14. Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

I zzie hurried down the main steps of the castle, an entirely too-wide stone staircase that had to have been an architectural marvel when it was built. Half supported by an outer wall, it turned partway down and she stuck close to the large stones of the wall, far from the railing, as was her habit anytime she moved about in a place she wasn’t entirely comfortable.

No one to surprise her from behind, and she was less noticeable, she supposed.

Her feet fast on the well-worn stones, she had been due to meet Sylvie in the library a half hour ago for a pianoforte lesson, but she had overslept.

After the altercation with Thomas two nights previous, she had been extra vigilant in staying awake and listening in on Thomas’s nightly ramblings. She never should have assumed when his head dropped back to the chair that he was asleep that night. She’d abandoned her post hidden deep in his dressing chamber for the comfort of her own sleep far too early.

That extra vigilance the past two nights had meant bleary eyes open until the early hours of morning when she was absolutely sure he was asleep. Soused to the point of oblivion, but asleep.

Callum hadn’t been wrong when he’d given her his assessment of the earl. Darkness had seeped into his soul and was eating him alive. That had been obvious from the first, but the other night when he had told her he slept on the floor, just the same as she did, it had terrified her for two reasons.

The first, because she was starting to believe the darkness within him was intensifying, looking to suffocate out every shred of living that he had in him. People on his path could slip away at any moment, without a word to the world that they were ending it.

That was really why Callum had requested her for this assignment. He knew she was the one in the Guardians that could convince people to turn and walk away from the edge of the cliff they were determined to fling themselves over.

She was good at it, because she’d lived it herself. Her toes dangling over the edge of cliff, leaning forward.

She was good at preventing tragedy. Until she wasn’t.

Her heel faltered on the stairs and she slipped down two steps, catching herself against the wall just before she went tumbling.

Pathetic.

She shook her head to herself.

Not the time to dwell. Never the time to dwell.

Save this one, and all sins would be wiped clean.

Callum believed in her, while Hector did not. This was her last chance to prove him wrong.

The second reason Thomas’s admission about sleeping on the floor had twisted something deep in her gut wasn’t just because he was the exact same as her, it was because she’d never confessed how she slept to anyone.

Even with other guardians—friends—who had stumbled into her room and found her sleeping on the floor, she had made excuses.

Too much wine and she’d missed the bed. She had twisted her back wrong in training and the hard floor was the only comfortable thing she could lie upon. The air was cooler closer to the floor.

She had a litany of excuses at the ready.

But with Thomas, she hadn’t hesitated in telling him her secret, bringing him into her room and laying it bare before him. Not one second of consideration on what a mistake it would be. How he would think her even stranger than he already did.

What had possessed her to do so, she couldn’t say.

And then he had told her he did the very same thing.

Unprompted.

He couldn’t sleep in a bed either. And she was fairly certain for how he’d cut their conversation short, he’d never confessed that fact to anyone else, just the same as her.

She rarely had anything in common with the people she was hired to protect. Their lives were ones of wealth and abundance.

Hers had been quite the opposite.

But in this, she was the same as Thomas.

It didn’t sit right in her chest. She couldn’t afford to align with him on anything, for as ornery as he was, she was drawn to him.

An ugly little reality she had been trying for weeks to ignore.

But it was hard to ignore her mouth going dry when he set those hard hazel eyes on her. Hard to ignore how jealous she was of Sylvie openly flirting with him.

Jealous every time Sylvie’s fingers would land lightly on his arm.

Jealous of how Sylvie openly ogled Thomas, a smile on her face anytime she tried to draw him into conversation. Her smile worked sometimes. Other times it did not.

Izzie had never been in Sylvie’s role on a mission—for she’d never been able to laugh recklessly, drawing eyes, plumping her breasts.

She didn’t like that many eyes on her.

There was a shadow in her soul, Hector had said, that would never play well in getting men to fall into bed with her. Men wanted light and airy and laughter and smiles and winks. Men wanted easy.

And Izzie would never be that—easy.

At the landing on the main floor of the castle, Izzie turned to the right, moving into the corridor that led to the library, which was set near the study.

Sylvie’s hope today was that the music would draw Thomas into the room, and he would see her playing beautifully, then suddenly want to bed her—even though he’d turned down her advances a dozen times in the last weeks.

Izzie did feel for Sylvie, for her friend was running out of tricks.

Now that it was well known Izzie could speak in full, sensible sentences and wasn’t truly a feral girl, she’d had the easy job. She just had to walk around the castle, looking sullen to highlight Sylvie’s brightness.

Except what Sylvie didn’t understand was that shadows liked the dark—it gave them somewhere to hide. Dark drew dark.

Izzie passed by the study’s slightly ajar door when a sudden crash made her jump.

“Bloody fucking hell!”

She stopped, considering for one short moment not sticking her nose into whatever had just happened, then she pushed the door open. “Thomas?”

Her gaze skirted about the room and she found the source of the crash—a heavy ledger still moved, settling at the floor of the wall to the right of the desk, pages crumpling as they fanned out.

Thomas sat behind the desk, glaring at the ledger he’d clearly just thrown against the wall.

“Thomas?” She stepped into the room.

His look jerked up to her, the hard planes of his face taut and the green flecks in his hazel eyes vibrating with frustration.

