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His own.
Insanely, he pressed his face to the gap. Shivers rippled from his neck to his knees.
Ghostly patterns stained the gray stone, and light flickered from the side window. Was he seeing things?
His heart galloped. He should call it a day.
He should creep nearer. If the house was occupied, maybe Henry lived there.
Or nobody had lived here in years, and the light was an apparition to lure in unsuspecting and stupid . . . victims.
He dropped his hands from the bars.
Right. He’d made a valiant effort to solve the mystery of Henry. Time to leave.
“Cameron? Honey?” The distant sound curved around the bend in the road.
He groaned. John had followed him?
He glanced at the manse, and the road, and back again. Safety and the prospect of another evening with John? Or venture toward the unknown and Henry and the possible dismembering of his body?
A cold wind slapped his name in his face.
This was like deciding between accepting Mr. Collins or refusing him in the faint hope of someone better.
An obvious choice for a romantic like him.
Dong. Dong. Dong. The eerie chimes skittered shivers through him.
Why hadn’t Lizzy accepted Mr. Collins? Security was sensible! He hiked toward the road. Stopped.
No, he needed to channel more of Lizzy’s gusto.
Dong. Dong.
Then again, Pemberley wasn’t haunted.
“Honey?”
Darn it. He scurried along the stone wall around the estate edged by shadowy woods. He huddled behind a sprawling tree growing into the rotting stone.
“Cameron?” Closer.
The trees were too thin to conceal him. He might make it to the graveyard, but he quite liked his limbs in one piece.
“Cameron?”
Cameron hauled himself into the tree, palms scraping rough bark, feet pushing against branches. He slung himself onto the crumbly wall and sidled up to a gargoyle-topped pillar. The place was as frightening as every pre-teen in Port Ratapu thought. Or the owners had a sense of humor. If he kept still, John would never look up, but if he did, Cameron would be hidden by the stone form.
God, his pulse had never drummed this fast. Look at him. Running away from one boy while stalking another at his haunted abode. Practically French kissing a gargoyle. This might be as close as he’d come to any kissing, at this rate. He thumped his forehead against the mossy stone.
A throat cleared under him. “His name’s Stine.”
Cameron tensed at the painfully familiar British accent.
Of course.
He cringed, but his belly lurched wildly. As if—no, surely Cameron hadn’t wanted this to happen?
He pulled his face off the gargoyle.
Disorderly hair, humored eyes, crooked smile; Henry looked exactly as he remembered. This time wearing heavy black boots, dark jeans and a leather jacket over a gray hoodie. His arms were folded, expression expectant.
“Stein?” Cameron’s voice cracked. “Like the German word for stone?”
“Sharper ‘s’. Stine. As in R. L. Stine.” Henry introduced the other gargoyles, one after the other. “Hitchcock. Stoker. Wells. Simmons. Koontz.”
The Tilney’s had a sense of humor then.
Especially this one, who watched Cameron with a twinkle in his eye.
John’s voice rang in the distance, farther now. Perhaps he was making his way to the studios again.
Cameron let out a relieved breath. “I’m glad to see you again, Henry.”
“I should hope. You coming here and all.”
Heat crawled up his neck. “I wanted to return your socks.”
“By all means, throw them down.”
“I would, but I forgot them.”
“You’re either exceptionally scatterbrained, or you’re here on more nefarious business.” Henry affected his voice, making light of any potential evils Cameron might have in store.
“Or perhaps,” Henry added, “you wanted to dance again?”
Heat choked him. Mortification didn’t begin to cover it. “If those are my only options, I’ll go with nefarious business.”
He laughed, delighted. “How nefarious are we talking?”
Cameron surreptitiously leaned down, stage-whispering, “I’m sort of stalking.”
“Never would have guessed.”
“I’ve never done it before, so I’m not very skilled.”
“Ah, well. Practice and all that.” Henry lifted a brow. “Do you like what you’ve seen?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ve seen so little. I barely know who this Henry Tilney is.”
“You have ideas though.”
“Wild ones.”
Henry eyed the wall. Finding a groove in the broken stone, he levied himself up onto it next to Cameron. “Go on then. What wild ideas do you have of me?”
“You’ll laugh.”
“I hope so.”
Henry’s warmth simmered in the twelve-inch gap between them, and Cameron drew in a breath. “You’re a con artist trying to woo me so you can control who I hire at Ask Austen studios.”
“Or maybe I don’t exist at all. Maybe my gravestone sits at the back of this property.”
Cameron’s eyes widened.
“Kidding, Cameron. I’m very much here—as my students would grumpily attest. See?” Henry slid his fingers over the back of Cameron’s white-knuckled hand and stayed there. Every nerve-ending lit up and electricity shot through him. Definitely corporeal. And very, very naughty.
He has a fiancé.
Whispered, “And the con artist idea?”
Whispered back, “No merit at all.”
