By the time the housekeeper stopped before the fourth door, it was all a blur.
The room was dark, and she was happy for it to remain that way.
Pauline numbly accepted assistance in stripping down to her shift, bathing the travel dust from her body, and climbing into the softest, warmest bed she’d ever laid upon. As her eyes closed and her legs stretched to the toasty depths of the bedsheets, she had the vague thought that someone had been here with coals in a bed warmer only moments before she’d entered the room.
Such excellent service. And for the first time in her life she was on the receiving end of it. It would have been folly to try to make it seem real, so she gratefully fell into dreams.
For several hours she knew nothing more.
She woke to darkness. And found she could not return to sleep.
She ought to have still been exhausted. She was exhausted, in truth. Her joints ached from the long hours in the coach, well-sprung as it was. Her mind was taxed to its limits from stretching to grasp so many unbelievable notions.
But she just couldn’t sleep.
She was in a duke’s house. Surely a duke didn’t even call it a house, did he? House was too humble, too common a word. He called it a “residence.” In the country, an “estate.” Whatsit Manor, or Summat Castle.
She drew aside a corner of the heavy tapestry bed hangings and peered into the darkened room. Fortunately, it was nearing full moon, and the milky glow seeping in from the glazed windows (three of them! in one room!) gave her enough light to see the room she’d been too fatigued to explore earlier.
She could make out so far as the foot of the bed, to the upholstered bench at the foot of the bed, to the plush embroidered carpet, its oriental reds and brassy golds now soothed by night. The lotus pattern stretched for miles, it seemed. If she strained and blinked, she could see the edge of the dressing table and catch the glint of a full-length, gilt-framed mirror hanging on the wall. The looking glass was supported by sculpted marble cherubs. Mischievous cherubs. Evidently, they never slept.
Pauline gave a short, muted chirp of a whistle. It echoed back to her from the coffered ceiling. Goodness, the room was a cavern.
This one bedchamber could swallow her family’s cottage whole.
And this was a guest room. Not even their best, she’d imagine. What must the other chambers be like?
On a side table, she spied a tea service, left over from when she’d arrived. Pauline supposed she should have rung to have it removed, but now she was glad she hadn’t. A sip of cold tea with lemon might soothe her nerves.
She tugged the counterpane free and wrapped it about her shoulders before sliding from the bed.
“Oof!”
It was a long way down. She landed with a thud, tangling in the counterpane and tumbling to the floor.
She wasn’t hurt. Even this carpet was softer than her mattress at home.
Ruefully, she blinked at the little staircase toward the foot of the bed. She’d forgotten climbing the thing earlier that evening. Imagine, a staircase just for getting into bed. The duke’s own bed must be so piled with feather beds, he probably needed six or eight steps. He probably lay drowning in satin bedsheets and downy pillows, cloaked in a nightshirt of regal purple velvet. The idea made her laugh.
A picture bloomed in her mind, crisp as daylight and all too real. The Duke of Halford, masculine limbs ranging across a wide bed. No toffish velvet. No flight of stairs. No swallowing maw of feather beds. Just rumpled dark hair, biceps flexed around a pillow, and soft white linen, luminous in the moonlight, tangled about his hips. Or maybe lower, just hugging the curve of a tight, muscled arse.
She tried to shove the image away. No luck.
That sealed it. Cold tea or no, now she’d never be able to sleep.
She picked herself up off the floor, gathered the counterpane tight about her shoulders as a wrap, and ventured out into the corridor.
It was darker here. Pauline stood still for a moment, trying to recall the housekeeper’s sequence of turns. She’d tried to pay attention, but she’d been so overwhelmed and tired. Not to mention awed by the rows of ancient portraits, in some places stacked three high. All those scores of illustrious ancestors.
The girls back home would say this place was surely crawling with ghosts.
Somewhere above her, timber creaked. A cool draft swirled over her neck. Pauline swallowed hard.
Left. She was sure they’d come from the left.
She made her way slowly in that direction, keeping one hand out to trail her fingers along the wall. Every dozen steps, her fingertips skipped from wallpaper to the beveled wooden surface of a door. One, two, three . . . She counted six before pausing. She ought to have reached the stairway by now.
A sudden flare of light stopped her in her paces. Stopped her heart as well. Which ghostly Duke of Halford Past was that? Ducking, she raised her hand against the blinding flame and squinted through splayed fingers.
“Simms?”
She found the eighth—and only living—Duke of Halford, haunting his own house.
He held a lamp in one hand. With the other he yanked a door closed. She heard the scrape of a key in the lock.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, pocketing the key.
His angry tone surprised her. “Good evening to you, too, your grace. My journey to London was fine, thank you.”
He was having none of it. “Why are you snooping around my private rooms?”
“I didn’t realize they were your private rooms. I wasn’t snooping. I took a wrong turning, that’s all. I’ll go back the other way.” She turned to leave.
He caught her by the arm, swiveling her back to face him.
“Did my mother put you up to this?”
Pauline didn’t even know how to answer. Put her up to what? Sleeplessness? Wrong turnings in a vast, darkened house?
“Are you looking to pilfer something? Answer me with one word.”
“No.” She drew up her spine.
“Then explain yourself. You’re out of bed when you should be sleeping, in a corridor you have no reason to visit.” He held the lamp high and examined her. “And you have a guilty look on your face.”
“Well, you have an arrogant, wrong-headed look on yours.”
That was a bit of a lie. The lamplight bleached the stark planes of his face and splashed weary shadows under his eyes. The rich brown of his irises was overwhelmed by cold, empty black. He didn’t look especially arrogant, not right now.
Whatever he’d been doing in that locked room, it was private. She’d interrupted him in an unguarded moment. And because a big, strong man like him couldn’t possibly admit to having an unguarded moment, he was going to make her twist and squirm.