Chapter Five
If history is “a cyclic poem written by time,”
as Shelley says, then some episodes of it can only
be described as limericks.
I, on the Past, Cornelius Ottersock
A kiss is almost never just a kiss. All through the ages it has been the sealing of a contract, a moment of letting go, the proof of devotion, a betrayal—and a thousand other profundities that can be pecked onto a cheek or applied to someone’s lips, occasionally with the tongue serving as an exclamation mark.
For Amelia, however, kissing Caleb was just a kiss, and no amount of opinion from the lower galleries of her body could change her mind.
After all, she had been kissed two or three times before (alas, the fact that she couldn’t be specific about the number indicated their quality), and this experience allowed her to be entirely cool now.
Or, rather, she felt hot, so hot she’d like to strip off all her clothes, but she was rhetorically cool. Which was the important thing.
Caleb demonstrated a skill greatly improved upon that he’d shown at Fortuna Andrews’s party when they were children.
His lips pressed gently, and yet it were as if a tremendous weight of emotion was being pressed against Amelia’s very soul.
She didn’t care about this, mind you. Nor did she care that his bare hand was cradling her jaw, tilting it as he pleased, with a slightly domineering attitude that, under normal circumstances, would incite a frown or scoff of laughter from her, rather than the tingle happening in her stomach (or a place in that general vicinity).
A flaming teapot hurled across the room, on direct course to smash against them. Without breaking the kiss, Caleb put an arm around Amelia’s waist and pulled her against him, turning them out of the teapot’s path. His hand moved from her jaw to cup the back of her head protectively.
As a natural consequence of this, the kiss deepened, just at the point where Amelia gasped with surprise at being abruptly cuddled against a man’s strong, broad chest. Thus due to physics, and with no intention at all on either of their parts, the tidy connection of mouths transformed into something more dynamic, lips sliding, clasping, growing heated.
It was everything Amelia had imagined a kiss from Caleb would be (not that she’d ever imagined such a thing, merely speculated one or two dozen times, as an intellectual exercise).
And yet it was also strange, beautifully strange, as if she’d stumbled into a dreamworld.
All her sense of the familiar, and of the innocent friendship between them, was dissolving like sugar against Caleb’s mouth.
He tasted of something wilder, darker, and altogether dangerous—a delicious poison, or strong black tea.
His fingers tightened on her hair. Amelia leaned into him. The tingle became a throb.
Abruptly her mind slammed up a high, spiked barricade against the desire swelling up from her heart.
It stuck reminders like heads on the spikes: if word of this kiss reached Ottersock, she would be forced down to the level of teaching at a community college, all her parents’ dreams for her career destroyed.
The teapot fell with a crash to the polished floor, pretty much at the same moment Amelia’s heart crashed also.
She began to stiffen in Caleb’s hold. As she did so, he began to soften.
In unison, they broke the kiss. At once, they looked around—to check the magic, you understand, and not at all to avoid looking each other in the eye.
A dazed silence hung limp and miserable over the ruined pub. Tea and beer dripped from fallen cups onto the floor. A bouquet of flowers was on fire. And the bacon and egg pie roamed beneath tables, clucking as it pecked at crumbs. Otherwise, nothing stirred.
“Well, that worked,” Caleb said in a completely ordinary tone, as if he’d not just unraveled Amelia’s nerves so completely, she wasn’t certain of her ability to stand upright. Fortunately he was still embracing her.
Unfortunately, however, he was still embracing her. The throbbing grew so insistent, it was as if she had a clockwork model of a heart in her underwear, pulsing in time with her own.
The ridiculous image restored Amelia to her better senses. “Um,” she said awkwardly.
At once, Caleb released her, stepping back. He pushed a hand through his hair, shifting it off his forehead. Instantly long strands began to fall again, tangling with his eyelashes. “We should probably get out of here before—”
“—the spoon causes more trouble,” Amelia inserted.
“—someone clicks that we’re to blame for the mess,” he said at the same time. He flashed a grin, the usual Caleb-type grin to warm her heart and remind her that he was her friend. Just her friend, Amelia added sternly to herself.
Although it wasn’t really a matter of just, of course.
It was almost everything to her. He was.
At the same time, however, he was not someone to get all soppy over, merely due to a kiss (despite the evidence of actual soppiness occurring within her at that very moment).
