“Poltergeist!” they chorused excitedly…and perhaps a little frenetically; Amelia, for one, being glad to grab an excuse not to discuss what had just happened between them.
“Such intense phasmatic energy may be due to amplification by the electrical storm,” she theorized as she climbed out of bed, abandoning all hope of sleep (which admittedly had been slim, considering the kissing). King John roared with Plantagenet ill temper, and the lantern on the bedside table tottered violently. Amelia caught it half a second before it could tip over onto the carpet. “We need to find the ghost’s source before it burns down the house,” she said.
“Merde!”King John declared in response to that idea.
“Repetitive fellow,” Caleb commented. “What is he saying? I can’t make out his accent.”
“I think he’s complaining about fecal matter,” Amelia answered. “I’d have Professor Throckmorton in to confirm it, but…”
“Yeah,” Caleb agreed. The medieval studies professor would immediately telegraph all of Oxford and half of London if he saw Caleb and Amelia only partly dressed in a bedroom together, and then they’d be obliged to murder each other to disprove the gossip. “Go get some clothes on. While you’re doing that, I’ll start the search in this room for Johnny’s sourceobject.” He ducked as the king threw a pillow at him in apparent revenge for the nickname. “Bloody hell, I can see why everyone hated this brat.”
“Shouldn’t you get dressed too?” Amelia suggested. “After all, you’re only wearing a shirt and—and nethergarments.” She mumbled the last word, for whereas she was imperturbable about such things as deadly teapots, explosive jewelry boxes, and packed lecture schedules, Caleb’s trouserless legs evidently embodied her one frailty. Perhaps if they themselves were more frail, less shapely, she would not feel herself now in peril of gawking at them again. And Amelia never gawked. Never mind being a Tarrant—she was an intelligent woman. Yet here she was, blinking hard to keep herself from doing so. Snatching up her lantern, she hastened for the door.
But as she passed Caleb, he caught her by the arm, stopping her. Reluctantly, for she knew what was coming, Amelia turned to face him.
“Yes?” she asked with exquisite nonchalance.
“About the…” he began, but trailed off in the obvious hope she’d finish the sentence for him.
“We are friends,” she said.
“You keep saying that.”
“And we’re adults,” she added.
“Allegedly,” he remarked sardonically.
“It can’t be unusual for adult friends to…”
“Snog?”
“Experiment with the intricacies of their…” Nowshetrailed off, but Caleb remained stubbornly silent. “Friendship,” she concluded rather weakly.
Caleb went on considering her for a moment that felt longer than the Plantagenets’ entire rule, even while one of its scionsraged in the background. Amelia barely heard the ghost’s shit-talking. Her hearing was devoted wholly to the anticipation of what Caleb might say next. At last, he shrugged.
“In that case,” he said in his gorgeous smooth-and-rough, polished-and-dirty voice. And he bent his head toward her, causing Amelia to promptly abandon all pretensions of breathing. But the confounded man merely whispered near her ear, as if he didn’t want King John’s phantom to hear, “I look forward to undertaking several analytical trials.”
Amelia’s nervous system dissolved into hysterics. She’d never heard the wordanalyticalspoken in such an erotic manner before, and all she could think of was how she might inspire a further conversation aboutsampling, andexamining, andcoming to a definitive conclusion. Caleb moved back just enough that he was able to look at her through a golden lock of hair, and Amelia realized there existed no hope of conversation. For it was impossible to utter any word when her entire body was aflame.
“Merde!”King John yelled.
“No one asked you,” they snapped at him in unison. Then Amelia took a step back from Caleb in one final effort to be sensible. “Ottersock—”
“Is in Oxford,” Caleb interrupted. “And we are in Cumbria. What happens in Cumbria—”
“Stays in Cumbria.”
He shrugged. “Maybe,” he said, and the slow, wicked curve of his lips practically deflowered Amelia on the spot. She could onlythankblame herself; after all, she’d been the one to request a kiss. And she might just have requested another right then, but King John threw a chamber pot across the room, and in the horrifying second before it was proven to be empty,Amelia concluded that she definitely needed to concentrate on work. With a quick frown at Caleb, she left for her own room and the calm dark it temporarily offered before the ghost and the professor wrought their fascinating chaos upon her again.
—
For the remainderof the night, Amelia and Caleb searched both bedrooms, evaluating several framed coins of medieval provenance, a badger-haired toothbrush that certainlylookedas if it had been used in the thirteenth century, and a tin of cocaine cough lozenges that Caleb sampled before Amelia could decipher its faded label. None of these evidenced any thaumaturgic power, although Caleb himself was certainly energized for an hour after eating one (three) of the lozenges: reciting speeches from Shakespeare’sHenry Vjust to aggravate King John’s ghost, and swatting at hallucinations of flying badgers.
No further kissing occurred, out of fear that someone might suddenly appear at the door. Indeed, they were wholly professional, badgers notwithstanding, and felt rather disappointed that Throckmorton did not turn up. If nothing else, he could have helped with moving the furniture to look for hidden artifacts.
Finally, the first faint stirring of daylight eroded the ghost into silence, and Amelia allowed exhaustion to claim her. Caleb was already asleep on her bed, so she went to his instead. An hour later, upon being awoken by a chambermaid drawing the curtains, she blearily and quite shockingly discovered herself hugging a pillow that smelled of Caleb’s aftershave, and turned so red the chambermaid asked if she was unwell.
If having a mad crush on my lifelong best friend might be considered unwell, then indeed, I ought to be in hospital, Ameliathought, giving herself a severe Tarrant-style frown even as outwardly she smiled at the chambermaid.
