Liar, you always wanted more with him.
She stumbled. No.
Retaining his hold on Copernicus’ reins in one hand, Crispin caught her lightly by the forearm with the other, and electric heat just like the sizzling charges she’d studied went through Elizabeth. Magnetic and tingling and—
Crispin steadied her. “Are you all—?”
“Fine,” she blurted, her heart threatening to beat a path outside her chest. He was her friend. He’d only ever been her friend. She loved him as that and nothing more. Her mouth went dry as fear needled in her belly. It couldn’t be anything more. “I tripped.” She swiftly drew back from his hold. “On a root,” she continued on a frantic rush. Unbidden, her fingertips went to the place his firm but contradictorily gentle touch had seared her, even through the thin wool fabric. His brows dipped, and he glanced over his shoulder at the handful of steps they’d traveled since. “Or a rock,” she finished weakly. The clouds overhead chose that inopportune moment to float past the moon and cast a damningly bright glow upon her blushing cheeks. “It might have been…” Stop. You simply lost your balance. He needn’t know more than that. Elizabeth went close-lipped and redirected her attention to the bandage she’d wound about Copernicus’ wound.
Heat pricked her neck at the feel of Crispin’s eyes on her.
In the end, she was saved by the unlikeliest of heroes.
Copernicus nudged Crispin hard between the shoulder blades, knocking him slightly forward. Switching the reins to his other hand, Crispin did a quick search of the injured mount. “You’re as skilled as you always were at bandaging up a wound,” he noted.
Some of the tension went out of her. This was safe. This was a familiar topic that didn’t involve recriminations about their past, or the yearning she’d buried in her heart. “I’m not completely out of practice. I’ve had many spirited students over the years who required the occasional patching up.”
“Were they?”
She stared quizzically back.
“Spirited?”
“Yes. Of course.” A wistful smile played at her lips. “Some more than others.” Some of the more lively students she’d instructed flashed to mind. Those mischievous girls had marked a break from the tediousness that had come to mark her existence.
“And did the students leave your tutelage with that same strength?”
She stiffened as the insult rolled along her back, one she’d have to be deaf to fail to hear. The oak-paneled inn drew into focus. Elizabeth kept her gaze on the whorl of white smoke spiraling from a distant chimney and fought for the restraint she’d so desperately mastered over the years. “Not all of us can have the luxury of a fellowship at Oxford,” she gritted out, hating the envy that had always been there at his securing one of those distinguished posts. “And certainly not a woman.”
“No, but neither did you have to trade your honor for a post at Mrs. Belden’s Finishing School.”
Elizabeth gasped and jerked to a stop beside the slate boundary stone at the center of the gardens. “How dare you?” He’d pass judgment on her for having survived these years as she had? And on the place she worked?
“I dare because it’s true,” he shot back, releasing Copernicus’ reins. The horse hobbled over to the edge of the road and proceeded to chomp on the wildflowers growing there.
“You know nothing about Mrs. Belden’s.” Elizabeth seethed, tasting her fury. “And you know nothing about me.” Not now.
It was yet another wrong thing to say. Crispin stalked over, a predator on the prowl, his gleaming black boots grinding up gravel and dirt. “No, I don’t, Elizabeth,” he purred in the hated, gruff rogue’s tones he’d used on so many others.
And I’m just as weak for him.
“But once, I knew everything about you,” he whispered, as if he’d followed her unspoken thoughts. “I knew the way you dog-eared pages you read until you had each verse or sentence upon them committed to memory. I knew how you loved the rain because you could splash through the puddles afterwards.”
Her heart worked. He remembered all that? All distant memories of her younger self that no rogue should dare recall.
A ghost of a smile played at the corners of his lips. “Yes,” he said again, with an unerring accuracy. “I remember even that.”
