He tugged on Pimmersby’s arm. “But the magic!” Pimmersby whined.
With one blink, Gabriel shifted the stare to him.
Pimmersby turned more ghostly pale than the subject of an Edgar Allan Poe poem. “Uh, actually, we should probably hurry, before we miss the dinner service,” he said, gesturing back toward the village. “Got to keep ourselves healthy for the term ahead, after all.” He tugged in turn on Hapsitch’s coat. Indeed, so much tugging occurred, the two men almost pulled each other off-balance. They retreated down the road with the haste of people whose nightmares involved such things as attending a lecture naked.
“The wind is only some ten knots now,” Gabriel muttered, frowning after them. “I wouldn’t call that a torrent.”
“I think he was taking poetic license,” Elodie explained. Turning back to the burning umbrella, she removed from her dressing gown’s pocket several paper scraps that were scrawled with important notes long forgotten, passed them to Gabriel,then took off the dressing gown and beat it against the enchanted fire until all that remained was a charred, soggy mess. Gabriel, hands full of paper, watched bemusedly. Once she was certain the fire would not reignite, she dropped her ruined dressing gown on the pile of ash and began walking back to the village, not caring if Gabriel followed.
Thoroughly soaked, with her boots filled with water and her gloveless fingers so cold they burned, she felt like a perambulating block of ice. Her teeth began chattering, and she hugged herself in what she knew would be a futile attempt to ward off hypothermia.
Coming alongside, Gabriel cast a dark glance her way, then began to remove his coat. Elodie’s breath tripped. The cursed man was going to give it to her! How inconsiderate! He was her estranged husband; he ought to be consistently rude and arrogant so a woman knew where she stood with him! How was she supposed to maintain a healthy antipathy when he kept doing thoughtful things?
Immediately, she walked faster, trying to ignore how her feet hurt as the wet leather of her boots chafed them. Without effort, Gabriel kept pace. From the edge of her vision, Elodie saw him withdraw one arm from within the coat’s sleeve…
“No,” she said, holding up a hand in refusal as she increased her speed yet again.
“I beg your pardon?” Gabriel asked, managing to sound simultaneously confused and repressive.
“Thank you for your consideration, but please do not be charming or gallant. Donotgive me your coat.”
“Why not?” he asked suspiciously. “Do you think I have body lice?”
“Aah!” Mortified by the very suggestion, she covered herface with a hand. “No, of course not! I just feel we ought to remain scrupulously professional.”In other words, do not make me like you, or I will remember that I love you, and that’s a worse disaster for me than any storm could create.
“Hm,” he replied. In fact, not even that. Half a hm. The least amount of sound possible while still being definable as a reply. So no real danger, then, of him being actually charming. Elodie had to wonder why she was making a mountain out of a mere chalk down elevation. Besides, her teeth were now chattering so hard she feared for their integrity more than that of her character. She stopped in a band of limpid red-gold light overflowing from a cottage window, and squinting against the rainfall, she looked obliquely at him.
“Unless you would offer it to any other colleague under similar professional circumstances, that is.”
At once, he had the coat off. Elodie girded her loins against the thrill of him draping it around her shoulders…
But he simply handed it to her. She took it automatically, rendered wordless by surprise, and he continued walking down the road.
“So rude!” Elodie muttered under her breath as she hauled on the coat. Its sleeves hung beyond her fingertips and its hem to her ankles, making her feel rather like an awkward child. But waterproofing had kept the satin lining dry and warm, and the exterior smelled of—well, sodden wool, actually, and smoke from thaumaturgical lightning, but also a dark muskiness she could only describe as masculine. She closed her eyes, allowing herself one moment to luxuriate in beinginside Gabriel’s coat. She’d spent years dreaming of this. Granted, in those dreams he’d tucked it around her, gently gathering her hair out from under the collar and then, with a forehead kiss,drawing her close to comfort her against his strength and his steady heart—
“Are you coming or not?” he called from farther along the road.
Sighing, Elodie hurried to follow.
Chapter Seven
Longitude tells you your relative position,
much the same as longing does.
Blazing Trails, W.H. Jackson
A warm bath restoredElodie to good humor, and after she donned an old, comfortable white dress and brown cardigan, she tied back the sides of her washed hair with the elastic band Gabriel had given her, leaving the soft, rippling length to fall down her back so it might dry before bedtime. Then she unfurled the extra mattress, setting a nightgown atop it as a claim marker.
“So there,” she said, hands on hips and smug smile tilting her mouth—then blushed at having spoken to an empty room. Really, she’d not behaved in such a juvenile manner since…Well, perhaps better not to answer that, lest memories from last month, when she dropped a water bomb on the dean of Merton College, come to mind. Instead she quickly took herself off downstairs.
The inn’s taproom looked like something from one of the adventure novels about smugglers that Elodie had read as a child at the back of slow-moving carts while her parents traveled around Europe, studying its magical geography. Shepaused in the doorway, clasping her hands before her heart in an old gesture of wonderment that adulthood had never been completely able to eradicate (probably because she was really still just a dreaming twelve-year-old inside).
Smoky, roseate firelight swayed over the rugged stone walls and flashed against a collection of mugs hanging from the low ceiling beams. Wood-framed paintings of old schooners on wild seas and medieval knights fighting dragons in oak forests lured her imagination into a thrilling jumble of stories she set aside for indulging later that night, before sleep. Several tourists sat at hefty tables about the room, eating food that smelled of grease and murmuring together with something like the same wonder Elodie felt. Kerosene lamps illuminated the curious glances several of them were casting at Gabriel, who sat alone at a table in a corner. He had bathed and dressed in a downstairs washroom and now veritably gleamed as he busied himself writing in a notepad, several maps spread across the table before him.
Wearing his spectacles, and clad in a crisp white shirt and dark tie beneath a knitted vest and brown tweed jacket, he presented the quintessential image of male professorship; indeed, he looked like he might at any moment stand up and announce a surprise exam. On the other hand, a damp fringe of hair lying over his brow made him appear young and really rather sweet. Elodie felt herself smile wistfully as she remembered brushing that fringe away from his eyes while they lay together, gazing quietly at each other, after consummating their marriage. It had been damp then too, since he’d put himself to quite a degree of exercise. He’d stiffened a little at the touch of her fingers, as if tenderness disconcerted him, and she’d snatched her hand back, anxious that she’d ruined themood. He’d muttered something about sleeping and turned onto his back…but one second later he’d gathered her against his side, holding her warmly, protectively, and giving her hope that their marriage might prove true after all…
“Ha!”
