Terrifying thought indeed.
* * *
Preshea left her room to make the rounds early that night. The house was silent and still, everyone abed. All the windows were shut. She encountered Formerly Connie in the drawing room, the fire cooling in the grate.
The ghost nodded to her. “Can’t sleep?”
“Yes. Then I remembered that my scarf was down here.” Preshea had taken to leaving accessories behind of an evening, with this excuse in mind.
“Try a glass of hot milk,” suggested the ghost, floating serenely.
“Do you find yourself calmer now than when you were alive?”
“Naturally. Not a great deal to worry about, you understand? Already dead.”
“I do understand. Thank you for the advice. Good night, Formerly Connie.”
“Good night, Lady Villentia.” The ghost drifted away.
Not so bad for a dead thing, as dead things go.
Preshea paused on the stairs when she heard the whisper of cloth. Someone else was awake and about. Someone else living, to be precise.
Preshea melted into the shadows.
Miss Pagril was creeping along the hallway, a candle held low, the light shielded with her free hand. Fortunately, she was not heading downstairs; instead, she hurried into the south-facing wing where the family slept.
She moved badly, like one mocking stealth. Although Preshea supposed that was how laymen did it.
Miss Pagril paused at a door and then let herself inside. Whoever it was must be expecting her, for the door was unlocked.
Preshea frowned. Whose room? Ah. Lady Flo’s. Very interesting. She shook her head in wonder. Young girls these days are getting very bold. It put the iron into her. If Miss Pagril can do it, so shall I!
Preshea glided down the north-facing hallway and then stopped as Miss Pagril had, in front of a room not her own. It also wasn’t locked.
Gavin was awake and waiting for her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A Scotsman Without His Banyan
“I was hoping you might come.” There was a hint of surprise in his voice.
Good, I shouldn’t want to be predictable. Preshea locked the door behind her. To keep others out or to prevent herself from fleeing, she wasn’t certain which.
She hesitated, watching him. He was sitting on the edge of a bed as big as hers. He’d one of the lamps lit for reading. It cast a gentle light over the room. His fire was built up, cutting through the night’s chill. It was all quite welcoming. Comfortable. Which made her uncomfortable.
He gave a tentative smile. His chin was shadowed by a day’s growth of beard. He was wearing that banyan again, looking like a laird from olden days in some Highland castle portrait. It had slipped again, too, showing his chest almost to the bottom of his sternum. It stopped at the exact spot where she’d been taught to wedge a knife. There had been a deal less muscle on the mechanical construct she’d learned on. Really, what right had any man, even a Scotsman, to that much muscle? His chest hair glinted golden in the lamplight. The quilted fabric of the banyan, thin with age, draped intimately against his thighs. The sash about the robe held it closed, but not so well when he was sitting; it parted over his knees. He clearly wore nothing underneath. Barbarian.
She did not move, frozen with her back to the door. This was not something for which she’d been trained. Not exactly.
“You’ve done this before, aye?” He patted the bed next to him.
Preshea remained motionless but for her mouth. “Four husbands, remember?”
He stood and came to her. His legs were no longer visible, but that chest… The chest was advancing. She forgot to breathe a moment, riveted.
Slowly, softly, he took her small hands into his large ones. “Yet you’re shaking, lass.”
His thumbs caressed the backs of her wrists in small circles. She was still wearing her gloves, but the skin underneath tingled from his touch. It was an odd sensation – both comforting and exciting. She breathed in shallow sips of air, for he smelled too good, all warm spices like a ginger honey cake.
Preshea considered how she would answer him. With this man, perhaps honesty might work? “I never wanted it with any of them.”
“Oh, lassie.” There was a world of understanding and, oddly, pain in his response. “In truth, we men take too much, too often. It need not be so.” He rotated her hands, palms up, so he could begin unbuttoning her gloves. Before he did, he caressed the undersides of her wrists with one finger. He looked into her eyes then, asking permission. She swallowed and nodded. Then watched the tiny buttons in his big fingers, mesmerized. He was so very delicate and careful about it.
“Perhaps someday you’ll keep them on for me? But na tonight. No barriers between us tonight, eh, lass?”
“Already, you believe you will get a repeat performance? You must have great faith in your persuasive abilities.”
“Aye. I’m a gruesome optimist.” He tugged off the first glove and began working on the second.
“All men, I think, are takers.” She pulled her hands away, liking it too much, and removed the second glove herself.
He loomed over her, as comfortable in his skin as he had made the room. He did not press or crowd her in any way. She wanted to pet his chest, following the opening made by his robe. She wanted to press her lips into his hand, to test the meat of his palm with her teeth. She wanted – so badly, she actually ached with it.
Instead, she moved away to sit at his dressing-table, busying herself with taking down her elaborate hairstyle from dinner. So many pins.