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“I didn’t want you to get lost. If you’ll make your way to the sitting room, there’s coffee, it’ll help you keep your wits. There’s a girl.”
With a huff and a mouthful of venom she was now too afraid to spew, she stormed from the dining room, turning only once to glare at me at the threshold before taking her leave.
“I was worried what Margaret had in mind, but shouldn’t have been. You held your own.” The fact Professor Hughes was surprised was an insult in itself. I was still boiling, and there was no one else to punish.
“She’s a terrible person.”
“She is.”
“You invited her.”
“I invited her husband. She wasn’t supposed to be in town. You look very upset. What did she say to you?”
“Nothing I’m sure I wouldn’t have figured out.”
“Do tell.”
“Perhaps another time,” I retorted. “They’ll be wondering where we are, and I don’t want to give them any reason to use their imaginations.”
I made it out of the dining room and turned toward the light of the parlor, but I’d taken less than two steps when Professor Hughes grabbed my arm, his grip firm but not painful. I was angry that he was so calm when everything inside my head was pure chaos.
“I’m truly sorry Margaret upset you,” he said, “but anything coming from her mouth was either a wild exaggeration or a straight lie.”
“And I should believe you?”
This, at last, made him angry. “You should.”
“Why?” I demanded, digging my fingers into the small opening of his frustration. “Your behavior since the moment I arrived has been suspect at best, threatening me in the hallways in the middle of the night, making your suggestions.”
“Millie, you’re raising your voice.” His tone was an omen I didn’t heed.
“Let them hear!” I yelled, flinging my hand to indicate their general direction, sealing my fate.
He caught that hand in his, much less gentle this time, and I found myself being pulled roughly to the nearest door, which he opened and spirited us into. The party preparations had not made it to this room, and it was unlit save for whatever sad illumination made it in from the stormy night.
“And here you’ve whisked me away to a lonely, dark room, how on pattern.”
My voice had instinctively gone lower, quieter to match the night in the room. The dark shushed me, and in it, I was not as brave. His tall bulk blocked the door, giving me no chance to leave without getting close to him, and that was out of the question. The shadows did something to Professor Hughes, something unholy. In the light he was attractive, captivating in his charming, polished way. But here where no sunbeam or cast of firelight could touch him, he was a being of the underworld, a shapeshifter made treacherous and devastating by the dark.
When he spoke, it was with a menacing drawl.
“Your mouth is running away with you.”
“Shouldn’t it? Maybe no one has ever had the nerve to tell you straight to your face that your behavior is abhorrent and ungentlemanly!”
The last word was weak, but I was so flustered nothing else came to mind. The fact that his response to my declaration was a low and throaty laugh made me all the more furious.
“I am appalled you find that I am not a gentleman,” he managed.
“And I am appalled I somehow fell for your trap.” The courage to finally move came with wrathful exasperation. I tried to sidle around him, reaching for the knob.
“A trap, you say.”
“I’m going to the parlor to enjoy more pleasant company. Stay here in the dark like the beast you are,” I said, managing to open the door ever so slightly.
He moved with unhurried resolve, leveraging my new position between him and my escape against me. He pivoted, pressing his hands into the heavy oak on either side of my head, enveloping me in a cage of his body, leaning in to close the door again with a sharp click. I turned, prepared to object, but when I faced him my words retreated. He surrounded me, every bit the rake I’d accused him of being.
“Is that really what you think of me? That I’m a monster waiting for the opportunity to sully any maiden who walks unwittingly into my den?”
