Chapter Six

Chapter Six

He wasn’t coming.

Minerva stared off in the direction of the castle. Then she checked her timepiece for the fourth time in as many seconds. Two . . . no, three minutes past six.

He wasn’t coming.

She should never have dreamed otherwise. She ought to have known he’d let her down.

The ground shivered beneath her. A rumble of hoofbeats reached her ears. Here it came, the coach. And it would pass her by. Leave her standing on the side of the road—an awkward fool of a girl, all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Hopeless.

She stared down the road, just waiting for the black shadow of the coach to crest the distant hill. So strange. The hoofbeats grew louder and louder, but no carriage appeared. By this point, she could actually feel the earth’s low rumble in her shinbones. Still no coach. She whirled, feeling confused and frantic.

And there he was. Lord Payne.

Colin.

Charging toward her on horseback, dashing through the early-morning mist. The wind rippling through his wavy hair. The sight was just like something from a fairy tale. Oh, he wasn’t riding a white stallion, but rather a serviceable, sturdy bay gelding. And he was dressed not in shining armor or regal attire, but in a simple, well-tailored blue topcoat and buckskin riding breeches.

No matter. He still took her breath away. As he slid from his horse, he was magnificent. Resplendent. Without a doubt, the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

And then he spoke.

“This is a mistake.”

She blinked at him. “A mistake?”

“Yes. I should have said as much yesterday, but better late than never. This journey would be a mistake, of catastrophic proportions. It can’t happen.”

“But . . .” Looking around, she realized he had nothing with him. No valises. No bags of any kind. Her heart sank. “Yesterday, in the cave. Colin, you promised.”

“I said I’d be here at six. I didn’t promise I’d leave with you.”

Minerva reeled in her half boots. Deflated and numb, she dropped to sit on the edge of her largest trunk.

He surveyed her baggage. “Good God. How did you bring three trunks all the way up here by yourself?”

“I made three trips,” she said weakly. Three cold, hard slogs through the mist. For nothing.

“Three trunks,” he repeated. “What could possibly be in them all?”

“Why do you care? You’ve just said you won’t go.”

He crouched in front of her, sinking to her eye level. “Listen, Michaela. This is for your own good. Did anyone notice we’d gone missing yesterday? Did anyone see us kiss the other night?”

She shook her head. “No.”

No one seemed to suspect a thing. Which ought to have made her feel better, but was somehow the most humiliating part yet.

“Then you’re safe, so far. And there’s too much at risk for you in this undertaking. Not just your reputation, but your safety. Your happiness. And it all might come to naught.” He tipped her chin.

She stared into his eyes. They were red-rimmed and weary. Little lines creased the space between his eyebrows. He hadn’t shaved. From a distance, he’d appeared handsome and dashing, but up close . . . “Goodness. You look horrible.”

He rubbed his face. “Yes, well. I had a hard night.”

“No sleep?”

“Actually, I did try to sleep. That’s the problem. I ought to know by now, that never ends well.”

Here it came again, that wave of sympathy rolling through her chest. She wanted to touch his hair, but settled for plucking a little burr from his coat sleeve.

“All the more reason you should want to come with me.” She tried to make it sound like the only obvious and logical solution, though she knew it really wasn’t. “Before the fortnight’s out, you could have enough money to return to London and live as you please.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know how to say this kindly, so I’ll just put it bluntly. Forget about me. Never mind your sister. To the devil with the five hundred guineas. Think of yourself. You’re betting your reputation, your family harmony—your entire future—on a queer-shaped hole in the ground. I’m a gambler, pet. I know a bad wager when I see one.”

“So you don’t believe in me.”

“No, that’s not it. I just don’t believe in dragons.”

“Is that all? You think I’m fanciful?” She stood and began pulling at the fastened straps of her trunk. “This creature was not a dragon. Not a mythical beast of any kind, but a real, living animal. And I’ve based my conclusions on years of scientific study.”

After a few minutes’ fumbling, she finally got the trunk open. “Here,” she said, lifting out stacks of journals and setting them atop the other trunk. “All my personal writings and findings. Months of notes, sketches, measurements.” She held up a thick leather-bound diary. “This entire journal is filled with my comparisons from the available fossil record. Verifying that no similar creature has been recorded to date. And if all that fails to convince them . . .”

She pushed aside a layer of fabric padding. “Here. I’ve brought this.”

Colin stared at the object in the trunk. “Why, it’s the footprint.”

She nodded. “I made a casting, from plaster of Paris.”

He stared at it some more. In the cave, in the dark, the “print” had looked like a random, three-pronged depression in the ground. The work of time and chance, not some primeval creature.

