Star's Crossing

28: The Fall

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.