Izzie ventured another step into the room. “I was…” She glanced over her shoulder, then looked to him. “I was on my way to the library—is all well?”

He heaved a sigh, shaking his head. “It is nothing, Izzie—nothing to worry on.” His eyes lifted to the dark, ornately carved ceiling. “It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense.”

“What? Life?” The right side of her mouth quirked upward.

His look dropped to her, his stare cold for a long second, and then the skin around his eyes cracked with an exasperated smile as he chuckled. “Yes—life as well.” He pointed to the ledger he’d flung across the room. “But mostly that—it is that blasted drudgery that vexes me.”

She looked to ledger now resting open, the heavy leather cover crushing the papers underneath it. “The book?”

“It is a ledger, and it is the devil’s playground.”

Her right eyebrow cocked upward. The devil in a ledger? She had to see that.

She went to the book and picked it up, resting the leather binding on her arm as she smoothed the creases out of page after page, setting the ledger back into order. “The numbers?”

With a quick glance, the ledger seemed to hold an accounting of goods in and out, along with prices and shipping costs.

When she had the last page smoothed and in place, she went to set it on his desk. “Why are the numbers straight from the underworld?”

“They don’t add up—not by any standard of basic mathematical principles.” He slammed his knuckles on the book as she set it down.

“No?” Her lips pursed. “May I look?”

“You know numbers as well?”

She shrugged.

His hand flicked out, waving above the book. “Be my guest.”

Leaning over his desk, she spun the book toward her, looking at a set of numbers on the right page with tallies at the bottom. Silently, her fingers ran along the lines of numbers, then again, then a third time.

Thomas didn’t interrupt her, just sat behind his desk, seething at the ledger like it was a pile of steaming, rotting cabbage.

At the fourth pass she took with the first column of numbers, she figured it out. She verified her hunch with the next five columns of numbers. “Who kept these ledgers?” Her look stayed down on the sixth column she calculated.

“My father did after his last solicitor moved to London. He died before he found a new one. Why?” Thomas lifted himself from his chair, moving to stand next to her, looking down at the page her fingers ran across.

“Did your father ever mention any peculiarities he had in regards to bookkeeping?”

“No.”

She glanced at him, suddenly aware of how very close he was to her. The full onslaught of his body in her space. Swallowing the air around her.

His look lifted from the page to her. “Why?”

His hazel eyes fixed on her, the green flecks in them were no longer sparking in anger, but now alive with curiosity as he waited for a response.

Eyes that held her attention for far too long. It took her an embarrassingly long moment to react, and she blinked, startled, then dropped her gaze to the ledger as she shook her head at her own idiocy.

She pointed to the second column. “Look, these numbers, thirteen and seventeen are transposed to thirty-one and seventy-one. Again and again, but the columns add up correctly if you transpose them back in your head. Here in this column, and in this one, and in this one.” Her forefinger ran along the length of the columns, pointing out all the thirteens and seventeens. “Your father knew what he was doing—he just didn’t record it in a way that is normally understood. But he clearly understood himself.”

“What in the blasted foolery?” His eyes squinted and he leaned closer to the ledger, his lips moving silently as he added up numbers. He got to the end of a column and his head jerked up, his eyes wide as he looked at her. “How did you figure that out?”

“Mrs. Dellcrane taught me numbers so I could keep track of her spices and herbs. Measure out portions for her. But my mind works the same as your father’s did. I would switch certain numbers as he did when I was first learning. But Mrs. Dellcrane quickly figured out what I was doing and veered me on the right path. I would imagine had she not, I would transpose numbers to this day.”

His stare locked onto her, intense, and she could feel the weight of it bearing down upon her.

“She taught you much of what you know?”

She nodded, taking a slight step away from him, though her fingers trailed on the ledger. “She did. Everything I would need to know to survive in this world. The people around us, they never understood her, never understood me. They still don’t. And they thought she was quite mad, that was, until they needed her for some ailment that she could ease. Then they didn’t care how insane she was, just as long as she could help them. It made me understand how people truly are.”

“How are people?”

“People are almost always looking out for themselves, and they’ll vilify a woman like Mrs. Dellcrane in the light of day, while visiting her cottage late at night to beg for help.”

“A lack of integrity.”

She lifted her right shoulder. “Or merely human nature. It is the way of the world and it is disastrous to expect anything honorable or exceptional from anyone. People rarely surprise me.”

He was silent for a long moment, his stare eating into her. “Honor does exist, Izzie.”

“Does it?”

His lips pulled taut, almost into a grimace. “Believe me, Izzie. It does. At least in some instances.”

Her gaze lifted from his lips to his eyes and she saw it. A heated flash of craving, bridled, even though it was trying to break free.

Her mouth parted in a sudden inhale.

That was lust, pure and simple and barely restrained. Lust directed at her.

It couldn’t be. But there it was.

And they were so damn close.

Her mouth went dry and she took a step back away from him, her head bowing. “Excuse me. I told Sylvie I would join her in the library for a pianoforte lesson.”

He nodded, his chin jutting out, gruff, like he wanted to say something to keep her in the room but wouldn’t allow it of himself.

She spun and hurried out of the room, the air stuck in her lungs. Her mouth dry.