Taming the Rebel Tycoon: Wife by Approval / Dating the Rebel Tycoon / The Playboy Takes a Wife

In this kind of setting, she could almost imagine seeing a ghost.

As they started to stroll along the walls, the scented air cool and silky against her face, she shivered a little with nervous excitement.

‘Cold?’ he asked.

‘No, not really.’

He put an arm around her all the same and she found herself glad of it.

‘You were going to tell me about your ghost,’ she prompted as they walked on.

‘According to the legend, Mag was the beautiful and chaste young daughter of Lord Anders’s household steward. She fell madly in love with Sir Gerwain, the son of a neighbouring nobleman.

‘He told her he loved her and promised that when his elderly father died and he was his own master, he would marry her. They used to meet in Daland Tower, away from prying eyes, and on moonlit nights he would ride over to keep their trysts.

‘Mag used to climb up to the battlements to watch for him and when she saw him coming she would slip down a hidden stairway to the cellars and take a secret passage that comes out inside the tower.’

Frowning, Tina asked, ‘But what about the moat?’

‘The passage runs beneath the moat. It’s quite a clever bit of construction.’

With a grin, he added, ‘As a boy, it used to be my escape route if I wanted to leave the castle without anyone knowing.’

‘Is it still there?’

‘Certainly. I could take you through it now if—’

‘Oh, yes, please,’ she broke in eagerly. It would be another unique memory.

He frowned. ‘What about those heels?’

‘Is it very rough?’

‘A bit tricky in parts, but not a great deal worse than the climb up here.’

‘In that case I can manage perfectly well.’

‘You don’t suffer from claustrophobia?’

‘No.’

‘Then let’s go.’He shepherded her to the west tower, where a low door at the head of the stairway gave on to what appeared to be a short dead-end passage, until his torch showed up a small opening on the left.

‘It isn’t lit, so I’d better lead the way.’

Stooping a little, the torch lighting up the rough stone, they descended a small stairway hidden in the thickness of the wall until the steps gave way to a low tunnel.

‘Go carefully through here,’ he warned.

Cramped and narrow, built of old brick with an arched roof, the tunnel sloped downwards for a while before levelling out.

The air was unpleasantly dank, the walls black in parts and slimy to the touch, the hard-packed earth floor decidedly damp and slippery.

Tina was just thinking that she wouldn’t be sorry when they reached the end, when the torch flickered and went out, leaving them in total darkness.

She gave an involuntary gasp and stood quite still. After a second or two she heard a movement and, needing reassurance, reached out to touch him.

But her searching hand found nothing and, in the silence, the terrifying thought popped into her head that he had walked away and abandoned her in this Stygian blackness.

CHAPTER SIX

B ITING back the surge of panic, Tina told herself not to be ridiculous and said, ‘Richard?’ To her everlasting credit, her voice was steady.

‘I’m here.’ A hand reached out of the pitch-blackness and took hers. ‘All right?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was just checking the torch. I’m afraid the bulb’s gone.’

‘What do we do now?’

‘As we’re about halfway, we may as well go on.’

‘Very well,’ she agreed.

His fingers tightened on hers. ‘All you have to do is move slowly and carefully and keep your head down. For a while it’s relatively straight and level, then it starts to gradually climb again.’

For what seemed an age, they moved forward at a snail’s pace and eventually the ground began to slope upwards. Hampered by her high heels, it became more difficult to keep her footing and her ankle started to throb painfully.

She was accordingly grateful when Richard announced, ‘Not far now.’

After a few more yards he released her hand. ‘Wait here a moment.’

Once again she experienced that scary feeling of being abandoned in the smothering darkness and was forced to bite her lip.

Then she heard the brush of feet on stone, the scrape of metal on metal and the protesting creak of old hinges. A moment later moonlight came flooding coldly in to illuminate a flight of crumbling steps.

Richard returned to take her hand and they climbed them together, emerging through a small iron-banded door into a roofless half-ruined tower full of bright moonlight and deep shadow.

‘So this is where they used to meet,’ she said wonderingly.

‘Yes. But of course in those days it was merely deserted, not ruined. However, despite the state it’s in, it’s steeped in history and well worth seeing.’

Closing the door behind them, he turned to look at her and, taking a spotless handkerchief from his pocket, cleaned a smear of black from her cheek. Then, wiping the hand he had used to follow the tunnel wall, he continued, ‘However, given the ordeal you’ve just gone through, you must be sorry you ever agreed to come.’

‘No, not at all. It was quite an experience.’

From the picture he’d built up in his mind after reading Grimshaw’s reports, he wouldn’t have thought her capable of exercising such self-control and the fact that she’d taken things so calmly had both surprised and intrigued him.