Five

-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-

Somewhere, in the delayed processing of the reasoning of her actions, she knew she had meant to distract him, that a kiss from an odd spinster would have him so confounded that he wouldn't bother her with suspicions further, even if she had not committed any crime worthy of suspect- in this part of the country, anyway.

But the moment their lips collided, her mind went quiet, and her body dissolved. A spark ignited from where her lips touched his, the ignition like trail of gunpowder running in fine lines over her skin to finally congregate in the pit of stomach. Her breath hitched with the sensation, his fingers tightening against her shoulders, and Izzy parted from him all of a sudden, as if shocked physically from the contact, a gasp frozen on her lips.

Kaede looked just as startled as her, his mouth slackened as he stared down at her.

And then his brows pulled together tight, one long-fingered hand trailing down her arm and spanning across her lower back, the other cupping the back of her neck, pulling her closer to him for more.

She met his descent again, rising onto the balls of her feet with an eagerness that astounded her. When his mouth slanted over hers, the world ceased to exist entirely. Heat coursed along her spine, exemplified by the places his fingers were touching, and his lips captured hers with a sweet, wild ardency that made her turn into clay, moulding against his body.

She knew, without a doubt, how utterly absurd it was to be kissing him, to continue to kiss him, when she knew nothing of him, when she had spoken less than ten consecutive words to the male before.

But the way her body was reacting spoke of an eagerness to know more, to know more of him intimately despite this, and her knees almost buckled when his tongue traced the curve of her bottom lip, coaxing her to fall open to his caress, and she was helpless to obey. He dipped into her mouth tentatively at first, his soft moan reaching her ears when he found her tongue, and then he retracted briefly before plunging into her with more demand.

His hand at her neck held her firm, tilting her further back to meet the endless dance of his lips, and then his fingers swept down, grasping her lower waist, and lifting her against him so that her toes left the floor entirely.

Dear God, that was the most arousing thing that anybody had ever done to her, a startled sound of delight escaping her lips, muffled by the insistent press of his mouth against her. She knew she wasn't the most petite woman to have ever existed either, having been blessed with an abundance of curves and a healthy appetite for anything that contributed to them.

But Kaede had lifted her up as if she weighed nothing at all.

All the while making her senselessly respond to each stroke of his tongue against hers, each nip of his teeth as he caught her lip, teasing, her breath catching and then releasing as sensation flooded her core.

When he paused suddenly, his tongue retracting from hers, his lips stilling where they crushed against hers, Izzy made a wanton grunt of protest.

But then he parted from her entirely, the space between their lips giving her sense of mind to open her eyes and study the perplexed frown pulling his brow tight.

"Do you have," he murmured, his voice low and roughened with arousal, "something concerning I should be aware of that makes up part of your anatomy?"

Izzy blinked, the fog of her unanticipated desire dissipating as suddenly as it had emerged. Her fingers clenched tightly against his chest, her breasts pressed against him while her feet dangled yet off the ground. "What are you talking about?" she rasped, wiggling until he slid her back onto her feet.

"Granted, I have never had relations with a human before," he admitted, "so perhaps things are a bit different anatomically than what I am used to."

Izzy cocked her head to the side, meeting his frown with one of her own. "I have not a clue what you could be talking about, yet I fear you are on the brink of insulting me."

His lips pulled tight, and then he stepped away from her, pointing at her crotch. "Whatever is down there was moving against my... cock. Is that normal?"

Her cheeks must have looked about ready to burst into flame, but wordlessly she extracted Otto from his protective pocket and brought him between them for a brief inspection. "Unfortunately, I am not quite so equipped. But Otto is very glad to make your acquaintance, it seems."

The young Beastkeeper's brows pulled even tighter together as his gaze dipped to consider the twitching rodent clasped between her fingers, and then his gaze travelled back up to hers.

But when he looked at her this time there was something different in his expression, something that she hadn't witnessed before. The suspicion he had regarded her with before had melted away to be replaced by an unnameable, speculative light that illuminated the shadows clinging to his countenance.

And Izzy didn't know what to make of that, other than it made a peculiar sort of warmth bloom over her heart- a sort of warmth and longing she hadn't felt before- which made her so very disconcerted.

