Thankfully, the geyser and its earthquakes subsided enough before they left that Elodie was free to stop worrying about the death and destruction they might cause in Dôlylleuad and focus instead on the death and destruction that might strike along the fey line—not to mention the death she herself was about to experience due to freezing.
Gabriel glanced over just then, and she read coat-giving in his eyes. Her stomach dissolved into sparkles. She could still feel his hands clamping her hips while he did things to her that made the violently erupting magical super-geyser seem dull in comparison. But the fact that they’d not since spoken a word unrelated to work confused her. Notwithstanding such interesting claims as“you’re mine,”she wondered if Gabriel had merely been suffering from nervous overexcitement (yet again) or if he only had enough room in his consciousness for one thing at a time, and that the potential end of the world had seized it. To be fair, she could have done with such focus herself. As it was, her thoughts skipped between disaster and kisses and the possibility of being pregnant—which sent her back to disasters again—until she began developing a headache. Perhaps it was she who was the confusing one, not Gabriel, she mused with a weary sigh.
“Such a mournful sound, Miss Tarrant,” came a polished voice behind her. Elodie turned to see Mr. Mumbers looking romantically windswept and smiling, like a poet in search of a rhyme. “I fear you must be chilled by this breeze,” he said, and began to remove his coat.
“Excuse me,” came a voice that was the opposite of suave. It was grim and severe, a granite mountain against a stark winter sky.
Elodie turned back to see Gabriel arrive, just an inch closer than “associates” would politely allow. He began removinghiscoat. Elodie bit her lip, feeling rather like a damsel caught between two knights except that, instead of weapons, they wielded cashmere garments.
“Thank you for consideringMrs.Tarrant’s welfare,” Gabriel told Mr. Mumbers with stolid civility. The other gentlemanblanched, understanding all too well that what Gabriel actually meant wasget away from my wife or I’ll suffocate you with that cheap coat hanging crookedly from your flimsy shoulders.
Elodie considered scoffing and then marching away, but instead, inexplicably, she blushed scarlet. This was far from the behavior of a plucky, intelligent heroine, and the only possible conclusion she could make was that sex had deranged her nervous system.
Oddly, kisses and various minor fumblings with other men in her youth had never induced this problem. Mind you, she’d not spent almost a decade dreaming about those men. And Gabriel certainly had not fumbled; he’d got straight to the point. When he’d lifted her off her feet, it had felt like her only connection to the world had been his strong and vigorous…
She blinked suddenly, noticing that Mr. Mumbers had gone and Gabriel was standing in patient silence, holding out his coat.Focus, Elodie,she grumbled to herself as she took the coat.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling.
“Hm,” Gabriel replied, and went to ask the ticket clerk how much longer the train would be.
Finally it arrived, and the group made haste to board while Tegan waved goodbye, a rather forlorn look in her eyes. Elodie wanted to run over to hug the girl and put in a final encouraging word about tertiary education, but there was no time. She found herself jostled as she tried to board. Just as she was contemplating a bit of unladylike elbow-jabbing and hip-shoving of her own, Gabriel stepped up behind her, acting as an effective bodyguard. Entering the train compartment, she turned to thank him.
“I’ll see you in Hereford,” he said before she could speak. He stepped back—
“Wait!” Elodie stared at him in astonishment. “Are you not coming?”
“Of course I am,” he replied.
“But—why—?”
“I bought myself a first class ticket. I could not tolerate hours in company with those tourists and Jennings.”
(“Hey!”Algernon cried out indignantly from behind him.)
Elodie watched, utterly gobsmacked, as her husband departed for the front of the train without another word.
Of all the confounding behavior! Of all the arrogant soddishness! Elodie flung herself into the corner of one bench seat in a haze of fury, ignoring the others settling in around her. She glared with such intensity into the middle distance that, as the train began to move, Algernon could be heard pompously advising Mr. Mumbers that “Dr. Tarrant is a brilliant scientist, and it’s best not to interrupt her when she’s cogitating about disasters.”
“Cogitating about disasters” summed up pretty well what was indeed occurring in Elodie’s imagination. She had Gabriel divorced before the train even cleared Aberystwyth Station, rendered homeless as they passed Bow Street, and trapped in a Scottish bog during a thaumaturgic thunderstorm that rained down worms upon him while Mr. Mumbers led everyone else in a game of charades.
But there is only so long a woman can torture her husbandin phantasiabefore she grows bored. Charades offered no distraction (indeed, she would rather have jumped into quirksand than taken part), and the view out the window was blocked by a Miss Trevallion’s hat. Thus bereft of entertainment, she rummaged in Gabriel’s coat pockets, discovering therein something small, flattish, and wrapped in a white linen handkerchief.
Instantly enlivened, she stared at the little parcel. The handkerchief was so well ironed it might have been fresh from a boutique store’s cabinet, but it carried the clean, cool aroma of soap that always accompanied Gabriel. The folds were so carefully made, he had clearly lingered over them. Elodie sensed this was a treasure of some kind—perhaps a small collection of leaves, from the feel of it—and she told herself to put it straight back in the pocket.
Unfortunately, her fingers did not hear this and had the handkerchief opened before she could stop them.
Inside were several raggedy bits of paper, stacked with care. Curiosity rather than nosiness (Yes, there is a difference,she told her horrified manners) saw Elodie lift the first piece and unfold it.
Her pulse swooned. She refolded the piece, set it aside, and turned over another. Now her breath threatened to swoon also.
These werehers. There were notes about a river’s flow through a farm outside Chipping Norton…an old shopping list…a limerick about cheese that she’d composed during her Thaumaturgy Theory lecture while her students were copying down equations from the blackboard…sketches of wildflowers growing around Oxford. She’d taken them from her own pocket outside the graveyard in Dôlylleuad and handed them to Gabriel while she extinguished the fire that had engulfed his umbrella. She’d forgotten to take them back. Evidently he’d kept them.
No, he’d done more than keep them. He’d smoothed out their wrinkles, folded them gently, and wrapped them in linen and…oh my goodness…pressed a wild violet between two.
Stunned, Elodie felt her fingers tingle as if the tiny flowerwere imbued with magic, rather than a sign she was hyperventilating. Trying to reconcile the romanticism of Gabriel treating her pocket detritus as treasure and his standoffish behavior at the Aberystwyth train station, she found herself caught, as it were, between the devil and a beautiful, sparkling, deep blue sea, with no compass to guide her.
Folding the handkerchief around the notes as accurately as she could, she tucked the tiny parcel back into Gabriel’s coat pocket and reengaged her imagination.
