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Yes, she'd always been splinting wounded sparrows and rabbits and had been far more skilled at it than he... or anyone he'd known.
She disentangled the lightly stained cloth, and feeling around the wound, she inspected the injury.
Pulling off his stained gloves, he went to a knee beside her. "What is your opinion?"
Elizabeth continued to probe the slight gash. "He was scraped. See here?" she murmured, trailing a fingertip vertically, taking care to avoid the seeping wound. "There's bits of gravel and rock lodged within that are irritating him, but he'd not go lame from it." Elizabeth held her palms up for Copernicus, and he nudged her fingertips. "I need to see the underside, sir."
He bleated.
"Tsk, tsk. You're braver than that." She softened the chastisement with a soothing caress along his elbow.
Crispin stared on as she ran her fingers back and forth in a gentle touch, and swallowed hard. He and Elizabeth had known everything about each other, and yet... he hadn't known her in the way Copernicus did now. He hadn't known the feel of her fingers, the brush of her hand in a lover's caress. "That's it, love," she was saying softly, and there was a husked quality to her voice that hypnotized.
He gave his head a disgusted shake. It was a sorry day indeed when a man envied his horse for the attentions he received.
"Did you feel each hoof?" she asked, sparing him a quick glance.
"I didn't," he said, his ears going hot. He'd been too busy lamenting what might have been and nursing wounded feelings at her betrayal to properly attend his horse--his loyal horse.
Scooting around Copernicus' right side, she started her examination of the back hooves.
"Did you find any variations in temperature?" she asked. "To indicate a possible injury or abscess," she added, the way he had schooled countless young men at Oxford on astronomy.
What a bloody waste of her talents these years. "I didn't."
She'd spent so much time instructing girls on matters of deportment and decorum, and all along, she'd had so much more to teach them. He hated that truth as much for the students she taught as for Elizabeth herself.
"What is your opinion?" he asked, forcing himself to abandon the past and focus on Copernicus' injury.
"He is fine. At least, his rear limbs are." She moved the heels, tapping the hoof walls. "You check for yourself," she urged.
While Elizabeth moved her study to Copernicus' front legs, Crispin inspected the back hocks for himself. As he did, from under the enormous mount's legs, he studied Elizabeth.
She was almost ten years older than when he'd last seen her, and there was a greater maturity to her heart-shaped face, a restraint that hadn't been there in her youth, but served her well in her examination now. For those changes to her temperament, an even greater intelligence sparkled in her eyes. It was a feat he would have believed impossible. She'd already been more clever than anyone he'd known.
"Ah," she was saying as she sank back on her heels. Several curls fell across her brow, and she pushed them behind her ears.
Using that as an invitation to join her, as he'd wanted to from the moment she'd moved out of his reach--always out of his reach--he looked to the hoof she lightly held. "What is it?"
"It's not merely the scrape," she explained. "Here, see?" And with her long, graceful neck bent, hair drawn tightly at her nape, he caught sight of a pink birthmark at the center of her nape--heart-shaped with a jagged, arrowlike slash through it. For everything he remembered and knew about this woman, that enticing mark hinted at all the ways in which she remained a mystery. And all the ways he longed to know her. Desire stirred, a potent hungering filling him to touch his lips to that tempting mark and explore it with his mouth. "Do you see here?" she asked, not raising her gaze.
His throat bobbed up and down. You. I see you...
Elizabeth shot a puzzled glance up at him.
He coughed into his fist. "I don't." Because he hadn't been attending the lesson she doled out. Rather, he knelt there, lusting after her.
"It's not your fault," she reassured, entirely too forgiving. "It is dark, and as such, you would not have necessarily noticed in your earlier examination." Elizabeth gently lifted Copernicus' left hock, and grazing her fingertip just above the horseshoe, she drew his attention to the discoloration there.
Crispin cursed roundly. "Bloody hell." How had he missed the darker spot? Because you've thought of only Elizabeth Brightly since you discovered her whereabouts.
Copernicus danced nervously on his back legs, drawing the injured limb closer.
