She closed her eyes and pictured herself moving up the stairs, down the hall toward his room. Knocking on the door.
His eyes would go hot when he saw her. She felt the jolt of his gaze now, as if she stood before him.
With that thoughtwantpierced right through her, as if her body was telling her, adamantly, that she was on the right track.
She could quench a curiosity. Solve a mystery.
She could look up into his fierce eyes as he covered and claimed her.
The rush of blood to her head at that thought nearly made her sway.
She could eradicate at least one fear. The bliss of that. Theblissof that.
She would walk away with a memory.
But what kind of memory? Would she cherish it? Would she bury it, because it would bring crippling shame every time her thoughts touched on it?
Or would she be just another desperate woman in the annals of time who had done exactly what she needed to do when offered an option?
Could she be just that pragmatic?
To get what she wanted, she decided she could.
And as her resolve began to solidify, her heart began to thud, thud, thud as if it were falling down one stair at a time.
She sat up on the edge of her bed.My room is at the end of a corridor opposite a candle that snuffs out mysteriously.It seemed kismet now that she knew this. And perhaps he’d deliberately told her for this very reason.
Was he lying awake thinking about her, even now?
The clock downstairs struck eleven o’clock.
Slowly, as if in a dream, she reached for her pelisse and slid her arms into it. She took up her lit candle.
And set out to take another mad leap into the unknown.
Nerves somehow compressed time. She hardly recalled her journey up the stairs to his room.
Finally, she tapped at his door with two knuckles, on the theory that a decisive knock would echo like a gunshot at this time of night.
The courage that had propelled her up the stairs wasdwindling as the cold bit through her night rail and even through her pelisse.
She decided she would not knock a second time. She would count to five, and then flee down the stairs if he didn’t answer.
On four she heard the scrape of the bolt sliding.
The door opened.
“Guinevere.” He looked stunned.
He wore only a shirt and trousers. His sleeves were rolled up. His feet and throat and forearms were bare. Aggressively masculine-looking curly hair sprang from the V at his throat and the hair on his head was tumbled every which way. She sensed he had rolled out of bed and hastily dressed.
All this ungarnished gorgeous manliness went to her head like a punch.
“Good evening.” Her voice had gone thready.
And that’s when her nerve sputtered out.
She could say nothing more and merely stared. There was no light at all in which he did not look fascinating, and that included flickering candlelight.
