Chapter Fifteen
History’s most powerful stories of love and sorrows we can but glimpse like ghosts in jeweled rings, tombs, and the minutiae of household management records.
I, on the Past, Cornelius Ottersock
The shadows of the narrow stairwell smelled hundreds of years old.
Eerie shapes, created by the sway of light from a lantern Caleb had procured along the way, seemed to reach out with claws to torment Amelia as she followed him up toward the attic’s door.
She wasn’t frightened, for her career often led her into spooky places (haunted houses, museum basements, and the parlors of elderly ladies who serve lukewarm tea), but she briefly contemplated acting as if she were, so that Caleb would hold her hand again.
He paused before a door at the top of the stairs and looked at Amelia with an intensity made all the more dramatic by deep shadow and the flame of his lantern.
“Prepare yourself,” he said in a hushed, solemn voice.
Unimpressed, Amelia looked back at him steadily. “Are there ghosts? Spiders? Should I have brought my insect repellent? Or is the roof broken and an enchanted wind blows in from the fells, keening of the lost summer?”
His expression collapsed. “No,” he said rather petulantly. “Just— Well see for yourself.”
He pushed the door ajar, its hinges groaning mournfully in the tradition of attic doors everywhere. As he progressed into the chamber, Amelia followed cautiously, for she did not quite trust his assurances on the matter of spiders. But what she saw brought her to a surprised halt.
“Told you so,” Caleb said, smiling at the look on her face.
A moderately sized room stood before them, its ceiling angled steeply, its windows narrow and lead lined (early 1400s, Amelia guessed, but was not about to ask Professor Throckmorton up for a more accurate estimate).
A sense of damp centuries freighted its shadows.
So far, so gothic. But the wooden floorboards were well swept and scented with lemon polish.
Green checkered curtains adorned the windows.
Along one wall stood a rail hung with fluffy, cozy dressing gowns; against another, a scrupulously dust-free sideboard displayed a biscuit jar, an unlit lantern, bottles of whiskey, and tidy stacks of magazines.
At the center of the room, two large, faded leather armchairs sat opposite each other, a low table between them.
“Huh,” Amelia said, unsure whether to be disappointed (no antiques anywhere to be seen) or relieved (no antiques anywhere to be seen!).
“The servants use it as a private lounge,” Caleb said as he set down his lantern on the table and moved to light the other.
Amelia frowned mildly in confusion. “How could you know that?”
“I asked them.”
“Good heavens.” She was quite astonished by this unconventional means of information gathering.
Caleb shrugged. “It turns out they’re…well, people.”
“You smiled at them,” Amelia accused.
He gave her an amused glance over his shoulder. “Maybe.”
She watched as he lit the attic’s lantern, feeling precarious in a way she could not quite define—almost as if something integral had been slowly peeling away from her over the past week, leaving her not wholly herself. Or worse, more herself, the old defenses eroding.
I’m tired, she thought. There had been too much arguing.
Too many days of relentless enmity. Even faked, it was agonizing.
Amelia felt haunted by the ghost of Caleb, although he stood living and breathing in the same room as her—haunted by the loss of small casual words they usually shared, touches, and knowing looks that made up the better part of her existence.
Longing lay on her skin like too much cold air.
And not just for kissing (although that too). She felt bereft of him.
But that wasn’t the entire truth, and Amelia cursed the analytical efficiency of her brain in admitting it.
Part of the trouble had been that the passion required for conducting their arguments made her feel…
hot. Fluttery. And really so very fluttery hot, she was beginning to feel less English and more like an Italian woman lounging about half-undressed on some beach, with a sea as blue as Caleb’s eyes lapping over her bare skin.
While she struggled to recenter herself in what was in fact a damp attic on a gloomy autumn afternoon, Caleb brought a lantern and bottle of whiskey over to the table and set them down. Then turned to her without a word and took her in his arms, hugging her close.
At the feel of his body against hers, Amelia exhaled in deep relief.
The embrace filled her with a warm, soft comfort, making her feel complete again, no longer split apart from the other half of her soul.
Just as always, Caleb’s very presence soothed the sharp little fragments of hurt that had accumulated inside her with every disdainful look from other people, every casual cutting remark.
Thank goodness she hadn’t sent that letter. With Caleb, she could endure anything.
They stood like that for an uncounted length of time, not speaking, just quietly waiting for the little familiarities to weave together again between them. Finally shifting apart, they shared a smile that was rich with two decades’ worth of mutual care.
