“I assure you, I’ve not come close to using your sister, cruelly or otherwise. I apologized for all that business at the tea shop.”
“Oh yes. You apologized quite prettily. You made them believe you were decent. That you cared. And then you took up with a married woman.”
Colin rubbed the back of his neck. He really didn’t have time for this. He had fireworks to set, a cannon to mount, and a lamb to catch. “I don’t know what you hope to gain by pursuing this conversation. I tell you now, I won’t offer marriage. Not to your sister, not to anyone.”
“Hmph. I’d never allow you to marry her.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
“I want justice! I want you to be responsible for your actions, instead of always weaseling out of them with a few pretty words.”
Do you see? Colin wanted to say. This is why I avoid you. It was as if those spectacles gave her the power to see straight through him.
“You’re starting to sound like my cousin,” he said. “I do hope you’re not planning to give me the same treatment you gave him.”
She stared at him a moment. “What an excellent idea.” With a swift, swooping motion of her arm, she drew back her reticule and let it fly.
Colin flinched just in time to take the blow on his shoulder, rather than his crown. Still, the cinched velvet purse landed with surprising force. Pain exploded through his shoulder. “What the devil is in that thing? Rocks?”
“What else?”
What else, indeed. How could he have forgotten her ridiculous obsession with geology? Vile harpy. “Listen, Marissa . . .”
“It’s Minerva.” She raised her hand to swing the rock-filled reticule again.
This time, he was ready. In a lightning-quick motion, Colin caught her wrist. He spun her around and pulled her to him. Her spine pressed flush against his chest, and he cinched his arm around her middle.
Her spectacles slipped from her face and tumbled to the grass.
She wrestled his grip. “Let me go.”
“Not just yet. You’ll step on them, if you don’t stop struggling.”
He wasn’t sure he truly wanted her to stop struggling. From where he was standing, poised to look straight down her bodice, all that wrestling did wonderful things for her br**sts. No cool, perfect alabaster to be found here. Just warm, womanly skin. And as enticing as she looked, she felt even better. So angry and alive.
“Hush.” He pressed his lips close to her ear. Her hair smelled of jasmine. The scent swirled through his head, muddling his thoughts. “Be calm,” he told her.
Be calm, he told himself.
“I don’t want to be calm. I want a duel.” She wriggled in his arms, and desire pulsed through him, as fierce as it was appalling. “I demand satisfaction.”
Yes, he thought. This was a woman who would demand satisfaction. In life, in love. In bed. She would demand honesty and commitment and fidelity, and all manner of things he was unwilling to give.
Which was just the excuse he needed to let her go.
“Don’t move, or you’ll crush them.” He bent to retrieve her wire-rimmed spectacles from where they’d landed in a clump of ivy. After brushing them clean of dirt and moss, he held them up to the moonlight to inspect them for scratches.
“They aren’t broken, are they?”
“No.”
She made a lunging grab for the spectacles, but he held them back. She stumbled, pitching forward to collide with his chest. As she looked up at him, blinking hard in her attempt to see clear, her lashes fluttered like thick, plumed fans. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips.
Good God. For a buttoned-up bluestocking, she had damned sultry lips. Luscious, plump, and a deeper red at the edges. Like two slices of a ripe, sweet plum. His mouth watered.
She leaned into him, cheeks flushed. As if she wanted his kiss. More than that. As if she wanted him. Every incorrigible, rakish, broken part.
That couldn’t be right.
“You know, they have a point,” he said. “You do look different without your spectacles.”
“Truly?”
“Yes. You look squinty. And confused.” He fitted the spectacles back on the bridge of her nose, hooking the rims over her ears. Then he put a finger under her chin, tilting her face for his appraisal. “There, that’s some improvement.”
She blinked at him through the discs of glass, her gaze sharpening to that familiar, piercing ray of mistrust. “You are a horrid man. I despise you.”
“Rightly so, pet.” And just because he knew it would vex her, he touched a fingertip to her nose. “Now you’re seeing clear.”
Twenty-five
Bram stared at the letter in his grip. This folded square of paper gave him back his command. For months now, this had been all he’d wanted. He’d worked tirelessly to recover his strength, pursued this one goal with single-minded determination. He couldn’t have dreamed anything would make him happier than the very scrap of parchment he now held.
He wanted to throw it in the fire.
And then toss Sir Lewis Finch after it.
“I can’t believe this. Oh my God.” Susanna sobbed into her hand, and then ran from the hall before Bram had any chance to stop her.
“Susanna, wait.” He started in pursuit.
Sir Lewis flung an arm in front of his chest, stopping him cold. “Let her be. She gets this way. All women do. I’ve found she always sorts these things out on her own, in time. If only you let her be.”
Bram stared at the man, fuming. “Oh really. The same way you let her be, when she was distraught after her mother’s death? Sending her to that ghastly torture in Norfolk?” With a curled finger, he thwacked the envelope containing his new orders. “How long have you had this, Sir Lewis? Days now? Weeks? Since before I even arrived in Spindle Cove, perhaps? Obviously, there wasn’t any true need for a field review. Did the Duke of Tunbridge really ask you to muster a militia here, or was that a lie, too? I always knew you were a brilliant inventor, but perhaps you ought to try your hand at espionage.”
The older man bristled. “I am a patriot, you ungrateful whelp. Tomorrow, before an audience of dukes and generals, I will introduce the weapon that could save many of your soldiers’ lives. And what do you care if I engaged in some harmless exaggeration? You’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you?”
“You mean this?” Bram shook the envelope at him. He lowered his voice to a growl. “This piece of paper has exactly one virtue right now. One quality that keeps me from crushing it under my heel.”