Algernon gasped. “Are you bothcompletelyreckless? Training specialist geographers is an expensive endeavor!” He jabbed his butter knife toward Elodie in emphasis. “Should anything happen to either of you, the cost to the Home Office would be significant! I will be writing this up in my—”
He stopped mid-rant as Gabriel grabbed his hand. With a gasp of mingled fear and outrage, his mouth fell open.
Wordlessly, Gabriel removed the knife from his possession, placed it on the table, and then returned to polishing his own cutlery. “How much would it cost if anything happened to you?” he asked in a mild, conversational tone.
Algernon closed his mouth without an answer, having apparently, albeit belatedly, discovered the profit of silence.
“We will inspect the trove first thing tomorrow,” Gabriel went on as if the interruption had not occurred. “With thismuch thaumaturgic activity, it has clearly been damaged. After effecting repairs, we need to trace the line to check for any exposure of lesser deposits. We also need to evaluate hazards and make an action plan for the follow-up team. It’s going to be a long day. Both of you be ready to leave at dawn.”
Elodie’s nerves, which had been twinkling after his display of manly protectiveness, now twanged with irritation as he crossed the line into manly arrogance. “Again I remind you about not making unilateral decisions,” she said.
“I assumed you would sensibly agree with me, therefore I abbreviated the conversation for everyone’s convenience.”
“You assumed wrong,” she informed him, chin in the air and eyes overbright, a pose that had made more than one gentleman professor tremble within his dusty tweed suit.
Gabriel, however, returned her look imperturbably, not the slightest tremble in evidence. “Are you admitting to not being sensible, Professor Tarrant?”
“Are you admitting to making an unscientific assumption, Professor Tarrant?” she replied.
Oblivious to their hot-eyed staring, and to the growing tension that felt almost as dangerous as a flash of wild magic, Algernon whined, “Dawn? Can’t we go at a more civilized hour?”
“Thaumaturgic energy does not flow by the clock,” Gabriel told him without looking away from Elodie.
“Unless it’s the Exeter Cathedral clock,” Elodie added, and broke their stare at last to smile at Algernon. “When they repaired it a few years ago, they used materials from Ecton Hill, a level three trove. As a result, when the clock reached the hour, it chimed three verses of ‘God Save the Queen’—at least, it did until the locals were driven so mad by this, they damagedthe bell. Now it just chimes ‘God,’ which I suppose is appropriate for a cathedral.”
A moment of silence followed this absolutely fascinating interjection, then Algernon asked, “What if it’s still raining?”
Gabriel gave him a dark, uncompromising look. “Then you get wet.”
Tegan arrived with their food, and thereafter dinner was undertaken in an ambience so uncomfortable as to be practically a parent-teacher conference. Algernon ate fast, then fled. Left alone, Elodie and Gabriel finished the meal without further word or even a glance at each other. The degree of atmospheric tension between them grew almost painful. Indeed, had Professor Mulgrew, Oxford’s senior meteorologist, been present, he’d have made an enthusiastic study of it (not because he was a meteorologist, but because he gossiped worse than anyone else in the entire university).
As they went upstairs, assisted by lanterns Tegan had given them to illuminate the way, Elodie tried to ease the mood. “I hope Professor Jackson hasn’t touched anything he shouldn’t have out there,” she said with a smile.
“Hm,” Gabriel replied.
The smile promptly stormed off in disgust. “There’s no need to be like that.”
“I’m agreeing with you,” he answered, so pleasantly calm that a woman hadno optionbut to argue.
“Someone needs to teach you how to say yes nicely,” she snapped.
“Saying yes is a dangerous thing.” He looked over his shoulder at her with such intensity, Elodie almost stumbled. Clearly he was talking about his wedding vows, and all of a sudden she longed to take a divorce decree and whack him over the headseveral times with it. Instead, she glared, although to no avail, since he’d looked away again.
“Sod,”Elodie muttered under her breath. And as if to concur, an icy draft swirled through the corridor. It agitated the flames of the lanterns, and although it failed to cool the furious heat currently burning great holes in Elodie’s dignity, she shivered a little nevertheless, pulling the sides of her cardigan together. A scent of wild, damp magic moldered the air. They might have been walking through a moonless autumn forest that leaned, yearning and sighing in every bough, toward an old river. They might have been lost in a dream. Elodie drew slowly to a halt, the argument with Gabriel forgotten as all her senses began prickling with curiosity.
Somehow, between one moment and the next, the night had turned gothic, as if danger (for example, a necromancer, monster, or university constable who wanted to know why you were climbing out a library window) lurked behind one of the doors in the corridor. The darkness whispered to her with eerie wistfulness.
“Elodie?”
She blinked, pulling herself out of the strange reverie, and discovered that Gabriel had turned back to her again. The way he spoke her name was not at all wistful; indeed, he’d obviously been saying it for some time. He ducked his head to look closely in her eyes, and as lantern light burnished his face, it made the mild frown lining his brow seem broodingly solemn.
“What?” she answered spikily, even as her heart melted into old romantic wishes that could never come true.
His frown tilted deeper. “Are you all right?”
“Fine. Tired.”
Gabriel looked doubtful. He lifted a hand as if he wouldtouch her face, and Elodie suspended all operations of her respiratory system.
