Chapter 15 The Proposal
Celise’s swoon didn’t last very long.
Darkness flickered before her vision, and for a brief moment, oblivion embraced her. Then she started awake. She sucked in a deep gasp of cool night air, like a diver breaking through the surface of a lake.
She was in the arms of the Mad Dog duke.
“Come now, my little moonflower, let’s keep our wits about us,” Elias’s low, raspy voice murmured in her ear as he patted her back. He held her braced against his shoulder as Celise lay limp from shock.
Finally she pushed away, forcing a few inches of space between them. She reclaimed a bit of her independence. Then she gazed into his eyes, unable to hide her trepidation.
Lightless luck.
He recognized her.
So what? A stubborn, petulant voice inside of her shouted.
So what if he recognizes me? Celise resisted the urge to shrink down.
She had just survived the scariest ordeal of her life.
Somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to fear this man after her encounter with the daemon.
She felt a new sense of courage and self-assurance.
Elias had saved her life, and she felt with certainty he wouldn’t harm her.
The duke considered her with a calculating look in the dim, stormy moonlight. Crouched on the ground, facing each other, silence stretched between them. Celise dared not break eye contact with the Mad Dog. She felt like she was facing down a real dog, feral off the leash. Stay strong.
Then Elias pushed his hair back from his face and closed his eyes against the rain. She caught sight of his scarred ear. It was truly gruesome. She glanced away too, feeling a bit guilty. He had saved her life. She shouldn’t care about his scars.
“Thank you,” she murmured, the words inane as they passed her dry lips.
“You’re welcome.”
“This has been . . . quite an evening,” she muttered, moving to stand, but his firm hand encircled her wrist. He kept her by his side in the wet grass.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Checking something.”
Elias reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and withdrew a small metal object.
Then he reached up and pulled a hairpin out of Celise’s hair.
Her braid tumbled down from her head, falling over her shoulder.
He held the two matching hairpins side-by-side in his hands and studied them with an unreadable look.
“Oh,” she grunted.
“Yes, oh.”
“You’ve been carrying that around in your pocket?”
“Since you dropped it in the woods, yes,” he confirmed. “I recognized you, but I had to be sure. You look much different in a proper dress.”
Celise stared at the shiny hairpins with the crystal horseshoes attached at each end. Then she stuttered, “A-Are you going to arrest me?”
“Why would I?”
“You think I’m a spy. . .”
“I think you have a tendency to wander around where you don’t belong,” he assured her in his rough voice. “But you’re certainly not in league with the people threatening my life—nor are you in allegiance with those thieves from last night.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Call it a soldier’s instinct. You don’t seem very . . . skilled.”
Celise’s mouth opened and then snapped shut. She wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult. It seemed Elias found her just as weak as Katrina did. It hurt, but compared to his own powers, she couldn’t blame him.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Celise . . . ah . . . Celise Dhastel.”
“Dhastel.” He frowned. She saw a glimmer of recognition pass through his intense gray eyes.
Beautiful eyes, she realized, framed by long dark lashes.
They were wider and slightly slanted at the edges to accommodate his strong cheekbones.
She wondered what he would look like if he smiled.
In the darkness, the shadows of the garden softened his scars, while the moonlight illuminated the angles of his face.
Celise could almost imagine how he once looked, before the wounds that marred his features.
What am I thinking? He is the Mad Dog duke!
But his stormy temper was subdued. He gazed at her, observing her face just as she inspected his own. Was he pleased by what he saw? Why should it matter?
“So, you are a lady after all,” Elias said with a bemused twist to his lips. “I thought you might have been a servant.”
“I believe you used the word ‘chamberflower.’”
“Only to provoke you into giving up your name. It didn’t work.”
Celise’s eyes flickered away from his own. “I am a daughter of the Dhastel house,” she admitted, her voice soft. It was the truth, if not the full truth.
“That explains how you know so much about my horse.”
He reached up and ran a finger along the side of her tender jaw.
She raised a hand to cover his own. She had forgotten about her bruise.
With a wince, she realized her makeup must have faded during her flight through the gardens, and now with the rain falling, it was bound to come off completely.
He inspected her bruise with hooded eyes, his thoughts moving like gray clouds beyond the veil of his expression.
