"Well done, Ms. Atwood." Camden inclined his head politely, hands behind his back.
Luckily, Mare had not yet been accosted by the half-dozen or so people she caught ambling toward her in her periphery. She stepped from the pavilion stairs and onto the lawn, slipping her booklet of Shakespeare's sonnets—the twenty-ninth marked by her thumb for another read momentarily—beneath her arm. She lifted a brow and did not bow back.
"Do you think so?" She asked. Her hackles were still raised after his less-than-warm greeting before the reading. "Or are you addressing someone else entirely?" In a bit of theatrics, Mare cast a pointed glance over each shoulder, internally pleased to turn back and find an amused smile upon Camden's lips.
"I am addressing you, Mare Atwood. Make no mistake." Now when he spoke her name it was as though his voice were flint, and her heart steel. That little spark caught, and she'd swear it began, at last, to burn. "I'm aware our introduction this morning was cold."
"Have you an explanation? Or, God forbid, an apology?"
"Both, as it were." Camden revealed his hands, and upon one balanced an overfull picnic basket, a bottle of fine champagne peeking beneath the lid. "But first, as is tradition: a proposal." That word, breath to her flame, and he knew it. His smile twisted, and a shadow appeared in his handsome black eyes. "Will you share this picnic with me, Red?"
Mare lifted both brows now, leery of her mother and sister creeping in from the lawn. "Red?"
"Indeed." Camden offered his arm, apparently in need of no assurance Mare would take it. She hesitated only a moment before doing so. "You see," said Camden, leading Mare toward the sprawl of set tables and spread blankets upon the lawn, "I have decided I prefer you more as a girl than a wolf."
Mare laughed, somewhat offended. "Is that so, Mr. Doores?"
"Well, one can hardly invite the other to dinner, can they? Or," he lowered his voice, "introduce them to one's mother."
Mare's cheeks went hot, and she was grateful when Camden directed her wobbling knees toward a table. He drew back the chair and guided Mare into it, taking the other opposite. Dozens of tables, Mare noted, all set for two.
"Well," she said softly, smoothing her dress over her knees and gazing at her naked plate. "You seem to have considered our...affairs more closely."
Camden smiled at Mare, and this time she sensed none of the acid that often accompanied his amusement. He began emptying the basket of its contents: brie, strawberries, a single crisp, long baguette. "I've had several days to think. And seek...council."
"Indeed?" Mare's stomach knotted, and she wound her fingers together beneath the table to alleviate her nerves. Little good it did. What she needed was a strong storm and a fast run beneath its torrents. "And whose council might you have sought, Mr. Doores?"
"Does it matter?" He examined the gilded label of the champagne. "How exactly am I meant to open this? Have they brought the help?" He glanced around, furrow between his black brows.
"Here." Mare reached for the bottle, pleased to have something with which to occupy her hands. "Jenelle taught me. My father hosted a client from New York City two years ago. The man's father was French." Mare raised her eyes from the bottle. "Old money," she said, remembering it was the phrase her father used. "The man's valet said he'd drink nothing but French champagne, Scottish whiskey, and German beer." Mare twisted the wire, feeling for the give of the cork beneath her palm.
Camden frowned, leaning from the table a hair, brow raised. "Are you certain you know how?"
"Better than you," she answered, smiling, surprised, when he smiled at her. "All right. Where is a servant?"
He laughed. "Too late now, Red. Let's see that humble, worldly skill you've rustled up."
"Some parlor trick," she said with a laugh, "I can't do it!"
"It's going to pop," said Camden, eying her hands, and ducking his head a bit. He peered over the picnic basket between them. "You are a dangerous woman."
"Always something with you," Mare muttered, though she smiled, snatching a linen from the table and cupping it over the cork. "First I've got teeth, now I've got a cork. Whatever shall I wield next?"
"My heart?" There was a laugh in Camden's voice, and none of it in his eyes.
