Stephen gulped down the rest of his wine. The truth was, no one could compete with her family. There was no sense trying. If he had any prayer of becoming a permanent part of Elizabeth’s life, it would be by convincing her he was worth making a little bit of room for. If not in her home, then in her heart.
Which meant Stephen could not shutter himself up in his makeshift laboratory with his goggles and his algebra. He would have to woo her the only way he knew how: with something unnecessarily complicated and more than a little gruesome.
“Are you up for a trip downstairs?” he asked.
Her brows lifted. “I’m up for anything you wish to show me.”
He pushed to his feet and held out his hand. “Then come with me. It’s time for the surprise.”
She placed her hand in his. He squeezed it gently. He would rather have tugged her forward into his chest and wrapped his arms around her and kissed her with all the emotion lodged in his heart, but he didn’t want to push things before she was ready. He’d done enough of that already. If he was lucky, there would be plenty of time for torrid embraces and passionate kisses in the future.
“Over here.” He led her down the corridor toward the spiral stone stairs that descended into the dungeon.
At the mouth of the stone opening, a sconce hung on one side. Below this, Stephen had placed two unlit torches. He let go of Elizabeth’s hand to light the tips in the flame of the sconce. He handed her the first one before attending to his own.
“Are you giving me a tour of the dungeon?” Elizabeth asked.
“I can. But there’s something I think you’ll like even more.”
They crept down the stairs carefully. The subterranean cavern was black as pitch. The orange flames of their sputtering torches lit their faces with an unnatural yellow glow and sent shadows dancing and skittering along the dark crevices of the dungeon.
Her eyes sparkled in the torchlight. “How delightfully ominous.”
He motioned for her to follow him past the rows of stone caves with their rusted iron bars on crooked hinges. At the farthest point from the only exit, the ceiling dipped low and the walls grew narrow. A pile of large gray boulders lined the squat far wall like a dam to block the flow of water—or rivers of blood.
“Did they flood this place?” She glanced over her shoulder toward the cells. “To drown the prisoners?”
“Maybe. The stones have another use now.”
“Wall art?” she said doubtfully.
“Misdirection. It’s not a solid wall at all.” He handed her his torch.
She leaned closer. “What are we doing?”
“You’ll see.” He rolled up his sleeves and pushed a waist-high boulder with all his might.
At first, it refused to budge. Then it scooted a few inches across the dust and dirt of the stone floor. And then it rolled, gathering steam and momentum until it knocked into another pile of rocks two feet from where Stephen had started pushing.
A gaping black hole as high as his hips lurked just behind where the boulder had stood.
“What is that?” Elizabeth stepped forward. “An animal’s warren?”
Stephen grinned at her. “The den where I go to hibernate.”
“You wentinthere? Why?” She rethought her question, then handed him his torch. “Why not?”
Stephen’s chest thumped. How could he not fall in love with thiswoman and her bravery? He adored that her natural response to being led to a gaping hole in a gothic dungeon in the dark of night was to surge forward and see what else she could find.
“Tilt your torch at an angle,” he cautioned. “If it scrapes the top of the tunnel, the flames could extinguish.”
She nodded her understanding, orange light dancing over her animated face.
He dropped to his knees and began crawling through the narrow opening, sending up a silent apology to his tailor for ruining yet more of the man’s handiwork.
Elizabeth crouched behind him without hesitation. When he glanced back, she was hiking up her skirts with her free hand as she edged her way forward a few inches at a time.
Ten feet later, they neared a dark, dank cavern. The air smelled musty and stale, as though the dust had been untouched for years until their intrusion.
