“I’d rather look at you,” he said. “It’s less nauseating.”
“Always one with the charming compliments.”
“You deserve it,” he said, and smiled beautifully. Glimmering raindrops began to appear, as if the sky were falling in love with him.
“Eek!” Vanity squealed. “We’re going to be drenched!” She flapped her hand at Sergeant Sheffield. “Make the horse move faster!”
Caleb’s eyes grew even larger, pleading silently with Amelia. “Professor Sterling and I will walk,” she announced. “That will ease the horse’s load. Besides, I’m sure the manor isn’t far now.”
Vanity did not even make a show of polite refusal. And the look on Sheffield’s face was so disinterested, so utterly incurious, it could have been framed and hung on a gallery wall as afine piece of postmodern art. Amelia and Caleb climbed down and stood in the middle of the lane watching the dogcart advance until it disappeared around a bend. When the dust it had kicked up settled again, they began to walk. The cold breeze moaned like a dirge around them, shedding a few more raindrops.
“How cruel of you to make me hike in this downpour,” Caleb said mildly.
“I’m a harridan,” Amelia reminded him in a matching tone. Taking from her skirt pocket one of the tissue-wrapped ginger candies she kept for moments like this, she passed it to him.
“You’re a darling,” he countered, unwrapping the sweet. “At least this weather is appropriate for our journey to a place called Ravenscroft Manor.”
“What do you mean?”
Caleb cocked his head to smile at her with mild astonishment. “Have you never readThe Mysteries of Udolpho?”
“No.”
“The House of the Seven Gables?Wuthering Heights? I know—you’ve surely readJane Eyre.”
Amelia frowned slightly. “Eyre. Is she related to Truelove the Eyr, who fought at the Battle of Hastings?”
A laugh burst from Caleb’s throat and lit his eyes. “Sweetheart, tell me you read fiction. Any fiction.”
“I’ve read Shakespeare,” Amelia replied a little snootily. Then, after a moment’s uncomfortable silence, she was forced by honesty to add, “Although only because we had to at school. Can’t say I much liked it.”
Caleb almost tripped on a pebble, so great was his astonishment. “How can you not like Shakespeare? You’re English!”
Amelia shrugged. “There’s too much historical inaccuracy.”
“But every time I turn around you either have your nose in a book or are hugging one. In fact, there’s one in your pocket right now, isn’t there?”
What a foolish question. “Of course there is.”
“But you don’t read novels.” He clearly could not comprehend this.
“I read biographies. National histories. The occasional annotated diary.” After all, what need had she for fiction when the annals of history provided a great, sprawling tale of turmoil, comedy, and romance?
Staring blankly along the lane, Caleb shook his head. “I can’t believe I didn’t know this about you.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Amelia answered rather darkly.
They entered the heavy shadow of trees shrouding the road’s slow curve. The world grew mysterious, almost sinister in the gloom. Leaves rustled with ominous secrets, and whisper-fine ribbons of blue light drifted and faded, suggesting sorcery lurked in the shadows. Amelia and Caleb slowed their pace, looking around with a natural caution behooving professors of thaumaturgic phenomena (“Magicians,” Caleb liked to say, to which Amelia would just shake her head)—she scanning for an old gravestone or roadside marker that might be enchanted, he for signs that a ghost or werewolf might suddenly pounce on them. But nothing was evident. As they emerged from the darkness, however, they stopped abruptly.
“Good heavens,” Caleb exclaimed.
They stared out at small hills stitched roughly with stone walls, patched here and there with clusters of dark, shabby pine trees that bled red-tainted shadows in the dying sunset. A little farther ahead, the dogcart carrying Vanity and SergeantSheffield had turned onto a long driveway leading to a manor house set deep within the view. Built in the late medieval era, it carried its age like a grudge. Vines crept over its moldering stone. Diamond-paned windows stared out at the cold and murky evening, unlit, secretive. Monstrous gargoyles perching atop the gables roared without sound.
As they watched, the manor’s great front door opened, revealing a faint luminance that grew stronger as the dogcart drove closer to the house—no doubt servants igniting lamps, preparing for the guests.
Suddenly lightning crackled across the sky. Several of the manor’s windows winked internally with an uncanny sapphire glow that transformed the darkness into a ghost of itself. Sparks leaped along the windows’ lead grilles before vanishing.
Caleb leaned a little toward Amelia.
