Killian filled the space, sucked the air from the room even as he energized it. His eyes locked on Sarah’s, glittering in the candlelight, and her heart beat so hard she thought it might fly apart. She dropped her gaze and toyed with the remnants of the match; she could not look at him, did not dare to look at him, for so many twined and tangled reasons.

“You are cold,” Killian observed, stepping closer, and before she could protest he had his cloak off his own shoulders and over hers, still warm from the heat of his body, smelling faintly of citrus and man.

His action highlighted one of the many reasons she admired him so. Because he would do something like that for her. Because he offered similar quiet kindnesses to many. She had seen it time and again on the ward with patients, and even with staff. Though his tone was usually cool and analytical, his treatment choices unaffected by emotion, his overtures at camaraderie with his contemporaries limited at best, there were small things he did that showed the warmth beneath his icy façade.

There had been the episode with Mrs. Carmichael when he had gifted her with the coats for her sons. And she had seen him slip coins in another night nurse’s apron while she slept, a shilling or two, enough to buy shrimps and tea and butter. He had sat the night through beside a mother whose daughter would never awaken, holding her hand as her child slipped away. And Sarah suspected it was Killian who had arranged for Mr. Scully’s sister to travel to Edinburgh to stay with his dead wide’s sister so neither would be alone.

Killian was an outwardly cold man with a flame inside him that he hid behind darkened spectacles and a mask of polite reserve.

She wondered if he was lonely or simply alone.

She stared up at him, feeling foolish and overwhelmed and so grateful for this small kindness. Tears pricked her eyes as she huddled in his cloak and that made her angry. She had no place in her life for self-pity, and after crying for three days straight when she found out her father was dead, she had thought herself moved past such a childish waste of time.

“Tell me why you came here tonight,” she said, pushing aside her maudlin thoughts and pitching her voice low so as not to carry through the thin walls.

“Let us sit, Sarah.” Reasonable. Calm.

His words made her anxious. Sit where? On the low bed? Uneasy, she cast a glance exactly there, and for a moment, she could not understand what it was she saw on her pillow.

Then she did understand and fear curdled in her belly.

On her pillow was a small comfit box of sweetmeats tied with a bow and beside it, a length of lavender ribbon.

She gasped and stumbled back, the very familiarity of those things making them all the more sinister.

Someone had been here. In her room. Someone had left these unwelcome gifts. Someone who knew things about her. An icy chill slithered through her, distress clenching around her heart.

“What is it?” Killian asked sharply, drawing near. “You’ve gone white as the belly of a dead fish.”

Sarah’s gaze jerked to his, and despite the unease that gnawed at her she could not help the startled chuff of laughter evoked by his words.

“An appealing image.” Dead fish. She shuddered, thinking of her father, his body never fished from the Thames. Never found.

The shudders would not stop, though she willed them to.

Killian closed his hands around her upper arms and kept them there as she trembled. She wished he would draw her closer, not just clasp her arms, but clasp her body tight against his own.

She pulled away from him, wrapping her arms around her middle and holding tight. “You left me the pasty. That day in the linen closet.”

“I did.” He frowned. “You had not eaten.”

“And the orange? The ham sandwich? You left me those as well?”

Still, he frowned. “The sandwich, yes.” The word was slow and drawn out, as though he took his time trying to read the underlying thoughts beneath her words. “The orange, no.”

“Then who?” she asked.

“That is the question, is it not?”

“And those?” She flung a hand toward the bed. “Did you bring those? Why not just hand them to me? Why leave them on my pillow?” Her words came faster now, strung together in a furious whisper. “And why slink into my chamber and leave them on my bed then sneak back outside to await my arrival?”

“Sneak…” he looked to the bed, then back to her. “Sarah, this is the first time I have been in this room.” He crossed to the bed and lifted the small box and the length of ribbon. She flinched away. He opened the confit box to reveal caramels and marchpane.

Someone had chosen the contents with care. Someone who knew her ways and her preferences.

“You didn’t bring them?” she asked, her voice tight.

“I did not. But someone did…” He looked at her expectantly as though she ought to know the identity of that someone.

