Page 65 of His Wicked Charm

Con sped up the steps, and as he pulled open the door into the Great Hall, he saw the door opposite him shutting. Where was she going? He tried to remember if he had seen an outside door in this section. If so, it would certainly explain why he’d missed her yesterday when he ran to the garden entrance. It was almost pitch-black in the hall, but there was the faintest glimmer of moonlight before him that he hadn’t noticed last night. It was hardly worth calling a light, but it enough to allow him to keep up his speed.

When he emerged from the Great Hall, there was no sign of Lilah. He instinctively turned to the stairs. It was so quiet in the narrow stairwell that he thought he could hear her breathing. She kept climbing, and he realized that she must be going to the top floor. It was perhaps the last place he had suspected as her destination. Hard to imagine that she paid a visit to her ancestors’ portraits at midnight.

He paused at the top of the stairs. Lilah was only a few feet ahead of him, strolling down the gallery at that same even pace. The long gallery had been an eerie scene the night before, desolate in its emptiness, its gloom crossed by patches of moonlight through the windows. It was even more chilling now to see Lilah’s ghostly white figure gliding along, never glancing right or left as she moved from shadow through moonlight and back into shadow again. An icy finger trailed down Con’s spine.

He started after her, a strange dread, almost panic, seeping into him. Lilah stopped at the end of the gallery in front of the high, wide windows. Moonlight cascaded over her. Con realized too late that when she turned back, he would be directly in her line of vision. There were no doorways to take shelter in along this long, unbroken corridor.

Lilah turned slowly, and for the first time Con saw her face. Her eyes were blank, her face empty. She looked straight through him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

AN ATAVISTIC DREAD froze Con in his tracks. He could only watch as Lilah turned and opened a door he hadn’t noticed before. She walked through it, as emotionless, as mindless as an automaton. Lilah was walking in her sleep.

The almost-inhuman blankness of her face, the utter lack of recognition or response, was enough to make Con shiver, but now he understood it. No wonder she had denied her trip to the maze last night; she didn’t remember her nightly rambles. With a start, Con realized that Lilah had disappeared through the doorway while he stood here like a dolt.

He rushed after her and came to an abrupt halt, stunned. Lilah stood in a round room. On the left was a staircase leading downward. The curving walls around her were covered in clocks. Large, small, of every sort, they covered the walls and filled the cabinets. It was the room of his nightmare.

Con let out a loud and profane exclamation, and Lilah whirled around with a shriek.

“Lilah. It’s me. Just me.” He held out his hands in a pacific gesture. “You were walking in your sleep.”

Lilah stared at him, then looked all around the room, confusion and panic mingling in her expression. “Where—no, oh, no...” With a moan, she sank down onto the floor, covering her face with her hands. “I thought it was gone. I thought I could manage it.” Lilah glanced around and shivered. “Please. Let’s go somewhere else.”

“Of course.” Con took her arm and pulled her up; she was cold as ice. He infused warm good humor into his voice. “I would offer to sweep you up in my arms like any worthwhile hero and carry you to your room, but I fear we might wind up in a messy heap at the foot of that staircase.”

He was rewarded by her breathy little laugh. “I’d rather not. I’m not a wilting damsel in distress anyway. Just a fool who has no control over what she does,” she finished bitterly.

“Nonsense.” Con put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to his side as they walked down the gallery. “You are without a doubt the most controlled woman I know. Perhaps sometimes you just need to escape those shackles you bind yourself with.”

“You can see why I have to keep them there. God only knows what I might do otherwise.”

“Trust me. You won’t act like a madwoman.”

“Really?” She gave him a skeptical look and pulled away, starting down the stairs. “Look at what I’ve done—apparently I wandered out to the maze last night, and tonight I wound up in Grandfather’s tower.”

“What is that place anyway?” Con said, only in part to divert her from her self-criticism.

“It’s the tower room where my grandfather kept his collection. All his clocks and compasses.”

Con remembered the smaller dials scattered among the clocks. There had been compasses in his dream, as well. It was the very same room. He would swear to it. The thought didn’t bring him any comfort. “Ah, yes, the tower—that tumorous growth at the end of the house.”

“Yes.” Lilah continued, “Whatever hapless ancestor added the gallery stuck on the tower as well—obviously someone with no understanding of architecture.”

“Or taste.” Con’s mind buzzed with questions about the bizarre room, but this was hardly the time to interrogate Lilah. He needed to get her warm again, to soothe her shaken nerves. Underlying that was a driving need to take her in his arms and hold her, but he couldn’t let himself do that.

Con thought of whisking her upstairs to her bedroom, but, considering how it had felt to have her body pressing against his side, he thought her bedchamber might prove to be a dangerous place. Besides, he wanted to talk to her without risking anyone waking up and finding them. God only knew what her idiot cousin would do upon finding Con in Lilah’s bedroom. Probably challenge him to a duel.

Con thought of the smoking room Sir Jasper envisioned turning into his billiards room. It sat handily near the end of the main corridor. He led Lilah there, closing the door behind them, and knelt to light a fire. Rising, he poured them both a brandy. Lilah still stood in the middle of the room, arms wrapped around herself, looking lost.

“Here.” Con couldn’t stop himself. Setting the glasses on a small table he scooped Lilah up and sat down in the chair by the fire to cradle Lilah in his lap.

With a tiny sigh that shivered all through Con, Lilah relaxed and rested her head on his shoulder. Con slid his hand up and down her arm to warm her. He tried not to think about the fact that only a thin layer of cotton separated her bare skin from his touch. Lilah was vulnerable; she required tender attention, not lustful thoughts.

It was doubtless an indictment of his character that his thoughts strayed that way. But it was damnably hard not to notice the dark circles of her nipples faintly visible beneath the white cloth. Or the inches of leg her rumpled gown revealed.

Con picked up one of the glasses from the side table and downed a gulp. He handed the other to Lilah. “Here. This will warm you up.”

With meek obedience that it pained Con to see, Lilah took a swallow. She shuddered, her eyes watering, and shot him an accusatory look that reassured him somewhat about her emotional state. But she didn’t leave his lap.