Page 22 of Love At First Fright
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Ellis’s rumbling voice came from beside her, and Rosemary realised that she’d fallen so deeply into her sexy little daydream that she hadn’t heard him approaching.
“What?” she babbled. Could he see what she’d just been thinking? Was it written in her flaring pupils and the flush in her cheeks?
“I said, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He stepped closer. The familiar scent of cedar and soap filled her senses. Shit, when had Ellis’s smell become familiar to her?
“Oh yeah, two of them actually. Out in the hall.” She winked, hoping that humour would conceal the swarm of butterflies in her belly. Ellis let out a dry chuckle.
“Come on, then. Mrs. Fairfax is going to show us the creepy tower.”
Rosemary nodded, and followed him out of the alcove. They soon caught up with the group, and as they moved further into the bowels of the manor, Rosemary grew more excited.
She could so easily envision her characters walking through these rooms, sitting at their desks by candlelight. She could picture the ghouls and demons she’d created lurking in ice-cold corners, waiting to attack. It was perfect.
“And just up here is a room called the Belltower. It’s the highest bedroom in the house, and we believe it used to function as an amateur astronomer’s lab.”
“This will be dressed up as Alfred’s room,” Vincent called back to them, as they began making their way up a narrow winding staircase cut from stone.
There was only room for one person at a time up the flagstone steps and Ellis indicated that Rosemary should go on ahead of him. As she climbed, Rosemary noticed a set of thin stained glass windows letting in light. But these were unlike the ones in the main hall. Each pane joined together to show a gathering of fairies, dancing around red cap mushrooms in a forest glade.
“Who made these?” she asked Mrs. Fairfax, who was behind Ellis on the stairs.
“The windows? Strangely enough, we don’t know. They must have been commissioned when the house was built, but there’s no trace of them in the records.”
“It’s odd to see fairies on a window like this, I thought you’d normally expect to see something religious,” Ellis added.
“Indeed. Though it’s said that the woods between Hallowvale and Osprey House—the other smaller Georgian mansion nearby—used to be teeming with the fair folk. So perhaps it’s not that strange at all,” Mrs. Fairfax said in a wistful tone. Rosemary stepped forwards to peer closer at the glass when her foot slipped on a weathered groove in the stairs.
She immediately lost her balance, fell backwards, and twisted to the side, expecting to feel the cool stone slam against her back.
Instead, Rosemary felt two warm hands grab her waist from either side, holding her steady.
Ellis had caught her before she’d slipped, so she’d ended up only pivoting on the spot. Facing him. Her hands pressed against the hard planes of his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breath. His heartbeat was thrumming fast beneath herfingers. Rosemary looked up at him, ready to apologise, to say thank you, anything…
“Got you,” Ellis huffed. His words sent a shock wave of heat up her spine.
As he was catching her, Ellis’s hands must have accidentally slipped into the space between her sweater and jeans. His fingers pressed into the small of her back. On her bare skin.
Rosemary nearly gasped at the sheer, immediate intimacy of it, his warm skin against hers. Ellis must have realised at the same moment, but his hands stayed where they were, holding her upright as she found her footing. The world peeled away, leaving just the two of them.
“The stairs are old,” Rosemary whispered.
“Yeah.”
“I slipped.”
Ellis stared down at her, and she swore that for a split second, his thumb caressed her skin, back and forth.
“I caught you.”
“Thank you.” Her voice turned breathy.
“Anytime,” Ellis said, the grey of his eyes appearing darker and deeper than before.
It wasn’t until Mrs. Fairfax cleared her throat that Rosemary realised they had just been standing on the steps and the others were already up in the Belltower room.
Rosemary spun around, taking the rest of the stairs two at a time to get away from Ellis as fast as possible. At least before she had hated him. He was grumpy, rude, and callous and had ruined her book. But now…what? Rosemary could no longer say she was indifferent to Ellis Finch. The place where his hand had touched her waist burned.
9
