“What a pity.”
He stepped inside, crossing over to the settee, and I nearly fell off it, struggling to distance myself as he sat.
“You look unwell,” he observed, setting the candle down on the table in front of us.
“Just a headache,” I said, repeating my earlier lie.
“I shouldn’t wonder, sleeping with all those clips digging into your scalp.”
With a flick of his wrist, he grabbed the combs holding my waves in place. They came toppling down my shoulders, streaming long and loose, and a flush crept over me, burning as bright as a fever.
This was too intimate.
Too undone.
Too…
“Beautiful,” he murmured, his eyes dancing over me.
I buried my hands in the fullness of my skirts, my mind full of impossible wonderings.
What if I held his gaze a moment too long? What if our hands brushed, just a touch?
Would we truly spark the world’s destruction?
Alex, I thought fiercely, dragging him to the forefront of my mind. It slapped like a cold wave, dousing the treacherous desire coiling through me.
I’d never betray him. I knew that with all my heart.
But oh, how the deep, wicked wondering parts of me wanted to.
“You seemed upset earlier,” I said, carefully slipping from his brazen touch. “In the statue garden. When Julien said he’d give the dukedom to Alex.”
Viktor shrugged. “It makes no difference to me if he wants to give up the title and all its trappings but I would have thought he’d at least inquire if I’d like them. He’s right, though, I suppose. I haven’t the faintest idea how to run a place like this, do the things I’d be expected to… Still. No one ever thinks to ask what I want.”
“What do you want?”
It was a simple-sounding question but heat stole across my chest as his gaze fell on me. As I realized how he might construe my meaning. As I wondered if he’d want to construe it.
He ran his tongue over the sharp edges of his teeth, considering. “Right now?”
My mouth opened but no words came out.
“A walk with you?” Viktor suggested.
“A walk?” I repeated. “It’s so late…”
His lips rose. “What better time? It’s not as though I could take you out for a stroll in broad daylight. What would the staff think—Alexander suddenly springing from his chair just in time to waltz you down the aisle?” His eyes shifted downcast to his lap.
“What are you doing here, Viktor? Truly?”
He shrugged, his lightness dimming. “Truthfully…I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Father’s notes, written across my mind as sharp as a brand. Too volatile.” He swallowed. “I feel as though he summed up and discarded my entire life in just two words.”
“He might have written it down, but it doesn’t make it true,” I murmured hesitantly. It was clear he was hurting but I hadn’t the slightest idea how to go about comforting him.
He was volatile; it was impossible to pretend otherwise.
But that didn’t make him expendable, dismissible.
Viktor’s eyebrows furrowed together. “It’s so strange…I’ve spent my life being angry at him. Being angry and hating and loathing him. Railing against our imprisonment, dreaming up ways to make him pay, to make him sorry. But when it comes down to it, when it really matters…I still want his approval. Isn’t that ridiculous?”
Carefully, I laid my hand over the top of his. “Not ridiculous.” I wanted to say more but my words felt too jumbled to lay out in a clean line. “Come on,” I finally said, standing up and pulling him after me. “Let’s go for that walk.”
He smiled, but it wasn’t the sly grin of triumph I’d expected. Instead, he stooped down to grab the candle before gently tugging back toward the passageway.
I paused, envisioning our bodies vying for space in the narrow tunnel, each accidental brush and bump stoking my inner fires until I pushed him up against the wall, pressing my mouth to his while my hands roamed, claiming every inch of him for myself.
The echoes of the world’s scream rang out in my mind, stopping me.
“You first,” I instructed. In the pit of my stomach, I knew I was making a terrible mistake.
“As the lady commands,” he said, disappearing into the darkness.
I made the shutting of the panel into a bigger business than it warranted, anxious to put additional space between us.
These were temporary feelings, I reminded myself. Lust not love, desire not destiny. This wanting would pass, as would Viktor’s time at Chauntilalie. He’d be gone and my equilibrium would return. It was momentary madness, nothing more.
“Did you lock it?”
He turned back as he noticed my absence. The candle threw strange shadows across the slatted wooden walls as he returned for me and I’d been right. The space was too small for the both of us. His scent filled the air, heavy and green and strange, like a stormy summer night, just before the lightning began to fall.
Before the stars fell…
“I did,” I insisted, pressing myself against the beadboard in an attempt to keep my distance from him.
“Careful,” he warned, gesturing to the candle. “You don’t want to get burned.”
I wondered if he knew how much truth his words held.
“Come,” he said, gesturing for me to follow him.
The passage was narrow and it was hard to see much of anything with such limited lighting, but the floor was smooth and flat. I pushed aside any imaginings of daintily twisted ankles rescued by strong, embracing arms. One less thing to worry over.
We came to a fork and after a moment’s pause, Viktor turned to the left.
“Do you know where we’re going?”
“I think. Mostly. I told Julien we ought to be leaving little markings in chalk for ourselves but he insists we leave no trace of our presence ‘upon such cursed grounds.’？” He mimicked Julien’s disaffected cadence with eerie accuracy.
I traced one hand along the wall and my fingertips came away coated in a dusty grime. “Does he truly think the house is cursed?”
He snickered. “Have you met Julien? I’ve never known a more scientifically driven mind. If you slit open his veins, reason and logic would bleed out all over your best carpet.” He sighed. “You’ve no idea what it’s like living with such a dullard. Though,” he added, considering, “you have been with Alex.”
“He’s not dull,” I defended.
“His bedside table is littered with books,” he said with a snort. “Stacks and stacks of them.”
I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “There’s nothing wrong with reading.”
“They’ll probably smother him one night in his sleep. Maybe you as well. You really ought to call the wedding off.” He glanced over his shoulder, quickly, as if trying not to show his interest.
“I’m not calling off my wedding over a stack of books.”
“Stacks,” he corrected.
“Not even then.”
We went up a short series of steps, five high, then down a long length to another set of them, climbing ever higher in the house. “What would make you call it off?”