At first, Thomas wasn’t sure what had woken him. With some difficulty, he levered himself onto his side in the plush bed and scanned the room. Sunrise? No, well past. Though the windows were high and narrow here, as everywhere else in the castle, they faced east. Light flooded the room and made him blink drowsily and rub his eyes.
Beside him, Jane slept on, her back turned toward him, her hair strewn across the pillows. One pale, plump shoulder peeked from beneath the covers, tempting him to trace its curve with his fingertips. God, but she was so beautifully sensual. Three times he’d taken her last night—twice more than he’d intended and thrice more than he ought—and still his ungrateful cock had woken hard and eager. His hand moved, almost involuntarily, to touch her.
But no, he cautioned himself, forcing himself to lean back into his pillow and close his eyes. They’d spoken only of one night. And it was most definitely morning.
He didn’t think he’d drifted off, but the sound of voices—a pair of them, at least, and one of them agitated—came from the sitting room and jerked him to wakefulness again. Was that what had disturbed him before? He glanced at the door; thankfully, the key was still in the lock. Probably just Esme, chattering to herself as she swept the hearth.
Before his body had begun to relax again, the door to the bedchamber shuddered in its frame as if struck. He sat bolt upright. From the sitting room came another muffled but urgent-sounding exchange.
“Jane!” he laid his hand on that tempting shoulder to jostle her as he spoke softly but sharply near her ear. “Wake up! I think someone’s trying to break down the door.”
Shoving hair from her face, she scrambled upright and clutched the sheets to her chest, evidently startled as much to find herself sharing her bed as by the news he’d imparted. “Wha—what did you say?”
But he had no need to repeat himself, for at that moment, something again rammed into the door, followed by a low moan and more scolding. And then a voice spoke near enough to the keyhole that the words could be clearly heard. “Och, Dougan, get up wit’ ye, ye worthless lump. Mrs. Higginbotham, canna you hear me? Oh, what am I t’ do?”
“Mrs. Murdoch.” He and Jane spoke as one, and he felt sure it must be his imagination, but Jane looked...amused.
Whether or not she found the housekeeper’s attempt to barge in upon them entertaining, she scrambled from the bed to put a stop to it. Thomas caught no more than a glimpse of her naked curves before she snatched up her dressing gown from a bench at the foot of the bed and slipped it on.
“You’ll have to hide yourself,” she urged, gathering up his clothes and boots and shoving them in his direction, “while I try to sort out what the devil has gotten into Agnes. In the wardrobe,” she added impatiently, pointing toward that ancient piece of furniture while he was still searching for the doorway to a dressing room or the like. “There’s nowhere else you’ll fit.”
Fit was overstating the case, for though the wardrobe was both tall and deep, it was also full of Jane’s clothes, both mourning gowns and many others in brighter and paler shades, perhaps from before the time she had donned her Mrs. Higginbotham disguise. No chance of slipping into his breeches while hidden inside; try as he might, he couldn’t even close both doors behind him.
The narrow gap between the doors did have an advantage, however. It allowed him to watch as Jane marched with surprising calm to the chamber door, twisted the key, and flung it open. Dougan, who had evidently been primed for another assault on the stout panel, came barging into the room instead, head lowered, and tumbled onto the floor.
Sweet Jane hurried to the man’s side and bent to lay a hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right, Dougan? Have you hurt yourself?”
“An’ if he has, ’tis no more than his duty,” declared Mrs. Murdoch from the doorway. Aphrodite and Athena darted past her and began to sniff their mistress anxiously. “Gracious, Mrs. Higginbotham, what a fright you’ve given us.”
“Fright? I don’t—”
“It’s not like you to lock the door, ma’am. Are ye feelin’ poorly? I knocked and called for a quarter of an hour, and when you didn’t answer, I went to fetch Dougan. It’s nearly ten, and I couldn’t think what…” She shook her head in evident distress. “And then, o’ course, there’s the state of the rooms…”
“Rooms?” Jane echoed again, absently patting an agitated Aphrodite before she rose. “What rooms? Will one of you please tell me what is going on?”
“When Esme took Mr. Sutherland his breakfast,” the housekeeper explained, a trifle impatiently, “she found the gatehouse empty and things in such upheaval—the tea tray overturned, and clothes thrown from his trunk—she feared something dreadful must have happened to ’im.”
“I heard her scream.” Dougan took up the story in his slow, methodical way. “Checked the bailey, just as he’d told me. No one in or out last night.”
“Just as who had told you?”
“Mr. Sutherland,” Mrs. Murdoch broke in. “Evidently he thought fit to warn Dougan that we might have an intruder at Dunnock. I wonder he didn’t accord me the same courtesy.”
“Well…” He heard the smile in Jane’s voice, though he couldn’t see her face. “Dougan is the guardsman.”
Mrs. Murdoch’s lips scrunched as if she’d bitten a lemon. “Be that as it may,” she sniffed, “when I came up here to see that all was well, imagine my shock. Papers strewn about, a puddle of wax on the carpet, books on the floor…” She shuddered, a trifle theatrically to Thomas’s way of thinking. So far as he recalled it was only one book. Surely, she’d seen worse messes than that? “I knew you’d never leave the study in such a state, ma’am. At least not willingly. An’ then there’s this.” With a note of triumph in her voice, she produced her most damning piece of evidence: his battered greatcoat. “Mr. Sutherland’s. Thrown behind a chair, it was. As if someone had aught to hide…”
“Mr. Ratliff received a threatening letter,” Jane interjected smoothly, and he could not help but admire the calm in her voice as she plucked the garment from the housekeeper’s bony fingers. “I was understandably alarmed. I worked late, but I asked Mr. Sutherland to keep watch last night, patrol the castle as it were. No doubt he came into the sitting room after I’d gone to bed, found things a mite, er, warm, and laid his coat aside.”
