A Rose for Beauty

Chapter 16

At first Lydia slept heavily, but at some point the dream landscape began encroaching on her rest. It drifted in gradually and Lydia became aware of her surroundings with dismay. Her first thought was that her dream pillow had failed, but after a moment she noticed that everything about her seemed somehow insubstantial, as though it were made of - or covered in - a fine mist. She reached hesitantly out to touch a plant, and was fascinated by the there-but-not-there sensation with which it yielded beneath her hand. She reached deliberately, then, for a tree covered in thorns and touched one. Although she could feel the pressure of it on her finger, it did not prick. 

"After all," she reassured herself, "he didn't claim it would stop the dreams, only that it would protect me."

"Well, whoever told you that was quite mistaken."

Lydia jumped. How did he always manage to surprise her like that? The tumbled chairs had been righted and he lounged in one of them, a carefully crafted posture of ease ruined by the steely sharpness in his blue eyes. The force of his personality was only a little blunted by the mistiness, but Lydia stood her ground. 

"I know who you are," she said, not quite able to keep her chin from jutting out obstinately. "Mr. Montgomery." Julian, she thought.

His eyes flared at that, and he tensed as though he barely stopped himself from leaping at her once again. "Now we come to it," he said grimly, hands clenching on the wicker arms of the chair. "Are you prepared to tell me who has sent you here?"

Lydia's stubbornness made her refuse to satisfy his arrogant query. "I have spoken only the truth to you," she insisted. "I do not know why I have been dreaming, or who has sent me here."

His lip curled at the corner, making him look like a feral creature. "Yet you know my name," he growled.

Steady, now. Lydia nodded. "I have been to see someone about these dreams. A friend of yours, I believe."

His gaze flickered, doubt surfacing. Lydia waited, pressing her lips together, staring him down as though her knees were not trembling in her skirts. Finally the question that he could not contain wrenched out of him. "Who?"

Lydia allowed herself to relax slightly. He was interested, he was talking... with any luck he was forgetting some of his wild aggression in the process. "Mr. Ambrose Hawke."

"Hawke?" he snarled, leaping from his chair. "He is a fool."

Lydia started again at his sudden movement, her heart pounding, but he was not even looking at her. He began pacing restlessly from one side of the path to the other, and Lydia recollected herself. "He was most anxious about you," Lydia said, stung on Mr. Hawke's behalf. If this arrogant man had seen Mr. Hawke's agony over his well-being, he would not speak so. Well. Not unless he were absolutely heartless.

"Well he should be, as the blame for my captivity here rests heavily on his shoulders."

Lydia opened her mouth to reply, but no useful comment came to mind and she closed it. Julian noticed her discomfort and laughed, a bitter, angry sound. "He failed to mention that, I see, when he sent you to find me."

On firm footing once more, Lydia denied his accusation heatedly. "He didn't send me. He was shocked to learn that I had been dreaming. We do not know why it has happened."

His assurance faded a little and he paused in his pacing for a moment. "He really did not send you?"

She shook her head and he sank once more into his chair. "No one sent you. But then how did you get here? No one has come for...so long."

Lydia's courage returned as his fierceness receded, and her curiosity would not be denied on this point. "Whatever happened to you? How did you get here?"