Nell looked across at Lady Diana and Elizabeth as they sat together on the opposite side of the coach. Both wore anxious expressions, their eyes wide and worried as they stared at her.

She supplied a wan smile. "I'm sorry for frightening you-twice." Her gaze shadowed, she stared at her gloved hands in her lap. "I do not know what came over me. The fall must have shaken me more than I realized."

The two women took her words at face value and during the remainder of the journey they chatted away about the events of the day. Julian said nothing, but a peek at his shuttered face told Nell that he did not believe that the fall from her horse had caused her to faint. It hadn't. A shudder rolled through her and wearily she shut her eyes. It seemed that nightmares didn't only happen when one slept.

Arriving at Wyndham Manor, Nell sought out her rooms and Becky's eager services. A hot bath was waiting for her and later, wearing a nightgown of softest lawn and a warm dressing robe of amber velvet, she nibbled at the tray of food put before her.

"Now you eat that up right now!" fussed Becky, her big brown eyes full of anxiety. "What will his lordship say when he discovers that you haven't hardly swallowed a morsel?"

Nell pushed away the half-eaten bowl of broth. "I only fell," she protested. "No bones are broken. I'm fine. I was just...badly shaken."

Becky sniffed. "If you say so, my lady. And since you aren't going to eat anything else, I'll just take these things back to Cook, who will probably go off in a decline when she sees how little you appreciate her hard work."

"Oh, Becky, please don't scold so," Nell begged, her head beginning to throb, terrible memories crawling into her thoughts.

Becky's face softened. "Very well, my lady. You go get in bed now."

Nell followed Becky's orders and had just settled into bed with a huge bank of pillows at her back when Julian walked into her bedroom. He came up to the edge of the bed and sat down.

Taking one of her hands in his, he asked, "Feeling better now?"

She forced a smile. "Yes. I'm sorry that I caused such a disruption. It was only a fall."

His gaze searched hers. "That may be, but I don't believe that it was your fall that caused you to faint in such a dramatic fashion at the Westons's."

"It wasn't," she admitted. Looking away from him, she bit her lip. "My lord, that, that portrait where I fainted, who is it?"

He looked surprised. "My cousin John and his son, Daniel. Don't you remember? I've spoken of both of them to you." Staring at her averted features, he leaned forward. Catching her chin with one finger, he pulled her face around to him. "What is it, Nell? Tell me!"

Nell swallowed. "Do you remember," she began, "when I told you about my nightmares?"

He nodded, frowning.

"Well, do you remember that in the first one, I said that I dreamed that a man was murdered?"

Their gazes locked. Her voice trembling, Nell said, "I recognized the man in my nightmare...The man I saw murdered was your cousin John."

Chapter 12.

Julian leaped up from the bed and took an agitated step away, only to swing back and stare at Nell with disbelief. "Impossible!" he burst out. "It was a nightmare. How could you have seen John in your nightmare?"

Looking miserable, Nell shook her head. "I do not know. I only know that I have never forgotten that man's face-and it was your cousin John's." She leaned forward, saying urgently, "I tell you that I recognized him! Your cousin is the same man that is in my nightmare. Julian, you must believe me! I saw his murder."

"Don't talk such fustian!" Julian ordered. "How can it be? My cousin was murdered ten years or more ago. You never met any of us until you married me. How could you have seen his murder?"

Nell pushed back a lock of tumbled tawny hair. "I cannot tell you, I do not understand it myself. I only know that after I was brought back from the cliffs and I began to have the nightmares that the first one was of a man being murdered. I swear to you that man wore your cousin John's face!"

Julian did not want to believe her, every instinct cried out against it, but there was no mistaking that she believed what she was saying. Approaching the bed once more, he reseated himself and taking her hand again, he said, "Nell, you cannot have seen John's murder. By your own admission, until today, you didn't even know who he was. How can he have been the man in a nightmare you had ten years ago? How can you be so sure now that it was my cousin John and not just a man who looked like him?"

"I cannot explain it," she admitted, "but I know it to be true-the man was your cousin." She swallowed convulsively. "I was unconscious for several days, but I dreamed all during that time, a horrible dream of a man being murdered. The same dream over and over and over. It was very vivid...as if I had actually seen it happen."

"It's impossible! You cannot have seen John murdered," he protested, his troubled gaze on her face.

Her sea green eyes met his steadily. "Tell me, where was your cousin murdered?"

Julian made an impatient gesture. "I don't remember exactly. Near some damn little provincial town. Somewhere in Dorset, near the coast." He stiffened, staring at her. "Meadowlea is in Dorset...near the coast," he said in an odd tone. Collecting himself, he muttered, "But that must be a coincidence."

