“Small good cat,” I said. Koshka didn’t take it personally. He was a Book Witch’s familiar, so he’d seen this before.
“Koshka, get Mrs. Turner, please.” Koshka ran to the kitchen. “Duke, keep going. You can do it.”
His head started to droop again. He sagged against the wall. I grabbed his arm before he passed out. When I caught him, he met my eyes.
“All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream…” he whispered in horror.
“Edgar Allan Poe,” I said. “It’s only a poem. You’re all right.”
He moved close to me, so close our lips nearly touched.
“A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it,” he whispered, and a shiver ran through my entire body from my head to my toes and back again.
“Oh no, notLady Chatterley’s Lover,” I said. “We broke up, remember?” Apparently, he didnotremember, because he brought his mouth to my ear and quoted another line fromLady Chatterleythat had certainly contributed to it being banned in the U.S., Canada, Australia, India, and Japan. Somehow, in his posh English accent, he still managed to make it sound like a proper activity for a Sunday afternoon.
Not that I was complaining.
It wouldn’t be accurate to say I dragged him to the library, but it wouldn’t be wholly inaccurate either. However it happened, I finally got him to the couch. Where was Mrs. Turner?
He collapsed, laying his head on the sofa arm, eyes closed. “We know what we are but know not what we may be,” he mumbled.
I knelt in front of him. His eyes fluttered open and met mine.
He whispered, “Thou art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings.”
“Are you trying to seduce me withMoby-Dick?” I teased.
But he shook his head as if I hadn’t understood the message he was trying to give me, as if we were speaking different languages.
“Give sorrow words,” he whispered. “The grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”
Shakespeare.Macbeth,if I remembered correctly, and, as a Book Witch, I usually did.
“Duke?” No answer.
Mrs. Turner entered the library pushing a tea trolley. “Master Koshka tells me we have a guest.”
“Unfortunately. Duke just showed up out of nowhere.”
Mrs. Turner glanced down at the rug. “His Grace has tracked water on my floors.”
“Not his fault,” I told her. “He’s had a traumatic reentry. His body is in this world, and his spirit is trying to catch up with it.”
“No excuse for untidiness, especially in the Quality.”
“Let’s try some tea. That might help.”
“First sensible thing you’ve said all evening, Miss March.”
She poured the tea into a white cup and saucer. “Milk? Sugar?”
“Black,” I said. “This is business, not pleasure.”
She passed me the cup, and I held it to Duke’s nose and let the steam waft into his nostrils. For a moment, his eyes cleared.
“Drink this,” I ordered.
Duke took a single sip of the tea. His eyes began to clear and focus like he’d found his way out of the shadows and into the light of day.
