Chapter Fourteen
There was something about the dark that made Della foolhardy. In the dead of night, she was thoughtless and hasty, unheeding of her own rationality. She knew this, and yet, she continued on.
Down the hallway, walking in the pitch black.
Sensing where she was only through muscle memory and the feel of her fingertips against the walls she hugged.
She’d been counting doorways since she’d left her own.
This was the right room, she knew it. The pads of her fingers drifted over the wood. They wrapped around the doorknob.
This was hide and seek all over again, but they weren’t children anymore, and never before had she needed to find him so desperately.
That desperation was as senseless as this entire endeavor.
She’d climbed out of bed on a whim, tossing a warm robe over her night rail to protect her fragile joints from the pain of cool air.
Only then, when she stopped in front of his door, did she realize what she was doing.
The silence around her was brittle, broken by the echoes of her soft footfalls. Trying to fight against a sudden wave of her own good sense, she closed her eyes. She stood so close to the door she thought she felt her eyelashes brush the wood.
Della blinked exactly three times to gather up the courage she’d somehow lost in the space between her own bedroom and his.
As she twisted the doorknob, she heard a creak, and she couldn’t be sure whether it was the door or her own wrist. At the sound of a click, she realized he’d left his chambers unlocked.
She hadn’t considered what she might do if he hadn’t.
There was a rush of air as the door opened.
Her room was cooler than his. Della attributed the new warmth she felt to Andrew himself.
Surely any place where he lay would naturally be as warm as the therapeutic baths Della loved to sink into every night.
For a moment, she stood frozen. Two steps inside the room, the door still wide open. She took a couple of breaths. She watched the rise and fall of his chest, just a hazy outline. He was a shadowed silhouette, but the briefest glimpse was enough to stop her in her tracks.
She must have moved eventually, shifted her weight to ease the terrible ache in her left hip. He stirred, made some noise that was halfway between a gasp and a groan, and then, “Della?” he said, and his voice was a dim whisper, as silhouetted as his form itself.
There was some clutching sensation behind Della’s ribs. A gnawing that left her almost bereft. She wondered if he recognized the shape of her in the fading firelight or if she was simply the first person he’d thought of as he startled awake.
“Della?” he repeated, because she’d been too busy trying to move her heart back into its rightful place in her chest to answer him. She rolled her eyes at her own behavior.
He was so, so close, and still entirely too far away.
“Yes,” she said, finally. “It’s me.” She didn’t know what to do. This mission was entirely improvised, and she hadn’t thought much past getting out of bed. She’d never even considered what she might do if she ever got this far.
Abruptly, she realized she still hadn’t closed the door.
Anyone could be roaming about the house, even at this hour.
Stranger things had happened. She peered out into the hallway, looking left and right to make sure no one had seen her.
As gently as her clumsy hands could, she eased the door closed.
“Come here,” Andrew murmured. She was still turned away from him, and she pressed her forehead to the door’s scratchy wood.
She needed a reminder that she was here, in reality.
That she remained grounded on this planet, and not truly in a world where Andrew spoke to her like this, so softly and so close in the dark.
She had to maintain her awareness of the circumstances.
She’d done something ill-advised and inappropriate.
Absolutely irresponsible. She should be deeply afraid of the consequences.
The aching sense of anticipation she felt at those two words were completely misguided.
This was not a moment she was going to remember as long as she lived.
This was not the single best night of her entire twenty-five years. It simply wasn’t.
Della turned, and she couldn’t make herself look at him as she took slow steps across the room.
She had to focus on her gait. She stared at her bare feet, willing them and the rest of her traitorous body to behave.
She reached the edge of the bed, and she had to look at him then.
There was nowhere else for her gaze to fall.
All the air in her lungs—all the air in the room, the world, maybe—was suspended in motion.
That indistinct silhouette was gone, replaced with Andrew’s true profile highlighted in sharp relief.
Moonlight danced through the gauzy curtains and hit the high points of his cheek bones.
It emphasized the way his bottom lip was just the slightest bit fuller than the top.
“Della?” He wouldn’t stop saying her name, and she didn’t want him to.
“What’s the matter?” He’d sat up, his torso leaning against the pillows and his shoulders resting against the headboard.
Once again, she became devastatingly distracted by the skin at the top of his chest his nightshirt didn’t hide.
She wanted to run her fingertips over the dip between his collarbones.