She didn't argue with him. "And when? What was the date of his murder?"

"The tenth of October 1794."

She gave a twisted smile. "My accident occurred on October tenth that same year and my nightmares began around then. Another coincidence?"

"Yes, of course. It has to be," he insisted. "To think otherwise is utter madness."

"Very well, believe that if you will, but let me tell you the details of my nightmare and see if you still believe it is merely coincidence." He nodded curtly and she began softly, "I was riding my little mare, Firefly, that day, but she'd thrown a shoe and gone lame. I was leading her home, not two miles further down the road. We came upon a small copse of wood and as we began to walk through it, I heard the loud voices of men arguing ahead of me. I did not understand what they were saying, only that they were very angry. I was frightened, uneasy perhaps, but as this was the only way home I had no choice but to press on. Besides, I told myself, it was probably only some locals having a disagreement and once they recognized me, they'd stop their fighting until I'd gone on by or perhaps even give me a ride home. At worst, I hoped that I might pass them without incident.

"When I came around a curve in the road, I passed a small closed carriage parked off to the side and just beyond that, I saw two men, strangers, fighting." She took a deep breath. "They did not see me. I stopped and stared, transfixed by the violence. I had never seen men strike each other so savagely, so furiously before. They were both tall, evenly matched I would say. The man I now know to be your cousin gained the upper hand. He knocked the other man down and was kneeling astride him when the other man dragged forth a dagger and drove it into his chest. The man on the ground struck your cousin once more in the chest, then once in the shoulder and once in the throat. The blood...The blood seemed everywhere." Her voice shook. "I cried out, I could not help myself, and it was then that I became aware that there had to have been someone else in the copse. There was a sound, a whisper of movement behind me, and as I turned in that direction, I was struck on the back of the head."

Sinking against the pillows, she said, "The rest you know-they found me over the cliff, lying on a small ledge...Firefly dead on the rocks below." Turning her head away from him she added, "Believe what you will, but I know that the man I saw murdered was your cousin."

Julian's cool logic rejected her story, denied that her nightmare could be so accurate in the details surrounding John's murder. But he could not dismiss the impact her words had upon him. Against his will, he asked, "In your nightmare, how were they dressed-especially John?"

"The one who stabbed your cousin wore a green jacket and..." She frowned, trying to remember the other man. How peculiar...Julian's cousin she could recall right down to the way his black curly hair was arranged, but the murderer...It was as if he had been blocked from her mind. But as the minutes passed and she concentrated, memory trickled back. "And buff breeches and boots," she finally said. "Your cousin John was garbed in Nankeen breeches, a dark blue coat with large silver buttons, a white waistcoat with black spots and upon his finger the same ring that is in that portrait at Stonegate."

Julian's breath sucked in as if he'd suffered a blow to the gut. He stared at nothing for several moments, fighting to understand. He could not judge the details of the murderer's clothes, but his cousin's he could. Reluctantly, he admitted, "John was dressed as you describe when his body was found. He always wore the sapphire ring-it was a family heirloom...It always puzzled me: if it had been mere robbery, as the local constable proposed, then why had the ring been left on his finger?" He rubbed his forehead. "The wounds you describe...John's were the same."

"Do you believe me now...Or do you think it is all just coincidence?"

He got up from the bed and stalked around the room, dragging a hand through his dark, unruly hair. "I do not know what to believe! This is beyond comprehension! What you tell me is incredible and I want to dismiss it out of hand...And yet you know too many things for it to be just a mere coincidence." He took another turn around the room. "Tell me," he demanded, "how did you end up on the cliff?"

"I have no idea," she replied simply. "As I told you, I was unconscious for days afterward and I have no memory of my fall or of even being in the vicinity where I was found."

"And the nightmare, the one where John is murdered, you had it ten years ago?"

She heard the skepticism in his voice, but she didn't blame him. Ten years was a long time to remember a nightmare. To remember a face. Even to remember a murder, but she did...as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.

"Yes," she answered, "ten years ago, repeatedly for weeks."

His expression harried, he stared at her. "And the other nightmares? Tell me about them."

She did so, trying to convey the horror, the fear, the unspeakable brutality that occurred in that terrifying place...those dungeons.

He was quiet for several minutes when she finished speaking. "And you are positive that it is the same man in all the nightmares?" he finally asked. "That the same man you saw kill John is also the man who savages these women?"

