Felicity shook her head. “Enough about me. Tell me more about him.”
Winifred sighed. She did not like Felicity’s evasiveness, but she knew her cousin well enough to not steer the conversation back to an obviously painful topic. She would have to come up with a different way to find out what was bothering Felicity.
“He is an inventor, as you know,” Winifred said. “His workshop is full of the most remarkable machines.” Including the one she had assisted him with that used centrifugal force. Seeing his experiments made her feel strangely at ease with her unusual situation. It would have been easy for him to lie in his letters, to pretend to be something he wasn’t, but everything she’d seen since arriving suggested Marcus was exactly as she’d expected: an intelligent but desperately lonely man. His need for assistance was not because of any lack of skill or knowledge, but the inevitable result of working alone for an extended length of time. He’d become trapped in his own mind and lost the perspective that was necessary for true innovation.
“What is his topic of interest?” Felicity asked.
“I am not entirely sure.” Despite having corresponded for months, she knew vanishingly little about what he was trying to achieve. He had mentioned an illness in his livestock, but he had not specified what he would do when he identified the cause.
“Wait,” Felicity said. She checked the time onher delicate rose gold chatelaine watch. “We have nearly an hour until your mother is likely to awaken. Why are we lounging about drinking tea when we could be exploring the library?”
Winifred laughed. “I suppose you are right.”
They had uttered identical gasps when Mrs. Gillanders had swung open the doors during the tour, but the housekeeper had barely given them a minute to admire the impressive space before she’d moved on.
Felicity rose. “Shall we?”
“Yes,” Winifred said. “We shall.”
The two women exited the solarium, arm-in-arm. When they arrived at their destination, Winifred barely suppressed a squeal. Marcus had not been exaggerating when he’d described his library. It must have been a ballroom at one point, as the floor was polished marble, but there were rows upon rows of shelves, as far as she could see. Winifred met Felicity’s gaze, and in that moment, an understanding passed between them. They enjoyed each other’s company, but a treasure such as the one before them required solitary investigation.
Felicity turned left, and Winifred right.
To Winifred’s immense satisfaction, the first books she ran her fingers over were historical manuscripts. Most she had read, but there were a few she did not recognize. She removed several and tucked them beneath her arm before continuing to the next shelf. It was less exciting, containing dusty religious tomes and treatises on various sciences. She had more luck several minutes later as she stumbled on truly rare handwritten journals of explorers. She had to restrain herself from heaping them all in her arms—there were only so many she could read in a day—but she made a mental note to ask Marcus where he had found them.
As she turned toward the window, a set of bright-blue spines caught her attention. She tugged one out and flipped it open to a random page, which contained a remarkably detailed illustration of a naked couple.
Her cheeks warmed. Was it even possible to contort one’s body in such a manner? It seemed as if it would be quite painful, although the woman on the page certainly did not appear to be in distress. Her eyes were closed, but her expression was one of bliss.
Winifred leaned against a bookshelf and imagined Marcus sliding his palms up her shins and pressing ardent kisses to her stomach. The secret place between her thighs throbbed, making her wish for the privacy of her room.
Unfortunately, her time was not yet her own.
She reluctantly closed the book and added it to the top of her teetering stack. Perhaps she was torturing herself by keeping it, but the way Marcus had touched her the previous night had sparked an unexpected interest in pursuing the physical aspects of marriage. If nothing else, the illustrations would be something titillating to look at when she lay in her bed alone at night.
Heavily laden with texts, she made her way to a table by a window and settled in a stiff-backed wooden chair. She opened the first of her books, tilted the pages into the sunlight, and immersed herself in a different world.
Chapter Eleven
Marcus ran hisfingers over the grain of the oak door at the bottom of his tower. Such a simple thing, a chunk of wood and iron lashed together to serve the noble purpose of keeping unwanted intruders out.
It wasn’t doing a very good job.
Not only was his castle filled with strangers, but now he couldn’t so much asthinkabout venturing outside without being overwhelmed with a suffocating sense of pressure, like all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. He assumed the worsening of his symptoms was because of the disruption in his carefully crafted routine, but he couldn’t help wondering if Cordon was right and hunters were responsible.
He was about to try again, asphyxiation be damned, when he heard the rapid sound of footfalls descending the steps.
“There you are,” Cordon said as he came around the corner. There was loose hay stuck to his trousers, the knot of his cravat was askew, and a button on his silver-and-blue-striped jacket was missing.
“You look like you had a fight with a horse and lost,” Marcus said before Cordon could ask questions Marcus didn’t want to answer. Being rescued by his brother once had been embarrassing enough. He could think of nothing worse than Cordon discovering the depths of his vulnerability. The man could not keep anything to himself. The next thing Marcus knew, his siblings would be stolen away by other nests desperate to supplement their numbers while he remainedtrapped in his stone prison.
Better to continue his experiments in secret.
Cordon flicked a clump of dirt off his shoulder. “I had an unfortunate encounter with a spooked stallion. The creature escaped from its pen and was making a glutton of itself, eating a heap of turnips someone had dumped in the pasture. You should have them removed before your cows get to them.” He glanced down at himself and grimaced. “Kitty will be furious when she sees the mess I’ve made.”
That was likely true. Katherine “Kitty” Shaw, Cordon’s new wife, had been a dressmaker and tailor before Cordon had turned her into a vampire. Not attending their wedding with the rest of his nest was one of Marcus’s biggest regrets. But Marguerite would not have allowed sentimentality to sway her mood, so he couldn’t, either.
Even if his three sisters’ absence at his own wedding had hurt more than he cared to admit.