“Nothing,” she said, reflexively. Then she cursed her own strange behavior again. There was no reasonable explanation for sneaking into his room in the middle of the night if nothing was amiss. Unfortunately for Della, there was no reasonable explanation at all.
She hadn’t liked how they’d left things after their discussion in her mother’s rooms. Hated it, in fact, and instead of speaking to Andrew at some point during the day as most people would, she’d allowed herself to sit and stew and overthink every word and every gesture, until she’d ended up here.
In his bedchamber. Hovering uncomfortably at the edge of the bed and staring so intently at the fine hairs on his chest that she thought she might be able to count them.
Perhaps it was time to admit that indeed everything was not all right.
“I . . .” She twiddled her fingers, but that made her realize how much they were starting to curve in different directions, and she was no longer soothed by the motion. “I couldn’t sleep.”
In the fading light, she thought she saw concerned crinkles form at the edges of Andrew’s eyes. He turned down the counterpane next to him and fluffed an extra pillow.
“Come here,” he said again. Della closed her eyes against the force of longing that threatened to overwhelm her.
It was no use, she was swept away. She hadn’t allowed herself to be caught in the undertow, but her heart hadn’t asked for permission.
She inhaled one quick breath, and it smelled like him.
Like leather and pine and ink, more potent than any sensation she’d ever felt.
This wasn’t her intention, not really. She’d never imagined herself ending up here. She’d only wanted to talk. She’d only wanted some assurance that when he left Westfield Manor, it wouldn’t be forever.
Della slid into the bed as gracefully as she could with a body that was actively in decay. Suddenly, she could feel him. That warmth all around her was Andrew. He pulled the coverlet over her legs, his arm brushing over the fabric of her robe, and she shivered.
They didn’t speak for long moments, and already, Della felt better.
The racing beat of her heart slowed, and the constant panic in her mind quieted.
It was peaceful. Just being with him in a way she’d never been with anyone else.
Her soul was much more tranquil than her body, which was struggling to find comfort in this half sitting, half reclined position.
She scooted down the bed, resting her weight on her right shoulder, which began to throb.
So, she lay on her back. That was murder on her hips, and the inflamed joints between her ribs made her feel as if she were suffocating.
Della tossed and turned, shifting each limb in an attempt to calm the stabbing pains shooting through her bones.
With a huff, she gave up. She rolled onto her stomach, her head facing him.
That damned hip was agonizing, but she rearranged herself in a way that helped some, with her left knee bent.
She rested one hand in between her pillow and her face and let the other tangle in the sheets between them.
Andrew wordlessly mirrored her position, lying on his back and turning to face her.
Della stifled a gasp at the closeness. He was so warm and steady, and she was overcome with emotions she couldn’t define.
She felt his hand drift to the back of her calf, draping her leg over his.
That gasp slipped out into the air between them without her permission.
“Is that better?” he asked, his thumb rubbing slow circles over the back of her knee.
“Yes,” she whispered. It was such an indulgence, being with him like this. She couldn’t help but ask for more. She couldn’t help but reach for everything she’d ever wanted while she could.
So slowly, Della let her hand move up to his chest. She pressed into his skin, her fingertips dancing under his shirt.
Giving in to that devastating longing, she felt the dip between his collarbones and the smooth line of his throat.
Despite the warmth he radiated, his skin was cool to her fevered fingertips, and Della thought her mangled hands were never more useful for anything than touching him.
Her thumb brushed the edge of his jaw, and he sighed.
His chest rose and fell, and she felt him move, turning his face to melt into her touch.
She sank her fingers into those curls, and she didn’t even know if the sharp intake of breath she heard was her own.
His eyes had become drowsy, what was usually the brown of tree bark had turned an almost as inky black as the night itself.
“Why couldn’t you sleep?” he asked, low and slow and gentle.
Della thought she might have actually felt the imprint of his words on the delicate skin of her cheek.
She wanted to keep them there, as a talisman of this moment.
She wouldn’t need anything to remember this by, though.
As much as the seconds ticking by felt ephemeral, she knew the memory was beyond eternal.
“You’ll come back, won’t you?” Della finally asked. She spoke her fear out between them, and for a second, it felt heavy and dense, like she’d exhaled the black smoke of an overburning fire.
Under her hand, those lines appeared in his face again. On his forehead, around his eyes. She smoothed them out with her febrile fingertips.
“Of course,” he whispered, his lips drifting over her forehead so briefly she thought she might have imagined it. “That’s the best part of traveling. Coming home.”