"There's one in every corner. Do you mind them? Some people find circular stairs uncomfortable."

Lucy remembered seeing wide stone stairs rising from the great hall, but she had no intention of backing down from the challenge. He and his house were on trial here, but she suspected that she was, too. If she married the dragon Earl of Wyvern, she couldn't be the sort to tremble at a circular staircase.

She started up the narrow stairs. The steps were uneven and worn in the middle as if from centuries of feet. Illusion, she dismissed, but then remembered that though Crag Wyvern wasn't medieval, it was nearly two hundred years old.

At first the staircase wasn't too bad, but when she turned beyond the opening below and couldn't see the escape above, panic tried to stir. It wasn't pitch-dark, but it was gloomy, and the dragon was close behind. She could imagine that she felt his breath, but she also began to remember another stairwell and a very different kind of heat. So tempting to pause, to turn-but anything that happened here in this twisted s.p.a.ce would be vile.

Just keep climbing, Lucy.

A step at a time.

It has to come to an end.

Despite reason, she began to doubt it. When she saw the opening, she sucked in a breath as if she'd escaped some monstrous gullet.

When she emerged, however, she wasn't in a much better place.

She stood at the juncture of two long stone corridors. These must be the corridors that ran behind the rooms, between them and the outer walls. She could see doors in the one on her left, and light shot in through arrow slits on her right, but both were deserted and swords and axes hung at regular intervals along the outer walls.

She managed a light tone. "I hope these corridors are lit at night or someone might accidentally decapitate themself."

"But if a dragon attacks, you'd be prepared."

She met his eyes, but he was as blank as slate. "I'll bear that in mind."

"Be careful, Lucy."

It was the first time he'd used her name, and it was a warning.

The enclosed s.p.a.ce pressed in on her, but her foolish body responded to him, despite any danger. Insanity on both sides.

He turned on his heel and set off along the corridor to their right. It looked to go the full length of one side with no doors. She saw him brush aside a cobweb and was glad he was going first.

But then her brain cleared. Cobwebs meant this corridor wasn't much used. Was this truly how people got around the house, or was he playing dark games to frighten her away?

He'd find out that wouldn't work with her.

He stopped midway in a patch of light and she saw a small circular, unglazed window in the outer wall. It framed an image of the outside world that seemed almost miraculous from within this place.

The gra.s.s was vibrantly green, a sheep snow-white, the sky impossibly blue, and glimpsed in spire and roofs, the haven of Church Wyvern was snuggled down below, full of normal people.

Then she laughed to herself at that thought.

Was anyone normal here?

Even David?

He stood close behind her, still stirring both desire and fear.

This fear was different to the thrill of danger that had fired her in the d.u.c.h.ess of St. Raven's garden-oh, that haven of normality! Even when he'd seized her there, she'd not been afraid. Here she feared the unknown.

She made herself face him. "Why did you leave London?"

She hoped to put him off balance, to startle some admission, but he said, "To get away from you."

She couldn't doubt such a blunt truth.

"Because of what happened at the theater?"

"In part. I've said all along that I won't marry you, but I won't ruin you, either. Yet here you are."

"I'm not trying to ruin you into marrying me!"

"Aren't you?"

"No."

"Then why come?"

"To find out if I could marry you."

"Pointless, when I'm not going to offer you the opportunity. When I've satisfied your curiosity, I'll take you down to the manor, to my aunt. Tomorrow I'll see you suitably escorted on your way back to London."

Lucy found she had no recourse against such steady authority. Despite everything her heart and senses told her, he'd spoken the truth. He'd left London to escape her; he would not marry her; and he wanted her gone.

With that realization, this whole venture seemed shameful. Why had the Delaneys aided her? She remembered that she'd considered doing exactly what he'd accused her of-seducing him into commitment. Perhaps her mother had done that, but her father could never have been so calm and absolute in his rejection.

With what dignity she could gather, she said, "Very well." But then she saw a problem. "I didn't provide for that. I don't have enough money with me. How stupid!"

"I believe the earldom's coffers can stretch to a loan, and I know you're able to pay me back."

A touch of David in that threatened tears.

"d.a.m.nation, Lucy. You knew this couldn't be."

"This?"

"Us."

Something in his desperate tone lit an ember of hope. "Can you make me see why?"

"You want to live here?"

"No. Yes. It doesn't matter. That's not the problem, David. What is?"

"You want to live so far from London? So far from a city, even a town of any size. In the wilds of the country, where even the gra.s.s can make you cry?"

"No. I mean it doesn't. I don't have hay fever."

