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“Something,” she echoed. “What something?”
He shifted on his feet. “I… I don’t know. It was… unexplained.”
That fucking lower lip twitched, curled at the edge like the lilt at the end of a question. Infuriating and jovial and so tempting he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from chasing it with his mouth.
“Valebrook,” she cooed, “were you chasing a ghost?”
“Absolutely not.” He huffed and crossed his arms. “Ghosts aren’t real. I was chasing a light.”
A laugh burst from her, the first one he’d heard since the tavern; their flirtation seemed like a lifetime ago. He wanted to chase it and catch it, more than he wanted to find any wandering spirit. More than he wanted to chase down her lies.
He scowled. “Why are you laughing?”
She propped her hands on her hips as her laughter died. “Because sometimes people have irrational reactions in stressful situations.”
He agreed, but he could still argue the point. “Teasing me will deliver us no closer to an escape. Will you at least explain what happened?”
She was already striding towards the staircase and hiking up her nightdress to scale the steps two at a time.
He sighed. “Should I follow you?”
“You could wait for your ghost light,” she retorted.
“Why are you mocking me about this?” He was winded from chasing her up the stairs. “I know what I saw!”
She reached the top and spun to face him. “Because you either need to admit you believe in spirits or admit you were looking for me.” She tilted her head to the side, the picture of innocent inquiry. “Which one is it?”
She would be the death of him. “Tell me where you’re going.”
“Answer my question.”
“Only if you answer mine.”
Even in the low gaslight—the one that had mocked him earlier and glowed merrily now—he watched a worry flicker across her expression, a wrinkle between her brows, a crimp in the corner of her lips.
“What did you feel for Christina, if not love?”
The inquiry was mild, but it still struck him with enough force that he grabbed the banister to steady himself. He’d expected her interrogation at some point, like he’d done when she spoke of her parents’ death. He’d dug his thumb into the bruise on her heart, and he anticipated the same treatment in return. Welcomed it, even, like the purging of a sin. What had she called it—an atonement?
“I cared for her a great deal,” he said after a long pause. “Our marriage was about responsibility, not joy. I… I was sorry when she died, but she’d been in such pain that I was glad to know she was no longer suffering.”
His chest tightened again, as it had when she’d fallen ill, when she’d been buried in the Valebrook mausoleum. When her mother had gripped his hand and cried, when he’d been unable to summon a single demonstrable emotion suitable for a man losing his wife.
“Aren’t all aristocratic marriages that way?” she asked gently.
“My best friend Benedict is madly in love with his wife. They have five daughters.”
She shuddered. “I can’t imagine. I don’t want to imagine.” She took his hand, and her palm settled so easily within his. The wax was long gone now, fragmented and lost when they raced from the turret. But somehow he still felt stuck to her. And he didn’t hate it.
He scrubbed his free hand down his face. “There’s nothing wrong with a marriage without passionate love. But what Christina and I shared wasn’t powerful enough to have her reaching for me from beyond the grave. You said love was necessary for the ritual, and what I had with my wife… it wasn’t that sort of love.”
Her brows were furrowed, an angry chasm deep between them. “But what happened in there—what’s been happening, it only started when you arrived. Christina’s ghost is the only cause that makes sense.”
“Could it be someone else? The Bunton-Talmadges or the Americans?”
She shook her head. “I doubt it.” She blinked at him, those wide green eyes searching. Scared. “I think you’re the reason everything has gone wrong.”
The air rushed out of his lungs. “I have to apologize. By not telling you the truth about my marriage, I’ve ruined your grandfather’s study.”