She nodded. "As best as I can tell." When he continued to stare at her, his demeanor giving nothing away, she said passionately, "You must remember that I've never seen the man's face. It was gloomy in the copse, thickly wooded, and when I first came upon them fighting, the murderer had his back to me. When your cousin knocked him down, your cousin was facing me, his murderer lying on the ground looking up at him. I was still several feet away and I only saw the top, the back, of his head. And in the dungeon, it is a dark, shadowy place and his face is always averted."

"Then how do you know they are the same man?"

"I sense that they are...There is something in the build, in the way the man moves, the shape of the head...that convinces me that they are the same person. And I find it easier," she confessed, "to believe that it is the same man rather than to think that two such monsters are abroad."

Wearing an expression of frustration, horror and anger, Julian loomed up next to the bed. His voice grim, he demanded, "If I believe you...If I accept that your nightmare reflects an actual occurrence...Do you realize what it means?"

Nell nodded. Bleakly she said, "It means that he is a real man, a real person, and that he's still out there somewhere, killing the women that I see in my nightmares." She bit her lip. "And that those dungeons actually exist, that I have not imagined them." She hesitated and flashed him a look before saying, "And I think I know where to look for them."

He glanced at her. "What are you saying?"

"Lady Diana and Elizabeth told me about the dungeons beneath this house," she said.

"And you dare to think that it is in the dungeons beneath my home that he does his killing?" he asked incredulously, his eyes blazing. "Isn't it enough that you're asking me to believe that by some unexplained black magic, witchcraft, you saw my cousin killed, that you see other women murdered? Must I now search out my own home to find proof of these vile crimes?"

"I don't know," she cried. "I don't understand any of it, but I do know that my nightmares cannot be dismissed as the results of my fall over the cliff any longer. I recognized your cousin! I saw his murder. And if his murder was real, then the dungeons are real and what goes on there is real, too."

Julian threw himself across the bed and lying on his back stared up at the silken canopy overhead. He lay there a long time, fighting against accepting her words as true. Yet what other explanation was there? It would be so much simpler if he could discard Nell's nightmares out of hand, blame them on feminine hysteria. If only he could convince himself that it was his misfortune to have married a woman of a nervous disposition, an excitable creature given to spasms and fanciful ideas, but he could not. True, he had not known Nell long, but he had seen her in a dangerous, difficult situation and she had kept her head. A smile lurked at the corner of his mouth as he remembered that first meeting. If she had been the type of woman to go off into screaming convulsions it would have been then, but instead she'd proven herself pluck to the backbone. While he wished violently that it was otherwise, he could not pretend that her nightmares were just the wild imaginings of a hysterical woman. She knew things-things for which he had no rational explanation.

"I do not want to believe you, but I find that I must," he said finally. He turned to look at her. "There are forces at work here that I do not understand. How you could have dreamed John's murder...!" He swore under his breath and sat up. "Upon my soul! This is an impossible situation! I must believe that in your nightmare you saw my cousin's death and that somehow you have a connection to the villain who killed him. A vicious villain who is still killing innocent women-in dungeons." His voice full of disgust he added, "Dungeons that you think might be beneath my very home."

"I don't think that I dreamed your cousin's murder," Nell muttered. "I think I actually saw it."

He jerked upright, his expression full of speculation. "And the events come back to you in the form of a nightmare?" he asked, a spark of interest in his eyes.

She nodded. "Yes, that's it precisely." She frowned. "The other nightmares...They feel different, as if I am watching them through a veil, but with your cousin...The colors are bright, vivid, I can smell the air, the forest, feel the coolness of the day, Firefly's reins in my hands-but not in the others."

It was Julian's turn to frown. "If you actually saw the murder, how did you end up where you did?"

Her fingers plucked nervously at the counterpane on the bed. "I think that your cousin's murderer, and whoever else was there in the copse with him-that after I was knocked unconscious, that they carried me to the cliffs and threw me over and then drove poor Firefly over the same cliff. They left me for dead."

An icy dagger ripped at his heart at the thought that she might have died that day...that he might never have known her. Rage against those faceless, nameless bastards filled him, but he throttled it back and coolly considered her words. "Wasn't that dangerous for them? After all, your family is prominent in the area. Surely they must have known that you'd be missed, that within hours someone would be looking for you?"

"I am positive that they were strangers to the area, that they did not know who I was." She made a face. "I did not have a groom with me that day and I was wearing my oldest habit. There was nothing about me, other than perhaps Firefly's quality, that would give them a clue that I was anything more than some local female who had stumbled across something she should not have." A shudder rippled through her. "I feel that they did not plan on anyone, except mayhap a worried parent or husband, to go looking for me. Certainly they never thought that nearly everyone for miles around would be in on the search, or that I would be found alive."