Mare held his gaze, mirth slipping from her lips. Before she could reply, the cork shot from her fingers, followed by a burst of foam and bubbles. "Oh!" She leapt to her feet, chair tipping into the grass. "My dress!"
Champagne shot from the bottle in a spirited plume. It quickly died to gasping spurts, but still Mare clung to the bottle. Her dress was sopping, silk shoes soaked. A spray of bubbles had leapt all the way to her cheek, and a strand of hair dripped near her jaw. She looked to Camden, mortified.
He was bent double with laughter, shoulders quaking. Mare laughed too, despite herself, clapping a hand to her lips. Camden, cheeks pink, rose to his feet, shaking out a napkin as he chuckled, and bringing it to Mare's face.
She froze, smile still upon her lips, as he dabbed at her hair, her cheek. He paused as well, smile fading, eyes bright. "Red," he said softly, "you've made quite a scene."
Mare's heart turned leaden, smile slipping. She couldn't bear to turn. There was a dense quiet upon the crowds she knew she'd spawned. How ashamed her mother would be! What a display of foolishness; how unscrupulous for a woman to uncork champagne, to drench her dress before the whole of Star's Crossing!
"Don't look," said Camden, but his voice was less warning, and far more conspiratorial. He leaned nearer. "I think we've made the other couples jealous."
Jealous? Mare blinked foolishly at Camden. "Whatever could you mean, Camden?"
And both halted at the cadence of his name upon her tongue, her lips; his black eyes shone with something most inscrutable as he held hers, and his hand, she realized, had lowered from her cheek to her neck, where it remained most pointedly.
He withdrew it with haste, offering the napkin for the blossoming stain upon her skirts. "Shall I call your carriage?"
"Carriage?" She huffed, then quickly softened her voice. "Of course not. It's warm enough it will dry in a moment. The real question," she added thoughtfully, lowering her voice, "is where we're going to procure another bottle of champagne."
He narrowed his eyes, almost suspiciously again, and Mare had the strangest sensation that he was wondering: is this truly Mare?
And she hoped, then, so very foolishly, that the thought that followed was thus: is she too good to be true?
There was no way of reading Camden's thoughts, however, and so futile a mission was it she thought of another: her investigation. The letters. The Star's Crossing Gazette. Ms. Cressida. Lilith.
But now: Camden.
"Well," he said, "if you intend to stay..."
"I do," she said swiftly, and she meant it. Camden held her eyes a moment more before pulling the bottle from her fingers and directing her back to her chair. "Though my mother will have my hide for this..."
Camden settled across from Mare, pouring what remained of the champagne into her flute and his own. "I'll buy you a new one, then." He lifted his glass to hers, holding her eyes above the rim. "If we intend to...continue."
Mare touched her glass to his, refusing to blink. His eyes were blacker than night; black as a raven's down. Black as the moors on a moonless night. Mare thought she might fall into them; she wondered if she'd ever wish to return.
"Yes," said Mare, surprised at the steel of her voice, lifting the glass to her lips. "I intend to do so. Do you, Mr. Doores?"
"Red. If I did not know better," Camden squinted, "I'd say you were proposing we enter courtship."
Mare's heart leapt. This was it. The final page. The squeeze of the trigger. The offering of one's future. One's heart.
Our doubts are traitors.
Mare inclined her head, lifting her glass in salute. "Let us be grateful, then," she said, "that you know better, Camden Doores."
And for a moment, strangely, she wished she knew better, too.
But this was no fantasy, no tale, no novel. This was life. Mare was not a hero, but a girl in love; a girl with a chest of letters and a fickle heart. A girl who still could not reconcile the young man before her with the young man she knew in ink. A girl who still, after the roses and passions and papers, sensed something ill afoot.
And so her investigation had begun, after all.
Mare sipped her champagne, and Camden sipped his, and all the while his black eyes regarded her as coldly as obsidian.
If she was the little girl in red, she realized, she had met her wolf.
It was time to see if she could get him to bite.