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Her thumb drifted up and down the back of his hand absently, and awareness prickled up his arm. He wished he understood why she affected him this way, why admitting the inadequacy of his marriage was a gift when he presented it to her. Why he felt lighter, as if he’d dropped a yoke from his shoulders and thrown it off the jagged Cornish cliffs.

Finally, she sighed, her lashes lowering for a moment before she met his gaze again. “I don’t know if the turret is sound. That’s what I need to check.”

“You’re not going back up to the turret.” He’d lock her in the cellar if she attempted it.

“Performing the ritual wrong locked us in,” she said. “Logically, we need to do it right to escape.”

And escape must be the priority, especially if the building was crumbling into the sea. But nothing about what happened in that house was logical.

“What if it doesn’t work?” he asked.

Fear flashed across her features so quickly that he wondered if he’d imagined it. “We’ll be fine if you help me.”

He ground his teeth together. “I won’t send you to your death.”

“I won’t die.” She waved off his concern with a flick of her hand. “How strong are you?”

“Um, strong enough?” He wasn’t certain he liked the calculation in her eyes as she scanned his chest and arms.

That devilish quirk of the lips appeared again. “We’ll see about that.”

CHAPTER 18

For as long as Bridget could remember, she’d made sense of things by picking them apart. Nothing in the manor house was immune from her inquisition. The peeler dissected into its screws, auger, and cutting plate; the mousetrap stripped of its springs and triggers; the bell-pull system reduced to a heap of wires, pulleys, and mechanical annunciators. When her curiosity was piqued, she wasn’t at ease until she understood the components.

There remained so many things she could not break apart and understand, despite her best efforts. The death of her parents. The loss of her grandfather. Her lack of the gift of sight, despite sharing blood with the two most celebrated English mediums in history.

This strange, inexplicable attraction to the man who wanted to ruin everything. The inexorable longing for his touch.

Her lack of understanding made her uneasy, as if forces beyond her control were manipulating her.

And now, surrounded by the incomprehensible, she couldn’t quiet the static of her thoughts. So she may as well break things down.

“Should I be worried that you keep a mallet under your bed?”

Bridget ignored Valebrook’s inquiry and bounded down the main stairs, hopping over the spot where the ghost had supposedly met her doom. She needed no more bad luck.

“My bed frame cracked last month,” she called over her shoulder. “I needed to repair it.”

He caught her upper arm, forcing her to turn. “What were you doing to break your bedframe?”

A wicked thrill pulsed through her; the possession in his grip and fiery blaze in his eyes made the persistent ache in her core even more pervasive. She wanted to tease him, to fire a retort that would push him away again. But in this, she told the truth. “I stood on it to clean my windows, and it cracked. Nothing untoward took place in my bed, my lord.”

She leaned on the last words, and he scowled. He stared at his hand as though he hadn’t intended to touch her.

She needed to keep moving, because as long as she was moving, she lacked the space in her mind to think about the disaster unfolding in Ashveil Manor. She had summoned a spirit, one powerful enough to shatter crystal, lock doors, and trap them inside for purposes unknown. The structure of the building was actively failing. Valebrook had heard her admission of deceit.

And there remained the inconvenient fact that she found him infuriatingly attractive.

“Bridget, tell me what you’re doing.” The gravel in his voice, the tension in his grip, did nothing to ease the smoldering lust in her belly.

“I have an idea. Let me go, and I’ll show you.”

“I’m starting to hate this part of you.”

“You only hate one part? And I thought you hated all of me.”

His hand spanned the circumference of her arm, and his thumb swept along the inside of her bicep. Sparks skimmed along her skin and down her spine. “I don’t hate you.”