And she did. “It was him.” The man who stalked her, who clung to the shadows, who refused to reveal his face. He had chased her through the alleys tonight, but first he had come here. “He was in my room,” she whispered. “He touched my things. He must have left me the orange as well. He’s been watching me here, at the hospital…everywhere.”

Killian’s expression darkened. He held the confit box in one hand, the ribbon in the other.

“Sweetmeats. Ribbon. Impersonal at first glance, but first glance is a lie,” he said. “These items have specific meaning to you.”

“Yes.” Sarah felt ill, confused…afraid. “Someone knows far too much about me. Someone knows things that are private, things from my life before my father died. My father used to bring me ribbons and that very same selection of sweetmeats before he became…ill.”

Killian’s gaze flicked to the items he held, then back to her face. “The man who stalks you, how long has he been about it?”

Sarah frowned, thinking back. “The first time I saw him was a few weeks after my father died.”

Killian set the box and ribbon on the bed. “That was the first time you saw him. But before that…”

“I sensed him. I knew he was there. I thought it was grief that played tricks on my perception. I felt someone watching me, following me, always in the shadows.”

“The first time…When was it?”

Again, she thought back, trying to piece together the puzzle. “I don’t know. I think the first sense I had of someone lurking was…” She had cried for three days and not left the house. But on the fourth day she had forced herself out in the evening, forced herself to walk along the river, and she had looked over her shoulder more than once, plagued by an eerie feeling that she was being followed. “You think he has been following me all along? Even before I sensed his presence?”

“You said your father was ill. What malady afflicted him?” Killian asked.

There was something in his tone, an urgency she couldn’t understand. Her chin kicked up a notch. “He became addicted to opium.”

Everything about Killian stilled: his movements, his expression. He looked to be made of stone. “How do you know it was opium?”

“He took no food. He said everything made him sick to his stomach. Everything tasted rotten and foul. His complexion took on a terrible grayish cast. He spiraled into malaise.”

“How long was he like that?”

“I don’t know. It felt like an instant even as it felt like forever. Months and months. By the end, he clung to the shadows and eschewed the light. Sunlight made him cry out in pain. Lamplight made him wince.”

“What else?” Killian asked, his attention focused and intense. Frightening.

“He was too ill himself to see patients. He spent his days abed in a darkened room, and his nights prowling the streets, or perhaps in opium dens.”

“Did he hurt you?” Killian asked.

“No… No!” Sarah shivered. “But one night, I thought he might,” she admitted after a long pause, relieved to finally tell someone. “He was ill in his bed, muttering and cursing and pleading, though I know not for what. He was drenched in sweat. I went to change his nightshirt and as I leaned over him, he caught my wrist, his grip far stronger than I would have expected from one so ill. He stared at me. I was—” She broke off, remembering. Her father had looked at her through eyes that were not his own.

“You were…” Killian prodded.

“Afraid,” Sarah whispered, hating the admission, hating that the harsh memory was one of her last of her father. “I was afraid of him. My gentle, kind father was not there. Someone else looked back at me through his eyes.” She exhaled in a huff. “You think me melodramatic.”

Killian stepped closer. “I think you brave. Resourceful. A woman carving her way in an unkind world.”

The way he looked at her made her pulse race and her mouth go dry. She made a nervous laugh and looked at the ground. “My father…the look on his face was one I had never seen. He looked like he would do me harm, like he wanted to do me harm. He cried out as though in pain and thrust me from him. He snarled at me and said that I was never to come into his chamber again. Not while he was in it. ‘Get out. Get out now,’ he shouted though he was never one to raise his voice. I ran and moments later watched from my window as he went out into the night with his nightshirt flapping and his feet bare.”

Killian took another step toward her, but Sarah shook her head and stumbled back. If he touched her now, she would break, shatter, and she would never be able to knit the jagged pieces back together.

“How did he take his opium? Laudanum? Some other tincture? A pipe?” he asked.

“I don’t know. He took it privately. I never saw.”

“And after he died? You found no bottles? No pipe?”

Sarah closed her eyes for an instant, picturing their house, her father’s chamber. “No. I found nothing. He must have taken the drug elsewhere. At an opium den.”

