There followed a taut silence as Vanity beamed and Amelia strove in vain to dislodge several words lodged in her throat.
“Coffee!” Caleb declared suddenly. Getting to his feet, he grasped Amelia by the wrist and pulled her up also. Surprised, disoriented, she swayed, putting a hand on his chest to steady herself. “Come on,” he said as he yanked open the compartment door. “Let’s go get drinks for everyone. And maybe they have some cake!”
Amelia followed him by necessity into the train’s corridor. “God save me from people,” he muttered as he towed her through a vestibule into the dining car. It was unoccupied, and Caleb pulled out a chair at one of the white-clothed tables. “Sit,” he directed her.
“I thought we were just ordering coff—”
“Sit.”
With a fussy little sigh, Amelia did as bid, and he pushed the chair in for her. She removed the gloves he’d given her and laid them neatly upon the table while Caleb dropped into a chair opposite.
“We need a plan,” he said.
Amelia looked up from aligning the gloves one atop the other, her eyebrows arching in surprise. “I don’t think I’ve ever before heard those words from your lips.”
Even as she spoke, her brain desperately tried to stop her but to no avail.Your lips, your lips,echoed through her thoughts with a hot, sibilant whisper. All at once she could see nothing but those same lips gliding into a smile, could feel nothing but the electrification of each fine hair along her arms as if merely speaking about Caleb’s mouth was equivalent to having it kiss a slow, gentle path from her elbow to her wrist.
Oh for goodness’ sake,she thought testily, even as she blushed all over. She wasnotattracted to Caleb. She was just…thirsty. Er, for tea, that is! A perfectly normal, utterly chaste thirst for tea.
“Tea,”she told herself with severe emphasis, then blinked as she realized she’d spoken aloud.
“Tea should always be at the top of any plan,” Caleb said, blessedly ignorant of the chaos unraveling her mind. “Although considering you’ve gone from looking cold to looking hot, perhaps we should make it iced lemon tea, yes?”
“This is a disaster,” Amelia murmured—for just as the sobering thought of tea had begun calming her flutters, Caleb’s insertion oflooking hotbrought them right back. She was at a loss to understand herself. A properly behaved woman doesn’tjust go to Hereford for a few days and return with a spontaneous attraction for her best friend!
Although, if she were being honest, it wasn’tentirelyspontaneous. There had been that night in the Ashmolean when they’d stood together inspecting the thaumaturgic candlestick, and Caleb’s fingers had brushed hers, inspiring a thrill that she’d supposed at the time to have been the candlestick’s magic. And a few weeks before that, when she’d glanced up from a stack of papers to find him leaning on the frame of her office’s open doorway, watching her, the warm, intimate smile on his face sending tingles through her entire nervous system…
And then there had been the first time she set eyes on him, two decades ago behind the school dormitory—a pretty, fair-haired boy offering her his rather shabby handkerchief so she might dry her tears.
She’d been sent to school for being an impossibly wayward child. A Tarrant ought to be sober-minded, as her father had explained while chastising her for having come in from the garden with daisies adorning her hair. (“If you must bring nature indoors, my dear, it should be for the purpose of conducting scientific experiments.”) They must also put away childish things when they reach the age of reason, as her mother had informed her when, at seven, she cried upon watching her toys being packed up and sent to a local orphanage. (“We simply cannot be having with these hysterics, darling.”) When Amelia proved incapable of controlling her emotions by eight years old, it was concluded that boarding school, with its healthful regime of cold baths, bullying, and desperate loneliness, would cure her of such instability. And indeed it had in fairly short order, but they’d kept her on at the school for the rest of her childhood anyway, out of sheer habit.
Caleb, on the other hand, was there after being raised up out of a missionary Ragged School and given a scholarship on account of hischarming the teachersintelligence.
Despite their differences, the pair of them had become inseparable, to the degree that now Amelia was inclined to believe them two halves of the same soul—a sentiment that would almost certainly horrify both Ottersock, who’d probably drag her and Caleb down the nearest church’s aisle on the basis of it, and her parents, who’d never believe in souls unless given proof via a double-blind study.
In truth, Amelia’s small, shy heart had fallen instantly in love with Caleb’s prettiness and his gorgeous, kind smile. But almost as instantly she’d repressed that emotion in favor of friendship. After all, the reason she’d been crying was because she’d been condemned to boarding school for the crime of being too silly. And nothing was more silly than love.
“Completely,” Caleb agreed rather disorientatingly, and Amelia hastened to recall their place in the conversation. “Mud, fresh air, and now a giggly museum receptionist as well. I haven’t known such a disaster since—well, since two days ago, when we nearly blew up the Min. Still, it could be worse.”
Amelia looked at him dazedly. “How?” she asked both him and, secretly, herself. “How could itpossiblybe worse?”
Caleb shrugged. “We could be helping with the party Ottersock always gives during freshers week to welcome new students.”
The awfulness of that thought broke Amelia out of herself. “Yes, that would be worse.”
“Novelty paper hats,” Caleb went on. “Professor Staples reciting naughty limericks.”
She laughed. “Stop, I’m going to have nightmares.”
He did stop, and he smiled at her fondly. He’d noticed her turmoil and had made her laugh on purpose, as a diversion, just as he had that very first day. Goodness, how she adored him. He resided at the very center of her heart, alongside her brother Gabriel, her cousin Devon, and Aunt Mary’s triple chocolate cake. Romantic attraction would imperil their friendship (sinceof coursehe wouldn’t feel the same), and Amelia could not bear that. There existed only one safe conclusion: she was wrong, this wasn’t attraction, it was something far less frightening, such as a brain derangement.
There, fixed.
While Amelia exhaled in relief, Caleb leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the table and cheek resting against his linked hands. The window beside them glimmered with rain. The fields beyond were a turbulence of shadows, as if remembering ancient battles. But Amelia saw only Caleb. And he in turn regarded her with a contemplative steadiness that almost set her fluttering again. “Don’t be upset about what Miss Tunnicliffe said,” he told her. “It was nonsense.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Amelia replied. “I absolutely reserve the right to be upset about having to play icebreaker games.”
Caleb grinned. “Oh, Meely, you do inspire me.”
