In the darkness Julian frowned, sensing that there was more behind her words. "Does something trouble you, Nell? The nightmares, perhaps?"

"No. Not the nightmares. I have not had one in weeks." She hesitated. "Which means, no doubt, that I will have one soon."

She hoped she'd distracted him, but he pulled her back against him and asked, "If not the nightmares, then what else is on your mind that will not allow you to lay peaceably by my side?"

Nell detested tattletales, but she couldn't help blurting out, "Your Aunt Sofie reminded me tonight that this was not the first time that you had looked forward to the birth of a child...and that those hopes ended in tragedy."

"That woman!" Julian growled, a note in his voice making Nell very glad that she was not Sofie Weston. "I may save Charles the trouble of wringing her neck." Nell believed him. He took a breath, saying in a calmer tone, "Rest assured that I shall have something to say to my dear Aunt Sofie when next I see her. In the meantime, put her nonsensical and, I might add, vicious comments from your mind. She has always been a troublemaker-pay her no heed. This is our child and what is between us has nothing to do with the past."

Nell wanted to believe him. Part of her did. Yet he was wrong. The past had everything to do with them and as long as Catherine's specter hovered between them...

Nell was not a coward, yet she was clutching her courage in both hands when she asked, "Did you love her so much?"

"Who?" Julian inquired, completely at sea.

Baldly she said, "Catherine."

Julian stiffened. Biting back a curse, he jerked upright and running an agitated hand through his hair, demanded, "What the hell does she have to do with us? She's dead, Nell. She's dead and buried. Forget her!"

"Can you?" she asked tightly.

Just the mention of Catherine's name filled him with rage and remorse. What he and Nell had together was precious and clean and honest. He wanted nothing to touch that, nothing to tarnish it. And bringing Catherine into their lives, their marriage, could certainly do that, he thought mirthlessly. Remembering the ugliness, the lies, the lovers she'd paraded before him, he wondered how he could ever explain to Nell everything that Catherine had been without sounding weak and pitiful-or like the cuckold he'd been? Nor could he bring himself to speak aloud his darkest fear: that the child Catherine carried and that he mourned to this day might not even have been his. How could he ever speak aloud of his loathing for a woman he had sworn to respect and protect all of his life and had failed...miserably, completely? If there was one thing he did not want to discuss with his second wife, it was his first wife. But Nell had asked a question and she deserved an answer. Could he ever forget Catherine? No, he thought wearily. She had sunk her claws into his very being and had stripped away his pride, his manliness, and very nearly destroyed him. No, he would never forget Catherine.

"No, I cannot forget her. I will remember until my dying day her and the child that she carried when she died, but she has nothing to do with us," he said heavily, standing up and pulling on his robe. "This is our marriage...and our child. I beg you, leave my past where it belongs. Understand me: accept as I have the fact that she is dead and buried and nothing will change that."

Well, there you have it, Nell thought bleakly. He's admitted it. He will never forget the heavenly Catherine. What hope is there for me? None. Defeat washed over her and Nell turned her head away. "Oh, I understand perfectly," she muttered, wishing him a thousand miles away. She made a great act of yawning. "Forgive me, my lord. I am very tired."

Julian hesitated, but the note of dismissal in her voice was not encouraging and he did not want to part from her this way. He didn't, he realized, want to part from her at all. What he wanted was something he'd never wanted from any other woman; he wanted to lie beside Nell the entire night, to feel her warmth against him, to listen to her soft breathing and to know that she was near his side all through the long, lonely, dark hours of the night.

Just the mere mention of Catherine's name, he thought savagely, had ruined any chance of Nell welcoming him back into her bed tonight. By heaven, but he wasn't going to let that witch reach out from the grave and destroy his only chance for happiness. Damn her black soul! Try your wiles, Catherine, but you will not win this battle, he vowed.

Surprising both of them, he tossed aside his robe and climbed back into bed beside Nell. Pulling her against him, they lay spoon fashion. Julian kissed the top of Nell's head. "I, too, am tired and can think of no more delightful place to sleep than at my wife's side."

Nell tried hard to cling to her hurt and anger, tried hard not to be pleased by his words, but it was impossible-she loved him. Her breath caught sharply as she realized that it was true: she did love him. Madly. Passionately. Completely. Awed she lay there reveling in his big, warm body pressed against hers. She loved this man. When it had happened she did not know. Perhaps from the moment she had first seen him looking like a desperate highwayman? Or had it been on their wedding night when he had kissed her so passionately? Made her so very aware of him as a man? Mayhap later still, when he had first made love to her? She didn't know when the fierce emotion that beat in her breast had begun, she only knew that she loved him with every fiber of her being.

