"Same thing," Sophie said dismissively, then began heading upstairs. She paused halfway up. "Also, your room's the third door on the left from the main staircase. In case you get lost later. This place is a maze if you haven’t grown up in it."
By the time Sasha was finally shown to her guest room, her head was spinning with names and relationships and the growing certainty that she was completely out of her depth. She was also slightly hungover, which wasn’t helping.
The room was lovely and she was slightly afraid to touch anything. It all looked like it belonged in a museum: the antique four-poster bed, the writing desk that probably predated electricity, the Persian rug that was probably worth more than she'd made in a year.
It was also approximately the size of a middle class house, with ceilings so high they seemed to disappear into shadow. Even with the windows thrown open, the place was boiling.
"This is mental," she said to her reflection in the ornate mirror. "Completely mental." Free holidays indeed, she thought to herself. It was more like she was playing dress-up in someone else's life. Her small suitcase looked ridiculous on the luggage rack that Davies had positioned at the foot of the bed. Outside, she could hear the sounds of the house settling: distant voices, doors closing, soft footsteps in the corridors.
She'd unpacked, changed into her most respectable pajamas, and was lying in the ridiculously comfortable bed staring at the ceiling when she realized she desperately needed the loo. The problem was that in her nervousness, she'd completely failed to pay attention to any explanation of where anything was located.
She sighed and got up, having to jump down from the bed it was so high.
The hallway outside her room was dark and confusing, lit only by dim lighting that made everything look like a gothic novel. The corridor stretched in both directions, lined with identical doors, and no helpful signs indicating which way led to bathroom facilities.
Sasha muttered something about maps until her bladder protested and she chose a direction at random.
Floorboards creaked under her bare feet, and she found herself walking on tiptoe, trying not to wake anyone. She tried the first door and found what appeared to be a linen closet. The second opened onto what might have been a sitting room. The third revealed another bedroom, though she backed away quickly when she heard gentle snoring from within.
By the time she finally found a bathroom, she was beginning to suspect that the Sullivans had designed their house specifically to confuse intruders. Or possibly to get rid of guests who drank too much.
With great relief she did what she needed to do, washed her face and her hands, and then decided that she could probably sleep now.
However, the journey back to her room proved even more challenging. What had seemed straightforward now appeared to have multiplied into several possible corridors, each lined with identical doors and antique furniture. In the dim lighting, everything looked the same: dark wood, faded wallpaper, and occasional portraits with the creepy eye-following mode firmly switched on.
She was fairly certain she'd taken a wrong turn somewhere around what might have been the main staircase, but could equally have been a completely different staircase. How many staircases was a house allowed to have?
After what felt like an eternity, she thought she was on the right track at last.
The door she was looking for seemed right, though it was difficult to be certain in the darkness. Third door from the main staircase, Sophie had said, though Sasha was no longer entirely certain which staircase counted as "main." So she opened it.
The room was darker than she'd left it, which was odd, but maybe the moon had gone behind clouds. She felt her waycarefully toward what she thought was her bed, trying not to knock over any priceless antiques in the darkness.
The bed was softer than she remembered. And warmer. Much warmer.
It took her sleep-addled brain several crucial seconds to process the fact that beds were not supposed to be warm on their own, and by the time she realized her mistake, she was already sliding under covers that smelled of something expensive and floral and definitely not like the lavender-scented sheets she'd climbed out of twenty minutes earlier.
The something warm and soft beside her shifted slightly, and Sasha's heart stopped entirely.
She was in the wrong bed.
And so was someone else.
Or perhaps the someone else was in the right bed, how was she to know?
But then, what were the chances of two people wandering around lost in the middle of the night?
No, she was almost certainly in someone else’s bed. And someone else was certainly there too.
Christ.
The smart thing would have been to slip out quietly and pretend this had never happened. But smart wasn’t always Sasha’s strategy. Particularly when panic set in and made her clumsy. She tried to silently slide her way out of the occupied bed, only to have her elbow connect solidly with what felt like a bedside table.
The crash of breaking glass was deafening in the quiet house.
"What the hell…" said a voice beside her, and Sasha's mortification was complete as she realized exactly whose voice it was.
Chapter Five
