He would not fall.Breathe, Charlotte.
His coat billowed around him as he took the grenade from his pocket and tossed it up, caught it, restless. He glanced at her and winked.
Her heart winked back.
She began muttering. Magic awoke, sparking against words, sending trails of heat along her nerves. Charlotte frowned.
Something felt wrong.
Suddenly, Alex leaped. All the thoughts in her head seemed to go with him; blank, she incantated by habit alone. He landed with ease and began running up the roof toward its ridgeline as if he could outrace gravity. Would her magic reach across the distance to him? Worried, Charlotte removed her sunglasses to see more surely. She incantated in a louder voice. Wind shook through the sound, shook her awareness, making her realize she’d somehow got to her feet and was standing on the cottage roof, anchored only by magic. Her heart leaped like a pirate.
She swayed, hands reaching out as if she could grasp hold of the wind to steady herself. Magic whipped inside her in a way it never had before, rowdy, messy...
Exhilarating.
She laughed.
The sound shocked her. A witch ought not laugh when reciting the incantation. Magic was not fun. It shouldn’t delight, nor disturb, nor tug at instincts deep and secret inside her until she felt like dancing. Charlotte told herself sternly to get back onto the ladder where she could be safe and focus her thoughts on protecting Captain O’Riley. That was the sensible thing to do. And no one was more sensible than a witch.
She nodded in agreement with herself.
And began to walk toward the chimney at the far end of the roof.
On the other house, Alex had reached its chimney and was dropping in the grenade. Charlotte watched him from the corner of her eye. Smoke erupted from the chimney and he turned to run back. In that moment, he saw her.
He stopped, his body teetering on the narrow ridge. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he yelled.
Charlotte put a finger against her lips to shush him as she continued to mutter the incantation. The ladies of the Wicken League would be aghast if they saw her. But those ladies were not present. And Elizabeth Bennet had nothing to say, since not even exploring the rooms of Pemberley equated to such a daring perambulation. Charlotte was alone and utterly bewildered by herself. She needed encouragement from a literary character who understood that walking the ridgeline was her only reasonable option. But if such a heroine could exist, she had not been written yet. Left to her own narrative devices, Charlotte inhaled sunlit wind and exhaled enchantment as she swayed on through the ancient, sea-washed, unburied dreaming of the incantation’s magic.
“Goddamn idiot!”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Alex running to leap back onto his own house. No doubt he intended to chastise her, but she did notcare. After all, she was a grown woman, capable, intelligent, and mature. He was not the boss of her.
She’d just reached the chimney when he caught up to her. She turned, a little unsteady, and he grasped her arms, pushing her back against the brick column as if that might save her from plummeting into the depths of a wayward enchantment. She stared up at him, half-drunk on magic and wanting to fly.
Good heavens but he was gorgeous. Those black-lashed eyes reflecting the vast, bare sky... that mouth more alluring than anything she’d envisioned on Mr. Darcy...
Suddenly Charlotte found herself wishing they’d let her readMadame Bovary.
Alex drew a breath as if to chastise her. She smiled, daring him.
And then he kissed her.
And she discovered there was a magic beyond words.
She had supposed he would take her in the way of a rogue, capturing her body and plundering her mouth and doing other things described with equally piratic metaphors until she was robbed of all good sense. But he was astonishingly gentle. His mouth lay soft on hers, tentative, wishing. His stubble was like a hundred tiny kisses against her skin. Every nerve in her body began to sing.
An aria. From a grand opera. With magnificent costumes, an entire orchestra, and flowers tossed onto the stage.
And yet, she wanted more—wanted something forceful, so she could be sure of what was happening, and how she must react. He would not give it to her. He brushed her lips with such a light touch that she almost sobbed with yearning. Lifting on her toes, she pressed against him, hands clutching in his windswept hair, trying to pull him into passion. This was not anything close to ladylike behavior, and Jane Austen would have ripped it out of her notebook and thrown itaway, but Charlotte could not seem to help herself. The wind was to blame—or magic—or the pirate’s aggravating nature.
He responded with a smile, and flicked her lips with his quick, devilish tongue. The fiend! This was outrageous! He was kissing her, and yet—not quite. He was coaxing a flame in her and then blowing it out, over and again, until the singing along her nerves reached such a pitch it would have shattered glass, had any been in the vicinity.
He shifted back an inch, leaving her bereft, and an old, aching loneliness rushed into the space between them. Charlotte could not bear it. She moved toward him, and he allowed their lips to touch gently, desperately briefly, before shifting back again. His smile tipped like a hook. She wanted it to pierce her, wanted kisses and sighs and his bare hands on her skin, but no book had equipped her with the necessary conversation to request such things. And Alex just stared back in provoking silence, as if he knew perfectly well how she felt and was enjoying it.
Charlotte realized then it was a game, like the briefcase had been. She considered reaching for the besom in her pocket so as to hold him at rapier point until he damned well ravished her. But if he wanted to play, she could play. She could be flirtatious. Books went that far, at least: Mr. Tilney had flirted with Catherine Morland inNorthanger Abbey, and she recollected the way of it perfectly well. She gave one smirk and began to turn her head as if she had lost all interest in this irrational kissing venture—
Suddenly, Alex surrendered. Catching her face in his hands, he kissed her with a passion that utterly engulfed her senses. For one exciting moment she thought she might combust. Smoke swirled around them—granted, from the Fairweather chimney, but it was still conveniently metaphorical. Charlotte’s knees trembled, and she grasped at the pirate’s coat, arms, anything she could, to keep herself from tumbling. He pushed her back against the chimney again, his bodypressing to hers, trapping her between a rock and a hard place. In that moment she discovered what an inadequate education statues had been. That which she felt through Alex’s trousers wasn’t so much a storm in a teacup as a teapot—a samovar, even—and the thunder was in her blood.
