He searched his boots and his suspicions were confirmed. No gun. No knife.
But he’d known that would be the case. The dustless room and nearly bloodless shirt were clues that Mrs. Durand and Mrs. Hardy did not do things by halves.
His trunk was still at the Stevens. He hadn’t much in it, apart from toiletries. And, of course, the account books he’d taken from Harrigan’s.
Christ, but he needed to sit down again.
He took the shirt with him and lowered his sorry, battered body to the bed. The water in the basin was clean.
He was just about to shake out his shirt so he could drop it over his head when something glinted in his peripheral vision. He pivoted sharply.
The doorknob was slowly turning.
He realized he’d already subconsciously scanned the room for weapons when he at once seized the lantern as the best likely projectile. He could hurl it or bludgeon with it.
His breath suspended, his every muscle locked and cocked like a loaded pistol, he watched that doorknob complete its revolution and the door open soundlessly, because of course the doors wouldn’t creak at The Grand Palace on the Thames.
A young woman slipped into the room and gently, slowly closed the door. He noted slim shoulders. A long neck.
The way her dress poured in a lyrical line from her shoulders to waist to sweetly flaring hips instantly communicated something primal to his groin.
Her brown hair shifted to dark gold when she turned into that beam of sun.
And saw him.
She froze. Her hand flew up to cover her heart.
“Oh!Mon di—you are awake. I am so sorry!”
His breath left him as though he’d been punched.
He slowly, slowly lowered the lamp. He loosened, but didn’t relinquish, his hold on it. It seemed important to touch something ordinary to anchor him to earth.
Wonder crescendoed into a strange sort of unspecific fury—very like he’d been captured against his will. Then receded gently again into wonder.
He’d been blessed by the sight of beautiful women before, but could not recall ever before experiencing what amounted to sensual panic. As if he would be imperiled somehow if he didn’tdosomething about her at once.
That jolt he felt was like a key turning in a lock. He instinctively knew he’d already been fundamentally altered somehow.
His muscles remained tensed, absorbing her impact as if she were a rogue wave. He took a surreptitious breath.
He supposed he could blame laudanum or fever for the strange sensation. And he would have, if he’d been more cowardly, and less brutally honest with himself.
That this should happen while he was pale, ill, half-naked, sticky with sweat, and hadn’t made love to a woman in three years... well, he was just going to do what he did so well, and that was brazen it out.
He had no sense of how much time had passed while they regarded each other in apparent amazement.
“It pains megreatlyto hear that you’re sorry I am awake,” he said gravely.
Her smile was swift and small and illuminated her entire face. It lasted mere seconds. Her faint accompanying blush made him restless.
But the woman seemed to have been shocked mute. Her fingers were curled into her skirt, as if she, too, needed to hold on to something lest she be borne away. Her eyes were blue. Blue like that rogue wave slapping the devil out of him. Blue like the color of the sky just after sunset, right before darkness takes over. He knew these blues. He’d counted them to himself while he was in his cell, so he wouldn’t forget the most beautiful things in life.
Lavender shadows of sleeplessness curved beneath them.
“If you’ll indulge me in what may sound like a mad question, madam... are you real? Or are you perhaps an attendant in a sort of surprisingly pleasant waiting room for the afterlife, where I await judgment?”
She had a dimple. That dimple all but speared his heart.
