Chapter Six #2
Safe. Amelia felt a warm sigh go through her.
Safe to smile and talk freely without damaging their reputations, let alone their careers.
Gladness swelled her heart, and for a moment she thought she might actually cry from it.
Pretending to squabble and feel angry had been so hard, these past few months.
But gladness was a short hop to the perilous chaos of joy. Retreating at once into self-restraining calm, she said a brusque “Hm.”
Caleb understood this to be acceptance, however, for he removed his coat and practically tossed it onto her back.
Then, walking backward as Amelia continued to march along the driveway, he began to wrangle her arms into the sleeves, grumbling all the while about her apparent determination to ruin his life by dying of a chill.
Once he had her sufficiently clothed, he turned to walk beside her, and he rubbed her upper back as was his habit whenever he disrupted her nerves with his behavior.
Disrupted, however, was an understatement.
Amelia felt like one of the blossom trees, buffeted, shaken, and coming apart.
And actually not entirely safe after all.
Caleb fussing with her clothes was nothing new; indeed, they had been doing it to each other forever—him shifting her hat to a more fashionable angle, her straightening his tie, him fixing her unbuttoned cuff, her straightening his tie (again) or jacket.
But now, appallingly, she imagined him removing her clothes instead…
A clap of thunder made her jolt. The drizzling rain intensified, as if the clouds had shattered.
“Run!” Caleb shouted. He grasped Amelia’s hand, and they raced together along the driveway toward the castle.
His coat, too big for her, slapped against her legs…
the wind snatched her beret…hairpins dislodged, sending strands of hair tumbling down to whip across her face.
Now everything about her was in disarray.
She felt as if she might unravel all the way out of her sensibleness into a wild and silent ghost that would wander the fells in search of its lecture schedule.
The thought should have left her aghast. No Tarrant ever tolerated unravelment.
It was practically the family motto: Tidy, Organized, and Keeping a Stiff Upper Lip to Such a Degree That Stress Is Too Scared to Approach You.
(Or, as was formally printed on their stationery, Stabilitas Perpetuus.) But perhaps whatever magic surrounding Ravenscroft Manor that had made daffodils flourish in mid-autumn also revived a remnant of the happy child she’d once been, for all of a sudden she found herself laughing.
Caleb glanced back at her, and at the sight of his delighted grin, Amelia knew she would indeed become a ghost after she died, never mind science or sensibleness, for she would never leave him.
“All right?” he asked through the loud thrum of the rain.
“No,” Amelia answered, the word broken into pieces by laughter. Caleb’s eyes glinted, and his smile grew so wide it seemed like he’d just come across a secret trove of ancient magical gold. “Be careful!” she warned him.
“It’s getting harder to be,” he answered strangely, his smile fading…
“I mean, watch out!” With her free hand, Amelia pointed ahead, and Caleb looked forward just in time to see they were about to crash into a hedge.
Hastily he corrected their path, laughing now too.
Thus they ran, in much the same way they had in the old days of their childhood, sparkling with appreciation for each other’s company, along the final stretch into the courtyard of Ravenscroft Manor.
Several footmen holding large black umbrellas were assisting Sheffield with unloading the dogcart.
Vanity stood at the manor’s large open doorway, talking to a man obscured by the shadows inside.
Amelia, slowing her pace, misjudged a step and stumbled against Caleb.
He put his arms around her, and together they dissolved into gasping, laughing breaths.
Almost at once, a servant was upon them with an umbrella.
They were efficiently hustled toward the door. Vanity smiled and waved in greeting.
“Professors! You’ll never guess who I just found here!”
Amelia, still huddled against Caleb (only to keep them both under the umbrella’s protection, you understand), and still light with heady silliness, answered with a smile—“Who?”
“He says he’s a friend of yours!” Vanity turned behind her with an encouraging gesture.
A large, brown-bearded man stepped forward, arms crossed, eyebrows raised above an expression of smirking satisfaction that must have been second only to that of the Scots when their king inherited the rule of England.
Instantly, Amelia stopped smiling; indeed, she stopped breathing altogether. Beside her, Caleb straightened, moving away from her, relinquishing the shelter of the umbrella. Icy wind howled through the space between them.
“Well, well,” said the man. “If it isn’t the two worst enemies in Oxford’s entire faculty.”
Amelia raised herself to the full height of her Tarrant dignity, pushed aside the wet tangle of hair from her face, and looked up at him with every appearance of serenity.
“Hello,” she said, “Professor Throckmorton.”