“Should I escape cardiac exhaustion in the next few minutes, I am well indeed,” he said. “Are you?”
She wriggled up a little so she could kiss the inexplicable tears on his face. “I am. Yes, I am, now.”
He smiled at her.
And the bed broke apart.
22
our heroes expand their minds (and other things)— a foregone conclusion—alice is in a sticky situation—revelations of a dastardly nature
Alice’s imagination was by habit ridiculously inactive; when the door was not open it didn’t even try the window, but sat morose in the room until a need for lateral thinking let it out.
Daniel’s imagination was a stone.
And yet, after dragging the bed’s mattress safely to the floor, they managed between them to invent several creative variations upon the theme of lovemaking, thus occupying the long hours of the night. This was, as Alice pointed out,professional behavior, since sleeping must surely be ill-advised when the Wisteria Society might at any point re-engage the hunt. They needed something to keep them alert. As it transpired, they were rendered so alert, so many times, that when dawn arrived, it found them lying naked and stunned on the mattress, barely able to move.
“I must say,” Alice mused as she watched the darkness fade to gold, “my neck doesn’t hurt as much as I feared it would.”
Daniel turned his head to look at her. His eyes, bright with new sunlight, unguarded by glass, held an expression she could not decipher, and yet it made her pulse flutter.
“You are...”
“Yes?” she asked. And when he didn’t answer, his eyes darkening, she repeated it more warily. “Yes?”
“I feel I should apologize,” he said.
“Oh?” Her pulse went from fluttering to threshing. Her heart shredded. But all she did was blink. “Do you have regrets about last night?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” Her brain marched in, swept up the remains of her heart, and shoved them into a trash can along with certain idioms.
“We ought not to have done what we did,” Daniel said.
“Uh huh.”
“I ought to have controlled myself until I had access to candles, soft blankets, or at the very least a clean bed, to give you the romantic experience you deserve.” He smiled shyly. “I’m so ruinously in love with you, Alice.”
Ta-dah!!Her heart burst from the trash can in a sparkling confetti shower of happiness.
“Oh,” she said primly, even while her nerves donned red dresses and began to do a tap dance. “I understand,” she added through the fizz of champagne being poured by her ego. Snatching a glass of it, her brain stood on a chair, pink feather boa about its neck and champagne raised for a sentimental toast she could not quite hear through the thumping of her heart.Love!it beat.Love!
“This is certainly an interesting development,” she said. “As it happens, I am in love with you also.”
She clenched everything inside herself nervously, but the world didnot end. Academy staff did not come bursting through the window with birch switches at the ready to chastise her. Nor did Daniel assassinate her. In fact, he almost lookedsoft.
“That is welcome news,” he said. “Most convenient.”
He held out his hand, and Alice shook it. They gave each other a brisk nod.
“How are we going to inform Human Resources of this unforeseen consequence to the mission?” she asked.
His eyes went still. Her heart went still. For one silent moment, the truth lay between them.
There would be no informing Human Resources. Were their relationship to be discovered, they’d be separated—quite possibly from themselves, and certainly from each other. Years ago, Alice had befriended a stray cat outside the Academy dormitories. She still bore scars from when her tutors found out—one across the back of each thigh, and one through her brain, the ragged memory of what they did to the cat.
She smiled tightly at Daniel.
