“OK, I did.” Martinelli grinned. “It was especially entertaining to watch your face as it dawned on you why the Sedereys invited us to eat with them two weekends in a row.”
Peter sighed. “What am I to do? I can’t very well say, ‘So sorry, Miss Sederey, but I’m desperately in love with Miss Harper.’”
“Henceforth you will be too busy to accept invitations to eat there, and you will do whatever you can to limit your time with Miss Sederey. In an unfailingly polite way.”
“Sounds like you’ve had plenty of experience.”
Martinelli glanced away. “I’ve only been married for seven years, whippersnapper. How have you not had wizard hunters after you before?”
Peter shrugged. “Never went in for the sort of places they congregated in D.C. You know I only showed up at social events when the Army ordered me there.”
They walked for a moment without saying anything, a pickup truck rumbling by the other direction.
“If you see no future with Miss Harper, you really ought to try to fall in love with someone else,” Martinelli said quietly. “For sanity’s sake.”
He really ought to forBeatrix’ssake. Free her from this disaster of a quasi-relationship. Let her have her true emotions back.
But how on earth could he fall in love with someone else when he would keep seeing the woman he really wanted night after night?
“Sorry if I’m overstepping, boss,” Martinelli said into the silence, eyes on the trees ahead of them. “I mean, what the hell do I know.”
“No, it’s good advice,” Peter said. “I just don’t think I can do it.”
CHAPTER 10
The first interruption of the day was Mrs. Greene, pleading for cold relief and getting it on the spot; Beatrix had shrewdly made extra. The second was Mrs. Beatty, issuing an invitation to Sunday dinner in thanks for earlier help; she had no daughters, so he accepted. The third was old Mr. Yager, who needed his tractor fixed and could not afford to pay anyone to do it; he went on Peter’s list. The fourth was Mr. Ambrose, who needed his roof patched andcouldafford to pay for it; he was shown the length of the to-do list and decided to find a non-magical solution.
Now the fifth interruption stood on his porch. She was no supplicant.
“Miss Knight,” Peter said, holding in a frown. He did not point out that it was more than an hour before Beatrix’s shift would end. He simply raised his eyebrows and waited.
Miss Knight cocked her head and raised her eyebrows right back at him. What did he expect? If he was Hades to Beatrix’s Persephone, her friend was a Fury, intent on making him pay.
He sighed. “Won’t you come in.”
After he’d checked the house for wizards, he circled back to the hallway to find out why she’d come.
“I’d like to do my grading here,” she said. “Beatrix’s house is—” She shook her head. “There’s nothing more exhausting than being monitored nonstop.”
Sympathy overpowered his irritation. “I can only imagine.” He gestured to the receiving room. “You can use my desk, if you’d like.”
“Thank you, but I’d just as soon go to one of the upstairs rooms. I don’t want to be tempted to watch Beatrix make brews.”
Sensible. He set up the room where she and Beatrix had practiced protection spells, dragging over a chair from across the hall, bringing in a shelf from an empty bookcase and levitating it to a reasonable height for a desk.
“Thank you,” she said, and if her smile was tight, it still had to be the first time she’d ever favored him with one.
Was she changing her mind about him? Could this be a sign that Beatrix was beginning to see the situation differently?
He grimaced as he trudged back to the attic. What other way could she see it? It wasn’t as if he wanted her to succumb to the insidious pressure the Vow applied to her every second of each day.
But if Beatrix’s angel of vengeance now saw some redeeming value in him, he would count that as a not insignificant victory.
Beatrix rushedup the steps the moment she decanted the last brew of the day, knocked on the door and called out, “It’s me.” She received no answer—the room was soundproofed, after all—and opened the door without any expectation of what met her eyes. Ella grinned at her from the middle of the room, hovering at least a yard off the floor.
“Ella, that’s—that’s?—”
“Amazing?”
