Gabriel looked up at her then, angling the block in his hand so she could see that it was a portable weather station: the four brass-ringed gauges set upon it measured temperature, air pressure, humidity, and thaumaturgy levels. Elodie noted at a glance that all readings were normal except the latter. Its tiny silver needle quivered at the edge of the danger zone.
“Thaumaturgic resonance,” Gabriel said.Magic.
They exchanged an expression that was pure geography, all steep hills, underground rivers, and a hot, dangerous flash of lightning. Elodie immediately looked away. She scanned the station for indications of danger, but other than an embarrassing number of professors waiting for a train out of the city just when students were beginning to return for term, nothing seemed amiss. No one else in the station appeared to suffer from feeling weird sounds. Behind her, Motthers stared at the slowly approaching train as if willing it to speed up. Even Gabriel’s student was entirely focused on trying to stuff a dowsing rod into their emergency response kit. And yet, the sound of magic continued to whinge inside Elodie’s air like an Oxford don who thought women professors would bring the university to ruin. A lifetime’s experience with geographicalmagic warned her that something somewhere was going catawampus.
(No reason why scientific expertise couldn’t come with a sprightly lexicon, Elodie always contended.)
Increasingly troubled, she glanced again at Gabriel and found him staring at her.
“Arousing,” he murmured.
A blush swept across Elodie’s face like a matador’s cloak, which was a particularly fitting description considering how her pulse rampaged. “I beg your pardon?” she asked with geographic dignity.
“The resonance. It’s arousing my nerves in the most disconcerting manner.”
“Ah, I see. Yes, me too. The hairs on my arms are standing up.” She slid a hand beneath one sleeve to calm them. “And—”
BOOM!
Chapter Two
If you want things to flow easily,
you have to not give a dam.
Blazing Trails, W.H. Jackson
At first, Gabrielthought his senses were exploding as Elodie reached under her clothing and stroked her bare skin. So this was it, then. The hemorrhagic stroke he’d been expecting since the moment an eighteen-year-old Miss Elodie Hughes walked into Advanced Thaumaturgic Cartography dressed in white lace and with violets in her unbound hair, looking like a Pre-Raphaelite nymph who had strayed into Oxford and decided to take up academia for a lark—and then promptly tripped over her own feet, crashing against his desk and sending his tidy stack of textbooks tumbling.
To say nothing of his mental discipline.
He’d never habituated to her. (Although, to be fair, that was like trying to habituate to a tornado.) Even in that first encounter, he’d failed to find words while she, apparently suffering the opposite problem, had restacked his books in entirely the wrong order, and joked about declensions, and left violets scattered all over his feet. And matters hadn’t improved since. One glance from those amiable green eyes, and hisprodigious vocabulary simplywent poofvaporized. The only wonder was that his health had held up as long as it had.
Therefore it was most perplexing, this desire to slip first one finger, then two, up her shirtwaist sleeve to soothe her aroused skin and make the wordsmy husbandcome shuddering from her lips.
Fortunately, before he could, the shock wave from theactualexplosion sent him stumbling.
Ensorcelled air hurtled past, shoving Elodie against him. Gabriel reacted without thought, catching her in his arms and holding her close, one hand cupped protectively against the back of her head. For a moment she stiffened, then clutched him as they were buffeted by raw thaumaturgic power.
Gabriel’s bones rattled, but he remained firm. Only twice in his life had he lost composure: after his cousin Devon had been sent to America when they were children, depriving him of his sole friend; and on his wedding night with Elodie, when he found himself inexplicably breathless and trembling as he watched her sleep. If they survived this moment, he would tell her—
“Bloody hell!”
The pained exclamation ruptured his thoughts. Looking up, he saw his assistant, Henry Beetleson, sprawled on the ground, surrounded by the shattered pieces of a hazel and copper dowsing rod. Blood slipped from a gash on the young man’s forehead, and blue sparks of magic flickered over it like tiny vampirical fireflies.
“Sorry, Professor,” he groaned.
Gabriel realized the propulsive energy had vanished abruptly, leaving quiet like a long, heavy exhalation in its wake. Making a rapid survey of the scene, he comprehended thatBeetleson had somehow caused the dowsing rod to detonate, releasing the thaumaturgic energy stored within it from previous use. Other than the student himself, no one on the station platform seemed hurt; indeed, they were watching the scene with mild interest. This was Oxford, after all, where the university’s presence meant that at any moment a deadly enchanted bird, possessed artifact, or over-caffeinated student might escape and go on a rampage. The explosion of a thaumaturgic device represented nothing special; all that remained was to see if those in its blast range would turn into flower bushes or large cuckoo clocks.
Frowning, Gabriel stepped away from Elodie—then discovered his body had ignored that command and was still holding her close, reveling in her soft, floral-scented warmth. Baffled, aggravated, he dispatched a stern disciplinary note to himself.
At the same moment, Elodie exhaled. As the gentle gust of air brushed against his throat, the disciplinary note went up in flames.
Mercifully for both his health and dignity, she tugged herself free. “Is everyone all right?” she asked, looking around in a rapid manner that prevented him from examining her expression beyond its blush. He could not miss, though, how excitement illuminated her entire being. “That wasfascinating!”
“Hm,” Gabriel said, crossing his arms tightly, determined not to evidence the fascination he also felt. A man couldn’t just go around being keen. It was the kind of thing that led, on one hand, to getting academic degrees, but on the other to being told,For God’s sake, shut up for five minutes about alluvial plains.
It also led to marrying a woman who clambered over hedges to avoid being seen when you walked past.