Collecting the reins, Elizabeth offered soothing words to the mount, and the horse immediately calmed. Once he'd settled again, she returned to her previous ministrations. She sniffed at the bottom of his hock. "There's no odor."
"And no discharge," he noted, finally giving his horse the attention he deserved.
She nodded. "I need to slowly clean off the abrasion and then bandage him." She offered Crispin the reins once more. Shrugging out of her cloak, Elizabeth gripped the collar of the coarse garment between her teeth and pulled hard.
Riiiiiiip.
The loud rending earned another nervous dance from Copernicus.
"Easy," Crispin whispered for the horse's benefit, patting his sweaty coat. All the while, Crispin remained riveted on Elizabeth as she shredded the fabric into long, jagged strips. Elizabeth saw to Copernicus the way a field surgeon might a wounded soldier in battle. "Here," she instructed, handing over the makeshift bandages.
Here was a command perfectly befitting a duchess. That word, uttered in confidence, was refreshing for its sincerity.
Crispin accepted the brown fabric and shifted his weight over his legs. "Did Mrs. Belden have you tending to her livestock over the years?" he asked, his query nothing more than a pathetically weak attempt to draw forth the secret that had been her life these years.
If she knew he was fishing for information, she gave no outward indication. Not pausing in her task, Elizabeth snorted and countered with a question of her own. "Did Mrs. Belden take you as one who'd allow any young woman to care for horses?"
He found himself grinning. "No." The old harpy, who had exuded an icy reverence for the existing social strata, would have sought to shape Elizabeth into the same pale shadow of all the ladies in London. His smile fell. And yet, his wife had preferred that existence to one with him.
Mayhap it was fatigue, or the shock of seeing her again, or mayhap it was simply the intimacy of caring for his horse with this woman, but the hurt he'd thought conquered reared itself. Sharp. Poignant. Stark.
Elizabeth passed dirtied bandages over and replaced them with new strips of her shredded cloak, until the blood flow slowed and then stopped altogether.
With a pleased little smile, Elizabeth sank back on her haunches and studied the neat bandage she'd expertly tied about Copernicus' hoof. Several tight curls had escaped the familiar knot she'd always worn her hair in and hung over her slightly damp brow.
His fingers ached to test the texture of those red curls in ways he never had before.
"There," she announced, brushing the back of her hand over her forehead. "That should keep until we have him in a proper stable where he might rest it."
We.
One word that joined them together.
Without hesitation, she placed her long, blood-marred fingertips in his. Any other woman would have wilted at even the prospect of dirtying her hands, let alone staining them with a horse's blood.
They stood, awkwardness setting in when there had only ever been an ease between them.
Elizabeth was the first to break the moment. She bent to rescue her cloak.
Crispin intercepted her efforts. Tossing it onto a nearby boulder, he shrugged out of his cloak, made of a fine wool and trimmed in velvet, as her own garments should have been.
She stared quizzically at him. "What are you--?"
"You shouldn't be going about in a shredded garment." She deserved better. And the evidence of
how she'd been living set the muscles in his stomach twisting into knots.
"Pfft." She stepped around him and reached for the article in question. "My cloak still serves its purpose."
That had always been Elizabeth. Unimpressed by the material baubles and fripperies that enthralled the rest of the world.
She latched the button clasp at her throat, and her fingers trembled slightly. That slight quake indicated that, for her control, she was not as composed in this moment as she'd have him believe.
What's become of us?
There'd only ever been a comfortableness in their exchanges, an ease that he'd never known with another single person. Crispin cleared his throat and rocked back and forth on his heels. "I should lead him on to the inn." He motioned to the graveled Roman road ahead, and Elizabeth followed the gesture. "It's but a short walk to the edge of Hampstead Heath." And he needed time to collect his thoughts and resurrect the barriers he'd built in her absence. "I'll return shortly."
He glanced off to where Brambly sat atop the carriage. The servant caught his gaze from across the way.
"I can join you," Elizabeth ventured tentatively.
