Page 150 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

She rested against the door frame casually, her breasts rising and falling with each breath.

His eyes fell lower to her feet, her ankles.

‘Why do you refuse to wear shoes?’ he asked.

‘I like the feel of the earth beneath my feet,’ she said without reaction to his reproach, and she moved into the room.

‘So, have you?’ she asked, as she cast her eyes around the room. To the art unseen by all but him.

‘Have I what?’

Her head snapped forward, and she halted. ‘Have you been hiding?’ she repeated. ‘From me?’

They both knew he had been, but Sebastian shrugged, feigning a nonchalance he didn’t feel.

‘Have you been searching for me?’ he asked, because he could not stop the question.

‘The castle has many rooms,’ she answered, and looked again at the walls. To the art. ‘And I have been in every one.’

‘And now you have found me.’

‘Yes,’ she acknowledged, but she didn’t glance at him. Did not smile in victory. ‘And here you are in the tallest tower, in the highest room.’

‘You should not have come up all those stairs,’ he said. The image of her, heavy with his child, ascending the spiralling stone staircase, so narrow, so dangerous, made his blood turn molten.

‘But I did,’ she dismissed his concern softly.

He couldn’t protect her, not even from the stairs. From putting herself in unnecessary danger. Because she didn’t see the risk with her naive eyes. She did not understand it was a risk to be here. With him.

Like that night?

He hardened everywhere he shouldn’t.

‘None of the rest of the rooms are like this,’ she said. ‘This room feels like you.’

‘And none of the others did?’

‘No.’ She reached up, splayed her fingers and let them hover above a face in the picture frame. And then she moved again. Her footfalls slow, the heels of her bare soles making contact first, and then her toes. Tiny and perfect, unscarred toes.

His breath snagged. ‘And what do I feel like?’ he asked, his voice gruff. Low.

Her fingers feathered one of the hooded floor-length fur coats he wore in winter on the moors. They hung on antlers he’d found in the forest, and they came out of the brick as if they were part of it now. Belonged there.

She stroked the coat, caressed it, allowed the brown fur to move through the spaces between her fingers. She turned to him. And she stole the minimal air he had in his lungs.

‘You feel endless.’

‘Endless?’

‘You are a fortress,’ she explained. ‘You have lots of doors. Some are open. Some let people inside, but they are not where you live.’

She continued to walk, circled him like a predator, until she came to the window. She turned to him, and he faced her.

The light danced in the wisps of her hair. It kissed her skin. It made her shimmer. Like a goddess in the sun. She extended her arms wide.

‘But I’ve found it,’ she said.

‘Found what?’