Page 43 of Dropping the Ball

The young ladies didn’t look at all impressed, but they held their ground as Bernadette reassured them, “He’s really entirely harmless. So are many of his cousins.”

Alden smiled at her attempted reassurance and went straight into, “Yes. For example, over here we have a delightful black and white Argentinian tegu, which is among the largest lizard species of its genus.”

Slowly, reluctantly, the timid pack of young ladies followed Alden onto the path that wound through the terrarium as he began his lecture. He was delighted that all but one of the young ladies came close enough to have a look at the tegu. One, however, almost came close enough before losing her nerve and turning to run for the door.

He lost two more of the young ladies in the middle of his explanation of non-venomous snakes when he found a two-meter-long black-tailed cribo sunning itself farther down the path and picked it up in the middle of his explanation of their natural habitat. The moment he’d held the snake out, offering to let the ladies touch it so that they might see snakes were not slimy, as they were so often portrayed to be, the two ladies bolted.

“Not everything in the wilds of the Amazon or the central regions of the Americas are slithery and terrifying,” he explained as they moved even farther down the path. “Take Nimrod here. Nimrod is a chaco tortoise from Argentina. He is also known as a Patagonian tortoise or a southern wood tortoise, he eats a diet of vegetation, and may have a lifespan of twenty years. Many tortoise species live far longer than that, up to two hundred years or more.”

That seemed to pique the interest of a few of the remaining ladies. Lady Wendine, for example, was willing to stoop so thatshe might pet Nimrod. But when one of the other ladies came close, Nimrod slowly opened his mouth, then snapped at her, and she backed away, squealing, then turned to run.

“He’s quite sweet,” Bernadette said, stepping forward to caress Nimrod’s shell, as if to encourage the other ladies. “Aren’t you, Nimrod?”

Nimrod turned his head to her, and Alden could have sworn the tortoise smiled.

“Oh! And over here, we have a cousin of Nimrod’s,” Alden went on, jumping to the side of the stream flowing through the room. “This lovely lady is Nancy, a Dunn’s mud turtle, from the familyKinosternidae.”

As he leaned over to fetch Nancy from the muddy bank of the stream, Bernadette left Nimrod to have a look. “What vibrant coloring,” she said, allowing Alden to slip the small turtle into her hands.

Lady Wendine cleared her throat and asked in a faltering voice, “What is the difference between a tortoise and a turtle?”

“Turtles are designed to swim,” Alden said, glancing to Lady Wendine for a moment–and spotting two more of the ladies sneaking away toward the door to the garden–then directing most of his explanation to Bernadette. “Tortoises have more domed shells and are predominantly found on land. And terrapins, of which I have no species in my collection, are semi-aquatic, freshwater varieties of turtles. All tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises.”

“I did not know that,” Bernadette said, glancing from Nancy, who appeared to have taken a liking to her, to Alden.

Alden smiled back at her. “Come over here. I have the most beautiful green turtle named Boris who I do not believe you’ve met yet.”

As Alden stood, Bernadette cooed to Nancy, then set her back into the mud at the side of the stream. She washed her handsbriefly in the water, then stood and followed Alden. Together they made their way to the far corner of the terrarium, searching for green turtles.

Without intending it to, the hunt turned into a delightful game. Alden took Bernadette’s hand and led her off the flagstone path and into the slightly squishy undergrowth as they followed the stream around one of its bends.

“Mind your skirts,” he said to her when he noticed mud beginning to mar the hem of Bernadette’s gown.

“Turtle-hunting is far more worthy of my attention than skirts,” Bernadette said, dodging around one of the larger iguanas who had come out to see what they were doing.

The iguana made a sudden movement, Bernadette nearly lost her balance, and Alden reacted swiftly to catch her. The moment left Bernadette laughing breathlessly and clinging to Alden as he helped her over a large rock that had been placed specifically for basking reptiles to a flat area beside the stream.

“Careful,” Alden scolded her, though he did so with a smile on his face and his heart filled with excitement and affection.

“I thought I was being careful,” Bernadette said, clinging to Alden’s jacket as they attempted to share the small space in the middle of the faux jungle.

She glanced up at him, and a pained, emotional flush pinched her expression.

“I thought I was being so very careful,” she said in a whisper. “I thought that if I never stayed in one place for very long, if I only kept company with my fellow sisters of the Oxford Society, that I would never find myself in a position to lose my heart when I knew it was not mine to lose.”

Alden rebelled at her statement immediately. “Your heart is and always will be your own,” he insisted. “No matter what other circumstances exist.”

“I only wish that were true,” Bernadette said, looking down.

Alden was suddenly very much aware that the remaining young ladies who had started out on the tour with them had abandoned the terrarium. He and Bernadette were entirely alone in the verdant wonderland he had created to house his passion. His other passion, his one, true love, was there in his arms, suffering for the actions of others long ago. He could not let that situation continue for a moment longer.

“Bernadette,” he spoke her name softly, intimately.

When she glanced up, he stroked his fingers across the side of her face. Her hair was slightly damp from the humidity of the room, and a few tendrils stuck to her brow. Her skin was dewy, and the fabric of her bodice clung becomingly to her bosom. She had her lips parted, as if she knew his intentions and longed for a kiss.

How could he deny her? With the sounds of exotic birds above them and the burbling of the stream below them, Alden pulled Bernadette into his arms and slanted his mouth over hers in a kiss. Bernadette drew in a slight breath before giving in to the passion Alden knew she had tried so hard to keep coiled and in check inside her. She moaned as his tongue lapped at hers and gripped his jacket with both hands as he circled his arms tighter around her.

It was both heaven and hell; beautiful because of the intensity of the love between them and horrible because of everything that stood against them. It was more than enough to make Alden believe that the Curse of Godwin Castle was real. He’d been cursed to love what he could not have and to want more than he was allowed.

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