Page 579 of Flirting with Darkness

“You are awake.” The full lips twitched in a wry smile. “I had begun to worry.”

He spoke perfect English.

He even spoke it with a flawless English accent.

He went on, however, in Russian, which also sounded scholarly, even for a nobleman.

“How are you feeling, my son?” he asked in his native tongue.

Did he know Ghost spoke Russian?

Or was this a test?

Ghost found himself answering in the same language before he’d thought about whether he should. Perhaps that was pride, too.

Perhaps he’d simply hit his head too hard.

“How do I feel?” He exhaled, combing his fingers through his black hair. “Like I’d been dragged behind the carriage all the way from the train station… rather than being transported within it…” he grumbled.

The old man chuckled in a deep voice.

“I am heartened to see you conscious, Lazarus,” he said, quirking one eyebrow.

Ghost couldn’t help but notice the look in his eyes remained empty.

Well, perhaps not empty.

Hard, flat, calculating. Wary.

Perhaps even cold.

It was a look of detached assessment, that of a hunter eyeing another animal, wondering if it might be prey or a different type of predator.

“You must eat,” his father said next. “I have already rung the servants.”

Ghost frowned.

He hadn’t seen his father move.

Rather than ask, he looked around the fire and sunlit space. He was back in the room where he’d first found himself here, along with his luggage and the dressing gown and slippers and the bear rugs and bowl of fruit.

“I will have them draw you a bath after,” his father added. “Anything you need, you have only to ask. They will remain here to help you dress for the party tonight.”

At that, Ghost’s eyes turned sharply back to his father’s face.

“Tonight? Is that not Sunday?”

That faint, wry smile returned.

“ItisSunday, Lazarus.”

Ghost frowned for real. His mouth hardened as he stared at the man with the dark blue eyes. He dropped any pretense of friendliness he might have assumed up to that moment, staring at the old man with open suspicion.

But his father had already risen to his feet.

He stood over Ghost on the bed, and now he held Ghost’s ivory-tipped cane in both of his hands. Ghost stiffened, watching his father turn it over with deft fingers.

Then, with a practiced surety, he gripped the ivory handle in one hand, and unsheathed the sword inside with a metallic ring.

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