Her leg muscles tensed of their own accord, ready for movement, but not for flight. She was about to step across the flag stones, into the arms of… what? Some ancient, mouldering spectre? She felt fear then, fear because of her own reckless, inexplicable yearning. Terror that she was seeing things.
The breeze freshened, the moonlight dimmed and, suddenly, it was dark. Emily glanced up, saw the thick cloud banked across the moon, and looked back to the dimly visible outline of the guard post. Nothing stirred, there was no sound, no figure. It… he had gone. She crept backwards, her hands tight on the rail, treading silently until she reached the door, as though a figment of her imagination could hear her steps, her pounding heart.
It was a figment, an illusion. It had to be. The studs in the oak-planked door bit into her shoulders, her groping hand found the rusty latch and she clung to it, a link to reality, as she strove for rational thought. She had been tired, unsettled in a strange room, her imagination stirred by the ghostly tale, that was all it was. The moonlight made strange, unearthly shadows and her mind had conjured up the cloaked man.
But why had she not been afraid of him? And why had she felt such strong attraction that even now her pulse still raced and her heart yearned?
Because I was already aroused, she told herself. I was thinking about Blake, wanting Blake, and that, with the foolish story, made a ghost out of my desire.
She was an adult, rational woman. She did not believe in phantoms and she would get to the bottom of this, now. If she scuttled back to her room and buried her head under the blankets she was nothing but a foolish chit and she would always wonder if there really had been some rational explanation. Ignoring the butterflies in her stomach Emily squared her shoulders, walked back across the wooden bridge and looked around. The cloud was shredded across the moon now, but there was enough light to see that the whole broad expanse of flagstones were
quite empty of anything living. There was not even a bat flitting above her head.
Then the shadows by the sentry box shifted, reformed, became a man, and the moon came out fully as he lifted a hand to his hat and she saw his face clear in the cold light. His very familiar face, as bone white and stark as death in the chill moonlight.
Blake. The blood seemed to drain from her head. ‘No!’ Emily threw up a hand in denial as he moved towards her. She tried to turn and run back to the door, but her legs had lost all their strength and she felt herself falling as his hands reached out. The world spun dizzily, her eyes lost their focus and then there was nothing.
Chapter Two
Blake stepped back sharply. His back met the solid stone of the sentry box as he drew a shuddering breath down to the pit of his stomach and told himself not to be a fool. It was a woman, not a ghost. He did not believe in ghosts. But the shock of seeing the white figure in the fluttering robes appear so suddenly, so silently, had jolted him. Then the moon came out again and he saw her more clearly, a slender figure, her face obscured by her drifting hair.
She was as human as he was, he realised, and came forward, raised his hand to his hat, opened his mouth to speak, to apologise for startling her as she had startled him. It was an error - the horror in her recoiling body was as vivid as if she had screamed. He reached out his hands to her, then she crumpled and fell against the rail.
Blake shook himself out of his paralysis, ran and caught her before she hit the ground. It wrenched the half-healed wound in his shoulder as he held her close, expecting her to struggle and hit out at him. But she lay limp in his arms, slender and still. Her heart pattered urgently under his palm as he laid it on her breast. She was in a dead faint.
‘Hell,’ Blake muttered. He’d had a long, tiring day writing reports, stuck in the cabin of the ship that had brought him from Gibraltar. When he delivered messages to the Governor an hour ago the suggestion from the Governor’s sister that he sleep here at the castle for the night and not return to his cramped cabin on the Loyal George had been a welcome diversion. Now he had to deal with an unconscious woman who might wake at any moment and scream the place down.
The servant who had lit his way here and unlocked the outer doors had gone. The house was deadly quiet, there were no lights in the windows, not even down at ground level. No help there from a competent housekeeper, a woman to hand his burden over to.
