AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We climb the stairs to the second floor.
"Is there an elevator?" Emery asks.
"No. This is a castle, not a shopping mall."
"Just asking, sheesh."
On the second floor, I show her the long gallery and the tower bedroom. She trails behind me a few paces, probably because she can't stop gawping. Emery has to jog to keep up with me, and I know I should slow down. But I can't. Something inside me pushes me to get this over with as quickly as possible. When we ascend to the third and final floor, Emery once again seems confused by the numbering of the levels in this building. We're on the fourth level, but it's the third floor. What's so bloody hard to understand about that?
I halt in the long hallway. "Our bedrooms are up here, along with a shower room, bathroom, and dressing room. There's also a third bedroom accessed through yours, with stairs leading down to it."
"Um…" She rubs her eyes and her temples. "The last bedroom is actually on the second floor, but its door is up here?"
"No, it's between floors."
"I'm never going to get any of this, am I?" She takes a deep breath, exhaling it slowly. Then she squints at me. "What do you mean the third bedroom is accessed through mine? You mean our bedroom, right?"
"You'll sleep in that room." I point toward the door at the right end of the hall. "I sleep in the master suite, there."
I hook a thumb toward the left end of the hall.
She nails me with a hard look. "Separate bedrooms? That wasn't part of the deal."
"We hadn't discussed sleeping arrangements." I stride toward the door at the left end of the hallway while Emery trails after me. I open the door just enough to let her glimpse what's inside. "The dressing room. My bedroom is accessed through it. When the boxes of your belongings arrive tomorrow, you can store any of them that you don't need in here. We share a bathroom, there."
I gesture toward another doorway.
My wife regards me for a moment, one hip cocked with a hand balanced on it. "What happens when we have sex?"
"I don't understand the question."
"We screw, and then what? Do you scamper back to your master bedroom, leaving me alone in my hole in the wall?"
"Your room is not a hole in the wall."
"Well, this explains why you ordered Jamie never to come up here." She narrows her gaze on me. "Wouldn't want your sister to find out you don't sleep with your wife. A quick roll in the hay, and you're off to your private suite for the night."
"You make it sound unseemly."
"What about Mrs. Darroch? Does she know?"
Head down, I scratch my brow with one fingertip. "She does. Mrs. Darroch cares for the whole house, and I had her prepare your room for you. I told her we'll sleep in separate rooms because you snore."
"I snore? Thanks a bunch, Rory."
"Everyone knows I don't snore."
"Guess that was a fly snoring in the car while I was driving."
I assume my best deadpan expression. "It must've been."
She gazes at me with an almost rapt expression, her eyes turning softer, her lips slightly parted.
"What's wrong with you?" I demand.
"Huh?" She shakes her head, blinking swiftly. "What do you mean? Nothing's wrong."
I scrutinize her. "You looked…dazed."
A half-suppressed laugh snorts out of her. "Dazed? Guess you only know how to sweet-talk a girl when you want to get lucky."
I glance up at the ceiling, accepting that I will never understand my wife, then I gesture toward the stairwell. "Jamie's waiting for us to have dinner with her. We should go."
Emery trots to keep up with me as I rush downstairs.
