AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We are safe with Lord Hardbury to protect us,” Miss Bell chimed in. “His lordship will not hesitate to battle the dead should they decide to rise from their graves.”
“Not sure that’s helping,” Guy muttered.
Immediately behind him, Arabella laughed softly, and Guy resisted the urge to twist around and share in that laughter. He had vowed to ignore her today, to stop his foolish, flirtatious games, but still he always seemed to know where she was. He was helplessly aware of her presence, as if she had become some kind of necessary function, the way one knew that one’s heart was beating or that one’s stomach required food.
This infatuation will pass, he had told himself.This game will end, he had said.
Well, the infatuation hadn’t passed, and the game did not feel like a game anymore.
“You have nothing to fear, Miss Treadgold,” Arabella called. “The dead are more frightened of us than we are of them. Are you still with us?”
“Oh yes, I am determined to be brave.”
“Your courage is admirable.”
At the last few stairs, the air grew noticeably colder and the smell of ancient stone washed over him. Guy held the lantern higher as they filed into the dark cavern, the light outlining the sarcophagi and statues of the women whose bones lay within. Guy’s boots echoed on the stone floor as he wandered into the darkness, sensing Arabella’s presence beside him. Mrs. DeWitt headed in the other direction, leading the other two under the arches, their heads swathed in the lantern’s glow, every footstep, murmur, and rustle of fabric amplified.
“Are you frightened?” he murmured to Arabella. “Will you faint? Shall I hold your hand?”
“I assure you, I am quite all right.”
“But I am not. If you don’t hold my hand, I shall swoon with fear, and you’ll have to carry me out.”
“Nonsense. I would have no qualms about leaving you here.”
So Guy did the obvious thing: He shut the flap on the lantern, sinking their part of the crypt into darkness. A glow revealed the location of the others.
“You cannot be serious,” Arabella said.
He laughed softly, and remembered too late he had vowed to stop these games. But neither could he move. In the darkness, robbed of sight, all his other senses sharpened with awareness of Arabella. He knew when she breathed, when she shifted, when she drew ever so slightly closer.
Something touched his neck. Warm fingers, teasing the hair at his nape. Heat shivered down his spine. A strangled sound escaped him.
“Oh! What was that noise?” came Miss Treadgold’s cry.
The lantern glow showed the others moving back toward them. Arabella shifted again. Her hand landed on his stomach. Inched downward. Oh, so help him, she was going to master him at his own game!
Now her fingers nudged his waistband. He emitted another strangled sound; she responded with a muffled laugh.
“Was that a ghost?” whimpered Miss Treadgold. “Oh, there are dead people everywhere!”
In the dim light of the other lantern, Guy could make out the shape of Miss Treadgold, hugging herself, eyes fixed on a statue of a long-dead abbess.
Arabella’s hand disappeared. Guy opened his lantern to increase the light.
“Miss Treadgold, are you all right?” Mrs. DeWitt asked. “It can be a bit overwhelming, can’t it? We’re all used to it, as we played here as children.”
“If you are frightened, we can go back upstairs,” Arabella said.
Miss Treadgold didn’t move. “All those bones…”
“Stars above, she’s frozen with fear,” Guy muttered.
He lunged across the space toward her, took her elbow, and guided her up the stairs. Absently, he murmured encouraging words but his mind was on Arabella, teasing him in the dark, taking her playful revenge for his games under the table the night before.
Back in the sunlight, he handed off the lantern to a footman and turned back to Miss Treadgold, who, it turned out, was neither pale nor trembling.
“You must think me silly,” she said with a pretty smile.
