"What's brought this behavior on?" I asked, sitting up. I drew my legs up and rested my chin on my knees, making sure the covers still hid most of me. "Yesterday you knocked and turned your back when you entered my room. Tonight you just appeared with no warning."

"I didn't knock because I didn't want to wake anyone."

"You woke me!"

"Anyone else. I don't think your sister would forgive me if I got her out of bed in the middle of the night."

"I'm not sure I'll forgive you either," I said. I do like my sleep. If I get less than eight hours a night I'm generally not the nicest person the next day. Jacob would learn that the hard way if he wasn't careful. "So is this the real Jacob Beaufort I'm seeing now?"

"No, it's the dead one." He crossed his arms and challenged me with that glare of his in the mirror's reflection.

My own glare faltered. I looked away, mortified and at a loss for words. There was no suitable comeback to his response, let alone a witty one.

He sat on the foot of my bed with a sigh. "I didn't want all the fuss and formality of you and your sister meeting me in the drawing room and your new maid serving us tea as if this were a proper social call. There is nothing proper about my visits, Emily. Nothing at all." His voice faded towards the end, as if he wasn't sure he wanted to say it.

"It's just a little disconcerting," I said. "Most of the ghosts I see are ones I've summoned. Occasionally I come across a spirit haunting a building but I've never had one come and go in my house before. Besides which, I'm not used to male company in the drawing room let alone my bedroom."

He leaned back against one of the posts at the foot of my bed. "This is not how I envisaged our talk to go but somehow...somehow our conversations never do seem to head in the direction I want them to." I was trying to decipher his meaning when he tilted his head to the side and looked at me puppy-like, giving me his crooked smile. "I just wanted to speak to you."

Only speak? If he gave me that smile and that look I'd let him do almost anything.

The thought made my insides clench. Oh lord, was I the sort of woman my sister called a wanton?

"What did you want to talk to me about?" If I didn't rein in my wild thoughts I might find myself saying, and doing, something I regretted.




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