‘They’ll both be abed, I imagine,’ Miss Morton had said as she poured more tea for him whilst he made a hasty supper. ‘And frankly, Cook is very elderly and the lad is simple-minded. But Peter will guide you up. Then climb one of the flights of steps in the thickness of the wall and you’ll come out at the top. Go over either of the little bridges to the house and there’s a bed made up in one of the chambers, just cast around until you find it. No, no, it is no trouble at all, Lord Greystoke – I imagine you’ll be glad to be on dry land for a change.’ She beamed at him. ‘I would give you a room here if we were not redecorating the guest suites. Dear Emily would want me to find you a comfortable bed.’
Of course, she was a friend of Emily’s: he recalled his wife regretting that Janey Morton could not come to the wedding. And indeed, Miss Morton had seemed delighted to accommodate him.
At this moment he felt considerably less than grateful for her hospitality. She might have warned him there was another guest. Damn it, he could have walked into this woman’s bedchamber – and then there would have been hell to pay!
Blake stooped to juggle the latch open with his elbow. It brought his burden unsettlingly close to his face and he caught a hint of her scent. Spicy, warm, unique. Very familiar. He should know it, he had commissioned its creation from one of the best perfumiers in Bond Street as a wedding gift. Emily? Here? He almost dropped her.
The outer door swung open as he shoved it with his shoulder. In the passage ahead he saw another standing ajar. ‘Emily!’ She stirred and muttered then moved in his arms and went limp again. The stab of fear surprised him. He was used to dealing with wounds, and the rational part of his brain told him that she was not hurt, that she had merely fainted with shock. It was unlikely that a healthy young woman would come to any lasting harm from that, and yet his gut tightened. It took a lot to make Blake Heyward worry, far more to make him fearful, and he did not understand what he was feeling now.
When he laid Emily on the bed she was still in a deep swoon. Blake struck a flame and lit the candle. There was no mistaking the profile on the pillow: this was definitely his wife, he was not hallucinating. He put the back of his hand against her cheek and stroked the softness of her skin. ‘Emily.’
No wonder Janey Morton had been so smug about sending him up here – this was probably the only made-up bed on this floor and she knew he would find it. She should have warned him, he thought with sudden protective anger. He must have terrified Emily.
But why was his wife here on the Isles of Scilly, flitting about the castle battlements in her nightgown? He had left her in Hampshire on their wedding day, blinking back the tears as she conjured up a brave smile that had caught him in the gut with guilt.
She was cold, he realised. Concerned now that she did not stir, he touched her scalp with gentle fingers. There was no swelling, no sinister shifting of bone under the pressure, no hint that she had struck her head. His hands, Blake realised with a jolt, were shaking. This was not some comrade he was checking over for wounds, this was his wife.
If he did not attempt to rouse her she would come out of her swoon soon and drift naturally into sleep without fully regaining consciousness. That would be best, he told himself, forcing back the selfish need to wake her, to see those clear blue eyes widen in surprise and, he hoped, desire.
But unconscious or not, he was going to hold her in his arms, sleep with her in this bed tonight. He moved with the soft-footed care of a man trained to stalk the enemy as he unfastened his cloak, unbuckled his sword, sat down on the end of the bed to tug off his boots, then dropped the remainder of his uniform on the chair. He eased into the bed beside her and pulled the covers over the two of them, turned onto his side and settled the slim, enticing body against him.
Lord, but he wanted her. During the weeks of their courtship it had been hard to hold back from kissing her with the full force of the passion she aroused in him, but he had not wanted to frighten her. There was time to get to know each other once they were married, for her to learn to trust him, for him to learn how to seduce his own wife into all the pleasures of the bedchamber.
Theirs might not have been a love match, and Emily had been admirably frank about acknowledging the basis for their alliance, but that did not rule out fondness and desire.
The vague ache in his groin became stronger, joined with the throb in his shoulder, as if his body was trying to keep him awake. But years in the army had left him able to sleep in the saddle, up a tree or on his feet, if he had to, and to wake at the snap of a twig. As he felt himself drift he buried his face in the spill of soft hair on the pillow and hoped his wife had missed him.
Blake was curled protectively around her. Emily smiled sleepily and arched her back, pressing her buttocks into the very prominent indication that her husband knew she was there. What a wonderful dream. She did not want to wake, not when her imagination was conjuring up such delicious, wicked things.