Elmira spent forty minutes in the bathroom.
She found the most conservative thing in the closet-a navy blue silk slip. It reached her knees, but the back plunged dangerously low.
She took a deep breath and opened the door.
The room was dark. Only a small lamp on the bedside table was on.
Ingram was in bed. He was wearing reading glasses, looking at a file. He glanced up when she entered.
His gaze started at her face, traveled down her neck, over the silk clinging to her hips, and back up.
He didn't say a word. He just took off his glasses, set them on the table, and turned off the light.
"Goodnight."
Elmira scurried to the bed. She lifted the duvet and slid in. She stayed on the absolute edge of the mattress, terrified that if she moved, she would touch him.
"Goodnight," she whispered.
She lay in the dark, listening to the rain. She could hear him breathing. It was slow, rhythmic.
Hours passed.
A crack of thunder shook the house. The windows rattled.
Suddenly, the hum of the central heating cut out. The power grid had flickered. The room began to cool rapidly. The stone walls of the manor sucked the heat out of the air.
Elmira shivered. She curled into a ball. The silk offered no warmth.
She was asleep, or half-asleep, when a nightmare took hold. The eviction notice, the cold sterility of the clinic, Ingram's face.
She rolled over. She moved across the expanse of the mattress.
She hit something warm. Solid.
Ingram was awake. He suffered from chronic insomnia. He had been staring at the ceiling for three hours.
He felt her cold body press against his back. He froze.
She mumbled something incoherent and threw an arm over his waist. Her face pressed into the space between his shoulder blades. She shuddered, a sound not of contentment, but of fear.
Ingram should have pushed her away. He should have woken her up.
But the involuntary tremor in her body was a vulnerability he hadn't anticipated. The scent of her shampoo-vanilla and something sharper-filled his nose.
His heart rate, usually a steady drum, skipped a beat.
He slowly, carefully, turned over.
She didn't pull away. She flinched in her sleep, her head finding the crook of his shoulder. Her hand rested on his chest, right over his heart.
Ingram looked down at her in the flashes of lightning. She looked young. Defenseless.
He lifted his hand. He hesitated. Then, his fingers brushed her shoulder, intending to push her away.
He closed his eyes. For the first time in years, the calculations in his head stopped. He felt the warmth of another human being, a liability that was now his responsibility.
He wrapped an arm around her waist, a possessive, restraining gesture. And he fell into a tense, dreamless sleep.
