A Week to Be Wicked (Spindle Cove #2)(19)

“Was this recent?” she asked.

“No, long ago.”

“What happened?”

Sighing roughly, he rested his head against the uneven, clammy stone. “I was a boy, traveling with my parents. An axle snapped, and the coach overturned. I survived the accident largely unharmed. But my mother and father weren’t so fortunate.”

“They were injured?”

“They died. There, in the carriage, right in front of me. My father went almost instantly. My mother, slowly and in tremendous agony.” He paused. “I couldn’t get out, you see. The way the carriage had landed on its side, the door was barred shut. I couldn’t run for help, couldn’t escape. I lay trapped there, all night long. Alone. A passing farmer found me the next morning.”

There. That would teach her to press him for honesty.

“Oh.” She gripped his arm. “Oh God. I’m so sorry. I can see why you’d be afra— er, why you would dislike dark, enclosed spaces. How dreadful.”

“It was. Exceedingly.” He rubbed his temple. “Suffice it to say, I’ve no desire to relive such a situation. So I have a few simple rules. I don’t travel at night. I don’t ride in enclosed carriages. Oh, and I don’t sleep alone.” A grimace tugged his mouth sideways. “That last is less of a rule and more a statement of fact.”

“How do you mean?”

Colin hesitated briefly. He’d revealed this much. There seemed no point in denying the rest. “I simply don’t sleep alone. If I don’t have a bed companion, I lie awake all night.”

He nudged toward the soft heat of her body and gathered the blanket close around them. “So you may want to rethink your plans, pet. If we did undertake this journey . . . I’d need you in my bed.”

Chapter Five

Somewhere in the back of the cave, a drip counted out Minerva’s stunned silence.

One, two, three . . .

. . . ten, eleven, twelve . . .

He needed her? In his bed? It was too much to be believed. She reminded herself it wasn’t her he needed. Apparently, any woman would do.

“So you’re telling me that this accident . . . this tragic night in your youth . . . is the reason for your libertine ways?”

“Yes. This is my curse.” He gave a deep, resonant sigh. A sigh clearly meant to pluck at her heartstrings.

And it worked. It really worked.

“Sweet heaven.” She swallowed back a lump in her throat. “You must do this all the time. Night after night, you tell women your tale of woe . . .”

“Not really. The tale of woe precedes me.”

“ . . . and then they just open their arms and lift their skirts for you. ‘Come, you poor, sweet man, let me hold you’ and so forth. Don’t they?”

He hedged. “Sometimes.”

Minerva knew they did. They must. She felt it happening to her. As he’d related his story, a veritable fount of emotion had welled in her chest. Sadness, sympathy. Her womb somehow became involved, sending nurturing impulses coursing through her veins. Everything feminine in her responded to the call.

Then came the lies. Her heart told her lies. Wicked, insidious falsehoods, resounding with every beat.

He’s a broken man.

He needs you.

You can heal him.

Rationally, she knew better. Untold numbers of women had already tried their hands—among other body parts—at “healing his broken soul,” with no success.

And yet . . . although her mind knew it to be foolishness, her body ached with the desire to hold him. Soothe him.

“I can’t believe this,” she breathed, mostly to herself. “I can’t believe you’re working this spell on me.”

“I’m not working any spell. I’m giving you the facts. Aren’t you fond of those? If you’re harboring any thought of compelling me to make this journey, you should know my conditions. I don’t ride in coaches, which means I’d be on horseback all day. I can’t ride on horseback all day unless I’m sleeping well at night. And I don’t sleep alone. Ergo, you’d have to share my bed. Unless you’d prefer me to search out random serving girls at each coaching inn.”

A wave of nausea rocked her. “Ugh.”

“Honestly, I don’t relish the thought either. Bedding my way along the Great North Road might have sounded like a grand time five years ago. Not so much, anymore.” He cleared his throat. “Nowadays, it’s more the rest I’m after. I don’t even bed half the women I sleep with. If that makes sense.”

“If that makes sense? Nothing about this makes sense.”

“You don’t have to understand it. God knows, I don’t.”

She sat next to him, reclining against the wall. Beneath the blanket, their arms touched. Even through that slight contact, she could sense the restlessness in his body. He was struggling to conceal his unease, but after years of vigilance with an asthmatic sister, Minerva was acutely attuned to small signs of distress. She couldn’t ignore the raspy quality of his breathing, nor the way his muscles hummed with a desperate wish to be quit of the place.

And when presented with a complexity, she wasn’t the sort to give up on understanding it. She was a scientist, after all.

“Is it just the cave?” she asked. “Or is it like this every night?”