Those words were rightly met with skepticism. No one had ever found any part of a castle in the Scottish Highlands in January “a mite warm.”
Mrs. Murdoch’s attention was quickly diverted by something else, however. “What’s that you’re fidgeting with, Dougan?” she demanded.
When Thomas realized what had caught her eye, he could no longer consider the distraction fortunate.
“Funny sort of a knife, innit?” Dougan held out the object. “Just lyin’ there on the floor.”
Instinctively, Thomas groped the boots he held. Empty. Damn and blast. The weapon must have fallen out when Jane had tossed his things to him, in the mad dash to hide all evidence of what had really transpired in that room.
“Mine.” Jane reached out with her free hand and plucked the knife from Dougan’s grasp. Thomas sucked in a breath, fearing one or both of them might slice off a few fingers in the exchange. But once more, Jane surprised him. Though he still could not see her face, he watched her handle the blade with surprising dexterity. “I thought it best to arm myself and lock my chamber door, under the circumstances.”
Thomas relaxed, just a little. Dougan seemed entirely satisfied by Jane’s explanations, and if the same could not be said for Mrs. Murdoch, she appeared ready to give up the interrogation for now, assured that Jane was at least temporarily safe. Gesturing impatiently at Dougan, she turned toward the door, intending to leave the room.
Two things happened, not unrelated, which evaporated that momentary illusion of triumph.
The wardrobe door creaked open, seemingly of its own volition. Startled, he looked down to see Athena nosing her way into the crack. When he flicked his fingertips to shoo her away, a low growl rumbled in the dog’s throat.
Mrs. Murdoch, her attention evidently caught by either the movement or the sound, paused on the threshold and frowned. “’Tis all well and good to have another man on hand to keep watch o’ things. But where is Mr. Sutherland now?”
Jane’s head turned as she followed the housekeeper’s gaze to the wardrobe, giving him a glimpse of her worried expression. If Mrs. Murdoch took it upon herself to investigate what the dog had found, that would be the end of it. Though his Jane was unquestionably a creative genius, if the housekeeper opened the wardrobe to find a naked man hiding there, a pair of boots clutched to his chest and the voluminous skirts of Jane’s dresses covering what they could of the rest of him, even the famed Robin Ratliff could never concoct a story that would mollify her.
“Athena, come,” Jane ordered, though the dog paid her no mind. “He wasn’t in his rooms when Esme brought his breakfast, you said? Have you checked the kitchen, Mrs. Murdoch?” She glided between the housekeeper and the wardrobe, ushering both her and Dougan toward the door. “A man of his size, up all night...I’m sure he must’ve worked up quite an appetite.”
His belly had the nerve to rumble loudly in confirmation, at which sound Athena gave a startled yip and flattened her ears.
Finally, he heard the door latch behind Dougan and Mrs. Murdoch. To his surprise, Jane did not turn the key in the lock but collapsed against the oak panel, barely containing her laughter. After studying her mistress for a moment, head cocked to the side in a quizzical pose, Aphrodite trotted over to aid Athena in the investigation of the wardrobe.
After counting to three, Thomas pushed open both doors of the wardrobe and stepped out into the room. The dogs skittered away at first, then snuffled past him into the wardrobe, and before he could stop them, they had found the breeches he’d dropped on the floor of the cabinet and begun a vigorous game of tug-of-war.
“Here, now. Here.” Jane managed to choke out the admonition as she pushed away from the door and came to his rescue. With a sly glance at his person, she slipped past to snatch the dogs’ prize from them. “Maybe you’d better put this on for now,” she said, tossing his greatcoat in his direction.
He had to drop the boots in order to catch it. They landed on the floor, thud-thud, narrowly missing his toes. The noise earned him a reproving frown, though it quickly softened.
“A little worse for wear, I’m afraid.” She poked her fingers through a row of holes in one thigh of the breeches, made by sharp canine teeth. “Esme’s quite skilled at mending,” she reassured him. “But they’ll have to do for now.” After depositing them on the rumpled bed, she began to walk toward the door, re-braiding her hair with brisk, methodical movements as she went. “While you put them on, I’ll go down and try to keep Agnes busy long enough for you to sneak back to the gatehouse and get properly dressed. It wouldn’t do to be late.”
“Late?” Properly dressed? He’d been thinking rather fondly of the prospect of collapsing facedown on a bed for a few hours. Preferably not alone.
She glanced over her shoulder and this time did not look away. “For church. It’s Sunday morning—or had you forgotten?” He must have grimaced, for a wry smile turned up one corner of her mouth. “I daresay it will do us both good.”
Was she that eager to put the night’s activities behind them? He gave a curt nod, not precisely intending to convey assent. “I’ll have my knife back, before you go.”
She stepped closer and laid the deadly instrument on his outstretched palm. “I hope you don’t intend to do anything desperate.”
Last night, yesterday, she’d opened herself to him, showed him parts of herself she’d never shown another soul—and for once, he wasn’t just thinking of her body. He thought he’d been prepared for the trouble this morning would bring. The inevitable awkwardness. The realization, however painful, that things between them had changed.
But this playfulness was worse, far worse than he had let himself imagine. The Jane he remembered—silly and witty and clever—was still inside her, waiting to be set free. And he was more than halfway to falling head over heels in love with her.
Again.
“That depends,” he said, twisting the blade to catch a beam of sunlight. “How dull are the parson’s sermons?”
She laughed and shook her head, charmingly torn between honesty and irreverence. “Deathly.”