“You hiss when you’re scared, swipe a sharp paw my way.”
“I’m not scared.”
“Very well.”
“You do not believe me!”
“Do you know”—he rested one oar in its bracket and tugged at his cravat before picking it up once more—“before you left in a rage seven years ago?—”
“A justifiable rage!”
“Yes, a righteous one. But that’s not the point. When you left, I was in the middle of a mission, one I never got to complete. Or even attempt.”
She rolled her eyes. “Learning Spanish. You do not need me for that, Mr. Clark. Hire a tutor.”
“None so pretty as you.”
“Richard.” Her voice a warning, a stone. Immovable. But… she’d used his given name, and she’d not done that for too damn long. Felt like the first rays of sun after a cold winter, the first drop of rain after a drought.
He picked up the oar once his cravat was loosened enough to let a cool breeze calm his fire-singed skin. “Learning Spanish was merely a maneuver, a means of accomplishing the true mission.”
“I’m sure you wish me to ask what it was, but I’ll not satisfy you.”
“Ah, but that’s the point—satisfaction. That was the mission.”
She finally looked at him, the thick brown slants of her brows lightly bending toward one another. “I do not see…”
“The satisfaction of tasting your lips.”
She gasped. “N-no. You did not want that.”
“I did.”
“Impossible.” But the look in her eyes—she knew the truth. She must have tasted it on his lips after Edmund’s funeral.
She’d been crying, and he couldn’t have that. Knew the best way to banish her tears was to rouse her ire.
“Didn’t know witches could cry, Bell,” he said, cornering her in the deserted stairway. “Or are those fake tears?” He turned his head every which way, inspecting her body. “Where’s the bottle? Show me.”
Her eyes flashed, the only remaining evidence of sorrow, the streaks across her cheeks. “Go away.”
He couldn’t. He’d not seen her in four damn years, and she was a vision, a mercy, a heartbeat. He pressed her against the wall. Still so bright. Edmund gone, Daniel exiled, Evelina a widow—their youthful group blasted and broken. But Beatrice Bell as bright as the sun. Still.
“Tell me how much you hate me,” he demanded. He needed to hear her speak of him with passion in her voice.
“I hate you,” she hissed.
He leaned into her, heard her back bump against the wall, and he braced his forearm on the stone just above her head. “You think of me.”
Her eyes flashed in the shadows, and her palms fluttered against his chest. Likely to push him away, though for now they rested. Only rested. “Only to imagine you trampled by a rampaging herd of horses escaped from Astley’s.”
He laughed, the first since his brother’s sentencing four years earlier. “You’re a goddamn delight, Beatrice Bell.” Then he kissed her, tipping her chin up with his knuckles and keeping her there until her lips began to move, until he was sure those palms on his chest did not intend to shove him down the stairs. Oh no, they curled into his coat, pulled him closer as her lips opened for him.
Damn. He slid his hand off the wall and curved it around her nape, tugging her closer, sighing into the kiss, tasting her hate, her pleasure.
Noise in the hallway.
She shoved him, slapped him, and with a chuckle, dark and dreary, he left her in the shadows. Alone.
