“Sure,” Elodie said, barely listening. Suitcase in hand, she began striding through the station building toward theplatform, the heels of her sturdy half boots knocking against the ground as if to announce to other travelers that a professional heroine had arrived—although apparently this was not clear enough for Professor Palgrave, who was forced to leap aside, muttering about “sinful blindness.”
“Um,” Motthers said, scurrying to keep pace despite his legs being several inches longer than Elodie’s (which prompted him to wonder if he should mention the knotted-up skirt, but his courage failed). “It’s just, well, it seems a copy was made of the telegram, and someone who shall go unnamed[Ralph Salterling]delivered it to a second office.”
“Oh?” Elodie stopped near the edge of the platform and shielded her eyes with her free hand from the limpid morning sun as she peered along the tracks for a glimpse of a train. Incredibly, she had managed to arrive early.
“To be fair,” Motthers continued, “we’re notexactlysure who the message was meant for in the first place, you or…the other Professor Tarrant.”
Elodie continued gazing out beneath her hand at the horizon, mainly because she had frozen. Then, very slowly, she turned to look at the small crowd on the platform.
And there he was.
“You,” she muttered with such ferocity, it must be cause for amazement that the gentleman did not spontaneously combust. He did not even so much as flinch, however. Indeed, he might have been a statue erected in honor of Elodie’s worst memory. All the familiar details were present: tidy black hair, almost-black eyes, olive skin, suit so immaculate he could have worn it to meet the pope, were he not an agnostic. Absent was any human warmth. Behind him, a graduate student fussed with their emergency response kit, but he ignored them, ignored theentire world, staring instead at a small, oblong wooden block in his hand with an expression so stern it made a rock seem like quivering jelly.
Yet Elodie knew that he’d seen her, without a doubt. He saw everything.
Gabriel.
Professor Tyrant to his students (and several members of the faculty when they thought no one could hear them).
Her husband.
Elodie’s face blazed. She thrust the suitcase at Motthers without looking, turned on a heel, and began striding back toward the velocipede.
“P-Professor!” Motthers cried out, but Elodie ignored him. She had to get away…even while her mind ran headlong into the pit of memory.
—
She’d married Gabrielon a Monday afternoon in September, almost exactly one year ago. It had been an accident.
If only she’d not gone to the Minervaeum, London’s private club for academics, after attending the annual Thaumaturgic Cartography Symposium. If only she’d not felt so queasy from the odors of pipe smoke, steamed pudding, and nitroglycerine swirling through the club’s Paracelsus Lounge that she’d decided to open a window. And if only doing so had not brought her close enough to where Gabriel sat with Professor Dubrovic that she’d overheard their conversation.
“Oh dear,” Professor Dubrovic was saying. “FourBalliol students living upstairs from your flat?” He shook his head sympathetically.
“They are constantly quoting poetry,” Gabriel answered,managing to grouch in such refined tones that one naturally assumed he was in the right because he sounded like he must be. “And they debate Shakespeare’s authorship at the top of their lungs. Or perhaps it’s just that they want breakfast at all hours—in any case, if I hear another cry for Bacon, I will go quite mad. I need to find new accommodation before I’m driven toeducatethem.”
“The place across from me on Holywell Street is vacant,” Dubrovic said.
“I know, and it would be ideal. I inquired, but the landlady only wants a married couple.”
Dubrovic shrugged. “So get married.”
There followed a pause in the conversation, due to a chemistry professor across the room having detonated her pudding. While the other patrons variously cheered or complained, Dubrovic smirked over the rim of his whiskey glass at Gabriel. “No need to look so perturbed, old chap.Amor est mortuus.I’m talking about a marriage of convenience.”
Gabriel frowned. “Oh? And where would I find a wife at such short notice?”
I’d marry you,Elodie thought with a wistful sigh. She’d adored him since the day they had met in Advanced Principles of Thaumaturgical Cartography, two eighteen-year-olds embarking upon a master’s degree far sooner than their peers. He’d gotten there via a bachelor’s degree (First Class Honors with Distinction), whereas her route had been through exceptional entry, having spent most of her life in the fields of Europe and Canada with her geographer parents. It was a difference in education that reflected their contrasting personalities, and yet Gabriel had from the very start represented Elodie’s ideal of manhood, since even as a young man he’dpossessed compelling gravitas and exceptional intelligence (along with perfectly aligned facial contours).
But he also scrupulously ignored her existence. Elodie could not blame him, however. She was neither beautiful nor thin, she lacked proper refinement, and then there was that time she accidentally dented his expensive, thaumaturgically charged copper sieve when using it to swat a fly in the classroom…
Suddenly, a ringing silence made her look up from the window’s latch, whereupon she discovered that Gabriel had become very aware indeed of her existence and was staring at her in a way that made her feel like a map of some newly discovered shore.
For one frantic second, Elodie mentally cataloged every wrinkle and ink stain on her dress. Then she dragged together whatever dignity she could find within herself and stared right back at him. “What?” she said defensively.
“You’d marry me?” he asked, echoing the thought she’d apparently spoken aloud.
Oh, damn.
—
