His answer was slow, his dark eyes unwavering from hers, scrutinizing her. “Weavingshaw has several attics filled with old trunks and hidden crates that must be searched. There are also smugglers’caves inside the black cliffs that have been forgotten for centuries. We will not leave until we have combed through this entire estate.”
When Leena did not respond, he crossed his arms. “What are you not saying?”
Leena swallowed. “Nothing.”
“Come, we know each other well enough by now. Out with it.” His look was piercing, and again she had the disquieting feeling that they were speaking about two different things. She remembered their first night here, his hand on her arm, when he had told her not to search for ghosts alone anymore.
She scrambled for an answer to give him—anything to distract him from the truth. “I find it very hard to imagine that a mere guest, who, granted, may have been here once or twice, would have such specific knowledge of the whereabouts ofsmugglers’ cavesandhidden crates.”
There.She dared him to deny this.
He gave her no answer, continuing to watch her from beneath hooded eyes.
“What are you not telling me?” she persisted.
“What are you not tellingme,Miss Al-Sayer?” he countered swiftly.
Leena wasn’t sure what he spoke of; there were so many secrets that she was now keeping from him. The secret of being possessed, the secret belonging to Moira, and the secret of Leena’s growing fascination with St. Silas that seemed to be eating her body alive.
Likely, he wanted to know all three. He wanted to know everything.
St. Silas would never be satisfied until he undid her completely. Until she was as transparent as a phantom, and he held mastery of all her secrets.
Not for the first time, Leena promised herself that that wouldneverhappen.
They stared at each other for a long moment. Neither was willing to disarm. This was not their first duel—nor likely their last.
“Then we will continue our search, just as we are,” she replied after a moment, shifting backward away from him.
He rose from the settee and took a step forward just as she backed away, narrowing the space between them.
“Justas we are?” The change in his gaze was rapid, his pupils dilating.
Leena felt her throat constrict—an emotion evoked just from that single look. He was standing close enough that she could see the arched shadow of his long lashes on his cheek, could smell the starch of his collar, the fine earthy cologne on his skin.
Leena felt that the lines that had once been so clear to her when it came to St. Silas were beginning to blur painfully. The intimacy with which she knew him—his looks, his scent, hislashes—could not be easily undone from her memory, and her heart responded with a crushing thud.
What was happening to her?
She remembered Moira looking at Percival in the same way, devouring his presence with equal fervor.
Before he had killed her.
For that was how it would always end—at least in Weavingshaw.
After a few heated seconds, she took another firm step back from both St. Silas and her own maddening reaction, her footsteps echoing loudly in the room.
“Yes. Just as we are.”
Leena did notsleep easy within Weavingshaw, even with the pouch of salt Mrs. Van had procured for her.
It was on the third night that she dreamed of Lady Hargreaves.
No, not dreamed. LeenawasLady Hargreaves, back when she was alive and still known only as Gemma, attending a ball in the first blush of youth, an empty dance card in her trembling fingers. The hundreds of flickering candles made her feel as if the entire room was on fire, the twirling men and women dancing amid the blaze.
Standing beside her was a woman Leena knew instinctively was Lady Hargreaves’s mother, her sharp eyes critiquing her daughter’s every movement.
“Stand straighter, Gemma,” her mother hissed. “No man will look twice at you slouched over like that.” She turned away from the girl with a frown, her attention reverting to the gossiping chaperones who sat among the perpetual wallflowers. “What did you say, Lady Grenville?”