“Or not at all,” Killian said.

“What do you mean? You think my assessment incorrect? You have some other explanation for his symptoms? There is no other disease I know of that would explain it. If you know such a one, educate me. I beg you.” As the last word left her lips, Sarah realized she spoke too fast, too loud. She wanted Killian to tell her of such a disease, to absolve her father of the addiction Sarah had attributed to him.

But Killian offered no such kindness. Instead, he asked, “The night he went out in his bare feet… Was that the last time you saw him?”

“No. I saw him early the next morning, before dawn. I was restless, unable to sleep. I went to the kitchen to make tea. He sat there in the dark. When I came in, he looked up at me and smiled. He was himself in that moment. He was the father I had always known.

“He seemed a different man than he had been the night before. Physically, at least. His skin was ruddy, his movements sure. But he was tormented, apologizing again and again for his actions, for frightening me. I said I forgave him. I made to touch his hand, but he backed away. He told me I must never again come into his chamber when he was there. He was adamant, distressed. He said I must stay away when he descended into what he called his melancholy.” She swallowed, the memories making her chest ache and her throat thick. It was both a torture and a relief to talk with someone about her father’s death. Before this, there had been no one to tell. “Two nights later, he drowned. His body was not recovered.”

“How came you to know of his death?” Killian asked, his voice gentle.

“Several witnesses saw him tumble into the Thames, including my father’s old friend, Dr. Grammercy, a man I know and trust. Though I had no body to bury and mourn, I had their testimony, the gruesome truth of it.” Sarah paused, replaying the entirety of their conversation in her thoughts. “Do you think the man who hunts me was a patient of my father’s?”

“Perhaps.”

“Someone from the opium den?”

“Perhaps.”

She did not take his replies as evasive. He only spoke the truth. It could be a man from either of those sources or neither.

Killian glanced over his shoulder. “You locked your door when you left this morning?”

“Yes. And you watched me unlock it just now.”

His attention flicked to the window. “He came in by other means.” He reached for the spare blanket she kept folded at the foot of her bed, shook it out, and wrapped it around her shoulders. She realized then that she was shaking, her teeth chattering.

Killian stood mere inches away. She had to battle the urge to lean in against him, to rest her cheek against his chest and let the sound of his heartbeat ease her worries. Instead, she forced herself to step away from him. He did not follow, but she thought he wanted to. She thought he wanted to hold her as desperately as she wanted to be held.

The backs of her legs brushed the spindly chair in the corner. She sank down and stared up at him, her thoughts a muddle of wary confusion.

There was no sense in any of this. Not in the pursuer who dogged her every step. Not in the gifts left on her pillow. And not in the attention shown her by Killian Thayne.

She yet had no idea why he was here. She wasn’t certain she wanted to know. He came to her home, alone, at night…

“I think you should go,” she said, and rose to drag off first the blanket, then his cloak, the latter of which she held out to him. His brows drew together as he took the cloak from her and draped it over his forearm. Then he lifted the discarded blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders once more.

“I cannot go.” His hard mouth curved up a little. “I am afraid that my damnably chivalrous nature precludes my leaving you here alone tonight.”

For an instant, she made no reply, her thoughts spinning through a thousand remembered dreams where he had been in this room with her, his lips on hers. She took a slow breath and forced herself to speak. “What are you suggesting?”

“I suggest nothing. I state fact. I will remain here with you—”

“—you cannot—” She shook her head.

“—or you will accompany me to my home—”

“—I cannot—”

“—and I beg you to cease interrupting my every word.”

“My apologies,” she offered acerbically, not bothering to mask the fact that her words were insincere. “You cannot simply step into my life and tell me what I will and will not do. I do not answer to you, sir.”

“No, you do not,” he murmured and shot her an indecipherable look. “I wonder if you have ever answered to anyone.” There was a measure of admiration in his tone.

“There was a time that I relied on my father’s decisions and good counsel to guide my life. Then he began to make only bad decisions, and finally, none at all, and so I learned to make my own.” She crossed to the bed where she scooped up both the ribbon and the box. She strode to the door, opened it, and set both out on the floor outside the door of the snoring sisters, then stepped back inside and closed her own door behind her.