Her jaw clenched. And he loved another. But it was with her that he lay-not a dead woman, and she took hope from that. She had months, years in which to make him love her...and Catherine had none. A little smile curved her mouth. And she carried his child. She fell asleep, a smile on her lips, her husband's arm wrapped around her, his hand lying protectively over her womb.

There was no warning. One second she was sleeping deeply, dreams of her child, dreams of the day when Julian would declare his love for her drifting rosily through her mind and the next.. She was there, watching in that smoke-stained dungeon, her ears assaulted by the woman's shrieks, her eyes fixed on the bloody rampage only a mind devoured by feral madness could inflict upon another human. Nell fought to escape the ripping talons of the nightmare, but they held her fast, forcing her to watch the horrible things done in that horrible place. She shuddered as the Shadow Man turned aside from his victim and reached for a different toy, a thin-bladed knife honed to razor sharpness...

As always he was in shadows, no way for her to identify him beyond his height and breadth of shoulder and yet when he had turned for that knife, something tugged at her brain and her breath caught. She knew him. She could not name him, but a bone-deep certainty flashed through her that she had met this man, had talked with him. Her Shadow Man was someone she knew.

In her sleep, Nell tossed wildly, panting softly. Julian awakened the second she had shuddered. Cursing under his breath, knowing it was the nightmare, he found a candle on the bed stand and quickly lit it. In the faint light, her face was contorted by fear and revulsion, and he reached out to touch her, to reassure her. But at his first gentle caress, she screamed and jerked upright, her eyes wide-open, but seeing nothing.

"Nell," he cried softly, "wake up. It is the nightmare. You are safe. Wake up, darling. Wake up."

But she could not, her gaze locked on a vision of unbelievable savagery. In all the nightmares, over all the years, she had never witnessed such ungovernable violence. Always before, no matter how vicious the act, there had been a pitiless curiosity emanating from him, as if he was intrigued by the reactions of the women to each new torture. But tonight there was no curiosity, there was nothing but a blind, mad urge to hurt, to rend and tear.

Kind words and gentle strokes were having no effect on Nell and in desperation, Julian slapped her across the cheek. She gasped, gagged and her gazed cleared. White-faced and shaking, she threw herself into Julian's arms. Sobbing against his shoulder, she muttered, "It was awful. Awful. I cannot bear this."

Julian held her, waiting for the worst of the storm to pass. All he could do was give comfort and he did that by holding her close, murmuring to her and stroking the tousled tawny locks. "Hush, sweetheart. You are safe. I have you and I will not let anyone hurt you. Hush, now."

Eventually her sobs lessened, but her clutch on his arms did not. She raised her head and in the flickering golden light from the candle she whispered, "I know him, Julian."

His eyes locked with hers. "You saw his face tonight?" he asked sharply. "You know his name?"

Nell shook her head. "No. Not that, it is just that at one point I felt instinctively that I knew him. That I had met him, talked with him." A shudder rippled through her. "He is someone we may have talked with in our very home."

Julian frowned. "But if you didn't see his face, how do you know he is someone you've met?"

"I can't explain it," Nell admitted. "It's just something that I know to be true." Urgently, she added, "We know him. He is no stranger to us."

Julian studied her pale face, seeing the streaks from her tears, the remembered horror in her eyes. He had already accepted the fact that by means and methods that went beyond normal understanding his wife had an unexplainable connection to the man who had murdered his cousin and tried to kill her by throwing her over a cliff. Nell's nightmares revealed that the same man, a monstrous creature, had for years been murdering innocent women in some dark dungeon. Having accepted all of that, it was not so hard for Julian to believe in what Nell claimed: that the man they sought was someone they knew.

"Very well. He is someone we know." He sent Nell a grim look. "But that helps us little if you cannot identify him."

"I know," Nell said mournfully. "If only we could find the dungeons! If we knew where they were, whose they were, we would know the name of this monster."

"Has it occurred to you that we have no idea where these dungeons might be?" Julian asked. "To be sure, we have explored the ones here at Wyndham Hall and excluded them, but good God! There are old, forgotten dungeons spread across the breadth and length of England! We could search out every dungeon in Devonshire and your madman could be in Cornwall for all we know."

Nell sat very still, her head cocked to one side as if she was listening to some faraway voice. Eventually she looked at him and shook her head. "No. I cannot identify him or them, but he is from this area and the dungeons are here, too."