Nor was she thinking God, please let him kiss me again, with or without the involvement of magic.
Or, rather, she was thinking it, but only to prove that she wasn’t thinking it. And she did not feel attracted to Caleb. Anyone would go a little daft after being kissed so efficiently, to say nothing of the flaming teapot.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” she said, striving not to touch her mouth.
“It was effective,” Caleb pointed out—and if he was gazing at her mouth as though he also wanted to touch it, Amelia felt sure it was just a figment of her now overwrought imagination.
“Perhaps,” she answered briskly. “But what if Miss Tunnicliffe saw and mentioned it to Ottersock or Throckmorton?”
Caleb frowned bewilderedly. “Does she even know Throckmorton?”
“Probably…maybe…I’m not sure, but…possibly,” Amelia muttered. Sympathy crossed Caleb’s face. He moved as if to hug her, and Amelia took a prudent step back. Snatching up the now-inert Hereford teaspoon from the table, she gave him a brisk, sensible nod. “Let us proceed with all haste.”
“Flee the scene of the crime,” Caleb translated wickedly. “That’s my girl.”
“I am not your girl, I am my own woman,” Amelia replied in a pedantic tone to counter the flutters that his words inspired.
“I beg your pardon,” Caleb apologized, and the flutters disappe—
He set a hand against her lower back. Flutterflutterflutter. A veritable typhoon filled Amelia’s interior. This did not suggest attraction, however, merely that…that…
“Be careful where you step,” Caleb said with helpful timing.
Amelia ignored the implication that she needed guidance to walk across a room (and furthermore that she’d most likely caused this whole debacle by feeling jealous when Caleb offered such guidance to Vanity).
They made a cautious path through the mess of broken plates, glasses, and food.
Emerging into the dreary, overcast late afternoon, they discovered a small crowd of diners, pub staff, and random passersby murmuring together on the footpath.
They appeared to be the typical population one found in rural England: plainly dressed, eyes darkened by instinctive suspicion, and at least one pitchfork held up among them.
Silence descended as everyone turned to stare at the historians.
“All fixed,” Caleb announced with a cheerful smile.
“What happened?” a waitress asked, twisting her apron anxiously. “Was it a ghost?”
“No,” Amelia reassured her. “There’s—”
“Are you certain?” The woman’s large-eyed gaze shifted to the door Caleb had closed behind them as if she expected a diabolical spirit from the netherworld to smash through it at any moment.
“Absolutely certain,” Amelia said. “The—”
“Because the Eagle and Child pub down the road has a ghost, and they get so many customers they can’t fit them all in.”
“Oh did you say ghost?” Caleb interjected smoothly.
He stepped forward, his hand gliding across Amelia’s back as he went.
“Yes, it was a ghost.” The crowd gasped excitedly.
“Big fellow, dressed like a Viking.” Rather disappointed murmurs sounded.
“I mean, king. Like a king.” The murmurs increased in pitch and enthusiasm.
Amelia saw Caleb’s eyes light up in the way they always did when he got an opportunity to tell stories.
“Now, I’m no expert,” he said, then paused to look endearingly through his eyelashes, making it clear he was so expert he could afford to be modest about it. Amelia estimated two women and an elderly gentlemen fell in love with him on the spot. “I just have a doctorate in history—”
“Ooh,” the crowd said. Amelia amended her count to four women, one gentleman.
“—and I think what you have here, fine people, is the ghost of King Edward…”
He paused again, and as one the crowd leaned toward him, breathless with enthrallment. Caleb gave them his most wickedly gorgeous smile.
“…the third.”
“Aaah!” The crowd exhaled with delight. Why England’s beloved warrior king should be haunting a rather dingy pub in a remote part of the realm went unexplained. If there was among the villagers even half a heart now not lost to Caleb, it would amaze Amelia.
“We have subdued the royal ghost and sent him back to the other world—” Dissatisfaction rippled through the crowd, and Caleb immediately changed tack.
“But he may return at any time! However, I must warn you.” His face became somber, and the crowd stilled, their attention fixed upon him as if he himself were royal.
“King Edward did leave just the tiniest bit of mess. As the French could tell you, that’s an unfortunate habit of his.
But he did say he’d never seen a more charming pub”—Caleb aimed his smile at the waitress, who twisted her apron so forcefully she nearly yanked it off—“in the most beautiful village of all England!”