A Very Highland Holiday - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,35
Why are you not running out of here, screaming for help at the top of your lungs?”
She seemed to consider his question carefully, letting go of one side of the towel as she tapped her chin in a contemplative posture. The towel slipped down her chest a little, and John felt his composure slip right along with it.
“For one, I’m not dressed. And for another, Bess warned me I’d spend the night with a ghost. I suppose it was my erroneous assumption that apparition would be female.”
He allowed her to keep the basin between them, even though he could have passed right through it and not even disturbed the water.
Not yet.
“I do apologize if I frightened you, miss,” he felt compelled to say. “Let me assure you I am a mostly harmless ghost.”
“That’s a relief to hear. Though I’ll admit I was more startled than frightened…almost.”
His scowl suddenly felt more like a pout, which irked him in the extreme. “I’ll have you know, the mention of my very name has struck terror in the hearts of entire regiments. And you expect me to believe you are so bold as to be fearless? I am a bloody apparition after all. You’re not even having a mild crisis of nerves?”
“I’m sure you were very terrifying, sir,” she obligingly rushed to soothe his ego, which helped not at all. “But I’ll admit I’m rather too elated to be scared.”
“Elated?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was the woman mad?
She nodded, her lips breaking into a broad smile, her slim shoulder lifting in an attractive and apologetic shrug. “I’ve always believed in ghosts, and I’ve never been lucky enough to meet one. I have so many questions. I could cheerfully murder myself for leaving my notebook back at the carriage.” She said this as a muttered afterthought before looking up at him with a winsome smile. “Do you mind, awfully, turning around so I can dress?”
“I don’t see the point,” he challenged, crossing his arms over his chest and lifting a suggestive brow. “You act as though I haven’t been here the entire time…watching you.”
“How dare you?” she gasped in outrage, her notice flying to the bathtub as if it’d just dawned on her that he could have been present without her knowledge. Her color heightened as a comely blush crept up her chest and neck from below the towel.
He was coming to hate that bloody towel.
John bristled, but only because guilt pricked at him. “I dare because I’m dead and have been imprisoned in this godforsaken structure since before your grandparents were born, no doubt. What have I to do but observe the goings-on here? Most people are none the wiser.”
Her eyes widened as she, no doubt, imagined what he’d borne witness to in so long a time. “That isn’t excuse for your ghastly behavior! You are—were—a Lieutenant Colonel?” She raked her eyes over his form, a few more colors of his crimson regimentals lit by the fire at her back. “This is conduct unbecoming an officer, I say.”
“Take it up with my superiors, then,” he snorted, leaning in her direction with eyes narrowed until he willed himself to disappear.
“Wait!” Her panicked quicksilver gaze scanned the emptiness, hopping right over him. “Come back,” she pleaded. “I’m sorry. I won’t scold you. I promise. I was just—”
He reappeared paces closer to her, standing on her side of the basin now.
She made a little squeak as he did, hopping back as close to the fire as she could get.
An inconvenient conscience needled him again. He was behaving badly, but a century of isolation tended to strip a man of his manners. “Tell me. Would you have behaved differently were our places reversed? Would you have looked away? Maintained my modesty, my privacy?”
Her gaze traveled down the length of him, and a very masculine sense of victory burned through his veins when he spied the glimmer of appreciation as it dashed across her features. An acute awareness of their proximity. Of his proportions in contrast to hers.
She was a woman.
He was a man.
They were alone in a room together with very little clothing between them.
And if he were naked, the warmth in her gaze told him she would drink in the sight of his body.
Just as he had.
“I cannot say what I would do in your case,” she admitted, her voice lower, huskier. “But if you asked nicely, I would turn around.”
He could refuse. What would she do then? But even as the thought flickered