But now in the sunlight, cast in plaster relief—he could see it clear. The edges were defined and smooth. Just as with a human footprint, the toe prints were individual and separate from the sole. It really looked like a foot. An enormous reptilian foot. The print of a creature that could send a man running and screaming for his life.

Colin had to admit, it was rather impressive.

But not nearly as impressive as Minerva herself.

At last, here was a glimmer of that confident, clever woman who’d visited his quarters. The woman he’d been waiting to see again.

The brisk morning air lent her skin a pretty flush, and the misty sunlight revealed it to lovely effect. She’d coiled all that dark, heavy hair and tightly pinned it for the journey—save a few fetching tendrils that spiraled lazily from her temple to her cheek. Doeskin gloves hugged her fingers like a second skin. Her traveling gown was velvet. Exquisitely tailored and dyed in a lush, saturated hue that danced the line between red and violet. Depending on how the sunlight caught the velvet’s thick nap, that gown was either the blaring color of alarm—or the hue of wild, screaming pleasure.

Either way, Colin knew he ought to lower his gaze, back away slowly, and be done with this.

“I will win the prize,” she said. “If you still don’t believe me, I’ll prove it to you.”

“Really, you don’t need to—”

“It’s not only me who believes it. I know you think I’m mad, but he’s not.” She rummaged through the trunk’s interior side pocket and withdrew an envelope. “Here, read it.”

He unfolded the letter, holding it carefully by its edges. The message was penned in a crisp, masculine hand.

“ ‘My dear friend and colleague,’ ” he read aloud. “ ‘I have read with great interest your latest reports from Sussex.’ ” He skimmed the letter. “So on and so forth. Something about rocks. More about lizards.”

“Just skip to the end.” She jabbed a finger at the last paragraph. “Here.”

“ ‘These findings of yours are exciting indeed,’ ” Colin read. “ ‘I wish you would reconsider your plans and make the journey to Edinburgh for the symposium. Surely the prize would be yours, without contest. And though it be paltry inducement compared to a purse of five hundred guineas, I would add that I’m most eager to further our acquaintance. I find myself growing most impatient to meet, face-to-face, the colleague whose scholarship I have long admired and whose friendship I have . . .” His voiced trailed off. He cleared his throat and resumed reading. “ ‘Whose friendship I have come to hold so very dear. Please . . .’ ”

Colin paused. So very dear? In correspondence between a gentleman and an unattached young lady, that was practically a declaration of love.

“ ‘Please make the journey. Yours in admiration, Sir Alisdair Kent,’” he finished.

He’d be damned. The awkward bluestocking had an admirer. Perhaps even a sweetheart. How quaint. How precious. How unspeakably irritating.

“There,” she said. “I’m certain to win the prize. Do you see?”

“Oh, I see. I see your little plan now.” He took a few aimless paces, chuckling to himself. “I can’t believe this. I’m being used.”

“Used? What can you mean? That’s absurd.”

He made a dismissive noise. “Please. Here I was so concerned that if I consented to this trip, I’d be using you ill.” He held up the letter. “But this is all about Sir Alisdair Kent. You were going to pretend to elope with me, on the hopes of seeing him. You’re the one using me.”

She snatched the letter from his grip. “I’m not using you. You would come out richer for this, while I would be utterly ruined. I’m offering you the entire prize. Five hundred guineas.”

“A fine price for my tender heart.” He pressed a hand over the offended organ. “You meant to ruthlessly toy with my affections. Suggesting we travel together for weeks. An unmarried man and an unmarried woman, trapped in close quarters for all those days.” He cocked an eyebrow. “All those nights. You’ll be casting glances at me over those coy little spectacles, driving me wild with all your polysyllabic words. Sharing my bed. Kissing me like a brazen temptress.”

Her lashes worked furiously as she refolded her precious letter. “That’s quite enough.”

No, it wasn’t enough. Not nearly. Colin knew she didn’t respect him. But now that he was seized with lust for her, she ought to at least reciprocate with a grudging-yet-helpless infatuation. So much would only be polite. But no, she’d been pining all along for another man. When they’d kissed, had she been practicing for this geologist toad?

She said, “There’s no need to mock me. There’s no call to be cruel. Sir Alisdair Kent is a colleague, nothing more.”

“He holds you dear, that letter says. Not just dear. ‘So very dear.’ ”

“He doesn’t even—” She made a fist and drew a slow breath. When she spoke again, she’d tempered her voice. “He is a brilliant geologist. And any admiration he feels for me is strictly based on my work. He believes the creature that left this footprint will be recorded as a new species. I’ll even get to name it.”

“Name it?” Colin eyed the plaster cast. “Why go to Scotland for that? We can name it right here. I suggest ‘Frank.’ ”

“Not name it that way. I’ll be the one to give the species a scientific name. Besides, this lizard was female.”

