King Among the Dead - Lauren Gilley Page 0,16

he didn’t offer anything else, she didn’t press for more.

~*~

Beck left the house frequently in the evenings. Well after dinner, and after dark, in those sleepy hours before bed when Rose usually read and Kay usually shouted at a game show on TV. His footfalls would sound on the stairs, heavier than normal, and he would appear in the door of the comfy parlor or the library in his flared leather coat, and his chunky-soled lace-up boots. The outfit he’d worn the night Rose met him.

The sight of him like that always sent a frisson through her. Hot and cold chills, a quickening of her pulse that wasn’t fear.

“I’ll be back late,” he would say, and his expression fell short of even his smallest smiles – though his eyes sparked with an intensity that Rose half-expected to set the drapes alight.

“See ya,” Kay would call, flapping a hand his direction without tearing her eyes from the screen.

But Rose would say, “Be safe,” and he would give her a fast glimpse of teeth that still didn’t manage to be a smile. She never heard him get home, but he was always in the kitchen the next morning, dressed and hair shining clean, making magic with a pan and asking her to fetch the butter or milk or the sugar cannister.

One night, Rose was still up when he returned.

A bitter, driving rain pounded the windows, loud enough to make her feel restless and too awake. Kay went to bed, but Rose built up a fire in the library hearth and settled into what she’d come to think of as her chair with a fresh book. This was one from Beck’s suggestion list: Jane Eyre.

She’d looked it up on her phone, and found a dizzying array of opinion-sharing, critiquing, and downright demonizing of the novel. It was an old book, written in a far different time, but from the first page, she loved Jane. She was Jane; right there in her shoes with her horrible family, and at the horrible boarding school.

And then came Rochester.

Rochester was rude, and cutting, a terrible conversationalist – but he didn’t frighten her. No, far from it.

So entranced in the story, she didn’t realize that hours had passed. Didn’t realize that she was up far later than normal until she heard footsteps in the hall.

She lifted her head, nearly startled to find that she was still in her chair, the fire all but died down, rain still beating the window, and not out on the heath with a fleeing, heartbroken Jane. She held her breath, listening as the steps came closer.

She knew the sound of Kay’s gait by now, and this was definitely not hers.

A moment later, a black wraith filled the doorway.

Rose didn’t startle. All the ugly, frightening things that had happened to her had never begun with tall, slender shadows filling doorways.

The figure stepped into the room, rain drops pattering off its long coat onto the carpet, and into the puddle of light cast by her single lamp and the dying coals of the fire. The warm glow slid up a slender, black-clad torso, and carved Beck’s familiar features in sharp relief.

His eyes, though, the gleam in them – that was less familiar. As was the tight set of his mouth. The way his wet hair clung to his face and throat.

Rochester, she thought.

But, no, worse, and more beautiful. Better, too.

The cold of the outdoors poured off of him, and something else, an intangible air that left goosebumps breaking out beneath her clothes.

“Hello, Rose.” His voice was perfectly polite, as always. “You’re up late.”

“I got caught up in my book and didn’t realize it had been so long.” Her pulse fluttered, throbbing in wrists and temples, leaving her a touch lightheaded.

He nodded. “Always a danger with a good book. What are you reading?”

His eyes. She swallowed. “Jane Eyre.”

“Ah. One of my recommendations.”

“Yes, sir.”

One corner of his mouth lifted, the light gleaming on his teeth, and it wasn’t a smile at all, not close. Voice still calm: “What did I say about ‘sir’?”

“Oh. Sorry.”

He turned and crossed the room, wet boots squeaking faintly. A sideboard sat along one wall, and she listened to the clink of glass-on-glass.

Rose got up to feed the fire, and resettled in her chair.

Beck returned a moment later, loosely holding a tumbler of amber liquid. He set it down on the table beside his chair, shucked off his jacket, tossed it on the rug, and sat.

Rose had never been to a zoo, but