Oh, the overweening privilege of this man. Knew it no bounds?
“I forbid it,” she said, firm.
“Youforbidit?”
It did sound ludicrous when he said it like that. Who was she to forbid the Duke of Ravensworth anything?
But she’d chosen this hill to make a stand, and she would hold her position. “I do.”
He laughed.
From the pit of his stomach.
Another possibility occurred to her… “No one’s ever forbid you anything, have they?”
“I can’t say they have.” He crossed his arms over his chest and propped a shoulder against a hearth beam. “And what wouldn’t you change about this house?”
“The smell,” she answered without hesitation.
“Thesmell?”
“It needs to smell exactly as it does now.”
“Like soured apples?”
Delilah nodded. “We are breathing the same air as Shakespeare.”
A few ticks of time beat by, and he nodded. In his eyes, she saw understanding.
Was it possible that Sebastian, the Duke of Ravensworth, understoodher?
Deep down—improbably—she knew the answer.
*
Sebastian’s step severalpaces behind Delilah, he followed as she took the lead in exploring the house.
Around the great room. Down a narrow corridor with low ceilings, close, dark, rife with whispered conversations past. Into the kitchen, stale and dank from years of disuse—a room that longed to be the warm beating heart of a household. Through the door that led into the kitchen garden overgrown with weeds and herbs alike. Delilah pinched a leaf of thyme and brought the fragrant leaf to her nose, emitting a coo of delight.
“Shakespeare’s thyme,” he couldn’t help saying.
She smiled and tucked the leaf into her skirt pocket.
She returned to the kitchen and found the narrow, steep staircase. Up creaking rungs she climbed, him behind her, until they reached a loft, low-ceilinged and just wide enough to accommodate a few cots and perhaps a small writing desk. This would’ve been the children’s room.
“Shakespeare would’ve slept here,” she tossed over her shoulder.
“Likely.”
She pointed. “There, beneath the dormer window.”
A dry laugh sounded through Sebastian’s nose. “And how would you know that?”
“Because that’s where Juliet would sleep. Dreamers and writers are in constant need of windows to stare out of.” She glanced at him, and a laugh chirruped out of her. “You’re entirely too massive a man for this loft.”
It was true. His forehead had struck two support beams already. “Shall we make our descent?”
On the ground floor, Delilah inhaled another sip of Shakespeare’s air before following Sebastian through the front door and out of the house. “That was wonderful,” she said as they fell into step on the high street.
