No, he bloody well should not.He should frown at her so she understood he was a tyrant and not to be smiled at like a man adored.
She looked at the frown and her grin widened.Widened. “I’m surprised you recognized a Tennyson reference,” she said.
“Yes, well, I’ve heard excerpts from ‘The Lady of Shalott’ recited in moony tones by a certain geographer for years now, during faculty meanings and in library corners where people aresupposedto be silent. It’s inevitable I would recognize its mumbo jumbo.”
“Mumbo jumbo!” she sputtered. The grin vanished, thank goodness. If he kissed her, would she bring it back? If he told her that he’d bought a volume of Tennyson’s collected works just so he could read that poem late at night and let it bore him to sleep, would she stop hating him? “You can’t call great poetrymumbo jumbo,” she said.
“You call undulating fey lineswiggles,” he retorted.
“That is a perfectly reasonable synonym.”
“And ‘The Lady of Shalott’ is a perfectly ridiculous rhyme.”
“Rhyme!” Now she closed her mouth so firmly, a muscle in her jaw leaped.
They trudged on, side by side, shadows weaving together, furious silence between them. A few minutes later, however, Elodie asked with a timbre that managed to be both huffy and conciliatory, “Did you know that field mice sing to each other?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said.
They glanced at each other. Elodie smiled tentatively. Gabriel gave her a clipped nod in lieu of the highfalutin poetry his wrecked and aching brain was urging him to express instead. And for one beautiful moment, magic flittered between them.
Literally…
“Ooh, look!” Elodie said, reaching for the star-colored thread of thaumaturgy.
Boom!
—
The horizon reallywas beautiful, Elodie thought as she gazed at it. Blush-colored and soft and far, far away. If only she were in it. Or back at the Queen Mab. Or even better, in her own Oxford home, hiding under the bed. Anywhere, dear God, except sitting here in the damp grass, watching Gabriel examine her bare foot. All that kept her from dying on the spot from mortification was that she’d got a professional pedicure before coming on this assignment. (It hadn’t take much intuition to prepare just in case she got tossed hither and yon by magical explosions and thus injured her ankle, considering how often that befell her.)
Gabriel looked like a knight errant on one knee before her,sober-faced, illuminated with late golden light; but the impression was spoiled by the way hetsk-tsked. Elodie was sure Lancelot had never clicked his tongue at Guinevere. Then again, Guinevere no doubt never had to surreptitiously pull a leaf from her hair while a handsome man tended to her injury.
“You need someone going around behind you at all times with a safety manual and first aid kit,” Gabriel grumbled as he carefully moved the foot to ensure she’d not broken her ankle.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Elodie retorted at once, even though it absolutely had been.
“So it was a pure accident that you tried to catch magic with your bare hand—again, may I add—causing it to explode and knocking us both to the ground?” He gave her a severe look, but something glinted in it that made Elodie’s stomach glint in response.
“Er, parts of that may have been my fault, and other parts accidental.” She smiled, and he shook his head a little, and some ten seconds later they both blinked hard and looked away.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, her voice a plaintive breath. It hurt to look at him and to not. It hurt to breathe the air he’d walked through, but hurt worse when he was absent. It hurt so beautifully, she could not bear it, and if only…
Wait. He was probably talking about her ankle.
“It aches a little,” she confessed. “But I’m sure I can walk on it.”
“Hm.” Clearly, Gabriel doubted her, but nevertheless took her stocking and slipped it back onto her foot.
“I can do that myself” is what Elodieshouldhave said, and indeed would have said, had it been any other man. Instead,she sat in a sweet-glazed silence, watching him unfurl the stocking up her leg. Thank goodness it was sturdy green wool rather than black lace, or she’d have died from internal combustion right then, and Professor Coffingham would get her office, which he’d always coveted.
Once the stocking was in place, Gabriel moved on to replacing the boot. This was safer; no one could take anything erotic from a man placing a dirty old boot on a woman’s green-stockinged foot. He pushed it over her heel and proceeded to button it.
His fingers were strong yet nimble as they grasped a small, round button and slipped it through the corresponding hole. A little sensation of completion followed, and Elodie found her muscles tightening as he worked. She realized belatedly that her skirt was rucked up, exposing the lace hem of her drawers, but she could not seem to make herself move to remedy the situation. Then Gabriel began to slide his thumb across each button after fastening it, and all hope of doing anything beyond staring at his hands was lost. She watched, mesmerized, her nerves quivering delightfully.
“I can do it,” she managed to say, although she made no real attempt to intervene.
