Charon's Crossing

The door swung open on darkness. She must have drawn the velvet drapes that covered the windows. Had she thought to protect herself from the night? he wondered with a twisting smile.

Darkness meant nothing to him. Still, he went to the windows, drew back the draperies, knowing in his heart that he was prolonging the moment until he would go to her.

At last, he turned around.

The cobwebs that had clung to the corners were gone, swept away by an old woman who had spent half her time cleaning the room and half of it making the sign of the cross.

Matthew had found it amusing, though he had not done anything to frighten her. The house's reputation, and the icy draft that swept down the stairs from the attic, had done that all by themselves.

But there was nothing frightening in this room.

There was only Catherine, asleep in the big, four-poster bed.

She lay on her back, with a pale pink blanket drawn to her chin. One hand lay palm up over the blanket's binding. The other was flung above her head, the fingers slender and lightly tanned against the white pillowcase.

Her guilt should have made her repulsive but it didn't. Her beauty still made his throat constrict.

He moved towards her slowly, his gaze sweeping over her. He felt a sudden painful hunger for the feel of her in his arms.

He hated himself for it but he understood. Hell, he thought with grim humor, what man wouldn't be stirred by the sight of a beautiful woman after he'd been locked up alone for so long?

He paused beside the bed and looked at her. His memory had played tricks on him, he could see that now. Catherine was even lovelier than he'd remembered. Her hair was more lustrous, her cheekbones more finely sculpted. And her mouth, that beautiful, lying mouth. He hid told her once that her lips were like the petals of the pink roses that grew at Charon's Crossing and that within them lay the nectar of the gods.

Now he knew that to compare her lips to rose petals was to be overly generous to the flower, for surely none had ever been so perfect.

His gaze drifted slowly downward. What of the rest of her? His body stirred. Was her form more, or less, than he remembered?

A rush of blood sizzled through his veins and pooled in his groin.

"Are you some untried stripling? Think with your brain, man," he murmured through his teeth, "not with your rod."

But how could he not look at her? After all this time, he had to see her. Just this once. What harm could there be in it?

He bent towards her, took hold of the blanket's edge. Catherine stirred in her sleep and he froze, not wanting to awaken her until he was ready. She sighed, turned her face a little on the pillow, and then her breathing steadied.

Matthew's did, too. Slowly, carefully, he drew down the blanket.

One quick look, that was all. Just one...

His heart stood still.

Sweet Mother of God, what was she wearing?

It surely was not a nightgown.

He had never quite understood the need of women to undress at night only to dress themselves again, to put on garments that covered them from throat to toe.

Catherine had slept in such a gown. Not just in the dream. No, he'd seen her dressed for bed once; she had passed before the lit lamp in her bedroom window as he made his way along the path that led to the house. She had paused in the window, almost as if she'd known he was there. Her nightgown, white and full with long, frilled sleeves and a high neck, had revealed nothing except the faintest outline of her body, silhouetted by the oil lamp.

Not all women slept that way, of course. He was thirty-three years old now; he had been at sea more than half his life and he was not exactly of the face and build that frightened women off. He had tumbled his fair share—well, more than his fair share, perhaps—of ladies into their beds.

But he had never seen one dressed in anything even halfway resembling this.

He swallowed hard, trying to ease the tightness in his throat. The tightness in his groin was another matter.

What in hell was she wearing?

It seemed to be two bits of embroidered white cotton. One was a narrow-strapped, sleeveless cotton shirt. The other was—well, he didn't know what it was. Not underpants, surely. No one, not even a Liverpool strumpet, would call that tiny swathe of white cotton an undergarment.