“—the fabric of time is damaged,” Caleb supplied, and Vanity grinned, her head bobbing, as if she rather hoped such an entertaining event would come to pass.
“Mr. Hunt,” Amelia mused. “I don’t know that name. Is he a thaumaturgic analyst?”
“No, he runs the museum’s shop,” Vanity said. “But he’s readThe Necromancer’s Clock.”
Amelia and Caleb were briefly silent. Then—“Isn’t that a gothic novel?” Caleb asked uncertainly.
“Abestsellinggothic novel,” Vanity corrected him. “Unfortunately its author is a recluse, refusing all social and media attention, or else I’d have asked her to join our team.”
“Oh dear,” Amelia said over Caleb’s sudden amused cough. “Well, we Oxford professors shall try to do our best for you.”
“And that’s saying quite a bit,” Caleb added as he released Amelia’s hand, which was now so thoroughly gloved she could barely move her fingers. “I really am rather clever,” he assured Vanity with a dazzling smile, “and Miss Tarrant manages to keep up. Don’t worry, love, we’ll save time from being destroyedandcatalog your antiques for you.”
Vanity’s expression swooned all over her face. Amelia, abruptly irritated by the whole conversation, considered explaining that, when it came to temporal matters, the worst a thaumaturgic object ever did was transform old energy waves into what people thought of as ghosts. But the train arrived before she could commit education.
Vanity handed out their tickets, and Amelia bade everyone a pleasant journey. Taking up her suitcase, she strode along the platform until coming upon an empty compartment that looked decently clean. A quick brush of the seat and she was able to sit in comfort, laying her suitcase beside her and exhaling a contented sigh. The next several hours stretched ahead of her in a pleasantly unsociable vision of reading, gazing out atthe countryside, and enjoying the marmite sandwiches she’d had just enough time to prepare.
“Shift over.”
She looked up to see Caleb enter the compartment. Her wits didn’t have enough opportunity to respond before he was tossing his luggage onto the overhead rack, then hers after it. He plonked himself down beside her, the woodsy scent of his expensive new cologne wafting through her personal space. Ameliatsked but was unable to move aside without her skirt bunching uncomfortably beneath her.
Without any apology, Caleb leaned back at an uncouth angle, stretching out his legs and crossing his ankles as if he were in his home instead of a public train compartment. Or, rather, what Amelia had intended to beher private compartment. Friendship was all well and good until it came to train travel, at which point every reasonable person ought to behave like a stranger.
She drew breath to request that he exit at once—
“I do so love a train ride!” Vanity sang as she entered the compartment, Sergeant Sheffield following closely with her three suitcases and his own rucksack.
“Uh…” Amelia said.
“Isn’t this cozy?” The girl settled directly opposite Amelia, arranging the rustling, striped billow of her skirts, clattering the bracelets on both her wrists, and generally assailing Amelia with a number of small stimuli that altogether felt like a circus show.
“Cozy indeed,” she managed to say. From the corner of her eye, she saw Caleb tip his head onto his right shoulder and look at her through a fringe of eyelashes, wry humor sparkling in his gaze. He of course knew exactly which of her nerves Vanitygot on, having himself honed them to sharpness over the years. Amelia refrained from smacking him only because that was what had got her into this blasted situation in the first place. Instead, she smiled politely at the young receptionist.
Vanity giggled in reply.
Giggled.Amelia hadn’t heard anyone do that since her undergraduate days at Balliol College, when the other girls at the dining table chatted around her while she read.Why couldn’t Sir Nigel’s antiques have destroyed timebeforeI got this assignment?she wondered gloomily. Then, realizing they might have, she became suddenly excited by the idea. Never mind her book, she would spend the journey’s hours thinking about chronological—
“I have some exercises to help us break the ice as we travel!” Vanity announced with glee.
A frisson of horror struck Amelia. “Exercises?” she repeated. “You mean push-ups and jogging on the spot?”
“She means charades,” Caleb said, his tone so dry it could have beached Noah’s ark.
“Yes!” Vanity exclaimed, pointing at him. “And I thought we could go around in a circle”—now the finger spun to them all in turn—“saying our names and three things we love about ourselves.”
“Charming,” Caleb drawled, which Amelia silently translated tokill me now. Sergeant Sheffield, sitting beside Vanity in a widespread pose that made it obvious he was more used to being seated on a horse, emitted a very quiet puff of breath that might have been dark humor, irritation, or the consequence of stuffy nasal passages. Other than that, he stared at nothing, his face expressionless, his eyes darker than the night before the Battle of Hastings.
As the train departed the station, Vanity rubbed her lace-gloved hands together briskly. “We’ll start with Mr. Sterling! Although I must confess, sir,” she added with a coy smile, “I’ve heard enough about you to feel that I already know you.”
“Oh?” Caleb asked, nonchalant. “Such as?”
“You like fine wine, fine women, and fast carriages.”
Caleb laughed. Amelia set the back of her fingers against her mouth, coughing discreetly. Vanity needed better sources, for Caleb suffered motion sickness in any horse-drawn carriage traveling faster than four miles per hour, and his preferred women were “fine” only insofar as they had to pay a fine if they were caught soliciting their services, since he considered actual romantic relationships far too much hassle.
“What have you heard about Miss Tarrant?” he asked, and blithely ignored the sharp look Amelia threw him.
“Enough that I was quite frightened asking for her to join our team!” Vanity giggled. “I must say, though, Miss Tarrant, you don’tlooklike an antisocial harridan.”