Julian rubbed his forehead again. His thoughts crashing against one another like waves on the rocks, flying in all directions, splintering into a million pieces, only to re-form and repeat the process. He could see no good in what he had learned tonight. His wife, like the witches of legend, appeared to have the "sight" or whatever name one wanted to call it, and that this gift, he thought sourly, manifested itself in her dreams. Graphic, violent nightmares that woke her screaming and trembling from their black, bottomless depths.

Something occurred to him. "Your nightmares...the ones after John's murder, they're only in these dungeons, the same dungeons, and only when he is killing?"

Nell nodded.

Julian's eyes narrowed. "If you only see him at those times, then it must be the violence that is your link to him," he said more to himself than to her. "John's murder forged a link, and God knows how, between the two of you...and your nightmares, your connection to him, is triggered whenever he kills."

"Until today I did not believe, not truly, that I was seeing, dreaming of real people. I knew that the nightmares had to be connected," Nell admitted, "but it was my fall over the cliffs that I blamed for them, not your cousin's murder."

Julian studied her features, noting the purple shadows under her eyes and the air of fragility that surrounded her, and his heart turned in his breast. She looked exhausted; she'd suffered a bad toss today and needed to be coddled and comforted, not badgered about the horrible events they were discussing. He wanted to press on, there were questions upon questions that he wanted to have answered, but he drew back, deciding reluctantly that tomorrow would be soon enough to consider tonight's revelations.

He stood up, preparing to leave the room. "You need to rest, and talking about this subject is not going to help you sleep." His gaze traveled on her pale features again. "I want Dr. Coleman to see you tomorrow morning," he said abruptly.

Nell wrinkled her nose at him. "Will it do me any good to argue with you about that?"

"No, none at all," he returned, a flicker of amusement crossing his face. He ran a caressing finger down her cheek. "I do not want anything happening to you. When Hodges returned and told me of your fall..." Remembered terror washed through him, but he forced a smile and said, "Let us just say that I do not want to experience that sensation again."

Precisely what he meant Nell could not tell from either his voice or his expression. Had he been annoyed? Worried? Irritated? He had not been happy to find her at Stonegate, that much she easily surmised. Probing just a little, she looked away and murmured, "It must have been a shock for you to find us at Stonegate this afternoon."

"I can't deny it," Julian replied, and some imp of the devil prompted him to add, "but that was nothing compared to the shock I felt when I saw you sitting so cozily next to Tynedale."

Her head swung in his direction and her chin held at a pugnacious angle, she said, "As I told you, I did not have a choice. He sat down beside me. I could not prevent him."

Julian wanted to believe her in this, too, but the sight of his bride sitting and chatting so calmly beside the man who had supposedly kidnapped her not three months before had given him a start and aroused a green-eyed demon within him. He had wanted to jerk that silly popinjay, Tynedale, off that sofa and shake him like a terrier with a rat. As for Nell, he had barely contained the powerful urge to sweep her into his arms and demand that she never frighten him in such a manner again.

That Nell had affection, or a fondness, for him he did not doubt, but he was also conscious that she withheld a part of herself from him. He tried not to dwell upon it or give it importance, but he'd noticed those subtle withdrawals-the gentle removal of her hand from his and the slight turning of her mouth, so that his kisses fell upon her cheek. The nagging sense that she was moving further away from him filled him with helpless terror. He wanted to grab her and shake her and demand that she love him...as he, he realized, loved her.

Stunned he stared at her. He loved her! He shook his head, hardly able to believe what had happened to him. He, the man who had never considered falling in love, had committed that folly of follies and had done just that-with his wife!

He stared at Nell, his expression shuttered as he grappled with what had so inexplicably happened to him. He loved this slip of a woman with the big, misty-green eyes and tangled tawny hair. Loved her as he had never imagined loving another human being. In some mysterious way she had become his world...And unless he'd mistaken the situation, she was drifting away from him.

Remembering her sitting beside Tynedale this afternoon, jealousy stirred like a wakened dragon in his breast and for the first time, he wondered if Tynedale's kidnapping had been as one-sided as Nell had claimed. He had believed her...then. But now he wondered. Had the withdrawal he sensed started with the news that Tynedale was in the area? Could the so-called kidnapping have actually been merely a runaway match? Had there been a lovers' quarrel that had sent Nell rushing off into the storm to seek shelter in the toll keeper's cottage? And perhaps, the next morning, when confronted by himself and her father, she could not bring herself to admit it? Had events simply spun out of her control so she had decided to make the best of it? He winced. Bad enough to be married for title and wealth, but to be married because it was simply a solution to one's problem did not bear thinking of...especially now, when he was in love with her.

"My lord," Nell said, breaking into his wanderings, "surely you do not believe that I encouraged Lord Tynedale?"

