“Go, girl, or you’ll have to be seeker next!” The dark-haired noblewoman drew her daughter along in her wake and ducked into a door Evie hadn’t even noticed in the wooden structure under the stairs. A broom closet, mostly likely.
“Four, three…” Lady Maribel called out in her singsong voice.
Evie couldn’t resist looking back, wondering where Rothwell had chosen to conceal himself.
“One!” Lady Maribel cried out. “I’m going to find you.”
The girl began to swivel in her direction, and Evie panicked, bolting toward the nearest room she knew. The library she’d explored when she’d come down for breakfast this morning.
She closed the door behind her as quietly as she could, then leaned her forehead against the wood. Why hadn’t she just darted upstairs as she’d planned?
“I know where you’re hiding,” Lady Maribel warned, her excited call echoing through the high-ceilinged hall.
“The door locks if you’re interested in cheating.”
His deep, breathy whisper sent a bolt of heat down Evie’s spine. She swung to face Rothwell but could barely make him out in the darkened room.
“I didn’t know you were in here,” she whispered defensively.
A sound beyond the door made Evie gasp. Then Rothwell’s hand enclosed her wrist, and she let out an involuntary squeak.
“Shhh,” he urged and pressed a finger to her lips. “Come.”
It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t give her a moment to respond before tugging her toward the far side of the room.
“Since you didn’t opt for locking the door, this will have to do.” He pulled back a velvet drape and stepped behind it, leading her along in his wake, his hand still gently wrapped around her wrist. Once she was beside him, he reached up and swept the drape across both of them.
They stood with their backs flat against the wall, their bodies side by side, both trying not to breathe.
The spot where he held her became impossibly sensitive. Evie could feel nothing but that single contact of his skin against hers, and it made her heart skitter wildly in her chest. He’d touched her before, surely. Not that she could remember anything beyond this unexpected and mortifying moment.
“You can let go of me,” she told him on a hissed whisper.
He did loosen his hold, but he didn’t release her. Instead, he dipped his head toward hers.
“What if I don’t want to?”
Evie swallowed and tried to make him out in the darkness. The heat of his breath brushed across her face. He was breathing hard. She was too.
“You must,” she told him, though it made her throat burn to say the words.
Because she didn’t truly want him to release her. She yearned to touch him too. Here, in the dark, who would know?
“Evie—” The moment her nickname slipped from his lips, someone turned the latch on the library door.
“We can’t be found together,” she whispered, her face only inches from his.
“Who’s there? I heard movement.” Lady Maribel had entered the library and, by the sounds of it, was making her way around room’s perimeter.
Rothwell finally lifted his fingers from her wrist, and the loss of his heat felt wrong.
He swung the drape aside just enough to allow him to step out, then yanked it back into place at his back, keeping Evie concealed.
“You’ve found me, Lady Maribel.”
“What a boon for me,” the young lady purred. “What’s my prize, my lord?”
Evie clenched her jaw in the pause, imagining that matters between Rothwell and his most ardent admirer might go to places she truly did not wish to witness.
