“Damn,” Caleb sworeas Amelia climbed off his lap. “Must we constantly be bloody interrupted by goddamn bloody magic?”
“Tsk.” Amelia did not stop to frown at him over the use of such language, for twinkles of thaumaturgic energy were luring her attention instead. “It’s coming from outside,” she said, crossing to the window (although it must be confessed she walked a little unsteadily, and inside, her heart—or perhaps some other organ—was sayingdamn, damnwith as much fervor as Caleb had).
“Uh-huh,” he answered in a rather pained tone. But he remained in the chair, with an annoying, but not altogether uncharacteristic, reluctance to get up and do work. Now Amelia did frown, turning back with the intention of chiding him into joining her in a search for the magic’s source. No words escaped her throat, however, for she was struck mute by the sight that confronted her. Immediately, Caleb leaned forward, ostensibly reaching for the whiskey bottle, but the damage hadbeen done. The loss forever hereafter of one part of her brain had been achieved. For Amelia knew she’d make a museum room of it, or perhaps even a shrine, so that she could revisit daily the image of Caleb’s prodigious arousal.
(Then again, perhaps he’d simply put an antique in his pants for some reason Amelia attempted to construct before her intelligence stepped in and told her to stop being a ninny. Her degree might be in history, but that didn’t mean she was ignorant about biology.)
Nevertheless, friends do not think about other friends’ stiffened phalluses,she lectured herself.
Sh,her brain replied, busy setting up a display plinth and special lighting.
Perhaps now was a good time to tell Caleb that her feelings for him lately went beyond friendship.
Or, rather, notnow, considering magic was glinting throughout the attic like a sugar bowl had exploded, but soon. Around the same time that she told him she’d seen his memories. And confessed about the letter she’d almost sent to Ottersock. And asked his opinion of Mary Wollstonecraft too, although that was perhaps less pressing.
Besides, she didn’t think she could quite deal with the pain of sharing her heart and having him tell her—kindly, with a smile—that all he felt in return was friendship. Deep, precious, loving friendship, but not the kind of romantic adoration that she was beginning to identify within herself.
Arousal did not count; that was just science. Then again, the way he’d looked at her in that memory she’d experienced…
A conversation was definitely in order. Just as soon as she’d fixed this latest problem.
With a remarkable degree of self-discipline, even for aTarrant, Amelia turned back to the window. The rain had stopped, the sky was limp and exhausted, and altogether the view resembled nothing so much as a towel that you reach for after your bath only to discover it is damp. One exception to this drabness did exist: a fountain of sparkling white and gold light erupting from a stony field some distance from the manor house.
That’s quite the exception,Amelia thought wryly. There being no one in sight, and Guy Fawkes Night still some time away, she presumed it was not a species of firework. Damn. She was going to have to go out in the cold and the wind to investigate.
“No,” Caleb said emphatically.
“What do you mean?” Amelia asked, watching the magical fountain shoot stars that spun and flared in the breeze.
“You’re doing that standing-straighter thing you do before you plow into action, which means that you’ll be wanting me to plow too. But I’m not going out in that cold, Meely, absolutely not. I don’t earn enough to justify tramping through farmland.”
Amelia turned to give him a crooked smile. He met her gaze—then glanced at her still-unbuttoned shirtwaist—then looked into her eyes once more with an expression that suggested he was not going walking anywhere, but was however willing to undertake a different, more horizontal kind of exercise. The air between them sparkled, and not entirely due to the discharging magic. For one second, Amelia considered abandoning her professional duty, her definition of friendship, her completely reasonable caution, and every last good sense remaining in her, to climb Caleb as if he were a library ladder.
But a thaumaturgic eruption in proximity to a house full of antiques, many of which were magical themselves, was really not to be ignored. Alas. She began to rebutton her shirtwaist.
“I am going out to determine the source and stop it if I can,” she informed Caleb coolly. He groaned, collapsing against the arm of his chair in dramatic, seven-year-old fashion, and Amelia clicked her tongue at him. “It’s fine, you can stay here. Make yourself nice and cozy, and I’ll let you know the results of my investigation when I return.”
—
Caleb leaned backin the armchair as he sipped whiskey. The attic was wonderfully peaceful, and he felt so warm and comfortable that he began to drift toward the restful bliss of a nap.
Or at least he did in his imagination. In actual reality, he trudged through a field that could better be described as a mass of sheep dung, mud, and thistles with some grass strewn among it. His trouser cuffs were soaked, his shoes ruined. “Slow down, Meely,” he called out, but Amelia ignored him.
“I’m certain the flash of magic came from over there,” she said, pointing to a boulder some distance across the fields. “Or maybe there,” she added, indicating now a red-gold oak tree some other distance away. (Yards and feet meant nothing to Caleb; as a historian, the only reason he ever needed to calculate distance was when he wanted a hot drink from Jabbercoffee but was due to lecture across the other side of town in half an hour’s time.)
Both boulder and tree formed mere silhouettes in the fading light. A sinister band of red along the western horizon, like the blood of the lost day, warned that soon night would be fully upon them. It was worrying, but not entirely a surprise, considering they had spenthourstramping around, looking for magic. The eruption of luminous thaumaturgic energy haddisappeared by the time they’d managed to sneak out of the house without being seen by anyone (except two footmen, who had opened the door for them and offered umbrellas, which Amelia, cruel woman, refused on the basis that it “didn’t look like it was going to rain,” as if they were in some country other than England). Caleb did not know whether to be pleased that the magic hadn’t resurged—after all, it was good news for the safety of Ravenscroft Manor’s residents—or annoyed, since it was bad, bad news for his shoes.
Hours!he reiterated grumpily, although not verbally, since he’d rather not receive another of Amelia’s frowns, even if she did look cute making them. Oh sure, if one wanted to bepedantic, it was more like fifty minutes, but even so. Far too much time. And Caleb wasn’t the only one to think so. His stomach agreed with him most emphatically.
“We’re missing dinner,” he told Amelia in dire tones.
“They’ll leave us some,” she replied, unconcerned.
“We’re going to get lost,” he tried instead.
“The house is rather hard to miss,” she pointed out. “It’s that big stone thing behind you.”
“Five miles behind me.”
