You Are My Destiny novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Lamps Out

I carried the tray up the back stairs at ten with a bowl of whitefish soup and my heart in my throat.

The study door stood open a hand's width.

Inside there was a fire, a leather sofa, a desk the size of a skiff, and one green lamp.

Phillip stood at the window with his back to me, and he didn't turn.

"Shut the door, Bree."

I shut it.

I set the tray on the desk with a hand I tried to make steady.

"Your wife said the staff aren't to be."

"My wife is asleep in the east wing with a locked door and a headache."

"I'm twenty-seven years old, Mr. Stannard. I know what a man wants when he asks a cook up at ten."

"Do you?" He turned.

He was thirty-one, with his sleeves shoved to the elbow and his collar open, and his eyes were dark in the firelight.

"Tell me what I want."

My mouth was dry.

"You want to be somewhere nobody smiles at you."

His laugh was short and surprised.

"Close," he said. "Come here."

I should have taken the tray and gone.

I crossed the carpet instead and stopped an arm's length away.

He didn't move.

He looked at me for a long time, at my braid, my plain mouth, my clouded eye.

Then he lifted his scarred hand and laid it along my jaw.

My knees nearly went.

"You shake when I touch you," he said.

"It's cold."

"There's a fire."

"Then it's you."

His thumb dragged across my lower lip.

"Good," Phillip said, and he kissed me.

It was not a polite kiss.

It was slow and then it was not, his mouth opening mine.

His hand slid into my braid and pulled it loose, and I made a sound I hadn't made in seven years.

I grabbed his shirt with both fists.

He walked me back until the desk edge hit the back of my thighs.

"The lamp," he said against my mouth.

"Leave it on."

"I want it off."

"Phillip."

"I spent two years in the dark." He kissed the corner of my jaw. "It's where I learned everything. Let me find you."

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