Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
“Coming, my love,” I called in return, not hesitating to make my way across the moor to my husband, my lord, my love.
Augustus.
My eyes snapped open to see only dark, and I felt the slumbering heat of Ian’s body spooning the back of mine.
And I lay there, at first feeling good and right, perfectly both, the like I’d never had in my life. This faded to feeling funny, strange, right and wrong, knowing and bewildered, scared and safe.
I remembered. I remembered the dream.
No.
I remembered everything.
I remembered the memory.
I remembered that day on the moors. I remembered the morning orgasm. I knew that night I’d have another…and another.
And I knew I hadn’t been dreaming.
Nor had I been remembering.
I’d been possessed.
No. That wasn’t right either.
It was me doing the possessing.
I had been Lady Adelaide.
And she had been me.
Ian and I had returned earlier and gone right to the Conservatory for one last drink.
Lady Jane had stopped in to say goodnight, the first time I’d seen her in that space. Portia chose to text from wherever she was in the house to do the same. We saw nothing of Richard or Daniel.
I again started feeling off, unable to put my finger on how, but I put it down to all that had gone before, and a belated reaction to it now that I had a chance to process it after an uneventful and pleasant day.
I told Ian how I felt, though, and he decreed it was bed for me. He came up with me, and because he wasn’t sleepy, told me he was going to do some work.
I got ready for bed and went to him in his sitting room for a goodnight kiss that became somewhat of a make-out session before he scooted me to the dais and kissed my cheek after he tucked the covers around me.
Now he was here, and I was here, but I’d just been there.
Two hundred years earlier, on the moors with my husband, her husband, thinking her thoughts, feeling her feelings.
And I lay there in the dark, cradled in Ian’s body, for the first time since I got to Duncroft House, genuinely and completely terrified out of my brain.
Twenty-Seven
THE BRANDY ROOM
It was not lost on me, when I slipped into the Brandy Room early the next morning, that Ian’s chosen places were the most expansive in the house, outside the ballroom, gallery and foyer.
The Brandy Room dominated the end of the southeastern wing. Two turrets and the high ceilings had been used to their utmost in storing books and displaying artwork, notions and ornaments.
Including the handsome balustrade, which protected the balcony that wrapped around the room and gave access to the second level of bookshelves, and the vaulted ceilings, it held the studious grandeur of Professor Higgins’s library, except it was better, because it was the real thing.
The varying seating areas and workspaces covering the floor were all fashioned to coax you to want to stay.
It smelled of leather and pipe smoke, the mustiness of old paper and the moss of Ian.
And I had no way of knowing where to begin.
There wasn’t an obvious lockbox I’d need Ian’s thumbprint to open.
And there had to be thousands of books. Everything from leatherbound volumes with gold leaf to contemporary novels by Grisham and Gaiman and Hornby.
I looked anyway, and I tried not to be frantic in doing it.
I’d woken very early, sliding carefully out of Ian’s slumbering embrace, and slunk into his bathroom, which beyond it, did indeed have a walk-in closet, where now, I had a small section. But it was nearly full of Ian’s clothes, something that made packing to go to the country very easy for him. Just load up buckets of work, and off he went.
It also laid testimony to the fact Ian was a clothes whore.
I brushed my teeth, washed my face, moisturized and swept on some powder, a hint of blush and some mascara (because, odds were, I’d eventually see him, and although he’d seen me bare-faced, when one had the power to do so, one must do what one could).
I’d then dressed and crept past his somnolent body, resisting the intense urge to round the bed and watch him sleep. His back was to me. I’d never seen him asleep. I was dying to witness it.
But it had to wait for another day.
I couldn’t waste this opportunity.
And I needed to have it, without him, or anyone else in the house, muddying the works.
I needed coffee, and maybe one of Ian’s cigarettes to calm my nerves after my dream-not-dream of the night before.
And I needed more.
I was meticulous in searching, but the letters weren’t to be found, not in the many drawers in the many tables and desks scattered around.
So now, I was searching for Aunt Louisa’s diaries.
Surely, she’d have long passages about Augustus and Adelaide, and maybe even extracts, or whole recountings of their letters to each other.