Chapter Twenty-Nine
Like every other moment since he’d waltzed into her life, Arthur Taliesin was currently making Maggie’s life difficult.
He sat across from her in the botany lab, looking so proud of himself for that comment, which he knew would leave her squirming and blushing.
And, sure enough, her stomach had flipped, her breath had hitched, and heat had spread along her whole body as that one sentence set off a barrage of fantasies she didn’t even know she had.
Despite the distraction, Maggie carefully ripped the gloaming creeper into fine ribbons and added it to the first boiling mixture.
As it began to leach into the water, it turned the liquid to a light mauve.
Once they were done, after the decoction had had time to settle, it would turn a brilliant aubergine color.
Ignoring Arthur’s comment, though his smug smirk still hadn’t fallen, she looked again at Dr. Silva’s procedure.
“After the first extraction, it will need to be exposed to two hours’ worth of afternoon light.
Then it needs time to settle before it will sit out beneath the waning crescent moon for three nights.
Then another three weeks of settling.” She bit her lip.
“We’re going to have a lot of downtime.”
“Mm-hmm,” Arthur murmured as he wrote down the temperature of the first phase of the decoction for their records. When he looked up from the notes, he had that cocksure grin on his face again. “I think we’ll be quite busy.”
“Oh?”
“Of course.” He leaned forward just slightly, and his voice was low like he was about to say something lascivious. Instead he said, “There are so many wards we should be fortifying.”
Maggie groaned. He was right, of course. Already the wards that had been strengthened by students before they left for the summer had begun to fade. The force of the pall’s magic was putting too much pressure on them.
“Yes, absolutely. Obviously, we should be fortifying the wards. We have plenty of time for that. But what if you also took me to the beach?”
The small dose of sunlight Maggie had experienced in the Wilds when they’d walked beyond the influence of the pall had awoken something in her.
Maggie needed sun. She needed to bask, to lie out like a lizard until she felt warm from the inside out, and to melt the effects of the pall from the outside in.
Atlantia, with its broad, busy beaches, was not covered by the pall’s relentless cloud. Atlantia, where Arthur lived.
Arthur’s eyes flitted to her chest, completely covered by her lab coat, and she wondered if he was imagining her in a swimsuit.
She already knew which one she’d wear—black and constructed out of what looked like two wide ribbons that wrapped around her cleavage and her waist. It was very annoying to put on and even worse to take off and she wanted to see if Arthur was up to the challenge.
“I feel bad taking a break from all this”—she gestured around them—“but it might be…” She didn’t finish the thought.
It might be our only chance to do something fun.
She was too aware of their impending deadline.
“The decoction will be ready three and a half weeks from now. What if we just see how much we get done this week? If we fortify every ward and I get through most of the translation, we could go next Saturday. That will still give us a few days afterward to finish any last-minute preparations.”
She knew she was explaining too much, but he was watching her with a careful expression, and she was afraid of what his answer might be.
Maybe she had misunderstood him. Maybe he didn’t want to see her outside of her apartment and the Hawthorn campus.
She couldn’t blame him; they were only going to be together for the summer, even if reminding herself of that made her throat start to feel tight.
But then he was talking, and Maggie had to ask him to repeat himself because she wasn’t sure she heard him correctly.
“I’d love to take you to the beach that Saturday, but we might have to take a break to watch a five-year-old pick flowers in the outfield,” he said, back to busying himself with the alembic in front of him. “My nephew’s baseball game is that day.”
Maggie paused. Surely he didn’t want her to go to his nephew’s baseball game? “Well, that you definitely can’t miss. We’ll find another day.”
He finally looked up from fiddling with the equipment.
Behind his safety glasses and his eyeglasses, his expression was one that Maggie couldn’t quite interpret.
“No, you’re right. There isn’t really another day.
Besides, it won’t take long. They’re five and six, they’re lucky if they make it through half an hour.
Come to the game.” He sounded sure, but Maggie couldn’t help her doubt.
