Amelia barely heard him. “Everything is your fault!” she told Caleb, and held her breath excitedly, awaiting his reply…
“Only in your imagination!” he retorted, causing her breath to release in a trembling rush. Indeed, her whole interior seemed to be trembling. Still glaring at Caleb, she thrust out one arm, pointing to farther down the table. “Professor Throckmorton, bring me a candlestick!”
“Going to smack Sterling with it?” Throckmorton asked hopefully.
“Ooh, yes please,” Caleb said, bouncing his eyebrows at Amelia.
She frowned in response, and her excitement transformed into something for which she had no name, never having experienced it before. It felt simultaneously like the electrifying tension of a tightly clenched fist and the exhilaration of letting go. “What nonsense,” she said, and snapped her fingers to hurry Throckmorton. “Candlestick!”
“Unsure if a good idea,” the professor said as he handed one up to her. “Considering the Ashmolean fire.”
“That’s true,” Caleb said as he continued to stare at Amelia. “Miss Tarrant is good at setting things aflame.”
She hefted the candlestick, and his smile quirked. Then he took it from her, and unbuttoning his suit jacket with one hand, he reached up high, his white linen shirt straining against a chest that suggested he was not as indolent as he gave the impression of being. He whacked the saltcellar with the candlestick.
Clankwent silver against silver.
Twangwent Amelia’s heart.
Immediately, the little bowl plummeted to the table.
And that was when things wentreallywrong.
—
“And so, inconclusion,” Caleb told Sir Nigel and Lady Ruperta as they stared open-mouthed at him from their separate brown leather sofas in the drawing room, “dining on the floor is the norm in many countries, and indeed is considered good for your physical well-being.”
Brandy splashed in Lady Ruperta’s glass as she half rose. But immediately she dropped back again, as if realizing one could not claim righteous superiority if one threw brandy in a man’s face—not even if that man had just destroyed her dining table. Sir Nigel puffed fretfully on a cigar.
“We are very sorry about the broken table…and the ruined meal…and, er, the two shattered chairs,” Amelia told them. “You can at least be reassured that we have the antique responsible contained securely, so it can do no further damage.”
She held up the linen napkin fashioned as a sack, into which she and Caleb had wrangled the saltcellar after recovering it from the food-spattered wreckage of the dining table. Blue-tinted steam was exuding from the cloth as the antique’s thaumaturgic energy cooled. Lady Ruperta frowned at the sight, but Vanity, perched uncomfortably on one of the dozen antique chairs crammed into the room, was staring at Amelia with amusement. Amelia did not much like this but could understand it nevertheless. She looked ridiculous. Getting caught in the middle of an exploding five-course meal does not benefit one’s coiffure, unless swan feathers and cold mushroom soup should ever become fashionable headwear. And the lesssaid about what stained her cardigan, the better.Definitely becoming vegetarian,she promised herself.
The only positive aspect of the whole shambles was that Throckmorton had retreated to his bedroom, declaring that, once he’d got all the oak splinters and fish bones out of his beard, he’d be packing to leave the “Disaster! Zone!” and catching the morning train back to Oxford, where no doubt the university’s entire teaching body would be awaiting his report. He’d given Amelia and Caleb the gist of it as they dragged themselves up from the floor where the saltcellar’s thaumaturgic blast had thrown them: “Incorrigible! Reckless!” and other Adjectives! that Amelia had tuned out as she’d hunted for some water, or even better, wine, to wash away the taste of salt. Her back ached, her spirit was mortified—and yet, had she known that an explosion of magic was all it took to get rid of the reprehensible medieval studies professor, she’d have organized one far earlier.
“Do you wish to include the saltcellar in your donation to the British Museum?” she asked Sir Nigel. For although she remained quite certain that the item contained only a slight thaumaturgic signature, and that the Hereford teaspoon’s influence had compounded it, she was not going toadmit it had been all her faultdeprive the museum of such a charming antique.
Sir Nigel nodded rather mournfully in agreement, and Amelia and Caleb were then given permission to withdraw for the evening. “I shall have servants bring you hot water and towels,” Lady Ruperta said, less with genteel consideration and more with an eye to her carpets. “And whatever supper can be contrived, since we are bereft of our proper dinner.”
Amelia drew breath to offer another apology—
“Thank you,” Caleb said, and turned to Amelia with a stern look. “After you, Professor Tarrant,” he said, gesturing toward the door. As a result, she was obliged to leave without demeaning herself in the name of politeness.
“Well, that was fun,” Caleb said sardonically as they trudged upstairs in the company of a footman carrying two lanterns to illuminate the way.
“Do you mean the explosion part?” Amelia asked. “Or the part where Lady Ruperta looked at us as if she wished we’d gone the way of the roasted swans?”
“The part where my favorite suit got splattered with God, what even is this?” He delicately lifted one of his jacket’s lapels and sniffed. Disgust writhed across his face.
“Best not to ask,” Amelia advised.
“That teaspoon is a menace.”
“It did find the thaumaturgic objects in the room, however,” Amelia reminded him. “Think of how easy it could make our job here.”
“By causing explosions of magic left, right, and center,” Caleb said. “I’m all for making things easy, but I’d rather not sacrifice another bespoke Henry Poole and Co. suit.” He brushed futilely at his jacket, then gave a tragic sigh.
Amelia took pity on him. “Pass the jacket to me. I’ll soak it in the vinegar solution I use for my hair. That should get the stains out.”
