Page 43 of Darkest at Dusk
“And what if you do not like the answers you find?” he asked.
“I think…” She swallowed hard, forcing herself to hold his gaze. “I think I need to know them anyway.”
For a long moment, he said nothing. He simply stared at her, his expression unreadable, his eyes deep and endless.
“Then I suggest you tread carefully.” His tone was cool now, a sharp edge of authority coloring the words. “The library is yours to work in.”
He turned, his coat sweeping behind him as he walked back toward the door. At the threshold, he paused, one hand resting on the carved wood frame.
“You think you want knowledge,” he said over his shoulder, his tone regretful. “But knowledge, Miss Barrett, has fangs.”
And then he was gone, the heavy door clicking shut behind him, leaving Isabella alone with the silence, the dust, and the severed ends of the fragile threads that had connected them for one fraught moment.
Her lips tingled with the ghost of a kiss that had never happened.
The pull was undeniable now, the sharp edge of fear softened by something else.
Desire. For him. For the feel of his hands on her skin, his lips on her own.
It was a heady thing, wild and overwhelming.
The breathless anticipation, the prickle of awareness across her skin…she recognized these feelings for what they were. After all, she had read the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats. Their words had awakened a trembling awareness, unfamiliar and thrilling, though not even a pale shade as thrilling as what Rhys Caradoc stirred in her veins.
But she could not allow these emotions to color her thoughts, her logic, her decisions.
Was she safe here? What exactly did this enigmatic, magnetic man want from her?
She exhaled a shaky breath, her hand rising to her throat, fingertips resting lightly over the key that sat just beneath the fabric of her dress.
After a long moment, she turned back to the desk, her gaze flicking to the ornate box and the stack of her father’s letters.
Slowly, carefully, Isabella set the letters back into the desk drawer and slid it closed.
The library stretched out before her, quiet, shadowed, and filled with secrets. Secrets her father had tried desperately to shield her from. Secrets Mr. Caradoc guarded with a sharp edge of possession in his voice and a glint of something unreadable in his eyes.
Papa had been afraid—for her, yes—but also of her. Of what she might become if she stepped into the madness he had worked so tirelessly to keep her from. She saw that now.
But was it madness?
What of Papa had been wrong? What if the wraiths were not the conjurings of her unstable mind, but something else entirely?
What if convincing her that she did not see them was the mistake Papa had alluded to?
There was no turning back, not without answers. Not without knowing what her father had sacrificed so much to keep hidden, and why Rhys Caradoc had pursued her with such persistence.
She was not certain what haunted her more, the secrets, the ghosts, or the feeling that he, with all his dangerous knowledge, saw something in her that she could not yet see in herself.
When Isabella returned to the library the following day, she found that cleaning had begun. The layers of dust had been wiped away from the desk, the chair, the narrow table near the multitude of open crates. The tang of beeswax polish and the faint bite of smoke lingered. The remainder of the room was still cloaked in a veil of dust and decay, Papa’s books exactly where she had seen them the previous day, scattered about in random disarray. She felt certain that Mr. Caradoc had been searching for something specific in those crates.
Light crept hesitantly through the tall, freshly washed windows, casting thin, angular streaks across the dark wood floor. Dust motes swirled and scattered and danced. Somewhere in the walls, a faint chime threaded through the hush, too thin for a bell, too regular for pipes.
The space felt cleaner, yes, but not lighter. The air still carried a weight, a solemn hush, a sense of secrets coiled tightly in the shadows, waiting. It felt like walking into a cathedral a moment before a sermon…or a crypt moments before the last stone sealed it shut.
Isabella’s gaze lifted to the towering shelves and the carved wood ceiling above, her breath hitching as her imagination painted eyes in the carvings, mouths hidden in the dark knots of wood.
Near one of the lower shelves, Peg knelt with a feather duster clutched in one hand and a rag in the other. Her red hair, damp with sweat and barely tamed beneath her white cap, glinted like molten copper in the morning light. Her shoulders were hunched, her head down, as though she were trying to make herself small.
“Peg?” Isabella called softly.
