Page 23 of My Lord Rogue
She did not have a plan, only a direction, away from her bed, away from the memory of his touch and the echo of his challenge. She moved through the corridor, past the heads of long-dead deer, the portraits of St. Ervan ancestors staring down with unamused, coal-dark eyes, all mere shadows in the darkness. The air was cold enough to prickle her skin, but she welcomed the chill, it made her feel sharp, present, real.
She paused once in the main hall, half-expecting to see Teddy’s silhouette at the window or hear his laugh—low and cruel—from the next room. But the silence held. She kept moving.
The library was on the ground floor, its entrance marked by an oak door heavy enough to crush a grown man’s hand. Theo pressed her palm to its ancient panel, feeling the ridges and knots like the veins of a living thing. She eased it open, careful to avoid the betraying shriek of the hinge, and slipped inside.
The room was cathedral-dark, the only illumination a faint golden puddle from the embers of the fire and the weak, persistent glow of a single lamp on the far desk. The air smelled of dust, leather, and the afterlife of cigars—some lingering aftereffect of St. Ervan’s habitual evening excess. The shelves rose straight to the ceiling, stacked with books that looked as though they had been bound from the skins of extinct animals.
She closed the door behind her, drawing a deep, shuddering breath. The hush of the library was different from the hush of the corridor, here it pressed in, intimate and confidential, as if the books themselves were holding their breath, waiting for her to speak.
She reached for a volume at random, its spine cracked but gilded, and was about to pull it free when she heard it, a faint clink of glass, the almost imperceptible creak of leather shifting under weight. She froze.
“Can’t sleep?” The voice came from the shadowed alcove near the fire. In the ember’s glow, Teddy was more shape than man, a watercolor flickering in and out of focus.
Theo’s hand flew to her throat. She could not have said why she was startled, she should have expected this, should have known he would be here, like a fox in the larder.
She found her own voice, brittle and high. “Do you always haunt the library at this hour, my lord?”
He lounged in an armchair, one long leg crossed over the other, coat unbuttoned, cravat loosened to a dangerous degree. In his hand was a short tumbler of something, on his face, an expression of deliberate and cultivated amusement.
“I like the quiet,” he said. “It’s the only time a man can read without someone trying to marry him off or challenge him to a wager.”
“I didn’t know anyone was awake,” she managed. “And you can’t read in the dark.”
He tilted his head. “I’m not sure we qualify as ‘anyone’ at this hour. More like two ghosts, rattling about in a house that’s too old for either of us.”
She stepped toward him, unwilling to be cowed, but clutching her wrapper tighter. “I suppose it’s better to be a ghost than a scandal.”
He laughed, the sound rougher than usual, as if it cost him something. “You think you can still avoid that? After tonight’s exhibition?”
She flushed, biting the inside of her cheek. “I don’t see how it could be helped. Verity will have told the entire county by morning.”
He gestured to the fire, to the other chair. “You might as well sit. It’s too late for dignity.”
She hesitated, then obeyed, lowering herself into the armchair opposite him. The leather was cold and slow to yield.She set the book—still unopened—in her lap and ran her fingers along the embossed letters.
He studied her, eyes half-lidded. “What did you choose?” he asked, nodding to the volume.
She glanced down. “Ovid.”
He smiled, lazy and wicked. “Of course. ‘Ut ameris, amabilis esto.’”
She managed a smile in return, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “‘If you want to be loved, be lovable.’ I always thought that was a dangerous line.”
“Dangerous,” he agreed, “and true. Most truths are.”
She opened the book to its flyleaf, but the print blurred. She looked up again, catching him watching her in the reflective way a cat watches a bird—uncertain if he meant to pounce or only to observe the tremor.
They sat in silence, broken only by the hiss and snap of the dying fire. Every now and then Teddy sipped from his glass, the crystal making a soft, conspiratorial noise as it met his teeth.
Theo turned a page, then another, but the words refused to anchor. “I don’t know why I’m here,” she admitted, the confession slipping out before she could recall it.
He shrugged, a bare flex of his shoulders. “I do.”
She waited, but he let the silence stretch, as if daring her to demand the answer.
“Why, then?” she asked, her voice quiet but sharp enough to cut.
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, glass dangling from two fingers. “Because neither of us wants to be alone, but neither of us can stand to be seen in daylight.”