She sighed. “Very well. Come up here.”
“Pardon?”
“You heard me,” she sniffed. “You may have half the bed. You are too big for the rug anyway. I would rather share the mattress than spend the night thinking of your bones freezing by the hearth.”
“They would not freeze,” he said. “Only ache.”
“Victor,” she said, her tone brooking no argument. “Come, please.”
He hesitated. He could, after all, remain on the floor. His back would complain in the morning, but he would survive. His self-control would remain intact.
The thought of lying beside her on that narrow bed, of waking up to her, felt like an invitation to folly.
“Are you afraid?” she asked quietly.
He almost laughed. “Of floorboards? No.”
“Of me,” she murmured.
That silenced him.
He rose in one smooth motion, crossed to the bed, and lay down near the edge, one arm behind his head, the other resting flat on the coverlet.
“There,” he said. “Satisfied?”
She turned onto her side, facing him, leaving a respectable gap between them. In the low light, with the shadows touching her cheekbones, her features were softer.
She looked younger. More vulnerable.
“Not entirely,” she replied. “But it will do.”
He huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. “Try to sleep, Gwendoline.”
“I cannot,” she admitted. “My mind will not quiet.”
“Tell it to,” he suggested.
“It won’t obey.”
“Then give it work. Tell me what it is gnawing on, and we will dissect it together.”
She was quiet for a little while, her eyes fixed on some point near his shoulder.
“I am worried about my mother,” she murmured.
He had expected that. “Because you left her with him?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Without me there, he will take out his anger on her. I am not under any illusion that my presence spared her entirely, but at least I was a diversion. A different target to strike. Now, there is only her.”
He considered. “You said she chose him.”
“She did,” Gwen affirmed. “That does not mean she deserves what comes with that choice.”
“No,” he agreed. “It does not.”
She drew the coverlet higher, as if warding off more than the cold. “My father died when I was twelve. From a fever. It took him in less than a fortnight. One day, he was laughing with me over some dreadful poem I had written; the next, he couldnot rise from his bed. He was clever and kind and terribly impractical. Mama adored him.”
“I remember hearing of his death,” Victor said. “My father said that it was a waste of a reasonably competent man and a perfectly good estate.”
