Beatrix leftfor work the next morning without Ella, who was tucked into bed with a head cold. Theo Garrett did not make an encore appearance on their doorstep. She had just convinced herself she wasn’t sorry when she stepped into her back yard and discovered he was waiting for her there, where lawn gave way to forest. Something inside her chest swooped at the sight.
“If I had nothing useful to tell you yesterday evening, I certainly don’t this morning,” she said, meaning for it to sound chiding but failing miserably.
“I know,” he said. He smiled at her. He really had a lovely smile.
She realized—of course—that she should send him away. He was a wizard. He might be superior to Blackwell in all respects, but he was part of the magiocracy all the same.
She smiled back. She stepped into the forest with him. When he offered his arm, she took it.
A bit like being under a compulsion, but this time magic had nothing to do with it.
“I’m president of the county chapter of the Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic,” she said, because she wasn’t so far gone to not see the objections.
“Yes.”
“And you know who my sister is.”
“Naturally.”
She looked up at him. “You can’t tell me that doesn’t bother you in the slightest.”
“It doesn’t bother me in the slightest,” he said, smile widening.
“Well, I’m afraid I can’t honestly tell youI’m not troubled that you’re a wizard.”
“Miss Harper,” he said, the steel showing through again, “I am surrounded in Washington by girls who simply adore wizards. They would like nothing better than to marry a wizard, and they don’t very much carewhich. I am sick unto death of being liked for my profession.”
She considered this. “But is it really better to be liked despite it?”
He leaned in and kissed her. She pressed closer, his freshly shaved jaw under her fingertips, his spicy scent enveloping her.
“Yes,” he murmured into her ear. “Infinitely better.”
CHAPTER 18
Ella was sitting in the kitchen—a cup of tea in her hands and a blanket around her shoulders—when Beatrix came in through the back door, humming a waltz under her breath.
“Oh! Are you feeling any better?” she asked, recollecting with a guilty start that she hadn’t thought of Ella even once since leaving that morning.
“Marginally.”
“Could I get you anything?”
Ella glowered. “No.”
Wait … was Ella glowering ather?
“What’s wrong?” She sat at the table. “Are you angry with me?”
“I’m not angry.” Ella paused to blow her nose. “Shocked, disappointed and aggravated, but not angry. No, I take it back—angry, too. Kissing awizard?Really?”
Beatrix had the brief sensation of falling. “Ella?—”
“How can you get involved with someone who’s part of the system that prevents us from living like normal adults?” She punctuated this whispered tirade by slamming her cup onto the table. “I never would have expected it of you—of all people! Everydayyou get a reminder of how wizards keep us from doing what we want to do and force us to do things we don’t.”
“Yes, but?—”
“What do you think will happen after the storybook wedding? Do you honestly believe he’ll say, ‘Oh, go right on trying to reshape the country in a way that will be bad for me personally’?”
