Acquainted With the Night (9781101546000) by Piper Maitland

it up?”
    She shrugged, as if she were always going off on tangents. The truth was scarier. She wasn’t free-spirited or capricious. She was so vigilant her motto was semper para-tus , always prepared.
    Jude handed her a swaying glass of Chablis, and his shirtsleeve pulled back slightly, revealing a sturdy wrist. He stepped back to the wall, reestablishing the neutral space between them.
    â€œI’m sure you’re a fantastic guide,” he said. “I can see you wearing pearls and escorting groups through Windsor Castle.”
    â€œQuite the opposite.” She lifted her free hand and rubbed her forehead, trying to smooth out her thoughts. The Chablis had loosened her up, and in a bad way. She squashed an impulse to tell him about her secret specialty: wicked history, the smuttier the better. Once she got going, she’d never shut up. Lecturing this man about Catherine the Great’s sexual preferences would be grossly uncouth, wouldn’t it?
    He smiled, as if he’d heard her thoughts. “When you aren’t leading tourists through the Tate, what do you do?” he asked.
    She shrugged. Better not mention her daily walks to the bakery, followed by evenings alone in the flat, eating treacle tarts and watching old movies, most recently Bogie and Bacall in To Have and Have Not .
    He took a sip of wine, and she tried not to stare at his hands. They would have fascinated a medieval sculptor. She wasn’t drawn to perfect men, but now that she’d had a chance to study him, she noticed that his right eye was rounder than the left. The disparity gave depth and expression to his face. So did the brown dots in his left eye, which were scattered like ground nutmeg.
    She squirmed in her chair, trying to ignore the slight scratchy sound that his hand made as it slipped into the front pocket of his faded jeans. She imagined him clutching a pen, writing equations and notes on a yellow legal pad, adjusting dials on a microscope. Then she imagined his fingertips on her body.
    Focus, Caro. Ask him about Uncle Nigel.
    â€œI read the letters,” she said.
    â€œWhat did you make of them?”
    â€œNot much.” They’d told more about him than her uncle’s secret plan. Jude had grown up in the north country. The land of plucky orphans. Jane Eyre, Heathcliff, and Mary Lenox. “You’re from York?” she asked.
    â€œRipon. North of Harrogate.”
    â€œI’ve been there. Ripon is a cathedral city, right?”
    â€œYes.” A smile—or was it a frown?—tugged at the edges of his lips. “There’s a line in Jane Eyre that refers to our old pile of rocks. Everyone thinks it’s about the Norton-Conyers house, but it refers to Dalgliesh Castle.”
    Keeping her eyes on him, Caro reached for her glass. Had the wine made him loquacious or was he boasting? She tried to look suitably impressed. “You lived in a castle?”
    â€œI wasn’t there often. My father sent me to boarding school.”
    â€œAnd your family is old and stodgy?”
    â€œOld enough.”
    â€œDalgliesh sounds familiar.”
    â€œIt’s popular with tourists. After my father died, Lady Patricia couldn’t afford a new roof. It was a positively astronomical sum. Over a million pounds. Lady Patricia had to prostitute the home-place.”
    â€œLady Patricia is your stepmum?”
    â€œYes.” His voice held no inflection and his face was unreadable.
    Caro rubbed her temple. She was on the edge of remembering something about the castle. “Does Dalgliesh have a tree in the dungeon?”
    â€œWe don’t have a dungeon. But there’s a hawthorn tree in the cellar. Lady Patricia turned the area into a gift shop.”
    â€œThat’s where I bought my luggage.” She pointed to the plaid duffel bag.
    â€œHere’s to small worlds.” He lifted his glass.
    And huge houses. Caro tried to imagine a much younger Jude playing in