The backs of her knees knocked into a boulder, the sharp stone biting into the fabric of her skirts, knocking her onto her buttocks. “And yet…” He stopped and framed his hands on opposite sides of her, effectively trapping her. “There is so much more that remains a mystery about you.” He hung that statement there as a temptation. His arms came about her like a prison that, God help her, she didn’t wish to escape. Her pulse slowed and then quickly picked up a frantic beat. “Like the taste of your lips.”
Her heart jumped. “W-we kissed one another.”
“As children.” His breath fanned the curls that had escaped her tight chignon. “Not as a man and woman. Not,” he continued, like temptation itself, “a kiss driven by desire that shreds rationale thought and leaves in its place nothing but unadulterated feeling.”
Swallowing hard, Elizabeth tilted her head back to meet his gaze. The movement sent her loose wire-rimmed frames slipping down her face.
Crispin raised a hand between them. His fingertips brushed the seam of her lips, the tip of her nose, before capturing the spectacles and sliding them into their proper place. “There,” he whispered, lingering his touch upon her.
He surely used nothing more than a rogue’s tricks to discomfit her, and yet, she proved herself far less logical than she’d ever credited. The passion burning in Crispin’s eyes stole the breath from her lungs, searing her with the intensity of a gaze so palpable she could almost believe his was a genuine hungering—for her. “You’re so very familiar now with heated embraces and stolen kisses?” she countered, more a reminder for herself that the man who’d pledged his loyalty had betrayed those vows with others. Nameless, faceless beauties who’d had the pleasure of the very embrace he now spoke of.
That green serpent slithered around inside, poisoning her with her own jealousy.
Crispin smiled slowly. “Ah, but we’re not speaking about any embraces I’ve shared with others.” He dipped his head. Their breath stirred puffs of white in the cool night air, the little wisps tangling and dancing together. “I’m discussing the ways I haven’t yet known you.”
“Y-yet?” she urged, barely recognizing the sultry quality of her query. For the word he’d used suggested far more.
Crispin’s gaze darkened, and he palmed her cheek.
Their eyes locked, their chests rose and fell in a like rhythm, and then, with a groan, Crispin claimed her lips.
Heat—sizzling, electric, and as dangerous as the lightning currents she’d studied as a girl—burned her from within.
Elizabeth moaned, and then gripping the lapels of his cloak, she angled her head to receive his kiss, this union of their mouths unlike the hasty one they’d shared as children. Now, only a raw, unadulterated passion blazed between them.
“Elizabeth,” he groaned. Her name, a plea, a hungry, desperate rumble, only stoked the flames of yearning that now spread through her. He licked her lips, tracing the seam, silently pleading for entry, and she let him in.
His tongue brushed hers like a brand, marking her, and she moaned, matching his movements.
Never breaking contact with her lips, Crispin guided her back until she lay prone upon the smooth surface of the weather-beaten boulder, laying her under him like a primitive offering to the gods.
His mouth left hers, and she keened at the loss, that incoherent plea giving way to a groan as he trailed his lips everywhere, from the corner of her mouth and lower to the lobe of her right ear. He caught that delicate flesh and lightly suckled, drawing another earthy moan from deep within her throat.
“So beautiful,” he breathed against her neck, and with a long, wanton moan, she tipped her head sideways, allowing him better access to that place wher
e her pulse beat wildly.
He placed his lips gently to the spot, nipping at it lightly with his teeth, like a stallion marking a mare. So primal, so raw that the ache at her center grew sharp.
As he worshiped that flesh, Elizabeth tangled her fingers in the lush strands of his neatly clipped chestnut waves, holding him close.
All the while, Crispin worked his hands over her, exploring her. Through the fabric of her skirts, he found her hips, sinking his fingertips into the flesh.
“Crispin,” she moaned. Of their own volition, her legs fell open in an invitation as old as Eve. His shaft, thick and hard with his desire, prodded her through her skirts, and the ache at her center grew. Panting like he’d run a great race, he dropped his elbows on either side of her head and reclaimed her mouth, thrusting his tongue deep and mating with hers in a primitive dance.
He wants me.
