The candle went out. There was a grunt, and then the floor came up to meet her, and she came down on top of him in a graceless, breathless tangle, her knees slamming down on either side of his hips, the candlestick still raised above her head with both hands wrapped around the base and every intention of bringing it down with everything she had.
“Put the weapon down, Juliana, unless you are planning to finish me with that tonight,” said the Duke of Stonevale, somewhat breathlessly, from the floor. “I was aware that you disliked me, but I confess I did not anticipate you attempting to stave my head in over it.”
The candlestick did not move. Neither did she.
“I… I heard screaming,” she said. Her voice came out steadier than she expected, given that her heart was trying to escape her chest. “It was coming from the West Tower. I thought…” She swallowed. “I did not know who was in the corridor.”
“Evidently.” His gaze moved to the candlestick with mild consideration, then back to her face. “You may lower that at any time.”
She lowered it. Slowly. As if granting him a concession she was not entirely certain he had earned.
He made no move to dislodge her. Suddenly, she became aware of the solid warmth of him beneath her, the steady rise and fall of his chest against her knees, the fact that his hands, which could have lifted her off him without effort, had simply settled at his sides as though he had nowhere more pressing to be. Her nightgown was a wholly insufficient barrier against the reality of him. She could feel the hard planes of his body through the thin fabric, the heat radiating off him in the cold corridor, and something else—something that made her breath catch and her grip tighten reflexively around the candlestick, because she needed something to hold onto that was not him.
“Did you hear what I said?” she pressed. “I heard a scream. It came from—”
“I heard you the first time.”
“Then answer me. Is there someone in that tower?”
Something moved behind his eyes. Not amusement, or not only that. It was a flicker of something more carefully contained, surfacing briefly before he could suppress it. She might havecalled it exhaustion, except that exhaustion had never looked quite so guarded.
“Are you perhaps one of those ladies who like to read too many Gothic novels?” he teased.
“No! I do not read such things,” she lied, clearly embarrassed to admit that this might have been a product of her imagination.
“Well, the house is old. The sounds it produces are varied and frequently unsettling. There is no prisoner in my tower, no first wife, no deranged relation. I am not that sort of villain.” A pause. “I am told I am other sorts.”
“Then why,” she said quietly. “Are you prowling the corridors at this hour?”
The amusement returned, faint and deliberate.
“Prowling?” he repeated. “Is that what I was doing?”
“You have not answered my question.”
She felt his gaze travel over her in the darkness.
“Were you coming to my room?” she asked, and immediately wished she hadn’t, not because it sounded accusatory, but because it didn’t. It sounded hopeful, and they both knew it.
The corners of his mouth curved.
“I wonder,” he said, and the lightness in his voice had an edge to it now. “Were you lying awake, hoping I would come to your room and make good on my promise? Is that what kept you wandering the halls tonight?”
“I was alarmed by the scream—”
“Beforethe scream, Juliana.”
The heat that flooded her cheeks was extraordinary. She was grateful for the darkness.
“You are a cad,” she said.
“And yet you were rather reluctant to remove yourself from my person just now.” His eyes gleamed. “One might draw certain conclusions from that.”
She scrambled to her feet with considerably less grace than she would have wished, her legs unsteady beneath her, and put a step of distance between them. He came to his feet with that controlled, effortful ease she had learned to recognize, his jaw briefly set against whatever the movement cost him. Then his posture was impeccable again, and she was left to wonder if she had imagined it.
“I will not let you evade my questions,” she said, pulling herself together. “I know what I heard. Someone screamed in that tower.”
“The house has a voice of its own,” he said. “Timber and stone and a great deal of cold air. What sounds human is not always so.” He regarded her steadily. “And if you truly believed there was a burglar, you would have been wiser to wake a footman than to charge down a dark corridor in your nightgown.”
