“What indeed.” He pushed a hand through his hair, more than a little offended at her accusatory tone. “I’m male. You rubbed your . . . femaleness all over me. I didn’t think. I reacted.”
“You reacted.”
“Yes.”
“To . . .” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “To me.”
“It is a natural response. Aren’t you a scientist? Then you should understand. Any red-blooded man would react to such stimulus.”
She stepped back. She dipped her chin and peered at him over her spectacles. “So you find me stimulating.”
“That’s not what I—” He bit off the rest of that sentence. The only way to end a nonsensical conversation was to simply cease talking.
Colin drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders. He closed his eyes briefly. And then he opened them and looked at her. Really looked at her, as though for the first time. He saw thick, dark hair a man could gather by the fistful. Prim spectacles, perched on a gently sloped nose. Behind the lenses, wide-set eyes—dark and intelligent. And that mouth. That ripe, pouting, sensual mouth.
He let his gaze drift down her form. There was a wicked thrill to knowing lushness smoldered beneath that modest sprigged muslin gown. To having felt her shape, scouting and charting her body with all the nerve endings of his own.
Their bodies had met. More than that. They’d grown acquainted.
Nothing more would come from it, of course. Colin had rules for himself, and as for her . . . she didn’t even like him, or pretend to. But she showed up in the middle of the night, hatching schemes that skirted the line between academic logic and reckless adventure. She started kisses she had no notion how to continue.
Taken all together, she was simply . . .
A surprise. A fresh, bracing gust of the unexpected, for good or ill.
“Perhaps,” he said cautiously, “I do find you stimulating.”
Suspicion narrowed her gaze. “I don’t know that I should take that as a compliment.”
“Take it how you will.”
She stared in the direction of the Queen’s Ruby. The group of girls had disappeared. “Drat. I’m not sure anyone even noticed the kiss.”
“I noticed it.” He rubbed his mouth with the side of his hand. The taste of ripe plums still lingered on his lips. He found himself unaccountably thirsty.
“So when do we leave?” she asked.
“Leave for where?”
“Scotland, of course.”
“Scotland?” He laughed, surprised. “I’m not taking you to Scotland.”
“But . . .” She blinked furiously. “But just now, inside. You said you chose me.”
“To dance with. I chose you as my dancing partner.”
“Yes. Precisely. You chose to dance with me, in front of all those people. To pull me outside and hold me improperly close. To kiss me, in the middle of the lane. Why would you do all that if you didn’t mean to elope?”
“For the last time, you kissed me. As for the rest . . . I regretted that scene last night in my quarters. I felt I owed you some apology.”
“Oh. Oh no.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “You’re telling me it was a pity dance? A pity kiss?”
“No, no.” He sighed. “Not entirely. I just thought you deserved to feel appreciated and admired. In front of everyone.”
“And now, for a second time in as many nights, you’re revealing that it was all deceit. So I can feel rejected and humiliated. In front of everyone.” Red rimmed her eyes. “You can’t be doing this to me again.”
Oh, for the love of tits. How did this happen to him? He had the best of intentions, and then somehow . . .
Your good intentions have the impact of mortar shells.
“That’s it,” she said, balling her hands in fists. “I’m not letting you out of it this time. I insist that you take me to Scotland. I demand you ruin me. As a point of honor.”
The bell on the tavern door jingled. They jumped back from each other a pace.
The party had outgrown the tavern, it seemed. Merrymakers spilled out from the Bull and Blossom, taking to the green.
Sniffing, Minerva crossed her arms over her chest.
“Listen,” he said low. “Is there some time and place we can talk? Someplace that’s not my quarters at midnight.”
After a pause, she straightened her spectacles. “Meet me at the head of the beach path tomorrow morning, just before dawn.”
“Before dawn?”
“Too early for you?”
“Oh no,” he replied. “I’m a very early riser.”
“You’re late,” she said, the next morning. The first rays of dawn glinted off her spectacles. “I’ve been waiting.”
“Good morning to you too, Marianna.” Colin rubbed his bleary eyes, then his unshaven jaw. “I had to bid my cousin farewell.”
His gaze slid over her frock—a murky, shapeless abomination of gray fabric, buttoned to the hollow of her throat.
“What on earth are you wearing? Did you take orders in a convent since we spoke last? Little Sisters of the Drab and Homely?”
“I thought about it,” she said dryly. “It probably would have been the wise course of action. But no. This is my bathing costume.” She raked him with a look. “I don’t suppose you have one.”
He laughed. “I don’t suppose I do.”
“You’ll just have to strip partway, I suppose. Come along, then.”
He followed her down the rocky path to the cove, bemused but undeniably intrigued. “If I’d known disrobing would be involved, I would have been more punctual.”
“Quickly, now. We must hurry, or the fishermen will see us.”
They reached the beach. The air whipping off the sea had a bracing, sobering effect, clearing some of the cobwebs from his brain. The world began to take on crisper edges.
He stopped at the water’s edge. The sea lapped at his boots. He took a long moment to inhale deeply, then surveyed the boulder-studded cove in the misty dawn. He’d never appreciated this view before, at this hour of morning.
It looked timeless. Almost mystical.
Seawater splashed him in the face.
“Wake up,” she said, removing her spectacles and placing them into a small oilcloth pouch looped over her wrist. She strode past him into the gentle waves. “Time’s wasting.”
He watched, incredulous, as the stark raving mad girl sank into the water. Knee-deep. Then waist-deep. Then all the way to her neck.