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Lancaster jerked back too quickly. The top of his head cracked against the low ceiling.
“Nick?” Cynthia gasped.
“Don’t. Please.” He let her go and stumbled back until he touched the far wall. The crown of his head sang with startled pain.
“What’s wrong?”
“We can’t…” He tried to shake off the shame that clung to him like a net. He tasted musk and sweat and something more. Bile rose in his throat, as his body tried to expel the memory.
Her fingers touched his chest, but in the dark, the hand could have belonged to anyone. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “We shouldn’t be doing this.” He reached blindly to the right and pushed. The passageway filled with merciful light that seemed to blind Cynthia. She blinked rapidly, her eyelids like the fluttering of butterfly wings.
“What happened?”
“This is wrong.” He slid past her and gulped in the cool air of the entry. “We can’t do this.” He dragged a forearm over his brow to wipe away the sweat.
“My heavens!” a voice gasped.
Lancaster looked up to see Mrs. Pell standing frozen in the hall.
“What in the world are you two doing?”
“Uh…” He couldn’t think. This was too much all at once. Half his mind was still struggling with the past. The other half wanted to step back into the wall, close the door, and finish making love to Cynthia Merrithorpe.
Speaking of which…He looked over his shoulder to see her still standing in the black rectangle of the opening, her forehead creased with utter confusion. Her gaze bruised. At least her skirts had fallen into place. But her mouth was a swollen clue to why they’d been hidden away in the passageway.
“Mr. Cambertson was here,” he blurted out, swinging his head back to Mrs. Pell. She didn’t seem to have heard him. Her eyes were locked on Cynthia.
She finally glanced to Lancaster. “He what?”
“He was here. Cyn and I almost walked right into him. I thought we’d better hide in case he’d spotted us and decided to come right in.”
“Well, did he?”
“No. He knocked a few times and then left.”
She looked back and forth between them again, eyes narrowed. “I didn’t hear a thing.”
“Were you upstairs, perhaps?”
She swept a suspicious glance down his body. But he wasn’t giving anything away. Not anymore, at least.
“I was upstairs. I suppose I might have missed it.”
“Right-o. Well, we’d better be going. God knows when he might return.”
Feeling Mrs. Pell’s eyes burning straight into his back, he walked calmly to Cynthia, took her hand and tugged her out of the passageway. “Let’s find some treasure, shall we?”
Though she stared at him as if he might have lost his mind, her feet moved her forward when he pulled.
“Pull your hood up,” he suggested, and she did. “Perhaps we’d better go out the back.”
Mrs. Pell followed closely, as if she suspected Lancaster might whisk Cynthia upstairs to a bed if they were left alone.
He took care opening the back door. “Where’s Adam?”
“Gone to buy fish,” the housekeeper answered.
“We should leave before dawn tomorrow.”