It was a heady, unlikely truth, and yet, every stroke of his tongue against hers and every rasp of his breath bespoke of a like hungering.
He drew her skirts up slowly. The cool night air slapped at her skin, a balm to the fire he’d set. Crispin stroked her bare leg, as if familiarizing himself with the feel of her, a glorious massage that pulled incoherent, garbled entreaties from her throat.
Suddenly, Crispin tore himself away.
“No,” she whispered.
Breathing hard, he stared down at her through heavy lashes.
He touched a fingertip to his lips.
In quick order, he had her on her feet, and as her skirts fluttered into place, he righted the loose tendrils, tucking them back behind her ears with an ease only a rogue could manage.
What? Why had he stop—?
Someone cleared his throat.
Oh, blast.
The sting of mortification burned away the chill left by the night air, and Elizabeth shrank behind Crispin. Of course, as one with a scoundrel’s reputation, he’d be a master at assignations.
A lad with tired eyes and a heavily freckled face stared baldly at them. “Can I help you?” he offered, alternating a curious stare from Elizabeth to Crispin several times before ultimately settling on the more well-attired and influential of their pair.
Crispin straightened, and gone were all traces of anger from moments ago. In their place was the smooth, even, ever-charming gentleman. “My mount is injured and in need of care and a stable.” He tugged out a purse and tossed it over. The boy easily caught it. “I’ll need to stable him here until I can send someone to retrieve him. We’ll also require two rooms.”
The child paused in midstudy of the velvet sack’s contents. “Don’t have two rooms, sir. Me mum and da have only one room for the night.”
Elizabeth curled her toes into the soles of her boots. Blast. Of course there was only one room.
“We shall take your remaining room.”
The boy nodded and then, collecting Copernicus’ reins, led the mount to the stables.
After he’d gone, Crispin glanced over. “This isn’t done,” he promised on a husky whisper.
As they started toward the inn, dread twisted in her belly.
For, God help her, Elizabeth proved how very weak she truly was. She didn’t want to be done with Crispin Ferguson, and that truth sent terror clamoring inside her.
Chapter 8
There had always been lively debates between Crispin and Elizabeth. And laughter and discourse.
What they had never suffered from, however, was silence.
Until now.
A thick, tense, uncomfortable silence hung in the air and grew with every passing instant.
Since their embrace, the never-shy Elizabeth had avoided his eyes.
With their belongings being taken up to their shared room and a bath being readied by the tavern keeper, Crispin and Elizabeth sat across an uneven oak table amidst a quiet taproom, two plates between them.
Elizabeth pushed her fork around her dish, attending her skirret pie with the same intensity she’d bestowed on every tome he’d sneaked from his family’s libraries and turned over for her research.
Which, after a day of traveling and with this being her first fare, would not have been unusual… if she hadn’t grown squeamish whenever her own mum had cooked with skirrets.
Crispin tightened his fingers around the pewter tankard in his hands.
Her discomfiture was now as great as it had been the last time they’d kissed. That previous meeting of their mouths had wrought havoc on his senses and haunted his six-and-ten-year-old self’s dreams.
That exchange, to him, had been magical and wondrous and—
Yuck. That was as pleasant as a raw skirret. Can you determine what all the fuss is about?
That had also been the moment he’d had his pride badly beaten by the truth that the feelings he’d carried for the slightly younger girl had been wholly one-sided—and humbling for it.
In the past, he’d bolted shortly after their first kiss, too much of a coward to face any more of her grimaces, but now he sat across from her, studying her bent head over the rim of his glass.
The pursed-lipped distaste she’d worn as a girl had, this time, been replaced by a woman’s desire. Her breathless moans echoed around his mind even now, her entreaties quiet as she’d clung to him like ivy. Unlike before, she’d wanted him as much as he hungered for her, and that realization steadied him.
Leaning back in his seat, Crispin stretched his legs out, the tips of his boots colliding with hers.
She stiffened but made no move to pick her head up.
