When a Scot Ties the Knot (Castles Ever After #3)(24)

A frisson skipped down her vertebrae, practically unlacing her corset as it went. Just those few words, and she was unraveled. Everything about the night before returned to her. She recalled his breath on her neck. His mouth on her skin.

His hands everywhere.

The wanting hit her with such force, so hot and overwhelming, that it threatened to push her brain out through her ears.

This was terrible.

At last Maddie was on the cusp of a career, amassing accomplishments of her own. Imagine, the chance to illustrate a book.

Not just a book but an entire encyclopedia.

Four whole volumes.

Bliss.

And now this could ruin everything. Couldn’t he have waited one more week to come back from the not--truly--dead?

“I can explain it better, but I’ll need to show you.” She put her hand on the door latch behind her. “Come this way.”

Her heartbeat quickened as she opened the door.

She never allowed -people in her studio. Especially not male -people. It was her sanctuary of curiosities—-odd and secret and entirely her. Vulnerable.

Opening this door for Logan felt like throwing her heart on the floor and inviting him to tread on it. But she needed to explain Lord Varleigh somehow, and perhaps this time the sheer strangeness would work in her favor.

It just might cure him of the desire to be married to her at all.



Chapter Seven

Holy God.

Logan found himself in a veritable chamber of horrors. The rumors about these old castles were true.

He followed her up a narrow flight of stone stairs. Candles in sconces lit the passageway, but they weren’t bright enough to shed light into the corners. It was the corners he worried about. Probably crawling with bats or rats or . . . newts. Maybe dragons.

They emerged into a square room that must have been meant as a cell of some sort. It featured only a single narrow window.

He turned to have a look around, then started in alarm. A stuffed owl sat perched on a shelf, not a foot from his face.

The rest of the chamber wasn’t much better. The room was lined with shelves and tables displaying all manner of seashells, coral, bird nests, shed snakeskins, insects and butterflies pinned to boards, and—-worst of all—-strange mysteries sealed up in murky jars.

“It’s ice--cold up here,” he said.

“Yes. It needs to be for Rex and Fluffy.”

“Rex? And Fluffy?”

“The lobsters. I thought I mentioned them last night.”

“You have lobsters named Rex and Fluffy.”

“Just because I lack any normal pets like cats or dogs doesn’t mean the pets I have can’t have proper names.” She smiled. “I do enjoy the way you say ‘Fluffy.’ It sounds like ‘Floofy.’ They’re in here.”

She waved him toward a tank in one corner of the room. The water within it smelled of the sea.

“Are they for dinner?”

“No! They’re for observation. I’ve been commissioned to illustrate the full life cycle. The only problem is, I keep waiting on them to mate. According to the naturalist who hired me, the female—-that’s Fluffy—-first needs to molt. And then the male will impregnate her with his seed. The only question remaining is what, exactly, that will look like. I’ve drawn up several possibilities.”

She moved to a wide, cluttered worktable and rifled through a stack of papers. On each page was a sketch of lobsters coupling in a different position. Logan had never seen anything like it. She’d created a lobster pillow book.

He looked around at her desk—-the piles of paper, bottles of ink, rows of pencils at the ready. Here and there a drawing of a thrush’s nest or a locust’s wing.

Logan lifted a sketch of a damselfly and held it so that the light would shine through, illuminating every inked contour.

She’d been deft with sketching ever since she’d begun writing him. But he’d never seen her produce anything like this in all the margins of her scores of letters.

It was beautiful.

When he lowered the paper, he noticed that she’d been studying him just as closely as he’d been studying the page. Staring, with dark--eyed intensity. He was struck by a sudden feeling of self--consciousness.

“That’s only a preliminary sketch,” she said, biting her lip. “It needs work yet.”

“Looks damn near perfect to me,” he said. “Ready to fly off the page.”

“You truly think so?”

Her face was so serious and pale. As though she were worried about his opinion. Surely with work of this quality and friends like Lord Varleigh, she didn’t need a Highland soldier to tell her she had skill. Nevertheless, the vulnerability in her eyes made him want to try.

He wished he knew something clever to say about art. How to compliment the lines or the shading. But he didn’t, so he just said what came to mind.

“It’s lovely,” he said.

She exhaled, and color rushed back to her cheeks. A small smile curved her mouth.

Logan knew a small, quiet sense of triumph. After years of destruction on the battlefield, it felt good to build something up.

“How do you do it?” he asked, genuinely curious to know. “How do you draw a creature so faithfully?”

“Oddly enough, the trick isn’t to draw the creature itself. It’s to draw the space around it. The hollows and shadows and empty places. How does it bend the light? What does it displace? When I start to draw an animal—-or anything, really—-I look carefully and ask myself what’s missing.”