Reeling from the sudden knowledge that he was in love with her, buffeted by pangs of jealousy and uncertainty, Julian muttered, "I do not know what to believe anymore."

Nell gasped, outraged. He doubted her word. Her green eyes glittering, she snapped, "Then I suggest that until you do decide to believe me that you not inflict yourself upon me."

"Inflict?" he demanded, her words flicking him like a cat-o'-nine-tails. Pride and temper goading him, he said, "Very well, my lady, I bid you good night. Do not worry that I shall inflict myself on you any longer."

Nell watched him stalk from the room, her volatile emotions flying from angry indignation to anguished despair and back again. The words to call him back, to make peace, hovered on her lips...and then it was too late. He was gone; the door between their rooms slamming shut behind his tall form with a thunderous boom that echoed around the room. The sound ringing in her ears, she buried her head in her pillow. A fist in her mouth, she choked back tears. Damn him! To doubt her word! To think even for a moment that she liked being in Tynedale's company. Oh, she hated him. And at that exact second she wasn't certain who was the true recipient of that hatred, Tynedale or her wretched husband, who did not love her-who had given his love and his heart to a dead woman. Damn and blast him!

While Nell fought her own demons, Julian paced the confines of his rooms. He had tossed aside his coat and cravat and removed his boots. His valet had left a decanter of brandy and a snifter and during the course of the hours that followed he made steady inroads into the liquor.

His thoughts were spinning. The import of Nell's nightmares, his newly discovered love, his jealousy and suspicions all fighting against each other like scorpions in his brain. John's death was a long-festering wound; Daniel's suicide the previous year only adding poison to the canker that ate at him. That Nell might really have seen John's murder, that she might be able to identify his murderer filled him with a savage exultance. At last, after all this time, he might be able to get his hands on the person who had foully murdered as fine a man as he had ever loved or known. Bringing his cousin's murderer to justice would help ease some of the guilt he felt for failing John's son, Daniel.

It did no good for Marcus or anyone to tell him that Daniel's suicide had not been his fault, Julian admitted wearily, taking a long swallow of the brandy. Whatever anyone else might think, in his heart he felt that he had failed John, that he had not kept his promise made on that long-ago day to care for Daniel should something ever happen to John. He had failed and failure did not sit easy with him.

He'd avoided thinking about Nell, but her image, the sweetness of her smile, the giddy joy of her kiss crept into his mind, driving out the darker thoughts. He stopped his pacing and stared blindly into the fire that crackled on the black marble hearth.

He was in love. With his wife. It was incredible and terrifying; glorious and confounding. He knew an insane impulse to toss the snifter on the hearth and charge into Nell's room, and taking her into his arms kiss her senseless, pour out what was in his heart and demand that she love him. With an effort he fought against acting so rashly. A bitter smile curled his mouth as he remembered their parting. Most likely he'd have his ears soundly boxed and only add to the estrangement if he dared to do so. His wife, he admitted, did not hold him in high esteem at the moment.

And Nell was right about one thing: he had to make up his mind whether he believed her...or not. Jealousy churned in his chest. Was it possible that Nell was in love with Tynedale? Had she perhaps not known her own feelings until she'd seen that bastard again? He did not want to believe it. He'd never once doubted Nell's word. He had believed implicitly her tale of being kidnapped and forced to accompany Tynedale. He had good reason to; he held the power to destroy Tynedale financially and he knew that Tynedale had been frantic for a way to escape his fate. Marriage to an heiress would be a perfect solution. And if Tynedale had been reduced to kidnapping and forcing an unwilling woman into marriage, it wouldn't have deterred him.

Julian took a turn around the room, rubbing his forehead. God! If only he could resolve the conflict within himself. Nell's nightmares were enough to drive a man to drink, let alone finding out he was in love with her and suspicious that she might be in love with a man he considered his enemy.

He tossed off the last of the brandy, his face grim. So, did he believe her or not? He recalled the glitter in her fine eyes, the outrage on her face, and a wave of remorse and shame washed over him. How could he have doubted her? He was a fool! The moment Tynedale's name had been uttered, he'd reacted like a callow youth in love for the first time-allowing insecurity and jealousy to rule him. A wry smile crossed his face. Well, he was in love for the first time, surely that gave him some excuse. But there was no denying that he'd let a green-eyed monster and, he admitted, his own temper, drive a wedge between them that they did not need. He took a deep breath. Even if he was not in love with Nell, he would not allow their relationship to deteriorate. He had failed at one marriage, he would not another. And he would not lose Nell to Tynedale without a fight. She was his...and he loved her.