Turning to face him once more, she rested her back against the wood and made a noisy, rushed exhalation.

“Well,” he said, his tone laced with humor. “That was a solution.”

“The best I could conjure at the moment.”

“You are ever resourceful.” Again, the whisper of admiration. It made her feel as though he knew her, saw the practical, intelligent part of her and valued that.

The moment spun out, thin and fragile, her thoughts battling within her. The imaginary Killian of her dreams would step closer, embrace her, press his lips to her temple. But this was no imaginary lover, and she thought that if the real Killian Thayne drew her into his embrace, he would do far more than kiss her temple.

She sighed in both relief and disappointment when he moved to the far wall with its two tall, narrow windows. He shifted the curtain to the side, staring out into the night. A low sound came from him, almost a growl. A warning.

“What do you see?” she asked.

“Nothing.” But he did not move from the window. Finally, he checked the latch and, satisfied, drew the frayed and moth-eaten velvet curtain shut. With a step to the right, he faced the second window and tested the latch. It slid free and the pane swung open, letting in a swirling blast of frigid air.

He did not so much as blink as the wind hit him. With careful attention, he closed the window and tested the latch, then played with it a moment until it clicked into place. It was merely temperamental, but not broken. He did not draw the curtain. Instead, he stood close to the glass, looking out, and Sarah had the same impression she had had outdoors—that he somehow appeared even taller, broader…a threat, but not to her.

“Is he out there?” she asked.

His gaze sought hers. “I am staying.”

The temptation to sink into the safety of his presence and simply thank him and let him do as he wished was a succulent lure. But she refused to be beguiled. To accept his comfort tonight meant that tomorrow night it would be all the more difficult to discover comfort on her own.

“While I appreciate your kind offer, there is no need for you to remain here. I have spent many nights alone in this place, and I awaken each morning with my heart yet beating and breath in my lungs. This night will be no different. I think it best if you go.”

Eyes the color of a storm-laden sky pinned her and held her in place. “I will sit on that chair, or I will take you to my home and you may spend the night there. The choice is yours.”

“You cannot spend the night in this room. My room.”

“As you wish,” he agreed amiably and grabbed the chair from the corner. He carried it to the door. “I shall spend the night on the landing outside your door.”

“There is no need,” she insisted once more. “I shall be perfectly safe here with the windows latched and the door locked.”

“I beg to differ. There are creatures of the night that even the best locks will not hold at bay.”

The way he said that, soft and menacing, set a shiver crawling up her spine.

“You cannot sleep in the hard chair.” She stepped forward and laid her hand next to his on the chair back.

“I need little sleep.” The smile he turned on her was languid, and it made her pulse trip. “I will stay the night through and leave at the first hint of dawn before the house awakens. No one will know I was here, and you will be safe in the light.”

She held her place, held his gaze, her heart racing a wild, heady pace. “Safe in the light? I don’t understand.”

“I know. And I am not yet ready to explain.” His smile dropped away, and he took a slow deep breath, his chest expanding, his gaze gliding over her in a lazy caress, lingering on her lips in a way that made her pulse pound hard and fast. “I hear your blood rushing in your veins, Sarah.”

How could he possibly hear that? And yet, it sounded as though he spoke the truth. She made a stunted, nervous laugh.

His hand shifted on the chair until it covered her own. Warm skin. She could not think, could not breathe.

“Is it for me that your heart races?” he whispered, his voice warm and rough.

For him. Yes.

He leaned in, his cheek almost touching hers.

“Sarah.” Her name was a breath. A whisper. A question.

She held her silence, uncertain what answer to give.

“I have enjoyed every conversation, every interaction. I enjoy the way your mouth twists a little to the right when you are deep in thought.” He touched his fingertip to the corner of her mouth. She gasped and had the strangest urge to open her lips and lick his skin. “I enjoy the way you walk with purpose, head high. I enjoy the sound of your laughter when you tease Mrs. Bayley, and the tone of your voice when you offer kindness to a dying man.” He brushed her cheek with the backs of his knuckles and she leaned into his touch. “I had not planned it, this fascination. But here it is—” his chin brushed against her hair as he leaned closer, and her heart stopped, her breath stopped “—and I find myself glad of it, though reason argues it is unwise.”