Julian sighed. "And how do you know this?"

"I just know it!" she snapped. "I've told you-I can't explain it. Any of it. I only know what I feel, what my instincts tell me. And my instincts tell me that he and that hellish place are here in this area." She bit her lip. "The nightmares have always been terrible, but the ones I've had here...I cannot explain it, but they are more intense...as if I am nearer to the source and because of that the impressions, the feel of them is so much stronger, more powerful." Mournfully she added, "I don't know how to make you understand, but I am not imagining any of this. You do believe me, don't you?"

Wearily Julian nodded. "Yes, I believe you. I don't want to, I'll admit that much, and everything that you've related to me flies in the face of reason but what you've told me about John's murder convinces me that there is some link between you and his murderer. And if I believe that much, then it is not so difficult to believe all the rest, incredible though it may be." He covered her hand with his. "We are in this together, Nell, and together we will find this monster...and his cursed dungeons."

She leaned against him, needing his warmth, his strength. "You are very good to me," she said in a husky voice. "Few husbands would be so understanding."

Flushed with pleasure by her words, Julian kissed her forehead. "It is a good thing that I am such an exceptional husband, is it not?"

Despite the gravity of the moment, Nell smiled, "Are you fishing for compliments, my lord?"

He smiled. "No, but it is nice to have you speak well of me."

They sat together for several moments, enjoying the closeness that existed between them, but all too soon Julian's thoughts returned to the matter at hand and sighing he said, "I dislike asking you this, but is there anything else from tonight's nightmare that you remember that may help us?"

"Only that he was enraged. He was like a terrible savage, brimming, boiling with fury."

"I wonder," Julian mused, "what set him off."

"I cannot even hazard a guess." She shuddered and pressed closer to Julian. "That poor woman."

"It is clear that we have our work cut out for us." Julian shook his head. "I am not, I can assure you, looking forward to exploring every wretched, abandoned, damp, filthy dungeon in Devonshire. And the mendacious tales I shall have to concoct to convince my hapless friends, family and acquaintances to allow me to explore the lower reaches of their house doesn't bear thinking about."

She smiled wryly at him. "At least you can rest easy that your own dungeons are not suspect."

He nodded. "Yes, there is that to be thankful for." He glanced down at Nell, his features grave. "Are you positive that he is someone we know?"

Nell nodded. "There is no doubt in my mind."

"Well then, let us hope," he growled, "that our madman turns out to be that bastard Tynedale."

Nell shook her head. "It is not Tynedale. Tynedale is blond. The Shadow Man has black hair, much like your own..."

Chapter 15.

Julian did not waste time. The next morning, seated in his library, he composed a list of the estates that he knew possessed dungeons. On that list he marked the properties owned by people that Nell had met. The fact that he knew them was of secondary importance, Nell was the key.

Having been born here he was familiar with the various properties. When his initial list was completed, he was surprised to discover that there were so many homes owned by friends and family that had been built on the sites of former Norman keeps or castles, with dungeons. Some of the owners, such as Squire Chadbourne, took great delight in the gloomy dungeon beneath his grand home and would without any excuse at all drag unsuspecting visitors down to view them. Others like himself forgot that they existed unless reminded of the fact. Viewing the ones at Chadbourne would not be a problem. As for the others...he sighed. Everyone was going to think he had gone mad unless he could fashion a plausible excuse for wishing to see their dungeons. He looked wry. He could picture the expression on Charles's face if he asked to stroll through the extensive dungeons he knew lay beneath Stonegate. Dr. Coleman wouldn't be best pleased either to be asked to throw wide the doors of Rose Cottage to let him poke around in the bowels of the place. Now Lord Beckworth, his neighbor to the north, was like Squire Chadbourne, rather proud of his family's dungeons, and could probably be induced to give him a tour without so much as raising an eyebrow.

And last on his list was John Hunter, his gamekeeper. Not that Hunter owned a grand estate, but his home and several acres surrounding it, bequeathed to him by the Old Earl, had once been a handsome hunting lodge and was said to be built on the site of an old Saxon castle replete with the requisite dungeons. Julian didn't know about the Saxon castle part, but he did know that the dungeons existed-as boys, he, John, Marcus and Charles, with a fearful Raoul in tow, had explored them. Julian smiled at the memory. Oh, they'd had a grand time roaming through that vast, ghostly place until John Hunter had discovered them and nearly scared them out of a decade's growth when his huge form, cudgel in hand, had risen up out of the shadows and he had chased them away.

