What a question, asked in such a sweet, husky voice. Something made him delay answering.
“No.” He dropped a firm kiss on her brow. “No, pet. Don’t spare a moment’s concern for me.”
He released her then, and she drifted away.
“This way, then.” She led him to a shelf of rock, and he gave her a boost as she struggled onto it. It felt good to retake the strong, manly role. It also felt good to cup her thigh.
Once they’d both pulled themselves onto the ledge, she felt her way along the cave’s wall and reached into a high niche to withdraw some sort of box. From it, she took a candle and tinderbox. The flare of warm, waxy light revealed the cave, letting him know that it was just as small and suffocating as he’d suspected. But that candle’s glow also created a small, intimate space within its golden circumference. Colin thought he would be content to stay within its borders for the foreseeable future.
Shadows played over her face as she retrieved and put on her spectacles. She held the candle up to the rocky wall at his back.
“So what is this place?
“A cave of wonders. Look. The entire exposed surface is a compressed layer of fossilized marine life.” She skipped her fingertips over the rugged surface. “I’ve spent hours making casts and rubbings and drawing sketches. Chipping away specimens where I can. Here’s an echinoid, see? Next to it, a trilobite. And just a few inches over, this is a fossilized sea sponge. Look.”
Colin looked. He saw rocks, bumps, and bumpy rocks. “Fascinating. So this is the topic of your paper for the symposium? Echy-things and troglodytes. Hard to see how they’d be worth five hundred guineas.”
“They’re not, not on their own. But this is truly priceless.”
She crawled sideways back into the cave, some half-dozen feet. Because she seemed to expect it, he followed. The farther back they went, the more the cave shrank around him, constricting his lungs. Even though he was dripping with seawater, a fine sheen of sweat pressed to his brow.
“See here?” she asked, lifting the candle. “This depression in the stone?”
He focused on it, glad for any distraction. “I suppose.”
“It’s a footprint,” she said, in a hushed, reverent tone. “Untold ages ago, some creature walked in the mud here. And the print was preserved, compressed into stone.”
“I see. And this excites you because . . . footprints are rare?”
“Fossilized footprints are rare. And no one’s ever recorded a footprint like this one before. There are three toes spread wide, see?”
Colin did see. His entire boot could have fit in any one of the individual “toe” impressions.
“It’s like a lizard’s foot,” she said.
“With a footprint that size, that deep? That would have to be one bloody large lizard.”
“Precisely.” Even in the dark, her eyes gleamed with excitement. “Don’t you see? Mr. James Parkinson has published three volumes of fossil plates, from vegetables to vertebrates. He’s documented dozens of larger animals, including an ancient alligator and a primeval elephant. But this footprint doesn’t meet any description found in his volumes. This is evidence of an entirely new creature, unknown to modern science until now. A giant prehistoric lizard.”
Colin blinked. “Well. That is most . . . remarkable.”
A giant prehistoric lizard. This was the great scientific discovery that was guaranteed to win five hundred guineas. She wanted to travel all the way to Edinburgh to argue the existence of dragons. No scientists in their right minds would award a prize for that.
“This footprint,” she said excitedly, “changes everything. Everything.”
He could only stare at her.
“Don’t you see?” she asked.
“Not . . . really.”
Unable to take the closeness any longer, he made his way back to the larger mouth of the cavern. He sat near the shelf’s edge. Black water lapped at his fingertips.
He looked up. “Is there some other way out of here?”
Dropping to sit across from him, she exhaled. “I should have known this wouldn’t work. You’re right, the whole elopement business was a stupid idea. I thought maybe if you had a chance to see it, you’d understand the implications. And you’d see how certain you are to take home five hundred guineas. But apparently, you’re incapable of grasping the scientific significance.”
He made a conscious decision to let the insult slide. “Apparently I am.”
“Not to mention, I expected you’d contribute something to the journey other than snide commentary. But I see I was wrong on that score, too.”
“How do you mean?
“You know. Brawn, if not brains. Protection. Strength. But after that situation with the tunnel . . . I can’t be dragging you kicking and flailing all the way to Scotland.”
“Now wait just a moment,” he interrupted. He cleared his throat and lowered his voice a half octave. “I have strength of all sorts in abundance. I box. I fence. I ride. I shoot. I am the first lieutenant of a small yet plucky militia. I’m certain I could bodily lift this giant lizard of yours and toss him off the nearest balcony. I just don’t have any patience for underwater tunnels.”
“Or caves.” To his offended silence, she replied, “Don’t deny it. I can tell how hard you’re breathing.”
“I’m not—”
“For heaven’s sake. You’re fogging my spectacles from here. Do you have a fear of small spaces?”
“Not a fear of them,” he said.
Her silence communicated skepticism.
He muttered, “A dislike. I dislike small, dark spaces.”
“You should have mentioned this before we entered a cave.”
“Well, you didn’t give me much opportunity.”
“Shall we go back out the way we came?”
“No.” In this larger chamber, with the benefit of candles, the cave wasn’t so bad. But he was not swimming through that tomb of a tunnel again. “You say the entrance is above water at low tide? Then I’ll wait for low tide.”
“That could be hours. People will wonder what’s become of us.”
He marveled at the “us” in that sentence—that it hadn’t even occurred to her she might swim back and leave him there alone. He’d noticed this about her, over the months. She couldn’t even contemplate the idea of disloyalty. Which was why she so disdained him, he supposed.