CHAPTER 24: CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

The house was dead silent. The only sound in Ines’s dark bedroom was the feathered ticking of the mantel clock and the ragged sound of her own breathing.

She was not in her bed. She was on it, lying on top of the covers in her simple linen nightgown, staring up at the dark, oppressive rectangle of the canopy. She clutched a large, down-filled pillow to her chest, holding it as if it were a shield.

"Why?" she whispered to the ceiling. "Why did it turn out like this?"

Her mind, a cruel and efficient torturer, replayed the entire day. The library. The dropped roses. The look on his face. The paper.

"If I hadn’t dropped that stupid, stupid paper," she muttered, her eyes stinging. "If I hadn’t been in the library at all. If I hadn’t written an erotic novel in the first, stupid, idiotic place!"

The frustration and humiliation were too much. She rolled over, burying her face into the pillow she was holding, and screamed. It was a long, silent, furious wail, all her panic and shame and terror pressed deep into the goose down.

"CRAZY!" she finally hissed, her voice muffled and hoarse.

She lay there, breathing in the scent of lavender and clean linen, her heart hammering. It was no use. The anger faded, replaced by something far more dangerous.

The memory.

Her mind went back to the library. Not the horror of him finding the page. No. It went back to the moments just after. It went to him standing inches away from her, his tall frame blocking out the light. It went to the impossible, shocking, gentle touch of his hand on her cheek.

"What do you want to know?" His voice, a low, dark whisper. "Ask me."

Ines turned, her face, hot and red, pressing into the cool cotton of her other pillow. She groaned. He had offered. He had actually, seriously offered.

And the most terrible part? The most scandalous, secret, awful part?

"Honestly," she whispered into the darkness, her voice trembling, "I had secretly imagined it before."

It was true. In her most private, locked-away thoughts, her writer’s mind had wandered. Carcel was, after all, her brother’s best friend. He had been a dark, brooding, handsome fixture in the background of her life for years.

What would he look like in bed?

Her treacherous imagination, the one she had just sworn to curse, instantly supplied the images. She had read enough forbidden novels to have a very good idea. She pictured him naked as the men in her books were described. All long, lean muscle, broad shoulders, a flat stomach, and the easy, dangerous grace of a soldier. A body built for strength, not for show.

"What experiences might he have had?"

she murmured, her eyes closing. He was a duke. He was a man of the world. He had been to war. He had not, she was certain, lived the chaste, boring life of a monk. He knew things. The things she was so desperate to learn.

She imagined him behind her, the way she had written it for Stefan. His arms, strong and warm, wrapped around her body, pulling her back against his hard chest. His face on her neck, his lips, his breath...

"When those calm, dangerous eyes are lit with flames... how would the woman on the other side feel?"

A strange, sharp shiver raced down her spine, starting at the nape of her neck and ending... lower.

She shifted on the bed, a restless, uncomfortable movement. She was feeling something. A strange, coiling heat. A dull, insistent ache building between her legs. It was a feeling she had only ever read about, a feeling she had tried, clumsily, to describe for Doris.

"Would she feel as restless and tingly between her thighs as I do right now?"

The thought shocked her. This was not imagination. This was real. This was her body, reacting to the mere idea of him. It was terrifying. And it was, she had to admit, the most powerful inspiration she had ever felt.

She looked at the clock on the mantel. The porcelain hands pointed to the ceiling.

"It’s almost midnight," she breathed.

"Tonight. At midnight. Meet me here."

She sighed as she remembered his exact words. A shiver ran down her spine.

But as she sat up, the strange, restless warmth still thrumming inside her, she realized with a jolt that it wasn’t just fear that was pulling her. It was curiosity. It was that same, reckless, thirteen-year-old girl who had climbed over the balcony just to see.

She got down from the bed. Her bare feet touched the cold floor. She was wearing her simple, high-necked linen nightgown. It was a child’s garment. It was what she had worn last night.

She looked at herself in the dim, moonlit mirror. " This won’t do." She murmured to herself. She turned and walked to her wardrobe. Her movements were slow, deliberate.

She opened the doors. She pushed aside her practical day dresses, her sensible wools. Her hand found a box. She had bought it on a whim, with her own allowance, from a visiting French modiste. It was an indulgence she had never, ever thought she would wear.

She changed.

She pulled the simple linen gown over her head, and for a moment, stood naked in the moonlight. Then, she let the new gown fall over her body.

It was silk chiffon. A pale, luminous blue that shimmered, almost silver, in the faint light. It was the color of a summer sky, and it complimented her reddish-brown hair and her hazel eyes. It was also terrifyingly thin. Her body, her shape, the shadow of her hips and the curve of her breasts, could be seen in the delicate, translucent material. It was the most scandalous, beautiful, adult thing she had ever owned.

She slipped on the matching silk robe, tying the sash loosely at her waist. It covered her, but it did not truly hide her.

She went to her vanity. She unpinned her braid, letting her curls fluff out, falling in a cloud around her shoulders. She ran her fingers through them. She looked at her reflection. She was pale, her eyes enormous in the dark, her lips parted. She slipped her bare feet into her silk slippers.

She was ready.

She walked to the door, her heart a slow, heavy, powerful drum. "I want to know," she whispered to her reflection.

"I want to know this dark side of him tonight."