At that point the waiter bustled in with salads and bread. But when the man left, she hastened to continue the conversation. It was so good to talk to Peter, even as the sensible part of her warned that this would only make it harder when the end came.
“Do you plan to keep omnimancing, then?” she said.
“Well, IimagineI may have blown my chance to get hired into the federal omnimancer ranks.”
His delivery was so dry it almost made her laugh. The feeling bubbled up but couldn’t quite make it past the icy certainty in her chest that he didn’t love her, had never loved her, had merely had the emotions thrust upon him temporarily by a spell gone awry.
He was looking at her, no doubt expecting a response that was not a sob, so she said, “There’s probably a county around here that would see the value in budgeting for a wizard.”
He nodded. “The trouble is, it wouldn’t pay very much. It’s not that I want a lot of money, but the hospital bills…”
“Yes,” she said, the icy feeling spreading to her stomach. When would they come? How bad would they be? She had called twice now to ask, and in each case was told that it would be “soon” but that the amount had not been tallied yet.
“And we need to have enough to cover Hazelhurst,” he said, buttering a piece of bread.
She blinked, lost, and then picked up the thread. “Oh—I’ve finished paying Lydia’s tuition.”
“No, no,yourtuition.”
The fork she’d picked up to eat a bite of salad slipped out of her hand and clattered on the table. “You—you plan to…”
He looked up from his own salad, brow furrowed. “Did you really think we weren’t going to prioritize that?”
She didn’t know what to say. He took her hand.
“Beatrix,” he murmured, “I know why you don’t want to set a wedding date.”
Her mouth went dry, her heart thudding in her ears.
“I’m sorry things have worked out the way they have.” He grimaced and looked down at his plate. “I understand how hard this is for you, I do. But I’m offering you a different sort of marriage. Surely we could make this work?”
“A—a different sort of marriage,” she said. She could feel her bottom lip trembling. She bit down on it to make it stop.
“Yes. Your life would be your own.”
Of course. She could see it. Her life would be her own, and his life would be his own, intertwining only in the ways that would be necessary to keep up the fiction of a marriage in which both parties loved each other. Perhaps she and her sister and Peter would all live together—in a house carefully scrubbed for eavesdropping devices. And in return, he would send her to college.
It felt as much like a bribe as when Garrett had offered it as a sweetener to his own marriage proposal. Garrett, of course, had thought he loved her. Peter’s intent was entirelydifferent. He was giving her another deep desire of her heart and asking for that to be enough.
“I …” The word came out as a gasp. It didn’t matter that this was verifiably not the worst thing that had happened to her—it felt in this moment as if it was, and she couldn’t take it anymore. She pushed away from the table. “I need to go home.”
He jumpedto his feet and put an arm around her, afraid she was on the verge of fainting. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t—” She swallowed and seemed to pull herself together. The shaking stopped. She looked away. “I can’t have this conversation. Not now. Not until Sunday.”
He stared at her, aghast. She wasn’t unwell—she was miserably unhappy. Sunday was the end of the two weeks, when he could finally create a secure place to talk. What could she want to say to him that she was afraid the magiocracy might overhear, if not that she would never marry him?
The door opened and the waiter came in with their meals—in time to see them jump apart.
“Oh, it’s all right,” the man said with a kindly smile. “The gossip columnists won’t hear it from me. What kind of a world is it when a man can’t give his sweetheart a kiss without it making the papers?”
He’d already put the plates on the table before either of them could think of something to say.
Beatrix got in first—“wait!”—but Peter was more assertive: “Thank you very much, and we’ll be fine, no need to check on us—we’ll come out if we need anything.”
The waiter grinned. “You got it, Omnimancer.”
The instant the door clicked shut, he leaned in and whispered, “I’m going to lay down demarcation stones in this conveniently windowless room, turn off the lights and count. On three, I will cast the shielding spell. Then I will count again, and on three, I will cast the spell-detector.With the lights off.”