"Lies?"

"A minor one. I didn't want your sympathy."

"Why were you crying?"

"For loss of my old life and unhappiness with my new one. It seems so long ago now."

"Yes."

She studied him, her back pressed to cold stone, as his was pressed to the opposite wall. They were putting as much s.p.a.ce between them as they could, but it wasn't enough.

"If you believed I would hate this place, why didn't you invite me to visit?"

"Perhaps I tried to save you a tedious journey."

She finally found the courage. "David, are you afflicted by your family's madness? Are you trying to protect me from that?"

She saw him inhale. "I should say yes. That would do it, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," she replied. "I'd hate it, and I'd try to help you, but I wouldn't marry you. Tell me. Please."

"There's no insanity in my family. I'm not the son of the Mad Earl of Wyvern. I don't carry that blood."

"You're not? But then . . ."

"Why am I earl? Because Amleigh didn't want to be, and Susan his beloved didn't want him to be, and I had the legal right."

"Because your mother was in truth married to the earl?"

"Exactly. But she fled him on her wedding night and was Mel Clyst's after that."

"You're his son."

"A tavern keeper and smuggler. Will that turn you off?"

"I'm the daughter of a foundling who doesn't know who his parents were." She stepped forward, closed the gap, and put her arms around him. "Nothing else could keep us apart. I love you, David. You and no other, for all time."

"Oh, you wretched woman."

He kissed her as she'd hungered to be kissed. Lucy kissed him back as fiercely, holding him to her as tightly as he held her to him, exploding with relief. To kiss, to be with him like this, to know he hungered for her as ravenously as she hungered for him. Any difficulties were dust, blowing away on a delirious wind.

When the kiss ended, when she snuggled against him, she said, "That was the truth, my love. The only truth that matters."

Against her hair he said, "There's more to this than kisses."

"I know."

He pushed her away. "d.a.m.nation, Lucy. I won't ruin you, and I can't marry you."

Now his rejection only stirred exasperation. "Can't, not won't? Why?"

But he was looking behind her, out of the window.

She turned. "People!"

Ridiculous to feel shocked, but she did. Two men were walking along the path toward them, toward the gargoyle-encrusted doors of Crag Wyvern. Two normal men, talking as normal people might, one in ordinary clothes, the other in a uniform.

David grabbed her wrist. "They can't know you're here. At least, Lloyd can't. Come on."

Chapter 29.

He towed her back down the corridor, past the stairwell, and around the corner. He opened a door into an explosion of color and pushed her in.

"Stay here," he said and left, shutting the door.

Dazed from the kiss and the rush, Lucy turned to take in the extraordinary room. In a building that seemed made up of harsh angles, this room was circular and a painted dragon took up all the wall. She turned, following the green, orange, and gold beast from fanged head along lizardlike body to tail, which it was eating, so it all started again.

That seemed all too like the never-ending tangle of her life.

Can't, not won't, but still a rejection.

"Why?" she asked the dragon's huge black eye, but it didn't respond.

She forced herself to see the more normal aspects of the room. A flat window looked into the courtyard, but everything else on the walls was curved, including a j.a.panned chest of drawers, a washstand, and an armoire. Even the door, she noted, was curved on the inside and the painting of the dragon flowed over it, almost making it disappear.

The bed, if a bed it was, was also circular and sat in the middle of the room. It lacked posts, bed-hangings, and pillows, but was covered by a counterpane in a fabric that matched the dragon's scales. It sat on a circular carpet with the same self-consuming dragon winding around the bed.

The ceiling was dragon free, but it was concave and painted to look like the sky in bright blue with a flaming comet streaking across it.

Seeking escape from the riot of color, she went to the window to look down into the garden. Its lack of vibrancy was a relief. From here she could see that the pale paths were laid out geometrically with the outer ones, forming a pentagon. The inner ones formed a star.

A maid-a short, plump one this time-came out on Lucy's left bearing a tray with a flagon and two tankards. She crossed the garden to Lucy's right, and Lucy worked out that David was receiving one man in the great hall. Only one?

The two men shouldn't know she was here to avoid scandal. Especially Lloyd.

Why especially him? Who was Lloyd? It was a Welsh name.

Irrelevant, but the men's arrival meant she now had an opportunity to explore on her own, to see whether the whole house was odd, or if David had showed her only the most peculiar parts. She opened the door and listened. Silence. Stone walls and floors could make sounds hard to detect, but there didn't seem to be many people here. She left the room and closed the door.

She was about to go right, in an unexplored direction, but then she heard faint voices from her left. Through stone walls and floors?