Chapter Twelve
Edie yanked on the handle of yet another heavily decorated double wooden door that she very much hoped was the door to Gregory Gregory’s library.
It felt like they had walked through miles of hallways, ducking into one unbelievable, gilded, paneled, muraled, carved room after another, but there hadn’t been the usual number of wry comments and observations from the princess.
Just like there hadn’t been the usual number of teasing remarks and non sequiturs from her.
A bit of heady, awkward silence was probably to be expected after you both almost went up in flames over a kiss on the cheek that was hotter than a lot of kisses Edie had experienced in dark rooms with her clothes off.
The double doors creaked open to reveal a room lined with books and dark furniture. “Library. Thank Moses.”
“I thought you’d been dying to tour this place.
” Cosima trailed into the room behind her, her jacket over her arm, her bra tastefully visible through the creamy silk of her blouse tucked into the first pair of jeans Edie had ever seen her wear.
They were a soft, pale, broken-in pair. The high yoked waist was cinched with a belt that buckled with gold double letters.
Edie had not, in all of her life, seen someone wear a silk blouse with expensively destroyed blue jeans and a designer belt.
She had not borne witness to the inside of an English manor, with skies painted on the ceilings and truckloads of Italian marble carved to look like curtains.
The library smelled like things she didn’t know about—expensive pastes and waxes that servants used to clean silver and wood, cinders in massive fireplaces, paper of vellum and ink made from gall.
She’d read about rooms like this in romance novels the same way she read about the minutiae of queer history, not once believing any of it was real or applied to her.
But here she was. With Cosima Frank.
“Edie?”
When she looked up, Cosima was close again, her head tipped and her golden-flocked eyebrows furrowed. “Yeah?”
“I found it.”
Edie hadn’t even started looking. “What? How? How do you know?”
“We go to Tattershall Castle next.” Cosima indicated one of the nearby bookshelves, and Edie walked over to see.
The bookshelf was sealed with plexiglass. On it sat a chessboard, set up as if it had been abandoned in the middle of a game.
“White just castled,” Cosima said, tapping the plastic with her fingertip.
“I don’t know what that means.” She peered at the pieces. “I’ve never played chess.”
“Assuming this has been set up like this since Agatha was here—and I’m guessing it must have, because I can see dusty museum wax poking out from under the pieces—then Tattershall Castle is next.
Plus, this shelf is right by the ladder, which has been locked in place, and the rook in this chess set looks exactly like the sketch of Tattershall on our map.
It even has carved stones like the castle, and windows where there are windows in the sketch. ”
The princess was right. They were going to a castle.
Cosima started out of the room, already on her phone. “I’m going to figure out a ride to the train station and buy the tickets.”
As Edie followed her out, she could hear the voices of college students filling the previously hushed hallways.
She would’ve loved doing something like this when she was in college.
Nothing like this had been offered to her, but that didn’t mean it had been out of her reach.
She’d seen in the Harlaxton Manor booklet that one of the colleges that used this site for a study abroad experience was a community college. Edie had gone to a community college.
Too late now. But no matter what, Edie could have this treasure hunt with this woman. She could even have her outsize crush and its private buzz. It was hard to remember, after losing so much, what she could have, but it wasn’t nothing. Sometimes magic intervened, at least a little, on reality.
She hoped Cosima felt the same way about this adventure. Edie looked forward to learning much, much more about gardening while wistfully watching An American Castle’s Garden and thinking about the way Cosima Frank’s lips had felt on her skin.
They went back through to the foyer with its terrifying stone fireplace, then stepped out into the pea-gravel drive. “You called a Lyft?” Edie asked. “Do they have that here?”
“I don’t know. I don’t do Lyft. I called Killian, Tam’s husband.
He brought me back to the inn last night and said he was happy to drive me anywhere I needed to go.
” The sun hit the golden sandstone of the manor, making the air glow, framing Cosima’s incomparable face against turrets and stone lions and the blue English sky.
Edie smiled at her, withholding nothing, and Cosima smiled back. They both looked away at the same time like they were bashful fawns in an old cartoon, but right now, in Edie’s life, that was a little spicy, honestly.