“I needed that,” Caleb said. “My sparkle was quite lost. Indeed, I was beginning to fear that having to obey society’s prudish conventions was turning me into that most dreadful of things—”
“Brooding and dark-hearted,” Amelia said.
“Boring.”
They laughed. “Sit, Meely,” Caleb said as he left her, crossing again to the sideboard. “Put your feet up. Have a drink.”
“I’m not drinking that,” Amelia answered, wrinkling her nose at the bottle, as she sat primly upright in one of the chairs (first checking it for spiders, polished floor notwithstanding). “A lady never consumes drink directly from a bottle. Think of the—”
“—germs. I know. But don’t worry, love, I’m getting us some glasses.”
“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t call me ‘love,’ ” Amelia said severely, even while her heart did a happy little pirouette.
“There’s no one to hear it.” Opening the sideboard’s door, he bent to search for drinkware, and Amelia conscientiously did not ogle his posterior (she just happened to be looking in its direction, that’s all).
“They could walk in at any moment,” she argued.
“I’ve locked the door.”
“Nevertheless.” Then she remembered what he’d told her downstairs. “What did you want to show me?”
“This!” Straightening with an excited grin, he held up a flat, rectangular box.
“Chocolates?” Amelia guessed, her eyes lighting.
Caleb deflated. “No. A chess set.”
She gasped, unable to restrain her sudden delight. “Even better!”
He eyed her dubiously. “Better than chocolates?”
“Absolutely!” Had she been able to sit up straighter with excitement, Amelia would have done so. Indeed, she was half tempted to clap her hands, Vanity-style. “But you wish to be punished?” she asked, surprised. “I’ve won every game of chess we’ve played.”
Caleb shrugged with mild agreement in the middle of that; then his grin returned, tinted with mischief. “Perhaps I let you win.”
“Ha!” was the only possible, sensible reply.
“So you’ll play with me?”
“Of course.” And when he evidenced some trepidation— “It will be restful.”
His grin sharpened. “We’ll see.”
Not bothering to argue, since he would soon enough be proven wrong, Amelia leaned forward to open the bottle and peer inside. “Thirsty after all?” Caleb teased.
“No, I just think that if I’m a little tipsy, it will even the playing field.”
“Ha!” He brought over glasses, filled them with what turned out to be rather cheap but tolerable whiskey, and set up the board, placing the white pieces on Amelia’s side.
Then slouching against one arm of his chair with his head propped in his hand, he smiled at her twinklingly.
Amelia suspected this was not a real word but could think of none more appropriate.
He was like a trickster god slumming it in the mortal world—all sparkles and just a hint of dark, dark power beneath his smile.
Amelia wondered if now was the right moment to tell him that she’d viewed his memories when stepping into the Hereford teaspoon’s magic yesterday, but before she could summon the courage to do so, he waved at the chessboard.
“You can start first,” he said in a tone either provocative or seductive (Amelia had not yet drunk enough of the whiskey to discern which).
“Hmm,” she murmured, rescuing herself from his glamour so she could strategize with a clear mind as she contemplated the board.
Its finely carved wooden pieces were old but not enchanted—always a bonus, since being bitten by one’s king while trying to escape check was distracting, to say the least. She reached out to move a pawn, then changed her mind and moved another instead.
“Interesting,” Caleb said.
Amelia raised her eyebrows at him. “You’re just saying that to make it seem like you’re good at the game.”
“Eh,” he said, shrugging in careless admission of the fact. He drank whiskey and then, still holding the glass, nudged forward a pawn seemingly at random. “How’s the scratch on your hand, by the way?”
“Fine,” Amelia told him while frowning at the board. “You never did bandage it.”
“Well, I was just being charming in the moment. Also, it gave me an excuse to kiss your hand.”
Amelia ruthlessly ignored her flutters. “Miss Tunnicliffe got scratched yesterday when a figurine of Zeus she was packing took wing.”
“Oh?”
Looking up from the board, she aimed her frown at Caleb. He looked back blandly. “I’m not interested in Miss Tunnicliffe,” he said.
“Perhaps you should tell her that.”
“Honestly, our conversations are quite dull. Mostly she just asks about the value of the antiques and what magic they might do. She wants to quit her job, go to university, and she thinks I can help her, so she’s being especially nice toward me.”