The precarious situation she found herself in slammed into her and she felt her heart grind against her flesh. She had kissed this young male, in a very public hallway in the middle of the day where anybody could have come across them, and it had been the best kiss of her life.

Her eyes popped wide and she hugged Otto to her chest. "I... apologise," she said, her words like a breath as they slipped from her lips. "That... that should not have happened. If you'll excuse me-"

She didn't give him a chance to respond, didn't wait to see what he would do, and instead she fled like the coward she was.

For what was there to say, or explain? She could count the number of words she had spoken to Kaede C'lainn on her hand prior to kissing him. She hardly knew the male, other than the fact that he was prone to a volatile temperament considering his propensity to hole himself away in the dark when things went awry, which certainly wasn't the worst sort of thing to have.

It went without saying that she found him attractive.

But did that warrant unsolicited kisses? And it had not had the desired effect, on either of them. Her lips still tingled from his touch and he... well, he did not seem repulsed at all by it either.

She gave herself a firm mental shake, not allowing her thoughts to linger on that particular discovery.

Izzy barricaded herself in her room, hurriedly depositing Otto within his cage and securing it firmly. She would need to amend his little latch with a better mechanism that his small brain wouldn't be able to decipher, but for the time being she fished one of her ribbons off a bonnet and tied a firm knot about the rigid wires where the latch met the rest of the enclosure.

Once that was done, she sat back on her heels and considered the rat. Otto considered her in return, his long whiskers twitching as he squeaked at her, almost indignantly.

"You've gotten me into enough trouble for one day," she told him sternly. "If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have ended up kissing broody Beastkeepers that I have no right to."

Otto merely squeaked in reply, his beady little eyes glinting with what Izzy interpreted as amusement. She sat back on her heels, scrubbing a hand over her face. "What am I to do?"

Otto didn't have a response for her.

It didn't matter- she knew what she had to do.

Life had taught Izzy one thing- being proactive was better than wallowing. And she was never one to wallow. When she had been given a sibling to parent when she herself was barely out of leading strings herself, Izzy had contrived a way to put food on their table and ensure a decent schooling for Cassie, using the talents she had been born with alone.

When her unconventional lifestyle had proven to reveal threats in the form of thieves and entitled men, Izzy had taken firm measures to restrict all of them by forming acquaintanceships with many wardens in her area, as well as a familiarising herself with a certain level of dexterity when utilizing a weapon.

And now it was clear that she had begun to overstay her welcome at Ravensfield in a way that was ensuring she certainly was attracting notice.

Her interlude with Kaede only served to reinforce her plan to leave.

As soon as possible.

She squared her shoulders, climbing to her feet, and made for the small escritoire beside her window that overlooked the rolling, manicured lawns of the estate. First, she would write to Lou and inform her friend of her imminent return, and of course her predicament she had found herself in- kiss notwithstanding- and then she would plot how best to approach Lady Adams and Mrs Holt. A firm hand would be needed with those two, headstrong-

A loud rap sounded at her door, stalling her path across her chambers.

Izzy immediately turned on her heel, thinking that perhaps her two hostesses had called upon her, which would align with her plans accordingly as she could divulge them both of her intentions then and there, but when she threw open the door it was not two smiling human women who greeted her.

"Kaede." His name was choked from the back of her throat.

It was an effort not to throw the door closed again and retreat, but his looming presence seemed to spill over her threshold.

His colour seemed heightened, his chest heaving as if he had exerted himself, and belatedly Izzy noted the tiny white snowflakes clinging to the strands of his hand and the shoulders of his dark coat.

His smile broke his face like a slither of moonlight, the lines bracketed his mouth easing into his cheeks with a familiarity that resonated through her very soul. That smile beamed from his essence, changed him entirely, and it proved to Izzy that her first impressions were correct- that Kaede C'lainn had smiled often and easily before his ordeal.

"You know my name."

Spoken in a deep, gruff voice... a lingering edge of roughness from disuse still made his words sound harsh, but Izzy was not surprised that she found the sound of him pleasing.

"I know of you," she agreed cautiously. "I have been staying on at Ravensfield for some time now."

