Spellmaker

CHAPTER 10

“We’re making a detour,” he added as the carriage pulled down the drive. Elsie glanced out the window at the darkening estate, but didn’t see any of the family.

“Detour?” she asked.

“Master Hill once offered me a room in her home,” he explained, pulling the tie from his hair and leaning back against the wall behind him. “I’m going to accept it.”

“At this hour?”

Bacchus didn’t reply.

Elsie worried her hands. Hadn’t she brought gloves with her? Had she left them inside? “Will . . . Will the duke be all right with you taking his carriage?”

Folding his arms, he answered, “He won’t stop me.”

She swallowed. “And . . . your men?” John and . . . Rainer, wasn’t it?

“They have instructions to follow.”

She turned the ring around on her finger. “I’m sorry, Bacchus. I was hoping it was something else.”

Bacchus relaxed into his bench. “I was as well. But I was prepared for it not to be.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out two lace gloves, folding them in half before handing them to Elsie. “I believe these are yours.”

Her lips parted as she took them, their fingers just brushing. Such a simple, silly thing, but it got her pulse hurrying along well enough. “Thank you. That was considerate of you.” She set them on her lap.

They rode for some time in silence, heading into London. Elsie glanced outside, seeing nothing beyond the rain pelting the window. “How much of that trunk did you pack?”

“About half.”

“Leave it to a man to be able to throw his things together and travel on a whim.” She folded her hands in her lap. “It’s much more difficult for a woman, you know.”

A ghost of a smile touched his face. “I’m sure there will be many wrinkles in my clothing come morning.” He’d slipped into his Bajan accent, and she was glad for it.

“You fill out your clothes well enough that I don’t think it would matter.” Her ears heated at her own comment. She picked at the handle of her reticule. “What now?”

He rubbed the half beard around his mouth. “I’ll lean on Master Hill’s hospitality until I can find a reasonable house in the city. I intend to join the atheneum as a free agent.”

Her stomach tightened. “Even with the . . . revelation about Master Phillips?”

“He will have the last say, regardless of his past deeds.”

A flicker of hope lit her. “You’re staying in London?”

“Until we decide to sail to Barbados. I have lands there, Elsie, but forwarding profits will be complicated. It would be more sound for us to have a steady income here.”

Us. God help her. “I’m tethering you here,” she whispered. “To a city you hate, with a duke who’s used you, under a hateful employer, to a place without any laceleaf.”

He lowered his hand. “I don’t hate England. I’ve spent a good deal of my life here. The laceleaf was merely a suggestion.”

“But you prefer Barbados,” she pressed.

Frowning, he nodded.

Elbows on her knees, Elsie sunk her head into her hands. “I’m so sorry, Bacchus. This is all my fault. I’ve ruined your relationship with the duke. I’ve forced you into this marriage. I’ve taken you away from your home.”

“Elsie—”

“We could probably call it off.” She lifted her head but couldn’t garner the strength to look him in the eye. “Couples split up all the time. I should know.” Her gut twisted like it was trying to wring out all her dinner. “It will be . . . awkward, with the newspaper announcement already published, but I’m not well known in any aristocratic circles. We just need an excuse. Maybe we can even tie it to the duke. The magistrate can’t really revoke his clemency once he’s given it, can he? And Miss Prescott truly thinks I’m a beginner, so we’ll have her as a witness. Emmeline, too—”

“Is the thought of marrying me so terrible?”

The question knocked the air from her. Her ribs cinched together as she met his eyes. They were dusky emeralds, narrow and unforgiving. They reminded her of the night they met, when she had begged him not to turn her in to the authorities.

Her next words caught in her throat like fishing hooks. “That’s not what I said.”

“That is precisely what you are saying,” he argued. “You are finding every excuse you can to break the engagement.” He gripped the edges of his seat. “I know I am not what a woman has in mind when she thinks of matrimony—”

“Oh, Bacchus, no.” Tears slipped into her voice, and she hated every one of them. “Don’t you see? You’re going to regret helping me. I’m already a burden to you and we haven’t even met with a priest.”

Shadows drew across his face as they passed a gas lamp on the street. “You are not a burden. Why would you think that?”