He frowned. In addition to those already listed, he supposed he should add the remains of the old Norman keep near Dawlish and the crumbling remnants of a monastery deserted since the times of Henry VIII. Both sites, if he remembered correctly, were rumored to have dungeons beneath them. If there were other places nearby that had dungeons or dungeonlike areas beneath them, he could not think of any. Feeling that his list was as complete as he could make it, he put it aside and went in search of his wife.

He could not find her and an inquiry to Dibble informed him that all of the ladies were presently at the Dower House. "They wanted to see how the work was progressing," Dibble added, "and I believe that there is some disagreement about the color of silk to be hung in the main saloon."

Since the day was fine for the second week of February and the Dower House was less than a mile away, Julian decided to walk. He had paid little heed to the comings and goings surrounding the renovations and because the Dower House sat back nearly a quarter of mile from the main road leading to Wyndham Hall, and was well concealed by a mass of tangled forest, he had not noticed any changes. Strolling down the badly pitted road that led to the house, avoiding the largest of the potholes, he concluded that work had not yet begun on the outlying areas.

The wild woodland pressed close, in some cases actually encroaching onto the roadway, making for a narrow, gloomy walk, the branches of trees meeting overhead. When leafed out they would block out the sunlight. If I were of a nervous disposition, he told himself, I certainly wouldn't be taking a stroll along this road. As he reached the final turn of the ambling lane, the Dower House rose before him, the roadway circling around in front of a steep-roofed, half-timbered, three-story house with mullion windows.

He crossed the roadway and standing at the base of the bottom step, he stared around, amazed at the difference that the freshly trimmed shrubbery made in this area. No longer half-hidden beneath mounds of ivy and vines the beautiful lines of the house were apparent. The massive oak and lime trees that had brooded over the house had either been removed or trimmed back and after the suffocating murkiness of the roadway leading to the house, the openness was a most welcome change. Julian smiled. At least from the outside the place no longer looked like the abode of a warlock or an evil sorceress. A wide brick walkway, lined with expertly pruned roses and newly weeded perennial beds, dotted with the cheerful nodding heads of yellow daffodils, angled off to one side of the house. An offshoot of the main driveway disappeared in the opposite direction leading, Julian remembered, to the stables. No one had lived here since the days of his great-grandmother and all of his memories of the place had been of a deserted, overgrown, decaying place. Only the most basic upkeep had been done to the place in decades. He was pleased to see the changes and a bit ashamed that he, along with his father and grandfather, had let the place almost fall into rack and ruin.

The sounds of pounding and hammering carried through the air and when his knock went unanswered, he tried the massive door and, finding it unlocked, let himself inside. In contrast to the outside, the interior of the house was chaos. Plaster, lumber, ladders, ghostly covered furniture loomed up here and there, and scrapes of wallpaper, buckets with mysterious substances in them and bolts of expensive material were everywhere.

But there were signs of progress: the large entry hall floor had been redone in a striking rose-shot marble; the walls were covered in a cream-colored satin embossed with pink rosebuds and all the moldings had been either retouched with gilt or repainted a gleaming white. The long curving staircase, which he vaguely recalled having sported several broken steps with a railing that trembled at the lightest touch, had been expertly repaired and repainted. The hammering came from the left side of the house and Julian followed the sound to its source, glancing into several rooms along the way. He smiled ruefully. His stepmother did indeed love pink.

In a handsomely appointed room near the rear of the house, he found his wife and the other two women arguing over the merits of a pink watered silk as opposed to a soft blue fabric enlivened with a faint gold stripe. He stopped in the doorway, a smile twitching at the corner of his lips. From their intent expressions, this was serious business.

"But Diana," exclaimed Nell, "you've already used pink in several rooms, in fact nearly every room in the house is pink, don't you think it would be better to use the blue here? Won't you get tired of pink?"

Lady Diana made a moue. "But I like pink. It is my favorite color. Besides, it is my house, why can't I do every room in pink if I want to?"

Nell and Elizabeth exchanged a look. "Of course, Mother, you can do exactly what you want," Elizabeth agreed. "But don't you think others, perhaps some friends and guests, who aren't as, uh, fond of pink as you are, might not find it a bit, er, overpowering?"

"Even perhaps boring and predictable," Nell added quickly. "You certainly wouldn't want that, now would you?"

Lady Diana looked torn. Naturally, she didn't want her family and friends to think her taste in furnishings was boring and predictable. Her gaze went from one fabric to the other.

