How could he beasleep, though, given what was meant to happen between them? She had barely made it through dinner, what with the nerves and the anticipation, and she’d spent three hours—three hours!—pacing her room.
With one more, slightly louder warning knock, she pushed open the door.
And found a completely empty room.
The space contained nothing but cobwebs. They hung from the corners and trailed down the walls so thickly as to be visible even by the light of her single flame.
“But where is he?” She sent the fruitless question into the air. Befuddled, she forgot the need for stealth as she went back out into the corridor . . . and encountered Lord Featherfinch on his way out of Olive’s bedchamber.
Judging by his horrified expression, he was more surprised to see her than she him. He didn’t know that she knew he was no threat to Olive. So she decided to disarm him and simply asked, “Lord Featherfinch, would you be so kind as to point me in the direction of Lord Harcourt’s room? I have an urgent matter to discuss with him.” She smiled brightly, as if they were meeting by happenstance mid-promenade in Hyde Park.
His mouth opened and closed a few times. He looked like a fish out of water. A very fine, exotic fish. She giggled. Which she was aware was likely to undercut her prior assertion that she had weighty matters in need of Archie’s attention. Lord Featherfinch’s countenance changed, appearing less fishlike and more as if a realization were dawning, and hedidsurprise her then by following her giggle with one of his own. “I would be delighted to assist you, Miss Morgan. The room you seek is that way. At the end of the corridor”—he pointed—“make a right. Archie’s door is the second on your right after the turn. It has a great big gouge in it.”
“A gouge?” She smiled, overcome with a fondness for this curious man who was such a good friend to Archie, and, it would seem, to Olive. “Perhaps dating from when the invading MacCallums tried to break it down? Or, better, perhaps it is a mark left by theghostsof the invading MacCallums!”
“Ah, Miss Morgan!” Lord Featherfinch exclaimed, apparently thrilled by her conjecture. “You will do quite nicely indeed.”
She had no idea what that meant, but she wasn’t inclined to press him. She had an assignation to get to. She bobbed an abbreviated curtsy as if she and Lord Featherfinchwereparting ways after that Hyde Park encounter instead of outside Olive’s bedchamber at one o’clock in the morning.
At Archie’s door, she traced the edge of the gouge, thinking about how old it likely was, regardless of whether its origins were spectral. It had no jagged edges, and her fingers encountered no splinters. This castle had stood for centuries. The fact buoyed her. Usually she felt that way about the outdoors. A river, for example, kept flowing no matter what men did or said next to it. If the blood they shed flowed down its banks, the current carried it away with indifference. She had always thought of the natural world and the world of man as opposites. People were unreliable. They misunderstood each other. They caused each other pain. They died. But here was a place that had been home to Sir Lionel for his entire life, and to his ancestors before that. Here was a door that had stood the test of time. Perhapssomethings men built lasted. She leaned all her weight on the solid bulwark. It would take more than her meager efforts—more than phantasmal marauders, even—to move such a door. Sometimes, it seemed, you could trust something besides yourself to hold your weight.
Clementine had been remarkably successful in putting the details of the task before her out of her mind. But now that she was here, looking at Archie’s door—touching it, leaning on it—she could no longer save such thinking for later. She was going to have to go in there and—
“Oh!” The door swung open abruptly, and she pitched forward. She was falling. She was going to—
“Clem?”
Archie’s chest interrupted her descent. His chest was not as solid as the door. She knew that with her intellect. Yet it was solid enough to keep her from falling. To bolster her. She knew that with someotherpart of her, some part that was at once larger and smaller than her intellect, the part that usually only came alive when she was outside.
Archie’s arms came around her, just as she’d regained her balance and might have thought he’d step away.
“Clem,” he repeated, quietly, gruffly, and she felt his cheek against the top of her head.
Her hair was down. She was wearing her shift and a shawl, not having packed a proper night rail or dressing gown. She’d forgotten the state she was in. What a picture she must have made conversing with Lord Featherfinch in her makeshift nightclothes!
And how extraordinary that she could trust Lord Featherfinch to not remark upon it to anyone.
Archie began to pull away from her. She wanted him . . . not to do that. “I–” Oh. He pressed his fingers against her temples, letting the pads of his fingers slide along her scalp as he tangled his fingers in her hair. “Oh,” she breathed. Who knew having someone’s fingers dragging along one’s scalp could feel sogood?
He took a step back, and she went too, a cat following the pressure of a human hand with its head. He led her into the room like that, step by step. Only when they’d stopped moving did she realize her eyes had been half closed, so surrendered had she been to the divine sensations starting in her scalp and shimmering down her neck and arms. She opened her eyes fully to find Archie studying her with that same unreadable expression from earlier, from when they’d been describing each other’s eyes.
“I was coming to find you,” he said. He did not take his hands out of her hair.
“Iwas coming to findyou.”
“And so you have.”
“I’d been going to suggest that we make a plan to begin our . . .” She needed to be able to say the words if she was actually going to do this. “I’d been going to suggest we lie together tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Why tomorrow?”
“Because it is late, and I’d imagined this happening out of doors.”
He cocked his head. “Had you?”
“Yes, isn’t that always where we had our fun?”
“I suppose you are right.”
