13. CHAPTER 13
S he had dreamed again.
Not her usual nightmare of being chased and bound, but a different one. Disjointed images she could not make sense of.
A high-society ball. Except everyone in it was from Guernsey.
She was exploring the corridors of a beautiful mansion, and she knew it had been her home, but everything lay abandoned, the furniture under holland covers.
She had made it to what she thought was her bedroom.
Dusty. As though it had been left abandoned for decades, not seven years.
The bed curtains were stiff and fragile with age.
Nothing like what she had found here, where her room had been maintained with meticulous care.
And yet, walking through the abandoned mansion did not cause terror in her. It was like a homecoming. She recognized things. It awakened a strange sort of melancholy.
Vivienne rose slowly. She had slept well, despite being in a strange place. Although she supposed it was not so strange after all, if this had once been her home. Maybe that was what her mind was trying to tell her with the weird dreams. Maybe her body remembered.
She should keep a diary. Start writing down her dreams, her impressions, the tastes, smells, every fragment of memory, and try to piece together the woman she had been.
She pulled on her dressing gown and had just tied the sash when someone knocked on her door.
She bid entrance without thinking, her mind still tangled in the dream .
The connecting door opened, and Dalton stood on the threshold.
Not the impeccable duke. Not the controlled, intimidating aristocrat she had been learning to navigate. He wore trousers and a half-buttoned shirt, untucked, his feet bare, his hair disordered. As though he had risen from bed and quickly thrown on whatever came to hand.
She stared at the wedge of exposed chest at the open collar. She could not help it. No man had any business looking so good.
"Good morning." His voice was rough from sleep. "Forgive me for intruding. I wanted to ask how you slept."
"Very well, thank you." A lie, but she was not about to describe her dreams to this man. "And you?"
The corner of his mouth twisted. Not quite a smile. "Well enough."
Silence. She searched for something to say, but his presence — barefoot, shirt undone — made him seem younger, less guarded, and scattered her thoughts.
"I thought it was the maid knocking," she said, because the quiet had become unbearable.
"She will be here presently, I'm sure. Have you rung for her? If you need anything, you only have to say so. All the servants in the house have the order to obey your every command."
"Thank you. No, I haven't rung for the maid. It hadn't even occurred to me, to be honest. I'm not used to having servants."
"I see." But he frowned as if he did not see at all. Could not comprehend not having people at his beck and call. Then pointed to a cord by the bed.
"Well, you only have to pull on that cord and someone will come to you."
She nodded. "Thank you, I know."
Why was it so difficult to talk to him now?
They had conversed more easily on the previous two days.
Maybe it was the intimate setting, their state of undress.
In some ways he was so familiar, and yet he was also a stranger.
She did not know what she should talk to him about. How to say the words he wanted to hear.
She supposed he felt the same, for he treated her with both familiarity and awkwardness. Knocking on her door half dressed had been an act of familiarity, and yet the conversation that followed was stilted. As if her hesitation reminded him that things had changed.
Her eyes kept dropping to that sliver of chest uncovered by the V of the half-undone shirt. Had he noticed her looking?
He stepped back, and the tension eased enough for her to breathe.
"Shall I come back in half an hour?" he said. "I can escort you to the breakfast room, and then we'll do the tour I promised."
"Yes. Thank you."
He closed the door. She stood a moment, her hand at her throat, her pulse still going too fast.
The tour took over an hour and took her through rooms with ornate ceilings and even more ornate walls. Galleries hung with stern ancestors in gilt frames. Drawing rooms carpeted in silk from distant lands, with chairs too beautiful to sit upon. Had she really been the mistress of all this?
Dalton walked at her side, unhurried, his voice deep and steady as he guided her from chamber to chamber, narrating the history of the place.
"They added this wing in my grandfather's time," he said, his hand at the small of her back as they turned a corner. Brief contact, barely a touch, but she felt it through her stays. "The older stones lie to the west. You can tell by the windows — narrower, meant for defense rather than light."
She tried to imagine it. Waking each morning to this, knowing which stair curved where, which corridor led home. It should have felt familiar. It did not. She was a guest in a life that ought to have been her own.
He offered small pieces of history as they walked — a fire in the east wing, a restoration after a storm, an eccentric great-uncle who had planted palms against all advice and coaxed them to thrive. Servants bowed as they passed. They looked at her with warmth. Relief. Something close to wonder.
As though she had returned from the grave.
Which, she supposed, she had.
By the time they descended toward the kitchens, the air had changed. It was warmer. Richer. Bread and herbs. Copper pans on the wall. A kitchen maid bobbed a curtsy so deep Vivienne feared she might not come back up .
Then she saw the door.
Thick oak, darkened by centuries, iron-banded, its hinges black with age. It did not belong here, not among the flour-dusted worktables and the cheerful clatter of pots.
Vivienne slowed.
Something stirred at the edge of her mind. Not a thought. A sensation. Cold stone under her bare feet. Darkness pressing close. The echo of steps down corridors that went on and on.
Her pulse tripped.
And beneath the prickle of unease, something else she could never account for. A quickening. One that was not caused by fear alone.
She moved toward the door before she knew she meant to.
"Where does that lead?"
Dalton answered too fast. "The larder and wine cellar. Old service passages. They run underneath half the castle." A wave of his hand, studied in its carelessness. "Drafty places, used only by the servants. Nothing you need concern yourself with."
She turned to him, but before she could press him further, he was already leading her away, his voice resuming its measured cadence. "Come. I want to show you the south terrace. The view at sunset is unmatched in the county."
She allowed him to lead her.
What else could she do?
Yet as they reached the far end of the kitchens, Vivienne glanced back.
The door called to her, signaling something. She just did not know what.
Yet she knew with a certainty that made her skin prickle that Dalton might not have lied. But he had not told her the entire truth either.
Something lurked beyond that threshold. Secrets he did not want her to know. Perhaps memories he did not wish her to remember.
Very well.
She would discover it on her own.