The play continued much as it had begun.
Rough. Fun. A bit too sincere.
"If I didn't know better," panted Teddy, hands on his knees, appraising Mare, "I'd think you were after killing me, Ms. Atwood."
"Lucky thing," she said, and meant it, as she had barely gotten started. Between hard passes, bad aim, and poor luck, she'd landed Teddy on the ground at least thrice. A bruise blossomed at his jaw where she'd struck him first, and she didn't feel the least bit bad.
But it wasn't enough. Words were the only solve, and to exchange them, she had to get Teddy alone. This hardly seemed possible in the light of current activities, and Mare had nearly given up when she and Teddy, utterly by chance, ended up chasing after the same far-flung throw.
"I've got it!" Mare called back to the group as she strode down the hill, toward the plunging thicket of trees that bordered the east end of the Watt property.
Teddy trotted close behind. "Mare, leave it—"
"Ms. Atwood," Mare snapped over her shoulder as Teddy jaunted after her down the slope. "And I've got it just fine, thanks."
"Ms. Atwood." Teddy hastened, reaching the steep crest as Mare did, and brazenly catching her arm. "Come, now. Be sensible."
Mare laughed, shooting Teddy's fingers as fiery a gaze as she could manage. "I'm a lady, Mr. Bridge. Not a child. I can fetch a ball as well as you can."
"I don't doubt that." Teddy's gaze smoldered, though not with anything kind or warm or even pleasant. His fingers tightened, and he gave Mare the gentlest of pulls back toward him. Mare appreciated his courtesy, and even his boldness, and even more the chance to exchange private words, as the rest of their party was laughing raucously, out of sight above them.
"I thought I said it was best if we stayed away from one another," Mare said, allowing him to guide her a step back from the sheer precipice. At the foot of the hill, a stone's throw from a gentle-tinkling creek, barely a black shimmering thread this late in the season, lie the rugby ball.
"I'd be happy to oblige. But you seem determined to kill me."
"I'd settle for maiming."
"Ah."
"Do not say ah as though you understand me."
"But I do. Don't I?" Teddy dropped his hand, fingers blazing a line down Mare's arm, all the way to her wrist. "I know you've no reason at all to trust me."
Mare's snide smile slipped.
"But you should," Teddy held her eyes, pointed. "I would never do anything to hurt you. Unlike you." Now he smiled. "Whatever happened with Geoffrey—"
"Why?" Mare clasped her hands behind her back to keep from tensing them into fists. "Why would you defend me? I am all but signed away to your cousin."
"I withhold judgment," said Teddy cautiously, "though you do not."
Mare's lips parted. "That," she said, soft, surprised and quite tiffed, "is very presumptuous—"
"It is not. You accused me of taking the same path as my father."
Mare fell silent. She had; she remembered. Now she looked at Theodore Bridge and heard instead the cold, cruel words of his father. She could not reconcile the two.
"Are you unlike him?" The question surprised her as it left her tongue.
Teddy did not readily answer. At last he said, "I don't know. Yet."
Mare stared. She wanted to feel nothing then; not sympathy or camaraderie; not respect, not pity. Least of all admiration. She felt on her tongue, between her teeth, poised in her throat—the very same answer.
"The ball," she said simply, by way of explanation, and turned.
"Mare, no—"
"Ms. Atwood, Teddy—"
Her foot slipped. One leaf, another, a twig, a bough—and down she went. Swift and hard, backside striking the earth with enough force she knew it'd bruise. But Teddy had followed, and he slipped as well, careening down the sheer slope at even quicker a pace and overtaking Mare in an attempt, it seemed, to slow or cushion her fall.
"Oof!"
"Ouch!"
A rock jabbed Mare in the hip; a branch whipped forth and lashed her cheek, her lip. She tasted blood. And at once she halted, arms sunk to the elbows in upturned dirt and mulch, a bed of leaves beneath her, creek babbling on mere feet from her ears. Overhead the great vast canopies swayed to and fro, boughs stirred in conducted unison by a wind that hastened as Mare watched, and brought down a rain of needles, leaves, and spores.
For a silly, discombobulated moment, Mare was entranced by the beauty of the wood and the creek and the day; hot and vital, the wind like blood pounding through the towering evergreens.
And then her ears were assaulted by a series of pained grunts, a muffled gasp, and the torrent of leaves crushed beneath weight. She'd been still on her back only a second, maybe two, when Theodore Bridge collided with her.
"Oof!"
Mare reached instinctively, perhaps to save Teddy from spilling into the river or perhaps only to spare herself. But her hands found his ribs, and his her shoulders, and one went over other.
Splash!
Mare gaped, racked with indignity before she'd processed what precisely had happened. Whatever physics had launched she and Teddy, however, scarcely mattered; it was nothing compared to the chemistry that followed.
She was astride Theodore Bridge by both sciences, and he lay prone beneath her. In the speed and surprise of the affair, his hands had grasped her hips and remained, most inappropriately, there. Her own were splayed against his chest, rising and falling in rapid breaths, and though most of Teddy was submerged in the small creek, only Mare's boots and knees had been likewise sullied.
She meant to leap from him. Surely he meant the same. However, neither moved.
"You're bleeding," Mare finally whispered, heart in her throat. It pounded so fiercely she knew he must hear it or, given their proximity, feel it. She was petrified, calcified, crystallized; there was terror in her blood at the implications of this fall, and fear beyond at what one might think stumbling upon the pair.
But most frightening was that beneath her mistrust of Theodore Bridge, her binds to Camden Doores, and her admiration for Geoffrey, Mare Atwood did not want to move.
So alien a thought! Mare's cheeks were ablaze, and she'd not moved her hands from Teddy's quick-rising chest, and her mind raged at the thought of where her body met his in other, rare-spoken-of places.
"You, too." His voice broke, and Mare's chest ached at the sound. He lifted one hand from her waist, where it felt he'd branded her, and reached for her face.
Again Mare meant to withdraw. To flee. To damn this brazen boy's brazen actions, to inquire after what game he and his family seemed, at all turns, to be playing.
But his thumb grazed her bottom lip, and something bright ignited in his shadowed gaze.
Somewhat distantly, Mare heard someone clear their throat. It took her an eternal second to realize it was not she or Teddy, and that a third party had trespassed upon their indecipherable moment.
Then Teddy moved, and was up in a mess of leaves and river water, guiding Mare to the bank. She fumbled with her wet gown, clutching Teddy's arm long as she dared. When she looked up, there was but a flash of skirts and porcelain skin, a long ribbon of silver hair, the wink of amethyst.
Mare looked to Teddy, mind sluggish to catch the implications of their being caught. He had his face in his hands.
Mare at once was struck with wretched guilt, confusingly more powerful for the Bridge than his charge, though Lilith would be ablaze with something to have fled without properly excusing herself.
Mare reached for Teddy. "Teddy—"
"Ms. Atwood," he said sharply, dropping his hands from his face, though he refused to look at her. "I think you have done enough."
Mare gaped, and he was not gentleman enough to offer his arm before ascending the slope. She remained alone on the riverbank, and not even the trees spoke to fill the silence.