At first, Kit was taken aback, and then he burst out laughing because she was so very right. “I can’t argue with you. We have made the rules in our favor.”
“I know,” she assured him. “I would like to have a say. I have a list of changes.”
“And what is on your list?”
“So many things,” she answered promptly. “Starting with the laws of inheritance. But also, I believe women should have the right to attend schools like men do.”
He thought of Eton, where he’d gained what education he had, and gave a shiver. “You need to desire something better.”
“Own property?”
“Some women own property.”
“Not enough.”
“True.”
“See? I knew you were an intelligent man,” she said.
“All I have to do is agree with you.”
“Not always,” she responded lightly, “but it makes conversation easier.” She punctuated her words with a smile that made him almost trip over his feet. There was a sparkle in her eyes. Sunlight spun her hair into gold.
And suddenly, just like that, Kit was hooked.
He could make all the excuses he wished about why he should keep his distance from her. She didn’t know his true identity. If she did, she might have a different opinion of him. Knowing Elise as he did now, she would be angry at his deception...
It didn’t matter.
Standing in this country path in the July sun, he found himself falling in love.
Real love. Not infatuation but something earthier and stronger.
A love that—without his realizing it—had been building from the moment she’d been willing to strike out on her own back in the woods after the Mail crash. He laughed to remember her darting around the coach, ready to give him a club over the head. Or informing him that he “reeked.”
Then there were those moments he could almost divine her thoughts... when their eyes met and he experienced a sense of connection. Why, he could have no more have let her go off to Moorcock alone than he could have flown to the moon, even if it meant facing a hundred Holberts—“What are you thinking?” she asked, interrupting his thoughts. “You have the strangest expression on your face.”
He wasn’t about to tell her. This awareness of what she meant to him was too new, and made him surprisingly vulnerable.
“I’m hungry,” he said in answer to her question.
Elise laughed, the sound happy as if his statement explained everything. “Of course you are,” she said. She held out her hand. “Let’s keep going. We’ll find food soon.”
He wrapped his fingers around hers, his palm in hers.
And he knew he was in trouble.
Chapter Fifteen
Beauty never boiled the kettle.
Irish proverb
Around midday, they came upon a village. Several stone-and-board cottages lined a road leading to an old Norman church. The graves around the building appeared neatly tended while two hemlocks and a rangy crab apple tree with twisting roots provided shade.
There was a small public house at the other end of the road, and Kit caught the whiff of meat and pastry in the air. “I could use an ale. What of you?” he asked her.
Elise hung back. “And how will we pay?”
