Spellmaker

“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.