And start juices flowing which hadn’t stirred in his veins for five years.
Maybe that’s what caused the dream. He’d had plenty of dreams about women. Sometimes they were set off by the things men said around a campfire. Sometimes because his body was trying to remind him that Nature hadn’t intended him for a life of celibacy.
But he’d never had a dream quite like this one.
He’d been married. To Rose. He couldn’t tell where they lived—the house was a mixture of Ashburn, the Randolphs’ Virginia home, and several of the houses he’d been quartered in during the war—but he thought they lived in Virginia. Oddly, his brothers were their children. They squabbled, but the mood of the dream had been happy. He was content to be married to Rose, to look after his vast estate, and to raise a large family of boys.
That dream represented everything George feared most in the world.
That was what caused him to wake up before dawn, his heart beating double-time. It was what caused him to lie in bed searching his mind for an explanation.
Only Rose could account for it. He would have to be very careful that her seductive presence didn’t lure him into thinking he wanted the very things he knew would end up making him miserable. He would never have thought he could be so weak-minded, even about a woman as attractive as Rose. He wouldn’t make much of a head of the family if he didn’t learn to be less impressionable.
The creaking door ended his self-examination.
“Time to get up,” Hen said, entering the room with a basin of hot water and a bucket of cold.
Tyler turned over. Zac didn’t move. Jeff sat up and swung his feet to the floor. Monty charged to his feet and headed for the door, apparently intending to go straight to the kitchen. Hen handed him the basin.
“What’s this for?” Monty demanded irritably.
“Miss Thornton sends it with her compliments. I take it to mean we’re to shave before we show up at the table.”
“I’ll be damned—”
“You probably will,” George interrupted, “if you don’t make some attempt to get your temper under control. Why don’t you try accommodating Miss Thornton rather than blowing up at everything she does?”
“Dammit, George, I thought you hired a housekeeper. That woman’s worse than a nanny.”
“Maybe you could use a nanny,” George said. “Have you taken a good look at yourself lately?”
Hen obliged by taking the mirror from its hook on the wall and holding it before Monty.
“Good God,” Monty exclaimed. “I’d scare a Spanish whore.”
“I been telling you that for years,” Hen said. “That’s why you can’t get any—”
Monty jumped his brother, and they went down in a tangle on the floor. George rescued the mirror.
“Tyler, since you and Zac don’t have to shave, you can get dressed and go help Miss Thornton.”
“I got a beard,” Tyler said. “I need to shave as much as you.”
George put out a hand to stop Jeff from uttering the words on his lips. “Okay, it looks like Zac gets to help Rose. Tyler can share my basin.”
“I ain’t going in there by myself,” Zac declared.
“You make Monty and Hen stop fighting, and you can share my basin,” Jeff said.
Zac looked at the boys still wrestling on the floor. They were several times his size. Many more times his strength. Before George could stop him, Zac took the bucket of cold water and poured it over them.
Shouts of profanity reverberated throughout the room.
“Fetch some more water before you get torn apart,” George said, barely able to hold back his laughter. “And see if you can find another mirror. We can’t all be looking in one at the same time.”
“You put him up to that,” Monty accused Jeff.
“It’s not Jeff’s fault,” George said. “Zac will do anything to stay with us. More than anything, he wants to be treated like a man.”
“It’s an overrated state,” Monty said. “I’d be just as happy to be the one to help with the breakfast.”
“Do you think she’d have you?” George asked. “You gave her a right rough time last night.”
“I don’t think she minded it much.”
“Of course she did,” Jeff argued. “Females are delicate. They can’t stand things a man would hardly notice.”
“Not every female is quite so fragile,” George said, cutting off what he feared would be an ill-chosen reply from Monty. “I get the impression Miss Thornton is capable of taking care of herself.”
“There’s only one more mirror,” Zac announced as he came into the room and slammed the door on the dogs trying to follow. “It’s hers, and she said she ain’t giving it up.”