He was born in Hallowsin, she reasoned, so his nature would be one of introspection.
A man who kept his heart close to his chest. She couldn’t guess his thoughts.
“You are . . .” he began, then stopped.
“I am what?”
“You are not what I expected.” But his eyes said something else. She could hardly breathe when he looked at her like that.
Interrupting the moment, a gust of cold wind blew through the empty grounds, rustling the leaves of the fallen maple tree. Celise jumped at the sound, turning to face the darkness, suddenly afraid.
“Here,” Elias said, as though just remembering the storm that raged around them.
He took her hands and helped her back to her feet.
Together, they walked to the shrine’s entrance.
The door had fallen off long ago and lay inside the abandoned shack, taking up half the floor space.
The rest of the small, single room was full of cobwebs and old leaves, but at least it was dry.
Once inside the shrine, Elias’s eyes flickered down to her muddy bodice, her ripped skirts and her ruined crinoline.
“Let me help you out of this,” he said.
Despite her mild protests, she let him reach under her skirts to her waist, where he used a small knife to cut through the straps that supported the broken cage.
He wrested it free from her skirts. He worked so quickly, so deftly, that she barely registered how risqué it was for him to place his hands up her dress.
Finished, he tossed the mangled mass of whalebone into the pond, where it disappeared beneath the wavering tideweed.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
“Yes, much better,” she admitted. “I’m not used to wearing such constrictive clothes.”
His eyes glinted at her. “Then what do you usually wear? A shift?”
Celise blushed. “Just . . . simpler clothes,” she mumbled.
She felt a strange heat rising in her cheeks.
The friction in the air intensified—it seemed Elias felt it as well.
He took a half-step closer to her, closing the distance between them.
In the dim light of the abandoned shrine, she saw the cut of his strong jaw.
She glanced at his lips, which looked wide and soft.
Tha-thump.
Then, not knowing what came over her, Celise raised her head toward him.
Elias searched her eyes for the briefest second, then he leaned down.
The kiss was bold, daring and utterly insane.
A gloved hand went to the back of her head. His lips captured hers. A flare of unexpected passion bloomed between them. Celise wondered if she had lost her mind.
She had never kissed anyone before.
His tongue slid between her lips, exploring her mouth without shyness or hesitancy: a tantalizing taste of something forbidden. Stubble scraped her chin. A wonderful, heady rush swept through her, and she leaned in a bit closer.
Oh, this was nice.
She wanted more . . . .
Their kiss began passionately, but after a few seconds, she felt a grin spread across Elias’s mouth. His caress became gentle and teasing. Then he pulled back further, lightening his touch, his lips sensual and skilled.
Then he broke away. Holding her by the upper arms, Elias gazed down at her with one eyebrow cocked.
“You’re innocent,” he said with an amused grin. “Bold, but . . . innocent.”
Celise shoved him off, and the man let go with a rough laugh.
“I hope that wasn’t your first kiss,” he added.
Celise blushed in the darkness. By the stars, was it that obvious?
“Perhaps it was,” she said, embarrassed.
“Ah.” He regarded her closely. “Why did you grant me your first kiss, Lady Celise?”
“You kissed me,” she stuttered, mortified. At his look, she continued, “I-I-I don’t know! Something came over me. I can’t really say . . . .”
“You seem like a woman full of mysteries and contradictions.”
“I don’t mean to be—”
“I like it. And I intend to discover everything I can about you, Lady Celise Dhastel.”
Fear lanced through her at those words, but when Celise met his eyes, she was comforted by their dark humor—and the heat of his gaze.
Never in her life had she imagined a duke would look at her like that.
Despite her mortification—and their vast difference in status—she wanted to kiss him again.
Why? She didn’t know. She wasn’t behaving like her usual self.
She touched her lips with her tongue. His eyes lowered to her mouth, watching her with a dark, simmering look. The tension built between them until the air seemed about to combust.
Then he heaved a deep, dark sigh.
“I should return you to the ball,” he said. “Your family will be worried about you.”
Celise nodded, swallowing her words: they probably haven’t noticed I’m gone.
Then he offered her his arm.
I kissed the Mad Dog duke, Celise thought as she rested her hand in the crook of his elbow. Furthermore, he had kissed her back. What did it mean?
It seemed too soon—or perhaps too late—to ask.