Читать книгу Deadline Istanbul (The Elizabeth Darcy Series) - Peggy Hanson - Страница 14

CHAPTER 10

“A lady’s imagination is very rapid…”

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Hello? Yes?” My voice sounded scared even to my own ears. The sound of the rattling doorknob, small, furtive, had wakened me from deep sleep and I leapt out of bed. I trembled, at once confused, alone, and vulnerable.

No answer. And I couldn’t see anyone through the peephole. I checked the lock yet again, to be sure. And I looked to see if another note had appeared. It hadn’t.

I plopped back on the bed, wide-awake and furious. I needed sleep after the trip. Who had dared to wake me up like that?

I took a deep breath. Get a grip, Elizabeth. No doubt some confused tourist was looking for his own room.

I dug through meds and took an Ambien to bring on the reluctant god of Morpheus—something I should have taken earlier to forestall jet lag. This way, I wouldn’t even know if someone tried the door.

But the medicine didn’t work the way intended. In a fitful dream I wandered lost through a snowy forest, shadowed by figures behind trees. Men? No. Wolves.

Heart pounding, I gave up, turned on the light, and pulled Pride and Prejudice to me. That’s what it was there for, to provide balance.

The immortal, familiar first words were as calming as usual: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. The reader knows at that moment that she is in good hands. Safe hands. We all want truth universally acknowledged.

And in the midst of life’s other trials, how comforting to be worrying that much about marriage.

I’d rather have slept, but in lieu of that, my old friend Jane held me as she’s done in the past—transported to a different time and place, where finding husbands became the absorbing tale of a village—almost a matter of life and death.

Marriage is a little scary in its own right, but marriage made a better topic tonight than Peter. Murdered Peter.

And much better not to think of the slinking gray things in my nightmare. I do love wolves, but not in my dreams.