He hadn’t moved. His frown didn’t deepen, there was no gleam of opening eyes. If his breath had changed, she couldn’t hear it over the crazed thumping of her heart.
Just a scratch against the wall. It couldn’t have been as loud as it seemed. She steeled her nerves—or tried
to—and turned back to her work. The second line of the “L” seemed even louder, but she kept going with only one glance backward. Cringing, she moved on to the “E,” then the “A.” She was shaking by the time she finished the last letter and finally let herself breathe.
Leave here. Simple, yet hopefully effective. She’d thought the seaweed would do it, but perhaps he was a dullard and needed blatant prodding to get out the door.
She was sliding toward the open panel when it reached her ears…silence. No rhythmic shush of air. Cynthia froze. She should have run, but her body locked itself with a nearly audible snap. The hair on her nape stood on end, then gooseflesh spread down her arms.
Don’t look. Don’t move and he won’t be awake.
“It’s you,” a hoarse voice whispered, and her heart plummeted a frightening distance. Just like jumping off a cliff.
“It’s you,” he repeated. “Why are you here?”
Oh, God. Oh, God. She’d been caught, found out. He’d send her back to her family and then she’d go to that man—
You are a ghost, something inside her said, scolding. Cynthia blinked and forced down her panic. A ghost. Of course. He still thought her a spirit.
She turned slowly, replacing her terror with a stern look. No need to talk, really, so Cynthia just glared at him.
The man should have been frightened, terrified, but his head tilted as if he were puzzled. Perhaps he really was a dullard. All those London nights of drinking and whoring had taken their toll.
“I am sorry,” he said softly. “Truly.”
She wished she’d brought a length of chain. A rattle would be the perfect sound to leave him with as she slipped away. Lacking that, there wasn’t much she could do, so she pointed toward the words she’d scratched and tried to glide toward the door…and promptly slipped on the polished wood.
Though she caught herself, the slight stumble seemed to jolt Nick from his daze. He sat up a little more as tension entered the silhouette of his shoulders. She glided faster.
Her movement must have drawn his eye toward the open panel. His head turned toward it, then back to her. She saw the moment he was about to rise, could feel a wave of awareness as his mind fell free of sleep. Cynthia bolted.
Her fingers managed to catch the edge of the panel when she ran past, but it banged on her heel and bounced back open…right into Nicholas if his gasp was any indication.
A burst of triumph flooded her veins as she sprinted toward the stairway. He didn’t know these passageways and he couldn’t see in the dark. Her escape seemed even more sure when a sharp crack sounded behind her. Nicholas cursed loudly and thoroughly, and she imagined him rubbing his elbow while she slipped away into the black maze.
She was planning her next move, mentally gathering up the few belongings she’d stashed in the attic, thinking where she could go…and then her foot slipped. A small scream escaped her as the world tilted. Her legs floated in the air for a moment before they crashed down to the hard steps and pulled her back toward the floor she’d just escaped.
The man she’d just escaped was waiting at the bottom. His hands closed over her shoulders in an impossibly strong grip.
“Bloody hell,” he growled, not sounding like Nick at all. “Who the hell are you?” Every shred of terror she’d managed to tamp down burst free to course through her body.
She pushed her feet against his legs and tried to pull away. Dull pain throbbed through her shins, but she ignored it and pushed harder. Foolish, apparently, as he simply plucked her up and carried her toward the faint silver rectangle that marked the open panel.
“You must be mad, pretending to be a dead girl,” he muttered. His fingers dug into her arm and hip. “Completely insane, not to mention heartless and cruel. I actually thought you a bloody ghost.” Bitterness had crept into the anger, and now he really sounded like a stranger. She never could have imagined such coldness in Nicholas’s voice. He didn’t sound the least bit soft or slow now, and nothing close to charming.
“Please,” she gasped, as he ducked through the opening.
“Please, what? Ghosts don’t feel fright or pain, do they? I can do with you what I like.”
What did he mean? The words pushed Cynthia to struggle in earnest, but it was too late. He only laughed and tossed her on the bed. Before she could catch her breath he had one hand wrapped tight around her ankle. She screamed and twisted, but only succeeded in hurting her own leg. Glass clattered, a match flared, and Nicholas managed to light the lamp with one hand.
Desperate, Cynthia kicked out with her free foot, meaning to knock the lamp to the floor, but she didn’t make contact with anything but Nicholas’s arm. He grabbed that ankle as well, as Cynthia pressed her face to the blankets and reached out to pull herself toward the other side of the bed.
“Well,” he scoffed as the lamplight grew brighter around them. “Your thighs certainly look pink enough. I don’t think you’re dead at all.”
Alarm stiffened her spine when she realized that the coolness against the back of her legs was air. His grip stopped her from snapping her legs together or even shifting her position. A different kind of fear was just sizzling over her nerves when he tugged her closer. He moved her ankles together, offering more modesty, but now he was turning her toward him. What to be most concerned with, her virtue or her identity?
Identity, her brain screamed. She had little to no virtue left anyway.