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She turned and kissed the tip of his nose. It was cold beneath her lips. “Remind me… is it haunted?”
A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “I wouldn’t know. I need someone to hold a summoning—”
“We can leave the ghosts alone,” she interrupted. “They deserve peace. Do you have space for animals?”
“As many as you’d like.”
She climbed off him and scrambled to her feet, then held out a hand to him. “Can I host parties?”
He took her hand and stood with a groan, pressing his hands to his lower back and twisting. “As long as you don’t wear a turban.”
“Agreed.” She laced her fingers with his. She rather liked company. “But I would like to wear a tiara.”
EPILOGUE
YORKSHIRE, 1903
Bridget raced down the hallway, her breath sawing in and out of her chest. Her bare feet landed with ghostly silence on the hand-knotted rug, guiding her way through the darkness. Twilight spilled through the tall windows, segmenting the corridor, and her vision blurred, her pulse thundered. Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimed the hour.
She was running out of time.
In the waking hours, the ancestral seat of the Valebrook earldom was her home, a place she’d modernized with the latest technology. Electric lights and an underground swimming pool. An extensive—if eclectic—garden with an automated watering system. She’d even trained the birds who lived on the property and was particularly pleased with the feeding mechanism she’d devised for her favorite goose.
But that night, everything had changed.
She rounded the corner, pressed her back to the wall, and listened. Nothing. A victorious grin pushed at her mouth—until she heard it.
Heavy footsteps, one after the other, as though the creature haunting her had all of eternity to torment her.
She waited until the footsteps were nearly upon her before pushing off again, but she wasn’t fast enough. Long fingers scraped her bare arm, and she screamed with all the air in her lungs. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much.
But it startled her pursuer, and she gripped her skirts in her fists and ran like her life depended on it. She’d often wondered if spirits inhabited the ancient part of the abbey, where the stones were worn and her footsteps echoed with history.
These footsteps echoed far too closely when she reached her hiding place and pushed the door closed behind her as quietly as she could manage. Her back pressed against the door, and she squeezed her eyes shut, listening, praying her hunter would continue past.
She bit her lower lip hard, the bite of pain sending an answering pulse between her thighs. Had he missed her—
Three raps sounded on the door, followed by a gravelly voice. “I know you’re in there.”
The doorknob rattled, and she jolted into action, throwing herself away from the door and behind the spindly settee. Hardly an effective hiding place, but she was out of options as the door swung inward.
Moonlight silhouetted the figure in the doorframe, tall and broad and inevitable. “You can’t hide from me.”
She ducked, her fingertips pressing into the brocade. She couldn’t see him, merely hear him, each step coming closer.
A dark chuckle. “You’re so wet for me, I can smell you.”
A shudder ran down her spine, and she smothered her whimper behind her palm. Her core throbbed with her arousal, as wrong as it was, and—
“There you are.”
A firm hand wrapped around her arm, turning her towards her pursuer. She gasped as he cupped the back of her head, tilted her chin upward—
“Are you sure you want this?” Valebrook’s brows furrowed, his darling face creased with concern.
She nodded vigorously. “I told you I do.”
He ran his thumb over her lower lip. She chased it with her tongue, flicked the tip, and he groaned. “Fuck, love. You look beautiful on your knees for me.”
