Eve Silver by Dark Desires Page A

familiar.
    As Darcie rested her hand on the door handle, a soft tapping sound drifted upward from the lower floor, followed by the creaking of the stairs. Someone was coming. She slipped into the doctor's study, leaving the door open a crack, unwilling to come face to face with Poole at this late hour. Through the narrow opening she watched as a quiet shadow moved along the hallway.
    Not Poole, she realized, for as the man passed the study doorway, she saw the golden strands of his hair. Damien. Her heart thudded as she watched him move past.
     He carried no candle, making his way sure-footed in the darkness, until he reached the end of the hallway. He paused, and then entered his bedroom.
    Pushing the study door fully open, Darcie slipped from the room and moved soundlessly along the hall until she reached the end. She flattened herself against the wall. He had left the portal slightly ajar and a thin finger of light cut the darkness, spreading across the carpet that covered the floor of the hallway. Looking down, Darcie realized that the carpet was a dark, rich red. She had never before noticed that it resembled the color of dried blood. A shiver coursed through her body, and she wondered at the source of her unease. She had walked this hallway dozens of times. There was nothing sinister here. Yet, despite the fact that she repeated that thought to herself over and over again, she could not quite convince herself of its veracity.
    She meant to walk past Damien’s door and ascend to her chamber, but as she hovered on the threshold, a movement from within caught her attention. Sidling closer, she found could look into Damien's bedroom without being observed. He stood with his back to her, staring into the fireplace, his shirt pulled from the waistband of his breeches and hanging loose from his broad shoulders to his hips.
    Suddenly, he turned. Darcie froze, barely daring to breathe. He stood, his head cocked slightly to one side, his eyes fixed on the door.
    Oh, please don't see me, she thought with mortification. To be caught spying on him would be the worst humiliation. On the tail of that thought came the realization that her brief glimpse of Damien had been wrong somehow. There was something out of place….
    Daring much, she leaned forward a bit more, breathing a faint sigh of relief when she saw that he was no longer looking her way. Her eyes traveled the length of him, pausing as she registered the source of her puzzlement. Damien's white lawn shirt hung open, revealing the skin of his chest, his abdomen. The front of the once-pristine garment was spattered with dark blotches, irreparably stained. He looked as though someone had thrown a bottle of ink at him, the marks spreading across the white cloth. Except, the stains were not the color of ink. They were the color of the hall carpet. The color of blood.
    Darcie jerked back and slammed her eyes shut. There was a reasonable explanation for this. He was a doctor. But even as she insisted to herself that the blood had come from a patient, or that the dark stains truly had some other, non-sinister source, she could not completely thrust aside the feeling of foreboding that rose like a tide.
    As she stood shivering in the chilly hallway, she heard the frightful howling of the wind as it whipped against the windowpanes, rattling and shaking them with the greatest force. The storm had grown stronger, more restless. A great rumbling of thunder shook the heavens, the windows, perhaps even the walls, and the frenzied illumination of bolts of lightning sent flickering shapes and shadows across the floor.
    Darcie peered hesitantly into the chamber once more. Damien had not moved. He stood, angled toward the doorway, and she watched, mesmerized, as he slowly, sinuously, drew the shirt from one shoulder and then the other. With a careless motion, he tossed it into the fire. She saw his actions, but though she realized that burning one's shirt was an exceedingly odd thing to do,