Two weeks ago, she’d have derided this as an unwise decision. Before Ravenscroft Manor, she’d have suggested taking their time. Had the Hereford teaspoon never come into her life, she’d still be standing with him on the doorstep right now, discussing publishing schedules and the cost of typewriters. Or worse, continuing to listen in demure silence as Professor Ottersock berated her.
Furthermore, a small, well-trained part of her mind began fretting that she’d not yet offered him a cup of tea, but she ignored it. Instead, the minute they entered the bedroom, she pulled Caleb against her and resumed kissing him. He tasted better than tea, even the Earl Grey variety. And judging from the passion of his response, he did not regret her lack of proper hostessing.
Their hands, which had been playing together for two decades, got down to business at once. Buttons were released, shirts removed, shoes heedlessly thrown across the room. Nakedness being achieved in short order, the hands then drifted in an enchanted dream, causing a thousand little flares of sensation that had Amelia gasping. She stepped backward, drawing Caleb with her, until she met the edge of her bed. But then he stopped, holding her still. He looked over her shoulder, and a confused, uncertain frown tumbled across his brow.
“Only one bed,” he said.
Amelia laughed. “Of course only one. Did you think I’d have bunks?”
“I mean, a bed for only one person. It’s awfully narrow, Meely.”
She glanced back at it, taking in the neat brown counterpane, the patchwork quilt folded at the end, the single heavy pillow, and she frowned too. Her bed had always been just a place to sleep—she seldom even read there, for that was deleterious to healthful sleep patterns—but now she appreciated that it could fairly be described as the most unenticing bed in existence.
“It’s all I’ve needed,” she said.
“You’re going to need something a lot larger before I’m through with you,” Caleb told her in a husky whisper.
To which there was only one reasonable reply. Turning away from him, Amelia began yanking the counterpane from the bed.
“What are you doing?” Caleb asked, laughing.
Amelia gave him a hot, fierce look. “You told me that you’d never shared a bed with anyone before. Show me what you do instead.” And throwing the counterpane, quilt, and pillow onto the carpeted floor, she presented him with amesscozy opportunity.
“Oh, Amelia,” he said in such adoring tones, it was fortunate there was now soft bedding on the floor, for she veritably swooned. They went down together in a sweetness of tangling limbs and tangling tongues. “I love you,” Amelia whispered. Or perhaps it was Caleb who did. At that point, there felt little difference.
All the promises he’d made the night before, while standing on a moonlit path in the middle of England, arousing her to pleasure with simple descriptions and tempting smiles, he kept now. But the experience of it was so much more intensethan Amelia had imagined. (And she’d done quite a lot of imagining during the train journey back to Oxford.) She’d never guessed how her very soul would stretch even as her body did to accommodate him. She’d not thought that “slow” would involve long, luxurious moments of just gazing at each other as they reveled in the experience of being united. And while she had anticipated Caleb’s joyful tears, she’d not believed herself capable of them also. Together they wept, and smiled, and whispered compliments, all jumbled up in an intimate treasuring that was so lovely it almost hurt.
By the time they reached the “fast” part, Amelia was in such a haze of soft delight that every sensation felt like an electrical storm, scorching, exhilarating. And when they climaxed, she cried out Caleb’s name just as he’d promised she would, regardless of any neighbors who might be trying to enjoy the peace of their gardens at that moment. Amelia had never known such perfect freedom. Sagging into the quilts, laughing in delight, she closed her eyes to relish the fluttering aftermath.
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
“I suppose that, since you continue to insist on the nickname, I won’t complain,” Caleb told her, grinning. And then he kissed his way down her body, settling between her legs, where he employed his tongue to show her just how good a friend he could be.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nothing anticipates the future more
than the past does.
I, on the Past, Cornelius Ottersock
Six months later
The Minervaeum Club’sduty manager stood near the library door with a fire extinguisher at his side. Water buckets had been stationed in every corner of the room, and staff carrying thaumometers along with trays of hors d’oeuvres patrolled warily. Antiquarians had gathered in the library to celebrate the opening of theHarroway’s Household Wonders!exhibition at the British Museum, and frankly, no amount of precautions could be enough.
Tweedy scholars and curators milled about in the dusty lamplight, slowly killing themselves with pipe smoke and arguing in mild, professional tones as to whether the exclamation point on the exhibition’s title was undignified or not. Sir Nigel Harroway himself had been invited as a special guest, and every few minutes someone approached him with congratulations, only to discover that the man was the academic version of sticky fly paper. From a safe zone just beyond Sir Nigel’s line of sight, Mr. Dummersby watched his horrifiedpeers endeavor to escape becoming acquainted with the minute details surrounding each thaumaturgic item in the exhibit. At the start of the evening, Oxford’s head of Material History, Professor Ottersock, had floated the idea of bestowing upon Sir Nigel an honorary degree. Less than an hour later, the professor was consulting train schedules for when he could soonest send the dreadful fellow back to Cumbria.
(Lady Ruperta Harroway had also been invited to the soiree. She gave her regrets, being unfortunately too busy taking in an opera show, shopping at Harrods, touring royal sites, and making an overnight trip to Paris, where she met a fascinating and beautiful artist who offered her a life of thrilling romance and adventure, which Lady Ruperta declined on account of said artist being middle-class.)
At a table in one corner of the library, beside a window that glinted with rain, a young woman in white lace sat drinking tea. Every now and again she looked out at the crowd with an expression of vague amusement. None of the gentlemen dared to meet her eye.
“Who is that lovely creature?” a graduate student from America whispered to Dummersby, his eyes alight with fascinated curiosity.
“That is Mrs. Sterling,” Dummersby informed him. “She is an eminent scholar of material history. It’s her public lecture, ‘On the Dental Thaumaturgic Manifestation of a Simulacrum Poltergeistic King John’ that you will be attending tomorrow.”
“Snappy title,” the student remarked.
“Hm.”