He seemed to sense her hesitation because he added quickly, “Invite Dahlia. Simon will be so happy to have a crowd cheering for him. We’ll have hot dogs and get irrationally angry at the opposing five-year-olds when they manage to score. ”
Maggie couldn’t help the curve of her smile, or the flush of pleasure she felt at Arthur’s relief when she said, “I’ll ask Dahlia. You’re right, it’ll be fun.”
—
When the liquid had siphoned into the beaker, Maggie returned it to the container above the burner and adjusted the temperature until it was a slow, rolling boil.
“It’s ready,” she called over to Arthur, who was removing his safety glasses and lab coat.
He walked to one of the many old levers in the lab and began to crank the glass panel open.
Ancient copper gears on the ceiling creaked to life, and cool, foggy air filled the lab.
“Dr. Silva said we don’t have to babysit it.
She’ll have her lab assistant check to make sure it isn’t boiling over or getting too cool. ”
They decided to get lunch and meet back in their office, with Maggie returning to Ilex Hall and Arthur heading down to a café right off campus called Dot’s. Eventually, he returned with a crinkling bag filled with metal canisters of soup.
“I’ve never been over to Dot’s,” Arthur said as he unpacked their lunch. “It’s cute. Dot served me herself!”
Maggie laughed at his enthusiasm. “You met a celebrity. She hasn’t been behind the counter much since her ninetieth birthday.”
“That explains her granddaughter’s scowl.
” He arranged the food on Maggie’s desk so he could position his office chair across from her.
She opened her container of tomato soup and unwrapped the grilled cheese.
Maggie had been the one to call the order in as Arthur walked, and she found a napkin tucked into her wrapped sandwich with Dot’s shaky handwriting—What a hunk!
Maggie choked on the spoonful of soup she’d just sipped and tucked the napkin into her pocket.
Arthur would be insufferable if he saw it.
Arthur had ordered a beef noodle soup with thin, stretchy noodles and a fragrant broth flavored with ginger. It was one of Maggie’s favorites, and she reached over with her spoon and stole a piece of beef and some broth. She sighed. Everything Dot and her granddaughter made was delicious.
When they finished eating, somehow they both ended up on the couch.
Arthur sat with his knees bent, and Maggie with her legs over his, leaning against the armrest. They had a little over an hour where their time was not accounted for.
It wasn’t enough to replenish any of the wards around campus or solve the problem of the incantation translation or adjust any calculations.
They had no more rare ingredients to hunt for or experts to consult. So, for once, they took a break.
Both of them had reached for novels on Maggie’s shelves.
Arthur chose a fantasy novel he had already read, losing himself in the pages quickly.
Maggie picked a romance she’d been saving for a quiet moment just like this.
She tossed a crocheted blanket over their legs against the chill coming through the window, which she’d opened to air out the stuffy office, and let herself get lost in the meet-cute.
Arthur’s hand rested on her thigh, and she barely noticed as he absentmindedly traced languid circles over her skirt, the silky fabric pulling up her thigh until his finger was on her skin.
She glared at him over her paperback, but Arthur kept turning his pages, and she didn’t tell him to stop.
She tried to focus on the words in front of her, but his fingers were trailing bigger and bigger circles, moving dangerously higher.
She snapped her book shut and stood up, the blanket falling to the floor.
“What is it?” Arthur asked innocently. Maggie locked their office door and Arthur leaned back, looking entirely too satisfied for Maggie’s liking. His legs were spread wide, his hand resting on his inner thigh. He nearly took up the entire couch, the entire office.
They didn’t say a word to each other. Arthur’s eyes roamed over every inch of Maggie, every curve, every glimpse of her skin.
In two steps, she was back in front of him, leaning forward and resting one hand on the worn arm of the couch, which propped her above him.
Her other hand came up and stroked Arthur’s tense jaw.
“You’re breaking the rules,” he said through clenched teeth, shifting his hips.