“I mean, I can’t ask you to sleep on the floor,” Amelia said.
Caleb laughed. “Yeah, I’m not doing that even for you, darling. The bed’s large enough for us both.”
“Oh.” Her pulse raced, and not just because of this scandalous suggestion. Caleb wasrolling up his shirtsleeves. Staring at his forearms with their shapely muscles and fine dusting of blond hair, she felt her blush return with a vengeance. True, the man had moments before been half-naked, but somehow this smaller revelation of bare skin was even more alluring.
“Hello?” he said, and she looked up to see his head lowered, angled, as he tried to catch her gaze. A patient but slightly quizzical smile was on his lips.Stop thinking about his lips!Amelia’s brain shouted at her, even as her body throbbed with panic. What had he been saying? Something about pillows?
“Tired,” she said. “Long day.”
His smile deepened, so warm and fond that Amelia bid farewell to her melting heart. “Poor thing,” he said. Taking the lantern from her, he held out his free hand. “Come with me.”
In a daze, Amelia placed her hand in his and found herself being led toward the bed. She glanced over her shoulder, looking without success for the ghost of the calm, capable woman she’d been before entering this room. Really, she ought to have just put up with King John stabbing her. At least that would have been educational.
I imagine there are many interesting lessons Caleb could teach you tonight,came a wicked voice from the back of her mind, where she stored her unorthodox theories about Anne Boleyn,opinions of Professor Ottersock, and secret liking for malt whiskey. Hearing it, Amelia tripped over what was probably a snag in the carpet but felt altogether too much like her scruples. Her book dropped to the floor.
“Oops,” Caleb said, releasing her hand so as to put a steadying arm around her. This in fact proved to be as far from steadying as it was possible to get without resorting to a salacious metaphor, but Amelia thanked him nonetheless. He set down the lantern on a small table beside the bed, then retrieved her book.
“Mary Wollstonecraft,” he said, reading the title. “Interesting choice. Peter Wilmot and I visited her grave once.” Pulling back the bed’s counterpane and sheet, he gestured grandly. “Tuck yourself in. I’ll go bar the door.”
As he moved away, Amelia took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. There was still time to leave…
But no, leaving would be silly.We are just friends,she reminded herself. And two friends—two professional, adult colleagues—can share a bed without it being anything more than a good night’s sleep. After all, she’d shared one with Professor Anne Tremblay from Edinburgh University when they were undertaking a joint study of carnivorous bagpipes, and nothing untoward had occurred beyond the sharing of chocolates and gossip. The same would be the case with her and Caleb, she was sure of it.
Climbing into the bed, she rearranged the counterpane tidily over herself, smoothing every wrinkle. Caleb was wedging a hard-backed chair beneath the door handle, and from her position, Amelia had an extremely edifying view of his posterior encased in the long johns.I wonder what would happen if I started a fight with him?she mused.
The thought was languid, silkily warm, sliding against her consciousness. The memory of their argument in the dining room sizzled. Increasingly, this pretense at enmity was playing havoc with her body, leaving her breathless and yet hard-pulsing at the same time. Caleb had transformed from her easygoing friend to a man deliberately trying to create sparks in her, and he proved very good at it. Even the adversarial way he looked at her was incendiary. And now here she was in his bed. She managed to convince herself that she’d arrived here solely due to escaping a mad ghost. Her motivations were innocent.
Alas, if only the same could be said for her imagination.
Caleb turned, brushing back his hair, and looked at her through the sultry lantern light. Amelia looked back at him.You’re safe with me,his eyes said.
I know,hers answered.
Damn,the silence between them sighed.
He approached the bed. But he didn’t walk; nothing so simple. He prowled, or so it seemed as she watched him, his every step lithe and slow and purposeful. His gaze never leaving her. The storm howled; the shadows danced liked worshippers of the wild god Pan, intoxicated by their unruly, sacred lust. Amelia’s self-pretense fell away, revealing the raw and naked tumult of her pulse. She did not have enough time to even choose betweenoh my GodandI am in so much troublebefore Caleb reached the bed and, drawing back the covers, crawled in, his mouth curving like a tiger’s claw, his eyes a promise of the storm…
And then he flopped back against the pillows. Kicking the bedding so as to get his legs under it, he squirmed, and muttered about lumps in the mattress, and pulled the covers upover himself with reckless abandon. Settling at last, he crossed his arms at the same time Amelia did.
They sat side by side, facing forward.
“Thank you for letting me stay,” Amelia replied in a stiff little tone that would have made her mother proud (providing her mother didn’t know she was using it while in bed with a man to whom she wasn’t married).
“You’re always welcome, Meely,” Caleb answered. He glanced at their legs stretched out in parallel beneath the counterpane. “Gosh, I haven’t shared a bed with someone since back in Bethnal Green.”
A shadow skittered through his gaze, the way it always did when he mentioned his childhood in the bleak rookery of East London, even all these years later. But he was smiling, and so very pretty in the gloss of lantern light, it was as if nothing foul had ever sullied him.
“Really?” Amelia asked. “Never? What about when you—er—”
He looked at her sidelong, his smile arched crookedly. “You sure you want me to answer that?”
“Maybe not,” she murmured. Distracting herself from the uncomfortable line of thought, she leaned forward to pull the counterpane up over him more, tucking and smoothing efficiently. “In the morning, I want to find the source of the ghost in my room. I’m assuming it’s a coin or—”
“Amelia.” Caleb caught her hand rather tightly in both of his and moved it to lie on her lap, even as he drew up his knees. “It’s late at night. I insist that you relax.”
Sighing, she relented at last, leaning against him, her head in the crook of his shoulder. He tilted his own head so it restedon hers, and sighing too, he slipped his arm around her back to hug her.
“I thought the countryside would be more peaceful than town,” she said, fiddling drowsily with lacework on the counterpane.