Crispin whipped around. She wanted to accompany him?
"That is... I don't have to." Elizabeth's gaze fell to the ground. She kicked a pebble with the tip of her scuffed boot, and it collided with the top of his foot. "If you'd rather..."
"Very well." He forced the response out in neutral tones. Except, as they started onward, a lightness spread in his chest. He was surely pathetic for the warmth that her simple request had wrought, and yet, he'd always had a weakness for Elizabeth Brightly.
He was just as weak now.
Chapter 7
Very well.
Crispin's response hadn't exactly been a resounding welcome.
Nor had it even been a mildly enthused one.
And why should it have been? They'd shared a bond over the years, but for him, it had never been a romantic one... whereas, for her?
Her mind shied away from any further exploration of what she'd felt for Crispin Ferguson, the Duke of Huntington. They were feelings and sentiments she'd never allowed herself to explore, for fear of the implications of them.
Facts were safer. They were concrete and undisputable, whereas feelings and emotions were open to interpretation and analysis and could be twisted and bent so that a person was no longer in possession of clarity over one's own feelings.
Walking side by side, so close their arms occasionally brushed, Elizabeth huddled within the folds of her cloak.
She shouldn't have asked to join him.
He would have been better off going out on his own, leaving Elizabeth behind with a disdainful Brambly as her only company. The sooner they returned to London, hosted that ball, and went back to the way things were, the better off they would both be.
Because every moment with Crispin put her further and further down a path of peril where she was forced to see all the ways he hadn't been altered by time, rank, power, or privilege. He was a titled gentleman still unafraid to kneel in mud and care for his horse, and where any other man, regardless of station, would have balked at a woman taking on that same task, Crispin had relinquished control and seen a woman as being as capable as anyone.
Whenever she'd thought of him, he'd always been changed in her mind. He was the rogue the papers purported him to be, who kept company with other like-minded rakes and had greater interest in the beauties he bedded than in the works he'd once read.
Her heart clenched, squeezing like one of those vises her papa had used when he'd built the rocker 'round their cottage, the pressure making it hard to draw a proper breath as jealousy swamped her.
There had been others in his life. Not village girls, but ladies he'd truly wanted... in the ways a man longed for a woman.
Elizabeth bit the inside of her cheek hard enough that the metallic tinge of blood filled her senses.
She stole a sideways peek at him. This broad, powerful figure was a stranger physically, and yet, despite those pieces of gossip she'd stolen about him over the years, he was unchanged in all the ways that mattered. Had he been the pompous duke who cared more for his own comforts than that of a loyal horse, it would have been easier to accept that he'd given his affections to other women. Lords weren't loyal to their wives. Her mama had always said as much, oftentimes in jest, as reasons she'd never have wanted anything more than her eccentric, failed merchant of a husband.
They were all the reasons she'd loved him as a friend.
Liar, you always wanted more with him.
She stumbled. No.
Retaining his hold on Copernicus' reins in one hand, Crispin caught her lightly by the forearm with the other, and electric heat just like the sizzling charges she'd studied went through Elizabeth. Magnetic and tingling and--
Crispin steadied her. "Are you all--?"
"Fine," she blurted, her heart threatening to beat a path outside her chest. He was her friend. He'd only ever been her friend. She loved him as that and nothing more. Her mouth went dry as fear needled in her belly. It couldn't be anything more. "I tripped." She swiftly drew back from his hold. "On a root," she continued on a frantic rush. Unbidden, her fingertips went to the place his firm but contradictorily gentle touch had seared her, even through the thin wool fabric. His brows dipped, and he glanced over his shoulder at the handful of steps they'd traveled since. "Or a rock," she finished weakly. The clouds overhead chose that inopportune moment to float past the moon and cast a damningly bright glow upon her blushing cheeks. "It might have been..." Stop. You simply lost your balance. He needn't know more than that. Elizabeth went close-lipped and redirected her attention to the bandage she'd wound about Copernicus' wound.
Heat pricked her neck at the feel of Crispin's eyes on her.
