CHAPTER 16: CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Ines didn’t just walk. She fled. Her bare feet, tucked into soft silk slippers, made a frantic shush-shush-shush on the dark, polished wood of the hallway. She did not look behind her. She was certain if she did, he would still be there, staring, knowing.

She reached her bedroom door and fumbled with the handle, her hand trembling so violently it took her two tries to open it. She slipped inside, shutting the door with a quiet, final click.

She was safe.

For one second, she stood in the darkness, her back pressed against the wood, her precious "diary" clutched to her chest. Her heart was a cannon, booming against her ribs.

Then, she launched herself.

She dove into the middle of her enormous bed, burrowing her face deep into the down-filled pillows. And she screamed. It was a silent, furious, utterly mortified scream, muffled completely by the fine linen.

"Crazy!" she finally hissed into the pillowcase, the word vibrating with frustration. "He’s crazy! I’m crazy! The whole world has gone mad!"

She kicked her feet under the covers like a furious child. That brush against him. That long, slow, agonizing moment of contact. And what she had felt.

It was a key. It had to be a key.

But... her treacherous, novel-writing mind whispered, ...it did not feel like a key.

Stop it! she commanded herself. Stop it this instant! You are a lady. You do not think about... about... keys! Your mind is a sewer, Ines. Stefan and Doris have rotted your morals. You are one step away from becoming a fallen woman, and all you did was brush against a man’s trousers!

She turned around with a groan, flopping onto her back to stare up at the dark, familiar ceiling of her canopy bed. The moonlight painted a faint silver square on her covers.

"This is a disaster," she whispered to the ceiling. "A complete, unmitigated disaster."

This was the second time. The second time she had been almost caught.

"Last time, it was Betsy, the new maid," she recounted to herself, her arm resting dramatically over her forehead. "I was so lucky she’s illiterate. She just saw me writing and asked what I was doing. I told her I was practicing my penmanship. She believed me! She just... smiled and left.

She was a good girl. Not like him."

Her thoughts zeroed in on their target.

"Of all days. Of all the people in this house, I almost get caught by Carcel. Carcel!"

She sat up, indignant. "I thought he went hunting with Rowan today! They were gone for ten hours! They should be exhausted. They should be unconscious! Where did he get the strength to read in the library at night, when his friend—my brother, the man who actually lives here—is already knocked out and fast asleep? Is he a demon? A very handsome, well-dressed, sleepless demon who just happens to read about agriculture in his spare time?"

Her mind began again, attacking her from a different, far more vain, direction. She closed her eyes, a fresh wave of mortification washing over her.

And I was wearing this, she thought, looking down at her simple, high-necked linen nightgown. This... this child’s garment. If I had known he would appear in the library...

Her eyes flew open.

If I had known we would run into each other like this, I would have worn that new silk chiffon nightgown I bought last week.

The thought was so appallingly shallow, so completely inappropriate, that it shocked her. The pale blue one. The one with the French lace at the bodice.

She immediately clamped her hands over her hot face. Ines! What is wrong with you? her inner-voice shrieked. Why would you want to wear that? So he could be more impressed while discovering you are a secret smut-writer? So you could look like a high-class harlot while he discovers you are a lunatic? You are pathetic. Utterly, utterly pathetic.

A new, colder fear crept in, banishing the silly thought of the nightgown.

"I hope he didn’t see what I wrote," she said, her voice small and concerned.

She turned in her bed and looked at the book, which she had tossed onto her bedside table. It lay there, still.

What if he did? What if his eyes are... faster than normal? What if he saw?

She pictured the page, the ink still wet. ’His finger penetrated into her moist and soft inner flesh...’

A strangled sound escaped her. "Oh, God. He would probably think I’m a crazy woman. A depraved, lonely, desperate spinster. He would tell Rowan. Rowan would take one look at that page and... and he would send me to a convent. Or worse, he would marry me to Viscount Grayson immediately, just to be rid of the family shame."

She sat bolt upright on the bed, clutching the covers to her chest.

"He looked so... serious," she whispered. "But he wasn’t angry. He was... curious."

The thought was a strange one. He hadn’t looked disgusted. That means he didn’t see anything.

He looks like someone with experience, her writer-brain noted, suddenly analytical. He looks like a man who knows things. About women. About... ’inner workings of a woman’.

She pressed her fingers to her lips.

If only I could ask him.

The thought was a bolt of lightning. What if she could? ’Excuse me, Your Grace. I am having a problem with my novel. In your vast experience, when a man has a woman straddling him, what, precisely, does he do with his hands? A detailed, step-by-step account would be most helpful. For my art.’

She collapsed back onto the pillows, groaning. "I can’t ask him. I am a lady. I am already at my last straw. I am finished."

This was the real problem. The true despair, which went deeper than embarrassment.

"After this scene," she muttered, staring at the canopy again, "I have nothing left. I have used up every bit of my imagination. Anything I write after this will just be... rinse and repeat. More stolen kisses. More trembling hands. More sighs. How many times can they sigh? It’s boring. How then do I get new ideas?"

She was trapped.

"The books I read now all have the same ideas! The same scenes! The heroine is shy, the hero is stern, they misunderstand each other for two hundred pages, and then they kiss in the rain. Ughh!!!"

She buried her head back into the pillow, pulling it over her face to block out the world. This was why she hated the "real world." It was so utterly unhelpful.

Her frustration with her writing bled into her frustration with her life.

"This is why I write. Because what else is there?" she mumbled into the pillow. "Balls? I hate balls. But I go, I stand in the corner, I wait. And what happens? Nothing."

She turned, her cheek pressed to the linen.

"All the men who have approached me so far have either been after my dowry or they were just... dull. So profoundly, painfully dull. They talk about their horses, or the weather, or their hunting. From the beginning, it has been impossible to find one decent, interesting man in that entire, dreadful place. And the one man who is interesting—the one who is handsome, and strong, and dangerous—is sleeping down the hall. And he probably, probably, thinks I am the strangest, most pathetic woman in all of London."

She let out a long, final, exhausted sigh. "It is just not fair."