“I’ll just go and fetch her, then?” she suggested, looking anxious at the prospect. “I fear she might have caught on with all the clamor down here.”
Freddy followed her to the staircase, hesitating at the bottom and shifting from foot to foot. “It looks well?” he asked, just one last time. “She will be pleased?”
“Yes, you fool,” Dot answered with a pause and, quite fleetingly, a gentle little smile. “Now be quiet.”
He was quiet.
Silas’s one-eared cat darted between his legs, heading very clearly toward the foyer as though summoned there by the cry of her favorite adversary. She paused to look up at Freddy, waiting to be acknowledged.
“Evening, Queen Mab,” Freddy whispered, giving her a formal little bow. “I suppose you’re off to torment Mr. Murphy.”
The cat twitched her one ear, blinked her big yellow eyes, and continued about her business.
Within seconds there was a very distinct and alarmed “Och!” from the vestibule.
It chipped away at any nerves Freddy had managed to amass in his shoulders, making him chuckle under his breath as Abe launched into a bombastic scree against the damned cat without his wife there to silence him.
He couldn’t quite make out the words, but the brogue was distinct. In the year he’d lived with Abe, he’d heard quite a few paranoid theories about the malevolence of that cat. He’d had that tone turned on him a few times too.
It had been a good era of his life, he thought. It had been a productive one.
“It is too early for dinner,” came his wife’s voice from the top of the stairs, silencing his thoughts of anything else and drawing his eyes all the way up the bannister. “I am not hungry yet.”
“There are sweets,” Dot assured her. “You do not have to eat.”
“She can’t resist a pastry,” Millie answered, and then chuckled like she’d been rapidly rebuked. “Go on, Claire. We’re right behind you.”
She appeared then, floating two steps down from the top before she paused, clearly surprised to see him waiting there at the bottom.
It struck him right in the chest.
He hadn’t planned it. He hadn’t even considered it.
And yet without meaning to, he had recreated the occasion of their first meeting. He had staged it. He had put them into position as though they were players in an opera, recounting the occasion of the bolt of lightning in all its historical glory.
Their eyes met. The lights seemed to dim. His heart gave a single great ring against his chest.
The only difference was … well, everything. Everything was different now. Every solitary thing except for how she looked at the top of those stairs and how she made him feel as she descended them.
He did not have to hold his dignity this time. He did not have to fear the violence with which love ripped through him every time he saw her. Every single time.
So he grinned and held out his hand and waited for her to return the smile, flashing those pretty teeth at him as she picked up her pace, hopping down the stairs like a girl skipping through a park.
“Freddy!” she exclaimed with pleasure, once she had come close enough to accept the warmth of his hand into her own. “I thought you had business tonight.”
“I do, my love,” he told her, pulling her close and dropping a kiss on her mouth, despite her flustered gasp and the observation of Dot and Millie behind her on the stairs. “I have very important business. The most important. Yours.”
“Mine?” she repeated, uncertain whether she should be more confounded or delighted as she was led toward her surprise. “What business is that?”
“Remember when I said I would find a publisher in London for your fairy stories?” he said, as casually as he could manage. He said it as though he’d just recalled the notion and perhaps a bespectacled printer was sitting in the dining room, waiting to consider the project for the first time.
“Vaguely,” she lied, attempting to disguise her excitement.
He laughed, lacing his fingers through hers and squeezing her hand. “Good. Because I did and I have and … well …”
They rounded the corner, revealing the gathered crowd, split into two little groups on either side of the central table he’d piled the books upon. They gleamed in the candlelight, the gold embossing on the letters stamped into the leather.
“Oh!” she managed, her upheld hand coming up to cover her mouth. “Oh, gracious!”
