“It’s December.” Chase’s voice was as cold as his estate looked in the beam of the limousine’s headlights. Barren and frozen as far as the eye could see. “Nothing in this part of the country is welcoming at this time of year.”
But it was more than that. Or it was her imagination, Zara amended, which had always been as feverish as the rest of her was practical. The old stone manor rose like an apparition at the top of a long, winding drive through a thick and lonely winter forest of ghostly, stripped-bare trees and unfriendly pines coated with ice and the snowy remains of the last storm. Several inches of snow clung to the roof above the main part of the house, and each of its wings glittered with icicles at the gutters, though the sky above tonight was clear. Thick and almost too dark, but clear.
She tried to imagine the house festooned in spring blossoms or warmed by the summer sun, and failed. Miserably.
For the first time in her life, Zara questioned her addiction to Daphne du Maurier and Phyllis A. Whitney novels. They might have helped her through an awkward adolescence and paved the way toward what she hoped would become her life’s work, but they had also made her entirely too susceptible to the dark possibilities lurking in a scary old mansion, a bridegroom she scarcely knew and whatever rattled around in the gloomy shadows of places like this.
“Are you sure you don’t have any madwomen locked away in the attic?” she asked, appalled when her voice sounded more shaken than wry.
“Making me a convenient bigamist and you therefore free of this mess we’re both stuck in?” he replied, smooth and deadly, and shocking Zara. She wouldn’t have pegged him as a reader of Jane Eyre. Or a reader at all, come to that, when he could be off brooding beautifully somewhere instead. “I’m afraid not. My apologies.”
Chase did not sound remotely sorry. Nor did he sound drunk, which Zara couldn’t quite understand. She’d expected sloppiness when he’d continued to drink from that whiskey bottle throughout the drive, had braced herself for his unconsciousness and his snores. Instead, he simply seemed on edge.
More on edge, that was.
Maybe the place—and the man—was more welcoming in the daylight, Zara thought as diplomatically as possible as the car pulled up to the looming front entrance. Then again, it hardly mattered. She wasn’t here to settle in and make a happy home for herself. She was here because Grams had wanted her to try. She was here because this proved, once and for all, that she was the good daughter. Surely this finally settled the matter. Surely her father would finally have to recognize—
“Come,” her brand-new husband said from much too close beside her, his hand at her side and that disconcerting gaze burning into her as surely as that small contact did, and when she jerked her head around to stare back at him it was even worse. All that irrational, unmanageable fire. “I’d like to get out of these clothes, if you don’t mind. And put this lamentable farce behind me as quickly as possible.”
Zara couldn’t keep herself from imagining beautiful Chase Whitaker without his clothes any more than she could stop herself from breathing her next breath. All that long, lean, smooth muscle. All that ruthlessly contained power—
Get a hold of yourself! she yelped inwardly.
And then she pretended she didn’t see the way his eyes gleamed, like he could read her dirty mind.
Chase ushered her into the grand front hall of the sprawling stone mansion, adorned with art and tapestries and moldings so intricate they almost looked like some kind of architectural frosting, with what felt like more irritation than courtesy. He introduced her to his waiting housekeeper, Mrs. Calloway, without adjusting his stride and then marched Zara up the great stair to the second floor. Zara had the jumbled impression of graceful statues and priceless art, beautifully appointed rooms and long, gleaming hallways, all in a hectic blur as they moved swiftly past.
He didn’t speak. And Zara found she couldn’t. Not only was the house lifted from the pages of the books she studied, but now that she was this close to getting out of her horribly uncomfortable dress at last and, God willing, sinking into a very deep, very hot, restorative bath for about an hour or five, every single step that kept her from it was like sheer torture.
That and the fact that Chase was more than a little forbidding himself. It was that set way he held himself. Contained and furious, even as he prowled along beside her. It seemed particularly obvious in a place like this, all shadows and absence, empty rooms and echoing footsteps.
You’re becoming hysterical.
When she felt like herself again, she was sure she’d stop thinking like this. She was sure. And then she’d fish her cell phone out of the bag she fervently hoped was in that limo and she would either listen to the host of apologetic messages Ariella should have left for her today, or, in their far more likely absence, call Ariella until her sister answered and explained this great big mess she’d made.
And then maybe all of this would feel a little bit less Gothic.
Particularly if she got out of this damned dress before it crippled her forever.
“Here,” Chase grunted, pushing open a door.
Zara blinked. Her head spun and her heart began to race and her feet suddenly felt rooted to the floor. “Is this…?”
“Your rooms.” He smirked. “Unless you planned to make this a more traditional marriage? I could no doubt be persuaded. I’ve certainly had enough whiskey to imagine anything is a good idea. My rooms are at the other end of this hall.”
Zara thought she’d rather die than persuade him to do anything of the kind. Or anyone like him who would, she had no doubt, need nothing in the way of persuasion if she was lanky, lovely, effortlessly appealing Ariella.
Not that you want this man either way, she reminded herself. Pointedly. She’d always been allergic to his type: basically, male versions of her sister. Younger versions of her father. Entitled and arrogant and no, thank you.
Despite that thing in her that felt like heat, only far more dangerous.
“Whiskey wears off,” she said crisply. “And more to the point, I haven’t had any.” She brushed past him, determined to sleep in whatever the hell room this was, even if it was a cell and her only option was the floor. “This is perfect, thank you.”
“Zara.” She didn’t want to stop walking, but she did, as if he could command her that easily. You’re tired, she assured herself. That’s all. “I’ll be back later,” he said, his voice dark and, yes, foreboding.
“For what? Persuasion? There won’t be any. No matter when you come back.”
He let out a noise that might have been a laugh, and the madness was that she felt it skim down the length of her spine like a long, lush sweep of his fingers.
There was no reason that she should have felt him the way she did then, like an imprint of fire, large and looming over her from behind, like he could cast a shadow and drown her in it all at once. And there was no reason that her body should react to him the way it did, jolting wide-awake and hungry, just like that.
“I’ll be back,” he said again, a low thread of sound, dark and rough, and she felt that, too. Felt it, like his hands against her skin.
She nodded. Acquiesced. It was that or succumb to panic entirely.
Zara waited until he closed the door behind her, then let out a long breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. It came out in a kind of shudder, and she had to blink back all that overwhelming heat from her eyes.
Then she actually looked around her.
The bedroom suite was done in restrained blues accented by geometrical shapes etched in an elegant black,