“How could I not?” she shot back. “I’m a burden to everyone.” She blinked her eyes dry. “Even as a child I was a burden. Why else would my family just up and leave in the middle of the night if not to get rid of me? And Alfred ran from me the first chance he got. Even Ogden had to be practically possessed to take me in—”

Bacchus leaned forward, almost enough to knock heads with her. “You are not a burden, Elsie Camden. You merely have an unfortunate number of complete imbeciles in your life.”

Leaning back, she hugged herself. “You’ll see, soon enough. I’m not a good person, Bacchus. Master Merton—”

“We are not discussing something you have already been acquitted for.”

“You’re not my judge.” The carriage turned. “You can’t acquit me. If they knew—if that magistrate knew—I would be shown no mercy, and you know it. I just . . . There’s something about me, Bacchus. Something unlovable.”

“You are not unlovable.”

“You are not listening.”

“No, you are not listening.” Frustration weighed his voice, and he flung out a hand toward the opposite window. “Do you think I did this just to save you? That I’m some gallant prince from a fairy tale, selflessly trying to save the young maiden from certain doom? No. I did not expect your arrest or this magistrate’s games. They merely sped up the process. And I have spent hour after blasted hour, day after day, trying to find a way to convince you that I am genuine in my affections, but it’s like throwing darts at a stone wall.”

Elsie simply shook her head at his attempts to reassure her, too miserable to examine them closely.

“Am I so untrustworthy?” he asked, and he might as well have stabbed her through the heart with a kitchen knife. “Do my actions seem so completely false to you?”

“No.” A tear slid down her cheek. “It’s not you. You are wonderful and perfect. You have been nothing but wonderful and perfect. But I’m a regret waiting to happen.” She fumbled to open her reticule, seeking a handkerchief. “I only want to save you, Bacchus. I only want you to be happy.”

“You are a foolish woman.”

She nodded, found her handkerchief. Looked up to apologize. “I—”

But Bacchus was there, so close to her, risen off his seat. She barely had time to register his closeness before his hand slipped around her neck and he gruffly pulled her toward him, his lips finding hers.

A storm burst out of Elsie, electrifying her limbs, sending her heart into her throat. She gasped, and Bacchus took advantage of it, tilting his head and claiming her fully. His lips were warm and moist and demanding. He called her very soul out of her body, and it flew up to meet him, dancing beneath his touch, sending shivers across every inch of her skin.

And then her hands were in his hair, his beautiful, thick hair, tangling with the waves as she kissed him back with enough passion to put even her favorite novel reader to shame. The carriage fell away, and she was floating, utterly enraptured by his touch, his taste, the way he smelled like oranges and rain. Heat crawled across her tongue and down her throat, warming her from the inside out, growing hotter until it was a fire. She took his bottom lip for her own, and thought she heard the faintest moan trapped between their mouths. It awoke something utterly enticing within her, a spell in a class all its own.

This wasn’t happening. But she certainly could not deny that is was, most definitely, happening.

Alfred had never kissed her like this.

And then the bolt shifted on the door beside them. Bacchus pulled away, leaving Elsie dizzy and longing, only barely aware that the carriage had indeed stopped, that they’d reached their destination, and that their driver was half a second away from discovering them in a very compromising position.

Bacchus wisely grabbed the handle and beat the man to it, making it look like he had left his seat merely to open the door. “Thank you,” he said, forgetting to paste on his English dialect. “If you would knock on the door and inform Master Hill, I’ll see to my trunk.”

The driver nodded and sprinted toward the looming house across the drive, a few of its windows still alight.

Bacchus put one foot out on the step, but the other remained planted in the carriage.

Struggling for her voice, her wits, and her composure, Elsie managed to say through tingling lips, “Is that how all Bajan men kiss?”

He smirked, the insolent man. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never kissed any of them.”

Elsie laughed, and it hurt, yet relieved the pressure building in her chest.

Reaching a hand up, Bacchus pushed away that same soggy curl from earlier before cupping the side of her face. “I want you to trust me, Elsie.”

She nodded against his hand. “I do.”

He looked like he might kiss her again, and Elsie’s entire body thrilled at the prospect, but the driver was already running back to the carriage. So Bacchus dropped his hand to hers, squeezed it, and said, “Write me,” before stepping out into the rain.

Elsie barely noticed the ride back to Brookley, the storm and the bumps. She had completely forgotten the debacle at Seven Oaks, as well as the articles waiting for her at the stonemasonry shop.

She arrived home as though in a dream, and found she had the most intense craving for oranges.