While they waited, they had time to walk around.
Cosima found the enormous glass conservatory on one side of the building and looked in at the plants longingly before Killian drove up in a red Toyota Yaris.
He was a big, bald, handsome man with a personality that filled the entire space of the car with animated chatter, and when he arrived at the train station, he gave them directions on how best to get to Tattershall, along with his good wishes for finding the treasure.
After the rush from Killian’s car, tickets, and locating the right platform, they located empty seats on the overheated train.
Edie couldn’t make herself take off her jacket and lean back.
She was having that restless, nothing’s-quite-right feeling that made her brain start to manufacture reasons for it—reasons that were all equally anxious lies, but also felt definitely true.
“Why are you not talking?” Cosima lifted up the armrest and turned toward her.
“I don’t talk all the time.”
“You do.”
“You just haven’t known me long enough to enjoy my quiet moments.”
Cosima crossed her arms. “I’m worried it’s because I kissed you on the stairs.”
“On the cheek.” Edie cleared her throat and turned her head lest she witness Cosima’s reaction to her strategic avoidance.
“Edie Whitelock.” There was forgiving amusement in Cosima’s tone.
“It’s not you. I keep thinking about how I never fit.
” Edie hadn’t known she would share this thought until she spoke it aloud.
“My whole life, everyone’s said that, or things like it.
But no one ever suggested, ‘Hey, Edie, maybe there’s somewhere else where you would fit.
’ I was just supposed to figure out how to shave off all the inconvenient bits of myself until I could cram myself into the mold. ”
She ran her finger along the edge of Cosima’s upholstered train seat, fuzzy, in shades of blue with a pattern of abstract red circles.
It was difficult to keep hold of her thoughts.
Cosima didn’t rush in with a lot of questions, though.
She sat still, her body relaxed. It had the effect of slowing down Edie’s heart rate and settling her jumpy muscles.
“My dad is English,” Edie said. “I mean, you wouldn’t notice his Englishness right away, particularly, because he’s lived in Tampa a long time, and he’s obsessed with golf and playing the penny slots, but he’s still responsible for half my genes. I could’ve done a study abroad year.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I didn’t. If I didn’t fit in Wisconsin, why use my second passport and find out I didn’t fit here either?
An entire other country I should feel comfortable in but maybe wouldn’t.
Even if sometimes it’s been difficult, I’m grateful that I could never have not been gay.
I briefly attempted stealth lesbianism. The Converse and compulsion to wear too many rings gave me away.
That, and I was constantly following girls around and telling them how pretty they were.
But everything else about me was on the table to be Green Bay-ified. ”
“I think I’ve actually known you long enough to understand what that means.” Cosima smiled her private, reserved smile.
“It doesn’t take a lot of deep background. But maybe I’m less chaotic and all over the place than I had led myself to believe, and happiness would be more possible if I hadn’t decided everyone was right about what I deserved.”
Cosima’s crescent moon brows found two wrinkles in the middle of her forehead. “I like it better when you talk instead of being so quiet. Continue.”
“If my phone worked, I would pull it out and make you record that, so I could play it back later when you complained about me.”
“When have I complained about you? You’ve talked plenty, and I’ve never told you to be quiet.
You wiggle around like you’re actually plugged in, but this doesn’t bother me at all.
What else could I complain about? That you’re kind?
Charming? Maybe that your esoteric knowledge goes surprisingly deep? ”
“My raincoat. You complained about that.”
“And I solved my own problem by replacing it. Nothing to do with you, actually.”
“You complained that I—” Edie tried to remember. Had Cosima complained about her? As in her, Edie, the essential Edie Ashlynn Whitelock? “Hmm.”
“Exactly.” Cosima nodded with only the point of her chin, like a royal. “I have not. Also, you can be assured that if I do have a complaint about you, it will be one hundred percent correct. Like the jacket.”
Edie was in new territory. The princess took her seriously.
More than seriously. She hadn’t presented Edie with an ounce of skepticism or jokes about Fauxmage, even as Edie tried to beat her to the put-downs.