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Nothing more.
As long as she was in that box, there was no danger in enjoying each other’s bodies while the ruse was in place. If anything, the spark between them would make the fake betrothal all the more realistic for his grandfather.
He just needed to keep her in that box.
Easy.
{ Chapter 10 }
Juliet glanced to her left, looking at the two-story-high wall of bookcases. Each shelf was stuffed full of tomes, a rolling ladder connected high to a brass rail to reach the upper books.
Were the books for reading or were they for show?
Her look darted about the rest of the library at Whetland Castle.
A big room. A big, dark room.
In the shadows, dark furniture, a few leather wingback chairs. A large table with long rolls of paper upon it—maps, most likely. A sideboard with a wide variety of bottles holding amber liquid. A desk in the corner with papers stuffed atop the entire surface. Side tables along each chair, most with a stack of three or four books balancing atop. The far wall held an enormous stone fireplace surrounded by unadorned stacked grey stone. A four-post bed sat to the left of the fireplace.
Evan did say that his grandfather had confined himself mostly to this one room, as the stairs in the castle did him no favors.
The wall opposite the bookshelves held tall windows without the draperies pulled, even though it was now dark outside. Four lit sconces, three lamps and the flames in the fireplace contributed the only glow to the room.
There, by the fire, Evan’s grandfather sat in a wingback chair.
Evan’s fingertips set lightly at the small of her back, and he steered her away from the doorway and across the room toward the earl.
The touch of his fingers was welcome. She’d come to know his hands, his touch on her body, so intimately during the past two days, it was instant comfort just to have that slightest bit of connection to him. Though the crackle between them had not been sated in the least by the last two nights of their bodies entwined.
She exhaled a breath. Not the time to think on that.
Time to do what she’d come all this way for.
Her chest lifted as she inhaled a steeling breath, and she set a smile on her face.
At the sound of their boots clomping along the stone flagged floor, the earl looked up from the book in his lap.
At the sight of Evan, an instant smile deepened the wizened wrinkles on the earl’s face. “Ev—ye’ve returned. ’Tis ’bout time.” His gnarled hand waved in the air at them. “And what have ye brought me? And if ye say she’s another nursemaid to scurry about after me, ye be meeting my fist, my lad.”
Evan chuckled. “No, I wouldn’t make that mistake again, Grandfather.”
The earl closed the book on his lap and started to shift in the wingback chair.
“No—no need to get up.” Evan lifted his hand to stop the earl.
His grandfather swatted his hand out of the air. “If ye brought me what I hope this is, I’ll make my own decision about standing on my own two feet.” With a heave, his trembling hands clutched the arms of the chair and the earl shifted upward.
Lord Whetlandstood, his back at a permanent bent. Even with that, he was a head taller than Juliet. He would have been just as tall as Evan if not for the crook in his back.
He looked to her, his aged eyes aglow. Grey eyes that were tinged with the same kindness that shone in Evan’s eyes.
“Juliet, may I present my grandfather, the seventh Earl of Whetland. Grandfather, I present my fiancée, Miss Juliet Thomson.”
Before she could curtsy, the earl reached out to grab her hand, the skin and bones of his fingers wrapping around her palm much stronger than the frail look of them.
“Splendid. Splendid, my Ev.” He looked to Juliet. “What line do ye come from, Miss Thomson?”
“Her father is the late Baron Placton.Unfortunately, without heirs,the title has gone extinct.”
