He took out his fob and his watch, placed them on the dresser, and began unbuttoning his waistcoat.
“What are you doing?” Viola demanded, alarmed.
“Getting ready for bed.” He walked into the dressing room, still unbuttoning his clothes.
Viola yanked the blanket over her head.
She heard him moving about, the rustle of discarded clothes, water splashing as he washed. Then footsteps. She lowered the blanket and peered out. He was wearing a nightshirt and carrying a candle.
He pulled back the blanket. The mattress dipped beside her.
Viola leapt out of bed, went to the curtains, and tugged at the tieback, cursing under her breath until she finally worked it free.
Sebastian had reclined, his arms folded behind his head, watching her.
She returned and laid the cord straight down the middle of the bed between them. “This is the border. Do not, under any circumstances, cross it.”
His lips curled. “I would not dream of it, ma’am.”
Then he blew out the candle.
Pitch black.
Viola yanked the blanket to her chin and turned her back to him.
“You are taking all the blankets,” he informed her.
“Be quiet and go to sleep,” she told him crossly.
The silence between them was heavy and loud.
She was acutely aware of him. His warmth. The slow, even rhythm of his breathing. The mere inches between them. It was a familiar, devastating presence that had haunted her for nine years.
If she reached out, her hand would brush him.
She kept her eyes pressed shut. Sleep, she willed herself. Sleep.
It was hopeless.
Her hand slowly, traitorously, inched forward.
Viola had hadthe oddest of dreams.
She’d dreamt that Sebastian had come strolling into her bedroom, as if no time had passed at all, and that they had resumed exactly where they had left off upon their wedding night. It was the most nonsensical, vexatious dream to have!
For surely, that would never happen. She would never allow it to happen!
And the evidence, of course, was that he wasn’t there.
She lay sprawled diagonally across the bed, pillows on the floor, blankets bunched in the middle. This wasn’t unusual, for she was a restless sleeper and had a tendency to flop about in bed, her limbs in all directions, tossing pillows and blankets to the ground during the night.
She shot up in bed, and her head whipped to the side, searching for his presence, but both bed and room were empty. The dresser was bare. No coat on the chair. There was no sign of him ever having been in the room. The rope she’d laid out in the middle of the bed was gone. The curtain! Her head whipped to the side and saw that the curtain was tied back neatly.
She fell back onto the mattress and stared at the ceiling.
How could a dream be so real!
There was a perfectly logical explanation for it all, of course. That headstand must have overstimulated her brain to such an extent that it imagined it had manifested Sebastian walking right in upon her—when of course he hadn’t—and that he’d slept in her bed. Which, of course, he hadn’t.