In the end, she was saved by the unlikeliest of heroes.
Copernicus nudged Crispin hard between the shoulder blades, knocking him slightly forward. Switching the reins to his other hand, Crispin did a quick search of the injured mount. "You're as skilled as you always were at bandaging up a wound," he noted.
Some of the tension went out of her. This was safe. This was a familiar topic that didn't involve recriminations about their past, or the yearning she'd buried in her heart. "I'm not completely out of practice. I've had many spirited students over the years who required the occasional patching up."
"Were they?"
She stared quizzically back.
"Spirited?"
"Yes. Of course." A wistful smile played at her lips. "Some more than others." Some of the more lively students she'd instructed flashed to mind. Those mischievous girls had marked a break from the tediousness that had come to mark her existence.
"And did the students leave your tutelage with that same strength?"
She stiffened as the insult rolled along her back, one she'd have to be deaf to fail to hear. The oak-paneled inn drew into focus. Elizabeth kept her gaze on the whorl of white smoke spiraling from a distant chimney and fought for the restraint she'd so desperately mastered over the years. "Not all of us can have the luxury of a fellowship at Oxford," she gritted out, hating the envy that had always been there at his securing one of those distinguished posts. "And certainly not a woman."
"No, but neither did you have to trade your honor for a post at Mrs. Belden's Finishing School."
Elizabeth gasped and jerked to a stop beside the slate boundary stone at the center of the gardens. "How dare you?" He'd pass judgment on her for having survived these years as she had? And on the place she worked?
"I dare because it's true," he shot back, releasing Copernicus' reins. The horse hobbled over to the edge of the road and proceeded to chomp on the wildflowers growing there.
"You know nothing about Mrs. Belden's." Elizabeth seethed, tasting her fury. "And you know nothing about me." Not now.
It was yet another wrong thing to say. Crispin stalked over, a predator on the prowl, his gleaming black boots grinding up grave
l and dirt. "No, I don't, Elizabeth," he purred in the hated, gruff rogue's tones he'd used on so many others.
And I'm just as weak for him.
"But once, I knew everything about you," he whispered, as if he'd followed her unspoken thoughts. "I knew the way you dog-eared pages you read until you had each verse or sentence upon them committed to memory. I knew how you loved the rain because you could splash through the puddles afterwards."
Her heart worked. He remembered all that? All distant memories of her younger self that no rogue should dare recall.
A ghost of a smile played at the corners of his lips. "Yes," he said again, with an unerring accuracy. "I remember even that."
The backs of her knees knocked into a boulder, the sharp stone biting into the fabric of her skirts, knocking her onto her buttocks. "And yet..." He stopped and framed his hands on opposite sides of her, effectively trapping her. "There is so much more that remains a mystery about you." He hung that statement there as a temptation. His arms came about her like a prison that, God help her, she didn't wish to escape. Her pulse slowed and then quickly picked up a frantic beat. "Like the taste of your lips."
Her heart jumped. "W-we kissed one another."
"As children." His breath fanned the curls that had escaped her tight chignon. "Not as a man and woman. Not," he continued, like temptation itself, "a kiss driven by desire that shreds rationale thought and leaves in its place nothing but unadulterated feeling."
Swallowing hard, Elizabeth tilted her head back to meet his gaze. The movement sent her loose wire-rimmed frames slipping down her face.
Crispin raised a hand between them. His fingertips brushed the seam of her lips, the tip of her nose, before capturing the spectacles and sliding them into their proper place. "There," he whispered, lingering his touch upon her.
He surely used nothing more than a rogue's tricks to discomfit her, and yet, she proved herself far less logical than she'd ever credited. The passion burning in Crispin's eyes stole the breath from her lungs, searing her with the intensity of a gaze so palpable she could almost believe his was a genuine hungering--for her. "You're so very familiar now with heated embraces and stolen kisses?" she countered, more a reminder for herself that the man who'd pledged his loyalty had betrayed those vows with others. Nameless, faceless beauties who'd had the pleasure of the very embrace he now spoke of.