"It would make a refreshing change," urged Nell. "A statement even."

"What sort of statement?" asked Lady Diana, intrigued.

Julian decided to enter the fray and, walking across the room toward the ladies, he said, "A clear statement that here lives a lady of refinement and elegance that possesses the most exquisite taste."

All three women turned at once, the warm smile Nell sent his way making Julian feel oddly breathless and light as a feather, as if he were floating. Certain that his feet were not touching the floor, he joined the ladies in front of the big window, still in need, he noticed, of a great deal of work, that overlooked the garden.

"Oh, do you really think so?" Lady Diana asked, her big brown eyes fixed on his face.

"Absolutely," Julian murmured, fingering the blue fabric. "Yes, the blue with the gold stripe is the way to go. I'm sure that friend of Prinny's, the one who is making such a name for himself amongst the ton, that Brummell fellow, would go into raptures over the blue." He looked thoughtful. "And no doubt despise the pink."

Lady Diana drew in a sharp breath. "That must not happen! Brummell can ruin a hostess by just a lift of his eyebrow." Turning back to Nell, she said, "It will be the blue, definitely the blue." A worried expression crossed her pretty face. "Mayhap I should redo all the rooms and remove any sign of pink?"

As one the other three said, "No!" There were still months of renovations in front of them and if Lady Diana began tearing out already completed areas, they'd be having this same conversation, or one appallingly similar, a year from now. There'd been a few accidents that had caused delays and several bolts of fabric for the drawing room had inexplicably gone missing, necessitating its reordering from London as well as a roll of lovely new carpet for the library, which had also disappeared.

"The other rooms are fine," Nell said glibly. "There is no need to tear everything down and start anew. You only need a touch of another color here and there to make all perfect."

Lady Diana nodded. "I believe that you are right, but I may change the walls in the dining room to that gold figured silk that I thought I didn't like. And the chairs-they could be recovered in that gorgeous green damask I bought and didn't know where to use. What do you think?"

She was looking to Julian for an answer and seeing his wife frantically nodding her head in the affirmative, he said, "An excellent idea! After all, one wouldn't want to be thought insipid and flat. Especially not by Brummell."

Not wishing to be embroiled in further decorating decisions Julian expertly cut Nell out from the others and whisked his wife away, leaving Lady Diana and Elizabeth to their own devices.

As they left the house behind them, Nell said, "I cannot tell you how grateful I am for your intervention. She has such good taste in so many things, but when it comes to the color pink..." She shook her head. "It has been all that Elizabeth and I can do to keep her from wrapping the house in the most vulgar and shocking shade of pink silk."

"Has it been a trial for you?" he asked, tucking her hand under his arm as they walked.

"Oh, no. I did not mean it that way." She glanced up at him. "I am very fond of your stepmother. I didn't think that I would be, but she is very sweet and biddable and has a kind heart."

Julian nodded. "And a brain filled with goose down."

Nell chuckled. "Well, perhaps her intellect is not the highest, but she sometimes surprises me with her observations. Just about the time that you think she is a perfect pea-goose, she will say something that makes you take a second look at her."

They walked away from the house, entering the section of road that had not yet been improved. Nell shivered a bit as the gloom closed around them. "I will be quite happy when work is begun on this road. It is so dark and depressing that one can almost imagine fierce beasts staring at one from the concealment of the forests."

Julian kissed her hand. "I shall order it cleared immediately. It will be one of my contributions to help speed along Diana's removal from our home."

Nell looked up at him. "Do you dislike having her living at Wyndham Manor?"

"No, not really. I am, like you, very fond of my stepmother, and especially so of Elizabeth, and will always keep a watchful eye on them. But I think for everyone's sake it is important that she have her own household." He smiled down at Nell. "I have new and delightful demands on my time and purse that take precedence over her and Elizabeth's claims."

"Very prettily said, my lord," Nell replied with an impish smile.

"I certainly thought so," he murmured, his eyes full of laughter.

Quite in harmony with each other they continued their walk. Julian told her of the list he had compiled and they discussed different methods by which Julian could gain access to the various dungeons. None of them sounded very good and they soon abandoned that topic and went on to a bone of contention between them.

"I still think you should take me with you," Nell argued. "I know exactly what to look for-you don't."

"It is going to be devilish tricky as it is for me to inveigle my way into these places without having you trailing at my heels." His jaw tightened. "Besides, I do not want your Shadow Man to have the slightest inkling that you may be involved."