She liked the idea of that even less.
“Mr. Brewster?” she said, turning back.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
She smiled. “I do not suppose you could tell me where the library is, could you?”
Among the familiar scent of books and dust and paper, Teresa set to work to distract her racing mind, needing the rhythm of cleaning and organizing to dim the visions that the gardener had conjured in her head, and quieten the repeating story of Cyrus Deverell.
“That poor man,” she mumbled, fetching a ladder that she had seen in the corner of the seemingly disused library, buried under a dust sheet.
I wonder if he was glad when his father and grandfather died.
She shook off the morbid thought, carrying the ladder back to the tall bookcase she had been working on. The old tomes on the top shelf were in utter disarray, thick with dust, crammed together like crowded teeth. More than anything, she was curious to find out what they were.
Hitching up her skirts with one hand, she climbed the ladder, only to find that the top shelf was still slightly out of reach. Muttering under her breath, she strained upward, extending her fingertips as far as they would go, nudging the underside of a particularly large book to try and tease it free. But it was stuck, too tightly jammed between the books on either side.
If I can free this, the rest will be easier.
Steeling her nerve, she reached her other hand up, managing to pinch the book with her fingertips, pulling until her hands ached.
Slowly but surely, it began to wiggle loose… and then shot out, all at once. There was a momentary joy at fulfilling the task that swiftly transformed into panic as the momentum knocked her off balance, and with her hands above her, holding the precious book, she could not move fast enough to grab the ladder. It would mean dropping the tome, and some force within her would not allow her to do that.
She became aware of a feeling of falling, terror chilling her veins as she realized there was nothing she could do to stop it.
All of a sudden, the air beneath her became solid, breaking her fall.
How…?
There were arms around her, holding her, bringing her closer to the solidity of a muscular chest that rose and fell with the speed of someone who had been running.
“What were you thinking?” Cyrus rasped, looking down at her with his beautiful, dark blue eyes. As cold as the deepest ocean.
She blinked in shock. “I… How… I…”
“I heard noise,” he explained gruffly, carrying her away from the bookcases, toward the reading chairs she had recently unveiled from their dust sheets. “Iassumedit was the staff, instructed by you. You should not have been doing something like that by yourself.”
His voice carried an odd note of something Teresa could not decipher, a slight waver, as if her fall had unnerved him. Either that, or he was trying to suppress the worst of his temper.
“I wanted to improve the library,” she said quietly, wondering how long he meant to carry her for. Not that she minded; she had always daydreamed about what it would feel like to be carried this way.
“Yes, well you should have asked someone to help,” he scolded. “You are a duchess; you should not be doing something like this at all.”
She glared at his profile, the side that had no scars. “I had nothing to do, so I occupied myself. Why should a duchessnotdo that? Would you rather I was bored, losing my mind at the prospect of empty days?”
She wriggled in his arms, and he seemed to realize that he was still holding her. Rather unceremoniously, not far from the reading chairs, he put her down and stepped back, folding his arms behind him as if they could not be trusted.
“You should have found something more appropriate to do,” he said coolly.
But with a rush of fear still coursing through her, spurred on by the thought of what might have happened if he had not been there, she was not in a particularly gentle temper. The days of his avoidance, his absence, finally caught up to her, tilting her chin up in defiance, balling her hands into fists.
His past is a reason, but not an excuse, for his treatment of me,she told herself, burning up inside.
“You are right, I should,” she replied. “But what is ‘appropriate’ would be spending time with my husband, considering this is supposed to be our honeymoon. As you have been who knows where, leaving me to my own devices, I have had to fill my days however I can. And youdidsay I could do whatever I please from now on, so that is what I am doing, even if that means—heaven forbid—cleaninga library so that it is fit for purpose.”
He frowned at her, though his gaze had thawed ever so slightly. “What do you want from me?”
“I believe I asked you that once, and that went remarkably well,” she muttered.
