my lord? I find myself exhausted by the day’s events.’
He stepped back, frowning. ‘Then I must bid you goodnight, Miss Wilding.’
He held out his hand for hers.
Reluctantly she accepted his courtesy, intending to rest her fingers lightly in his, but when his hand curled around it and he brought it up to his lips, she winced at the pain of it.
He tensed and glanced down. Before she could stop him he had gently peeled off her cotton glove and revealed the grazed skin and broken nails. His face hardened. ‘These are the lengths to which you would go?’ The anger in his voice was unmistakable. He released her hand. Strode to the door, opening it. He paused. ‘Miss Wilding, if there was any other way, believe me, I would not do this.’
Do what? Kill her? Was that supposed to make her feel better?
Her chest squeezed painfully.
Chapter Eleven
Back in her chamber, Mary picked up the little history book and turned to the maps. It clearly showed the tunnel to the old ruins. Hopefully it was in as good condition as the one running beside her chamber.
She put on her warmest gown, the last of the ones she had brought with her from Wiltshire, and donned her practical half-boots. She lay down on her bed to rest before it was time to leave, unable to stop herself from pondering Beresford’s last words.
The bleakness in his voice had touched a chord deep inside her, started an ache. A feeling she was missing something important. Sometimes she felt as if he was speaking in riddles.
She shook the feeling off. He was playing her again, like a fish on a line. Turning her on her head. But each time she heard those whispered words in her head and what he had said when he jumped down from the carriage: You little fool. For some reason she could not match them up. It was as if the words were spoken by two different people, for two very different reasons.
Or was it simply his seductive kisses turning her upside down, making her want to believe he was not the cause of her fall? Her long, deliberately forgotten dreams of a home, a husband, children playing at her feet, a real family, conspiring to make her yearn to believe in his innocence, to believe the seduction and not the facts.
Why did she want to believe? Had her foolish heart done something she had sworn she would never do again—could it be possible she had fallen for him?
Despite everything she knew.
If so, she really deserved all that had happened.
A numbness crept into her chest. The sort of emptiness she’d felt after she’d learned the truth about Allerdyce, only deeper. Colder. It was the only way not to feel the pain of knowing he’d sooner kill her than marry her.
And so she must leave. Without regrets. Without feeling anything. She got up and carried her candle to the clock on the mantel. Two in the morning. The household would be asleep by now. She wrapped her cloak around her and pulled up the hood. She had no valise. Nothing to carry except her reticule and that she had tied around her waist under her skirts for safekeeping.
Quietly she opened her chamber door.
It creaked.
She held still, waiting, wondering if the alarm would be raised. Nothing. She opened it a little more. And then she saw him. Beresford. Sitting on the bottom of the circular stairs leading up to the room above.
She froze, waiting for him to leap up and force her back into her room.
His chest rose and fell in deep even breaths. She raised her candle higher and saw that his eyes were closed. He was sleeping, his head resting against the rough stone wall, his large body sprawled across the steps, in a sleep of utter exhaustion.
In sleep he looked so much younger, as if all the hard lessons of life had been washed away and he was a boy again, with high hopes and sweet dreams. Her heart ached for that unsullied boy she had never met.
What was he doing here outside her door? Making sure she could not leave, obviously. Was that how he had arrived at her room so quickly the other night? No wonder he looked so weary if he had taken to sleeping here. One wrong sound and he would awaken and no doubt lock her up in her room.
She had to hurry, before he awoke and caught her. But somehow she