He cocked his head and stared at the print. “It’s a footprint. How on earth do you know?”

“I just know. I feel it.” With her fingertips, she reverently traced the three-toed shape. “The creature who left this mark—she was definitely not a ‘Frank.’ ”

“Francine, then.”

She exhaled forcefully. “I know this is all a joke to you. But it won’t be to my colleagues.” She replaced the rolls of fabric around the plaster, packing it tight. “Whatever this creature was, she was real. She lived and breathed, and she left this mark. And now, untold eons later . . . she just might change the way we understand the world.”

She shut and locked the trunk, propping one foot atop the baggage to tighten the leather straps. Her trim, stockinged ankle was revealed to his view. So pale and sweetly curved. He didn’t know which he found more appealing—the erotic glimpse of her ankle, or the determined set of her brow.

“Come. Give it here.” Colin reached to help with the buckles.

At his urging, she ceased wrestling with the straps and surrendered the task to him. In the transfer, the back of his hand brushed her calf. A jolt of desire rocked him in his boots. Lord. This was precisely why he couldn’t agree to this wild scheme.

He finished fastening the buckles and stood tall, clapping dust from his gloved hands. “He’s probably ancient, you know. Or warty.”

“Who?”

“This Sir Alisdair fellow.”

Her cheeks blushed crimson.

“I’m just saying, he’s likely older than Francine. And less attractive.”

“I don’t care! I don’t care if he’s ancient and warty and leprous and hunchbacked. He would still be learned, intelligent. Respected and respectful. He would still be a better man than you. You know it, and you’re envious. You’re being cruel to me to soothe your pride.” She looked him up and down with a contemptuous glare. “And you’re going to catch flies in your mouth, if you don’t shut it.”

For once, Colin found himself without words. The best he could do was take her advice and hoist his dropped jaw.

An air of determination settled on her. The curves of her face became decisive angles. “That’s it. I’m going to Edinburgh, with or without you.”

“What? You mean to travel almost five hundred miles alone? No. I can’t let you do that. I . . . I forbid you.”

It was Colin’s first attempt at forbidding anyone to do anything, and it worked about as well as he’d expected it to. Which was to say, not at all.

She sniffed. “Stay here and marry Diana if you must, but I won’t be a party to it. I can’t simply stand by and watch.”

“God, is that all that’s worrying you?” He put his hands on her shoulders to make sure she was paying attention. “I won’t marry Diana. I never had any plan to marry Diana. I’ve been trying to tell you as much for days.”

She stared at him. “Truly?”

“Truly.”

The distant rumble of hoofbeats and carriage wheels shook the ground. As they stared at each other, it gathered strength.

“That’ll be the coach,” she said.

Colin glanced down the road. Yes, here it came. The moment of decision.

“Come now,” he said. “Let me help you take your things back to the rooming house.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Min—”

“No. I can’t go back. I just can’t. I left a note, saying we’ve eloped. By now, they’re probably awake and reading it. I can’t be the girl who cried ‘elopement.’ The pathetic thing who gathered all her hopes and packed three trunks, and went out to stand at the road at dawn only to slink back home defeated and hopeless. My mother would . . .” She drew a deep breath, stood tall, and lifted her chin. “I just can’t be that girl anymore. I won’t.”

As he watched her, Colin was visited by the strangest feeling, unfurling warm and buttery inside him. It was a sense of privilege and mute wonder, as though he’d witnessed one of those small, everyday miracles of spring. Like a licked-clean foal taking its first steps on wobbly legs. Or a new butterfly pushing scrunched, damp wings from a chrysalis.

Before his eyes, she’d transformed into a new creature. Still a bit awkward and uncertain, but undaunted. And well on her way to being beautiful.

Colin scratched his neck. He wished there were someone nearby he could turn to and say, Would you look at that?

“You truly want this,” he said. “It means that much to you.”

“Yes.” Her eyes were clear and unblinking.

“If we embark on this journey, there’s no going back.”

“I know.”

“And you comprehend all the implications. Everything you’ll put at risk. Hell, everything you’ll outright sacrifice, the moment you leave with me?”

She nodded. “I’m exchanging my acceptance in fashionable society for standing within the Royal Geological Society. I understand this perfectly, and I think it a rather good trade. You told me to think of myself, Colin. Well, I’m doing just that.”

Turning from him, she popped up on her toes and waved her arms, signaling the coachman. “Stop! Stop, please!”

He stood by and watched her desperate gesticulations, absurdly enchanted by them. Good for you, pet. Good for you.

As the carriage rolled to a halt, she reached for her smallest trunk. She looked to him, smiling. “Last chance. Are you coming or aren’t you?”