“You’ve changed in many ways, Elizabeth,” he noted, deliberately husking his tone.
Her fork scraped across the plate, knocking a boiled potato over the edge and onto the table. She battled herself. It was a fight she wore in the tense set of her narrow shoulders. She was no coward, though, and Elizabeth raised her head slowly, daring him with her eyes to go on.
Crispin curled his lips up. “You’ve developed a taste for”—her thin red eyebrows shot above her spectacles—“skirrets.”
She didn’t blink for a long minute, her impossibly large eyes forming perfect circles.
He winked.
Elizabeth’s brows fell, returning to their proper place.
Crispin nodded at her plate of carved, but otherwise uneaten, pie. She followed his stare. Muttering under her breath, she grabbed her knife and carved one of the already cut pieces into several, smaller, minuscule bits.
His lips twitched. “What was that?”
“I like them just fine,” she mumbled. Still, she made no move to raise the fork to her lips.
He winged an eyebrow up.
She uttered something that sounded very much like infuriating spider brain.
“It’s really an unfair charge, you know,” he said, and she paused, a forkful of pie halfway to her mouth. “It’s all a matter of proportion, really.”
“What?” she ventured, lowering her utensil.
“The spider,” he elucidated. “Given their size, they are, in fact, mostly brain.”
She blinked wildly, and the contents of her fork tumbled onto the table. “Indeed?”
He sat back, encouraged by her interest. “Albrecht von Haller—”
“The Swiss naturalist,” she interjected with such excitement glittering in her eyes that it lit her face and bathed her cheeks in a delicate flush.
All the breath lodged in his chest.
She is magnificent…
Elizabeth cocked her head, knocking her spectacles slightly askew and bringing him back from his woolgathering.
“He wasn’t just a naturalist,” he said, clearing his throat. “His accomplishments also included anatomy and physiology.”
She opened her mouth and then stopped. Suspicion darkened her gaze, and she held her fork out menacingly. “We never read any evidence outside of his works on herbaria.”
Crispin gave her a pointed look. “No, we didn’t.” They could have, though. There was so much they could have shared.
His fingers curled hard around his tankard. He didn’t want to shatter the fragile bond with talks of their broken past. “His son, Gottlieb Emanuel, came to speak extensively at Oxford, offering lectures on his father’s works.”
The animated spark was lit once more within her clever gaze. She sat forward. “Which topics did he speak on?”
How he’d missed these exchanges. Crispin nodded and set down his drink. “Haller believed that as body size goes down”—he held his hands apart and shrank them together until the palms nearly touched—“the proportion of the body taken up by the brain increases.”
Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. “Which would not mean greater brain function,” she pointed out.
“No.” His grin widened. “It does, however, go to the relativity of size.”
“Hmm.” She chewed at the tip of her index finger, her gaze contemplative. She abruptly stopped. “Have there been studies performed?”
“On whether or not I’m spider-brained?” he asked, pulling a laugh from her, the bell-like expression of mirth earning stares from nearby tables. He joined in, his chest rumbling from amusement he’d not felt in so long.
“On the spider,” she needlessly clarified, wiping the mirth from the corners of her eyes.
Crispin shook his head. “Not that I’ve been able to discover.” He winked again. “I just took the liberty of applying the principle to your insult.”
Her lips twitched. “Fair turn.”
They shared a smile, and just like that, they were restored to the same pair who’d spoken for hours about topics that had horrified his parents. When was the last time he’d enjoyed himself this much? None of the company he’d kept these years had cared a jot about anything outside of their own pleasures: balls, soirees, scandalous masquerades with the lone friend he’d made in Elizabeth’s absence.
As quick as it came, however, her smile slipped, and reality forced itself upon them once more.
As if it could ever truly be gone. As if they could simply move past her abandonment. And how he despised himself for being shredded by her betrayal still. He swiped his drink off the table and took a long swallow of the vile, bitter ale. “I’ll allow you to your skirrets, madam.”
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