Her senses hummed with her awareness of him, with the warm glow that swelled at his words and the wild ache that spread through her limbs.

Oh, her mind was not her own, her body heavy and hot.

She wanted him to kiss her. Wanted to know the feel and taste of him. She was hungry for him, her lips tingling, her belly lit from inside with a heat that bordered on pain. Even in her inexperience, she recognized the feeling for what it was. Attraction. Desire.

It was lovely, this feeling, lovely and frightening and thrilling. She thought that if only he would press his mouth to hers that she would understand, would know secrets that hovered just beyond her reach.

He turned to her then, his movement quick, and she fell back a step, her back pressed to the wall.

Both hands shot out and Killian laid his palms flat against the wall on either side of her shoulders. She held herself still, her heart thundering, her gaze locked on his mouth, and he smiled, a dark, dangerous curving of his lips that bared a flash of white teeth for but an instant.

“You crave my touch.” Not a question. She was glad. She had no breath left to form an answer.

Taking his weight on his outstretched arms and flattened palms, he leaned in and brushed her lips with his, soft, gentle. Their bodies touched nowhere but their lips and she was undone by that caress.

Fire roared through her veins. She was so focused on him that the world beyond faded away to nothing.

His tongue traced the seam of her mouth, and when she gasped in shock, he pushed inside, his tongue inside her, tasting her, touching her.

She moaned, stunned by the wild kaleidoscope of sensation, endlessly wondrous.

Winding her arms around his neck she tunneled her fingers in his hair, enjoying the sensation of the silky strands running through her fingers. She kissed him back, following his lead. Tentatively, she touched her tongue to his, then grew bolder, stroking him and learning the feel of his mouth.

His weight came down on her, the lush heat of his body, making her blood rush and her belly dance with a low, humming ache. He curved his arms around her, one hand flat against the small of her back, the other cupping her bottom. She raised up on her toes, driven by instinct to mold herself to him, to fit every ridge and edge of him in the soft swells and dips of her body, his thighs hard against her own, his belly and chest taut where hers were soft. She found exquisite pleasure in the weight of him pressing her to the wall at her back.

He kissed her jaw, her neck, his mouth lingering on the pulse that beat there, his breathing ragged. Arching back, she offered herself, loving the sensation of his lips at her throat, his teeth grazing the tender skin.

With a groan, he tensed then drew back, his eyes gone dark, the pupils dilated.

Panting, she stared up at him, understanding neither herself in that moment nor the wild, turbulent, emotions rolling about inside her like heavy charcoal-limned clouds in a storm.

He meant to turn away. She sensed that. Meant to block out the wonderful connection that spun out between them, a glittering thread.

“I feel as though I stand on the edge of a cliff, the wind whipping my cloak behind me, and if I can only find the will and courage to leap, I will fly,” she whispered. “Kiss me again, Killian. Make me fly.”

She was drunk on the taste of him, the feel of him, unlike anything she had ever experienced.

The look he turned on her was feral. Hungry. She thought he would plunder her, take her, drag her against him and kiss her in ways she was too untutored to imagine.

Yearning sluiced through her, fever bright.

And she thought her heart would break when he stepped away, mastering himself with visible effort, his cool mask sliding in place to obscure the burning heat she knew she had not mistaken.

“Sarah,” he rasped, his gaze locked on her throat, hot and dark. Slowly, he raised his eyes to hers. “I must not—”

He shook his head, and she felt lost, barren, already missing the connection that melted away. He brushed his thumb along her cheek and she ached to fling herself against him.

Rooted in place, she watched as he took a step toward the door, then paused to look back at her over his shoulder, his eyes gone flat and dark, fathomless, mysterious, too many secrets reflected back at her. She was so attuned to him in this impossible moment, she felt the leashed tension inside him.

There had been a thrilling edge of desperation in that kiss. Need. Hunger. She ached to untether the bonds he set about himself, to follow where that desperation might lead.

A perilous path to tread; a most dangerous thing to want.