The Paid Companion | Herophine

Chapter Thirty Four

Hero

The clock on the table beside the bed read three-fifteen. Hero looked at it from his post near the window. He had undressed but he had not yet bothered to climb beneath the quilts. There was no point. It was not sleeping he needed.

He needed Josephine.

The house seemed to slumber around him. The servants had long since gone to bed. If past behaviour was a reliable guide, Felix would not bring Anne home until dawn.

He wondered if Josephine was finding sleep as elusive as he was finding it.

He looked out the window into the night drenched garden and thought about how Josephine would look curled up in bed. Then he reminded himself yet again that a gentleman must not knock on a lady's bed-chamber door unless he had been invited to do so.

Josephine had not issued any invitations when he had said good night to her a short time ago. In point of fact, she had instructed him quite succinctly to get some sleep.

He was not in a mood to follow those orders.

He contemplated the darkness for a while longer. It would be irresponsible to go to Josephine's room. True, they had got away with that episode in the library, but he had no right to put her into such a potentially embarrassing situation again.

The risks were many and varied. Anne and Felix could easily come home early, and Anne might discover that he was in the wrong bedchamber. Or one of the servants might hear the creak of the floorboards and, fearing burglars, come upstairs to investigate.

But he knew, deep down, it was not the risk of discovery that was holding him back. It was the possibility that all Josephine wanted or needed from him was a short-lived passion.

He thought about her dreams of financial and personal independence. For a brief, heady moment he pictured what it would be like to cast off the shackles of his responsibilities to the Tiffin family and run away with Josephine.

The fantasy of living a gloriously free life with her in some far-off clime, well beyond the reach of his relatives and the demands of those who depended upon him, shimmered in front of his eyes, an effervescent reflection on the windowpane.

The image quickly vanished. He had commitments. He would keep them.

But tonight Josephine was only just down the hall.

He tightened the sash of his black silk dressing gown and turned away from the window. Picking up the candle, he crossed the room, opened the door and let himself out into the corridor.

He stood listening for a few seconds. There was no sound of a carriage out in the street, no noise from downstairs.

He went along the hall and stopped in front of Josephine's bedchamber. No light shone beneath the door. He told himself he should take that as a sign that, unlike him, she had been able to go to sleep.

But what if she was lying there in the darkness, wide awake? It would not hurt to tap lightly on the door. If she was sound asleep, she would not notice the small noise.

He rapped, not quite as softly as he had intended. But, then, what would have been the point of a soundless little tap?

For a moment he heard nothing. Then he caught the unmistakable squeak of the bed frame followed by muffled footsteps.

The door opened. Josephine looked out at him with eyes that appeared fathomless in the glow of the candle. Her light hair was pinned up under a lacy little cap. She wore a plain dressing gown patterned with small flowers.