A Week to Be Wicked (Spindle Cove #2)(24)

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.”