His smile had not diminished, not in the slightest, and he shifted where he stood, dragging her gaze to a movement she caught by his waist. In his fist was a bunch of flowers, their white blooms drooping atop their stems.

"Snowdrops," she breathed, and found his gaze riveted to her face when she raised hers.

"What?"

"You're holding snowdrops," she told him. "Well, Galanthus, if you are interested in knowing their proper genus. They are hardy, winter blooms... sprouting even through the snow at the end of winter."

He gave her a quizzical look, though his smile remained fixed, as did his eyes. She felt his gaze on her with an intentness that made her nervous, excited, and very aware that she wore a gown as shapeless as a pillowcase right then.

"I didn't know that," he admitted, holding the bouquet out to her. "They are for you."

Oh, God.

"M-me?" Izzy felt herself floundering. The events of the day spiralling around her in a whirlwind of unpredictability which left her flailing for a foothold, anything to leverage some sort of control over what was unfolding about her. "Whatever for?"

There was such earnest appeal on his handsome face, a youthful eagerness that made her heart clench almost painfully. Despite his youth, Kaede seemed to embody a casual confidence that she had normally only seen in older men before, and it was something she hadn't seen in him prior to her kiss.

God, did her lips have some magic ability to inspire confidence in dejected men? The sudden change in the normally gloomy Beastkeeper piqued her unease, made her wary at its cause.

His head tilted to the side, his smile deepening. "Are gifts and flowers not part of the human courtship ritual?" he asked innocently.

Izzy invoked a colourful repertoire of swear words she had memorised in every language right then, and they all snapped through her mind. "Courtship?" she blurted, and then she was moving, taking his arm and pulling him from her chambers, urging him down the hallway.

"Of course," Kaede said from behind her. "You seem surprised. Don't worry, I have been schooled in the art of romancing a lady."

Izzy squeezed her eyes shut, her heels digging into the carpet at her feet. "You cannot possibly want to court me."

"I do," he assured her, and there was no edge of doubt, no trace of hesitance in his voice.

Izzy spun to him, a determined frown pulling at her brows. "You do not, Mr C'lainn."

He scoffed gently before urging her to take the drooping snowdrops he still carried in his fist. Her fingers brushed his, her eyes lingering on the strong, tanned hand that was almost double the size of her own. Her throat went dry.

He was nodding, calm understanding swirling through his eyes. His tail swayed gracefully behind him, a sure reminder that she was not dealing with a human man. "It is sudden, and we hardly know each other. I understand your hesitation, but I would still like the opportunity to know you better."

"Anthony and Cleopatra," Izzy blurted. Her shoulders tensed, her thoughts chaotic and churning all at once, overwhelming her with volume until they spilled forth from her lips with little sense or context to work with.

The Beastkeeper manufactured a look of careful perplexity, his smile diminishing but his expression no less pleasant for it. "What?"

"Heloise and Abelard," Izzy continued, the words coming forward in great, big breathless gulps, "Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal! Ines de Castro and King Pedro!"

"Miss Cotton-"

"Courtships," she interrupted, fully aware that she was babbling, "that met a tragic end. Courtships that failed, that were full of tragedy. Cleopatra and Anthony- dead, suicide. Heloise and Abelard, castration and lived in monasteries for the rest of their lives, never to see each other again with only strings of heart-breaking love letters between them! Shah Jahan-"

"Miss Cotton," Kaede urged, his large hands gently taking her shoulders and compelling her to still. Her eyes landed on him, her vision blurring as she peered through the thick lenses of her spectacles. "What are you on about?"

There was no censure in his tone, only the gentle pleading to understand her better. Her throat constricted, her fingers tightening on her delicate stems she clutched in her hand and held to her bosom. "You cannot entertain a courtship with me, Kaede C'lainn. It would only end in tragedy."

She peered at him over the edges of her spectacles to garner one last, clear look at his endearing face, and then she pivoted and returned the way that she had come.

It was only when she reached the threshold of her chambers that she heard his voice, his words issued from the distance where she had left him, "I may not know of who you speak, but I intend to find out and when I do we will discuss this further, Miss Cotton. You can be assured of that."