“What?!” I gaped at him in genuine confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“One moment,” he said, “I was coming to meet the love of my life, after three whole weeks that we’d been forced to spend apart. The next moment, I was watching you nearly die, and I couldn’t do a single thing to stop it! Then when you finally woke up and discovered what you’d lost, you realized you didn’t want to marry me anymore. Well—why should you?”
He let out a humorless laugh, his face tight. “Even that damned elf-lord could tell I wasn’t born into my rank. All I’ve ever had to recommend me is my magic. No ancient family name, no great estate, no connections...the only thing that ever drew you to me was your own magic. Once that was gone, and you could see clearly...”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Something was rocketing around my head, some great revelation that I couldn’t yet glimpse, but there was no way to capture it with my heartbeat thundering in my ears and Wrexham filling all of my vision. “You know I never cared about family or connections.”
“Only because you had all of that already!” He closed his eyes as if he couldn’t bear the look on my face. “Cassandra, your own mother was a member of the Boudiccate. When we met, I didn’t even have a first-hand set of student robes! Do you really imagine, if you hadn’t been a magician yourself, that you would ever have bothered to take a second look at me?”
As I looked at him then, the dam that I’d locked so firmly inside myself two months ago finally broke wide open. “Wrexham,” I said unsteadily, “you idiot. I haven’t been able to take my eyes off you ever since the day we first met!”
His dark eyes flashed open. His chest rose and fell with his ragged breathing.
I said, “I was trying to save you, you ridiculous, impossible man! That’s why I fought so hard to push you away! I didn’t want you to be chained to me forever just because of an old promise that you made before my magic was broken!”
“Then we’ve both been idiots,” he breathed, “because I swear, Harwood, you nearly broke me. I’ll beg you on my knees, if that’s what it takes. Don’t ever abandon me like that again!”
Unbidden, my own words to Miss Fennell rang in my ear. “If you truly care about her, you won’t abandon her...”
I was a fool, after all, almost beyond comprehension. But I wasn’t yet too much of a fool to learn from my own mistakes.
The snowfall might be thick, but it wasn’t all-concealing. I darted a quick look at the house behind us, full of dangerously un-curtained windows, and then another look into the privacy of the knot garden before us. Just a few more steps, and we would be safely hidden...
No. I was thinking the wrong way again after all.
I drew myself up to my full height and lifted my chin proudly. “Wrexham,” I said to my ex-fiancé, “prepare to be thoroughly compromised, if you please.”
He blinked twice, rapidly. Then his lips curved. “Do you promise?” he asked. “There’ll be no getting out of it this time, you know.”
Oh, I knew. But I didn’t bother answering him in words.
Instead, I grabbed hold of his strong, wonderfully familiar shoulders for balance, jumped up on my tiptoes, and kissed him soundly in full view of every window in Cosgrave Manor.
It was time to stop hiding for good.
11
We ended up shifting into the knot garden after all. There was such a thing as making a statement...and such a thing as much-needed privacy, too.
It had been months since I’d kissed Wrexham. Months.
I wanted to devour him.
But there was only so much that we could do outside in the snow, even with the protection of high knotwork hedges and the perfect, spellcast bubble of warmth around us. So I finally forced myself to draw back, panting, before we could go much, much too far.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to remove my hands from underneath his coat. I kept them tucked there like a silent claim, fingers spread against his warm, lean back as his open greatcoat billowed around us both.
Home. I had to squeeze my eyes shut for an instant to take in the perfection of that feeling.
When I opened them again, I found Wrexham looking nearly as wild as I felt, with his dark eyes wide and shocked-looking and his black hair falling around his face in haphazard disarray where my fingers had raked through it. His hands loosened their hold around me, sliding down to my hips, but he didn’t let go either, even when I sank back down onto the soles of my feet.
“Harwood...” He stopped, shaking his head.
For the first time since we’d met, my ex-fiancé was apparently lost for words.
“Well?” A bubble of laughter surprised me as I took in his stunned expression. I grinned up at him, feeling every bit as young and as reckless as I’d been when we’d first met all those years ago. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“If you had any idea...” He didn’t smile back. But the look in his eyes felt like a second embrace as he lifted one hand and carefully, gently traced the outline of my face. I leaned into his touch, breathing him in. “Harwood,” he murmured again.
He didn’t continue. He didn’t need to.
I shifted closer in to hug him tightly, laying my cheek against his chest. His heart beat rapidly against my cheek as he closed his own arms around me.
After two months apart, the relief was almost unbearable.
The idea of losing it again...was not to be thought of.
“Well?” My voice was muffled by his waistcoat. “What did your gardening expedition teach you? Is Hilbury our rogue magician, do you think?”
Wrexham’s warm breath ruffled the top of my head in his sigh. “Jeremiah Hilbury may well be the most cantankerous magician I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting, which is an impressive feat in and of itself...but the bulk of his ire this morning derived from the unforgivable fact that the weather is not behaving itself according to his firm expectations. So...” The muscles in his back shifted against my arms as he shrugged. “I believe we can tick him off from our list of possibilities.”
“Then there’s only one name left.” I frowned, searching my memory. “Young Luton, Lady Cosgrave called him.” Try as I might, I couldn’t summon any image to accompany the name. “Do you know him?”
“Who, Luton?” Wrexham let out a huff of laughter. “I’ve been scowled at by him once or twice in passing, but he’s certainly never deigned to engage in a conversation. I believe he considers me to be hopelessly backward, old-fashioned and deplorably chained to the establishment.”