Chapter 114

She tried and failed to stop her falling jaw. Not for a king's ransom, not if that ten thousand pounds waited in his bedroom neatly laid out on the bedside table. She pulled the door open. "And you can go back to your bed."
"But Splen, don't yer see?"
"Out."
"Splen ... "
"Now."
She meant it. She shut the door behind Topaz and walked to the bed. The coverlet was one of those that felt like lead. Shiny and cold to her touch. Last night there had been straw and hay. Last night wasn't something to think about here. Even if the coverlet didn't just feel like lead, it was heavier than a bucket full. She edged her knees under it. She'd soon warm it up. She'd slept on a pallet in Lanthorne Street. In the kitchen at that.
But she hadn't known then what she'd known last night.
What was she thinking about, not taking Topaz's advice? Lanthorne Street was what she'd be facing, or worse if she didn't sort this. Was she mad?
She pulled the cover higher and lay down. The insanity would be if she allowed herself to go back along the corridor. She stared at the ceiling. She was counting sheep-one, two, three-her only move. Four, five, six.
Like the number of stars she saw last night when she first pressed her mouth to his. There was something else about it. His amazing tenderness beneath the passion that bathed him like a flame.
There were the awful things he'd said to her today. The women he took to Catterton House. The ones it had been hard to tell herself she didn't care about, were nothing more than the confirmation of her stupidity. Could tell herself, would, except for these moments last night. The stupid ones, underneath it all, that spoke of a different man. He had given her that money. He had helped them on the road. He had said last night was extraordinary.
She could close her eyes and look at the sheep. Sheep that didn't shout, or swear, or have untamed hair and ...She jerked upright.
On the heavy walnut dressing table, the candle flickered. He'd been out on that landing too quickly. The fact was she hadn't wanted to listen to what he'd said about last night because he'd made her feel one inch tall. The fact was she couldn't stay here.
She threw the covers aside. Her feet scudded across the rug. She peered in the mirror. Despite having failed to forego the assault by various broomsticks, her face wasn't marked. A ghost stared back. Bloodless, quivering. It wasn't the way to go to his room. But excitement burned in her eyes.
She grasped the candlestick, opened her door, padded along the silent hallway, taking care to step over the heap of brooms. His door, a shadowed, dark sentinel rose before her, wavering in the bleached candlelight.
He was beyond the door, breathing, living, beautiful. She might as well say it. Was he even now standing inches from her, separated by thin wood? Waiting in the shadows of his room for her? Sorry for everything that had happened earlier?
She grasped the handle. Turned it. Pushed. And pushed.
Pushed again. Plain pushed.
In fact, she pushed for some time in every way it was possible to push. It didn't matter how, or how much. Not when one thing was obvious.
The door was locked, and it didn't look like it was going to open to her this side of eight o'clock in the morning.
***
Oh, now what?
Kendall rolled his eyes ceilingward, then fumbled downward across the top of the rumpled bedspread for the book he'd picked up not ten minutes ago. The Mysteries of Udolpho. And a right load of fanciful tripe it was Babs had liked to indulge herself with too. The death of the heroine's father, her imprisonment in some gloomy gothic dump by some brigand. No wonder he seldom read. It was still better than listening to his door handle being rattled though.
He flicked the book open, narrowing his eyes in the yellow light. Page three. The late Monsieur Aubert's extravagance resulted in his son selling the family land. After all, maybe he would prefer to listen to the rattling at his door?
If only she hadn't said that dreaded word, the one that made his head sweat.
Marriage.
The hell with Aubert's vein-tearingly tedious improvements to his garden. His boots were things he'd quailed in, in that instant. Him. Who was never so lamentably weak-damn this deepest twilight stuff to the innermost regions of hell. Then there was the business of her turning her nose up at Catterton, that sacred place belonging to his impoverished uncle, he'd been reduced to after his father ran off. How could she do that to him?
He squeezed his eyes shut. And would she just stop rattling his door handle?
Jesus. He was trying to read this mystery stuff. If she didn't stop, he'd have to barricade the door to stop himself opening it. For that matter maybe he should have stayed at Catterton and let her have the run of the place here. Maybe he should go there tomorrow and spend the three months? If it wasn't for Phoebe's unpredictability, he would.
Another rattle. Right. That was it. The book thudded on the floor. Broken moth's wings. Probably the best thing for it when last night was seared on his brain, and really, it had been perfect. Whatever she thought of Catterton, she obviously wanted him. He flung back the covers, stood on cold, bare boards. Silence. He cocked an ear. Silence, except for the faint echo of retreating footsteps somewhere along the walls of his heart. And a good thing, too, when perspiration beaded his forehead. Sleeping with her again would be a mistake.
He glanced at the book. Speaking of mysteries, there was something very fishy about Lady Splendor and her friend and all that claptrap the damnable friend had talked about cleaning. A person could talk with only so many moth balls in their mouth. Was that why the friend sometimes sounded commoner than a peasant's arse? They were skivvies?
His father had been ruined by a cleaning woman. Now he had two under his roof and one, the one he was meant to be married to, the one he was sort of drawn to, had flown clean off the handle when he'd mentioned the word.
Tomorrow he was going to start asking around. Nothing Splendor said, nothing she did, would stop him from getting to the bottom of who she was.