“That sounds more like a prize for me,” he said, his smile growing into a grin.
“Yes.” She ground out a short laugh and returned to her sandwich.
He watched her, noting the resignation behind the veil in her eyes. Restoring Graven Fortress had been important to her. Would she truly give it up? For him? What had changed? What had convinced her of Eleanor’s guilt?
Would she truly leave? The thought of her not being here to converse with him, no longer seeing him left him feeling colder than the deepest fathoms of the sea.
Would he cease to be once these walls fell? What if he remained, aching for a woman he could never touch. “Montgomery, I can’t allow this.”
She looked up and a lock of her hair fell out of her bun and tumbled to her waist. “Can’t allow what?”
“Hmm?” he asked, staring at the lock.
“Lord Harwich, what can’t you allow? That you don’t hate this Montgomery?” She smiled at him, setting his ghostly heart to pounding.
He nodded his head. “And I don’t want her to go.”
She was silent for so long he thought he said too much.
Then, “I couldn’t stay for any length of time with no work going on.”
“Why not?” he asked, looking surprised, as if he couldn’t believe the words coming from his mouth. “There is a roof over your head in every room.”
She gave him a playful, scornful look. “My, but you’re obsessed with me, Oliver Gracehaven.”
He laughed as if her suggestion was the most preposterous thing he’d ever heard.
But it wasn’t.
Chapter Six
Oliver’s gaze blazedover the contours of Miss Montgomery’s face while she slept in his old room, in his bed.
A delicate snore escaped her and he sighed, straddling a chair and staring at her with dreamy eyes. She wore her hair loose to bed and it stole around her body like vines on a garden wall. Stray tendrils splayed out over her cheeks. He reached to move them away. But he couldn’t feel anything, nor could she.
It shouldn’t matter. It hadn’t mattered in six hundred years. But all of a sudden, it did. He shouldn’t have made the bet with her. He was going to lose. He wanted to run his finger along her jaw, her lips. The need saturated him like a cloud, making him feel lightheaded.
He thought about earlier in the evening, sitting with her on the bed, listening to her story about her mother abandoning her.
“She said I was trouble and kicked me out, shutting the door in my face. I didn’t try to get back inside. I was young, and I remember thinking that if I was trouble then I should leave and keep my mother safe. I never saw her again after that. Life was hard,” she’d told him, “but I fought my way to my place.”
Yes, he imagined her now, kicking, clawing, and punching her way through life, the prize. “Your victory,” he pined while she slept, “resounds and beckons me to follow you.”
He forgot that she could hear him, even when he whispered. Her eyes fluttered open, making what he fancied was his heart, pound.
When she focused her sleepy gaze on him, she smiled. “Hi. Everything okay?”
He tried to swallow but it felt impossible. He nodded then rose from the chair.
“Where are you going?” she asked, moving her arm to block him.
“I…ehm…”
“Please stay.”
What was she stirring within him that was making him miss living? He should go, leave the room, and her. But he found himself sitting back in the chair.
“I had a dream about you,” she threw at him without mercy. She sat up and tucked her wild locks behind her ears. “I can’t stop thinking of it. You were in terrible trouble, and I couldn’t help you.”
