
“No.”
“You missed the water closet and pissed on the floor?”
This time, he could not contain his rueful chuckle. Mirth, a rarity for him, became easier with each day that passed, placing him further from the grip of Dunsworth. Small steps. He could speak. He could laugh.
Could he love? Yes, came the answer, deep within his heart. He could.
“Decidedly not,” he told the duke.
“Hmm.” Northwich tossed back the rest of his brandy as he pondered his next ludicrous suggestion. Then he made certain their glasses were both refilled before resuming his queries. “You threw the marble busts of your ancestors from the roof, just to watch them smash on the streets below?”
Northwich’s mind was truly diabolical.
“A tempting scenario, but no.”
“You drank enough red wine to float your teeth and then smoked so much opium, you thought a dragon was trying to eat you?”
“What the devil, Northwich?” he bit out, his refilled brandy glass halfway to his mouth as he paused, his incredulity needing to be unleashed. “Haveyoudone so?”
“No.” His friend grinned. “But I have heard stories. Not all dukes are pompous arses, you know.”
“I do know, though I imagine you are the exception to the rule.”
Northwich could not be further from a pompous arse, and he was certainly nothing like the Duke of Longleigh, who was the only duke Adrian had ever known aside from Northwich, the man he had chanced to help that long-ago day. He was incredibly thankful for the unlikely friendship which had been forged, however. The duke was a loyal man. A good man. If it had not been for Northwich, he would still be rotting away in prison, and he would never forget that.
“I had one of my nightmares last night,” he admitted roughly, before drowning the humiliation in another swallow of brandy.
His nightmares were not a secret to Northwich. The duke had heard his shouts in the night, and Adrian had been left with no choice but to unburden himself.
“That is hardly foolish, old chum,” the duke pointed out. “You cannot help them. You fall asleep, and they arrive. Much like flies at a picnic. You set out the damned food, and then the flies, which had never once flown past you prior to the unveiling of the victuals, descend.”
He’d had a picnic once. With Tilly at Coddington Hall.
Tilly.
The woman he had married. The mother of his son. The woman he loved.
The woman he had never stopped loving.
Christ.
What was he going to do, now that he had married her? Now that she was his? How could he reconcile what had happened, who they had once been, to who they had become?
He cleared his throat, chasing the unwanted thoughts, the cursed questions. “You are quite right. I cannot help the nightmares any more than anyone at a picnic can help the arrival of the flies. However, it is not so much the nightmare that is the source of the foolishness, but what came after I woke from it.”
“Shall I keep guessing, or will you tell me?” Northwich asked.
After the bit about the opium and the dragon, Adrian was not certain he wanted to risk further guesses.
“She came to me,” he said. “My…”Damnation, he had to stop. To realize what she was to him now before continuing—that was how surreal it was. “My wife. She heard me and feared something was wrong. But when she was there, she…remained.”
