“I’m thinking.”
“Thinking!”Pivoting sharply, she set her shoe heel against a small rock and pushed, attempting to lever it out of the ground. Caleb retreated farther in case it would be the next thing thrown at him. Amelia was the most sedate person he’d ever known…until she wasn’t. But he himself had no intention of breaking a fingernail digging up half the field, not when he had two decades of quality education at his disposal. Scanning the area, he noticed a nearby patch of daffodils. Spring flowers at this time of year certainly suggested a leak of thaumaturgic energy from the ground beneath them. The fact that they werebluedaffodils reinforced this idea. Wandering over, Caleb put his hands in his trouser pockets as he contemplated the flowers.
“What is it?” Amelia asked, hurrying across. Her hair had begun slipping from its knot, and her face was flushed with exercise. She would have looked like a wild-hearted Catherine Earnshaw were it not for the intelligence sparking in her dark eyes.
“All right, so pausing to think might have been a moderately good idea,” she conceded, frowning at the daffodils. Afew seconds later, she turned the frown on him. Somehow it made her even more fiercely beautiful. Never mind being like a book character; she was like Shakespeare’s fairy queen Titania, or the heroine of an opera. Then her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “I suppose you’re waiting for me to do the digging?”
No, I’m falling even deeper in love with you, Caleb thought. But aloud he said, “There doesn’t seem any sense to us both dirtying our hands.”
With a scoffing laugh, Amelia crouched down. “I think someone’s dug here recently,” she said as she worked. Clumps of dirt smashed against Caleb’s shoes, but he dared not complain, not with Amelia in this mood.
“Aha!” she declared seconds later. Standing, she held up a gold locket dangling from a chain.
“Well done,” Caleb said. Then his pulse tripped as he recognized it. “That’s the locket I was looking for the other day.”
Taking it in her hand, Amelia made a small, interested sound. “Tingles.”
“Come now, Professor, don’t you mean ‘nerve stimulation due to thaumaturgic discharge’?” Caleb asked, grinning.
“ ‘Tingles’ is more efficient,” Amelia said. She weighed the locket thoughtfully. “What does it do?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t gotten around to assessing it.”
Both glanced at the enchanted air surrounding them, then exchanged a shrug.
“Seems obvious?” they said in unison.
“Does rather,” they answered together.
“Open it,” Caleb suggested, gesturing at the locket.
“It might explode,” Amelia said.
“Eh. It’s been a good life.”
Amelia paused, contemplating the risk, then went aheadanyway. After all,riskwas practically a nickname for material history studies (in fact, most MH students called it “Bric-a-Brac-a-Boom Studies,” but Amelia did try to elevate her language now that she was a professor). She’d never get anything done in her job if she worried all the time about things blowing up in her face.
Pressing the locket’s latch, she carefully levered open the case. “Huh,” she said with surprise. “There’s a tooth inside. I wasn’t expecting that.”
Caleb did not reply. He was watching the air shimmer like molten rainbows behind her as the thaumaturgic bubble dissolved. They were right, the locket had been responsible; opening it had immediately unraveled the magic. The sight was beautiful, illuminating Amelia’s hair, crowning her with tiny white stars until she seemed indeed like a fairy queen…a heavenly queen…the goddess of his heart. Caleb knew that, from now on, every time he rereadA Midsummer Night’s Dream, he would envision Titania with dark hair, a plaid skirt, and dirt-packed fingernails.
If, that is, he remained capable of reading at all, considering how his brain also seemed to be dissolving into gossamer dreams while he gazed spellbound at Amelia. Then she looked up from the locket at the eroding magic, and her eyes widened.
“Oh my,” she said rather breathlessly. “What a pretty manifestation of unconstrained thaumaturgic discharge.” She looked at him again, lucent, lovely, and completely Amelia with her dry humor and endless practicality. Caleb felt so enchanted, it was as though the magic had pooled in his heart. “I am compelled to admit,” she said, “that you were very clever to have found the burial spot so quickly.”
“No, no,” Caleb said, shaking his head. He lowered hiseyelashes and glanced up through them at her, offering his sweetest smile. “I was a bloody genius.”
“Language!”
At the sharp voice, they both spun about in fright. Two elderly women emerged from behind a nearby bush where they must have been hiding all along. They looked like grandmothers from a children’s tale of country life, with floral cotton dresses, aprons, and gum boots, but their menacing expressions and the alarmingly sharp farm implements they held made it evident that this was very much an adult horror story instead. The spade propped against one woman’s shoulder was exactly the kind Caleb imagined gravediggers used, and the pitchfork grasped by the other could well have been what required a grave to be dug in the first place. He stepped back nervously just as Amelia stepped toward him. Their hands reached for each other and clung tight.
“Good evening,” Amelia said in a serenely polite voice, as if they were standing outside a High Street shop, making small talk. “I believe we’ve met before? In the Staveley pub?”
“We have,” answered one woman. “I’m Hilda, and this here’s Mavis. Andyouare the antiquarians.” She made it sound like a crime—which, to be fair, Caleb was beginning to think it was, considering this blasted assignment. He summoned a charming smile, the one he employed specifically with older ladies, and that had over the years gained him all the antique brooches (and all the cake) he wanted.
“We’re in a hurry to reach Staveley but seem to have got turned around,” he explained. “What are two ladies such as yourselves doing out…here…” His voice trailed off as his brain finally leaped back into action, taking note first of the dirty spade, then of the ground from which Amelia had justretrieved the locket.Well, that was interesting. “Miss—” he said gorgeously.
“That’sma’amto you,” Hilda snapped, glaring at him so fiercely his smile vanished with all the speed of a suffragette printing an edifying brochure. He clutched Amelia’s hand even harder. “There’s no point trying your masculine wiles on me, lad. You professors are a pain in the—”
