Chapter 17
Neither of them thought to set an alarm.
It was past nine when he opened his eyes, and since there was no way to make it to Sunday services on time (with a grin, he imagined Pastor Hattington calling that “appalling but understandable”), he pressed closer to Beatrix and reveled in the luxury of lying in a bed she was in.
Particularly since she was in the bed clothed in nothing whatsoever.
He wanted to trace the contours of her torso, arms, legs, to touch every part of her that had so long been off-limits to him.
But he didn’t want to wake her, so he levered onto an elbow and looked instead.
The room was warm and the sheets were down around her shins, leaving nearly all of her to gaze at.
“Mm,” Beatrix said after a while, her eyes fluttering open. She gave him a sleepy smile. “Good morning.”
“Yes,” he said, grinning back at her. “A very good morning.”
Her lips quirked in amusement but then she looked down, winced, and pulled the sheets to her neck. Clearly, he shouldn’t have left her uncovered.
“You’re cold,” he said apologetically.
“No, I—” She screwed up her face and sighed.
“It struck me last night that what you saw dreamside was almost certainly a less flawed version of my body, and I wanted to put off the moment of truth. Which is ridiculous, obviously! But there it is. You have married a woman you thought had a dozen fewer moles than she actually has, and your wife, after taking pride in her lack of vanity, has discovered a deep store of it after all.”
“Hmm,” he said. He folded the covers at her feet. Then he bent to kiss a mole he recollected and three he didn’t, trailing down her right leg. “Do you know what I hated about dreamside?”
He sat up on his heels. She looked back at him, brow furrowed.
“I told you once, I believe,” he said. “I’d tried sleeping during the day to avoid it, and you asked me why.”
“Oh,” she said, her eyes unfocused, and he knew she was back in that moment at the brewing table when he’d said he wanted her. The real her, not the mirror-world counterfeit.
“I never thought dreamside was anything but artificial,” he said, taking her hand.
“I mean, good God, show me a man in his thirties who’s ready for a second round fifteen minutes after the first one.
” It suddenly struck him that she would have no source of information on that score. “Uh—I hope you weren’t expecting—”
“No, no.” The smile was back on her face, beautiful in its crookedness. “But how about … now? Would now be a good time?”
Twenty minutes later, he lay spent on the bed, fighting drowsiness by watching her dress. “Come here,” he said as she struggled with her corset. He pushed himself into a sitting position and laced her up. “Is this as uncomfortable as it looks?”
“Worse. And it’s all the magiocracy’s fault.”
He grinned. “Seriously?”
“Well, in a roundabout sort of way,” she said.
“Corsets went out of fashion during and for a while after the World War, you know. Wizards’ wives and daughters brought the style back in the ’30s.
Everyone wanted to look like them, I suppose, and by the time we were born, the alternatives were long gone. ”
He kissed her jaw. “So the magiocracy is the reason you can’t ever take a full breath while clothed.”
“Or run up a hill. Or do anything more physical than walking without feeling as if I might burst. It’s a fashion conspiracy, I tell you.”
“Well, revolt,” he said. “Refuse to wear it.”
“Don’t think I haven’t considered it. But no dress fits properly without one. Also, Rosemarie and Lydia would hit the roof. ‘We must respect all the reasonable expectations of blah de-blah blah.’”
He laughed helplessly into her neck.
“And you know Rydell would notice,” she added gloomily.
He groaned. “Speaking of which, we’d better go see what he’s written.”
All four of the newspapers on their doorstep ran the story of their wedding on the front page.
None of those pieces had any fodder for heartburn, but then, none were written by Rydell.
He turned to Rydell’s column, bracing himself—and was surprised to find nothing about them.
The WILD WIZARD PARTY in the headline referred to an out-of-control bash a few days earlier involving students at the Academy in Arlington.
Beatrix stared at it. “Uh oh.”
“What, you wanted him to write about—” He stopped short, catching up with her. Rydell had said he would cover their wedding come hell or high water. If he didn’t have even a small item on it, that wasn’t by choice.
“You’re right,” he said. “Damn it. Let’s see if he left a message.”
They clattered into the kitchen, Beatrix turning the telephone ringer back on as he hit play on the blinking answering machine.
Out came the perky voice from the night before.
“Omnimancer, it’s Olive—Mr. Rydell’s answering service?
So nice talking to you! I wanted to tell you that I did pass your message on to him, but turns out it was after deadline for his Sunday column when you called, and—oh, Omnimancer, he was so mad!
I’m terribly sorry! I thought you should know so I tracked down your number!
Congratulations again to you and Mrs. Blackwell! ”
Beatrix slumped into a chair. “I’m not sure he actually had it in for us before, but now …”
An unnerving thought.
“I wish we’d just invited him,” she said.
He shuddered. In no way did he wish the man had been there, smirking and scribbling acid commentary in his notebook.
“Listen, we can”—he cast about for something—“do an interview with him. Exclusive details, etc. etc.”
It was her turn to shudder. But she nodded, so he left a message with Rydell’s answering service, a different woman this time.
Breakfast was quiet, Beatrix’s eyes on her bowl.
Couldn’t they have just twenty-four unmolested hours to enjoy their new marriage?
Was that so much to ask, for cripes’ sake?
He ate his oatmeal with grim efficiency, arguing with Rydell in his head as he scanned other headlines in the newspaper.
Tensions Continue to Mount with Canada. Key Vote on Typic-Rights Bill Tomorrow.
“Husband mine,” Beatrix murmured.
That gave him an unexpected thrill. “Yes?”
Her lips curved ever so slightly. “Nothing. I just wanted to say that.”
“I love you,” he whispered, taking her hand. “Every day of my life I swear I will prove that to you.”
Her expression was suddenly solemn. “I don’t for an instant doubt it. You don’t have to prove it to me.”
How he wanted to kiss her. But for all they knew, the magiocracy had cameras pointed at them, eyes watching from afar.
Wait …
“Something just occurred to me, wife mine.”
“Oh? What?”
“Well—now that we’re married, if someone were to, for instance, see a photo of us kissing right here, at our kitchen table, they would think it perfectly just and right. And I’d like to take full advantage of that. Right now. Assuming that plan appeals to you, of course.”
Beatrix leaned in, her lovely, mischievous smile flaring to life. “Yes. Oh, yes.”
Rydell, the magiocracy—all of it faded beneath her lips, her tongue, the press of her hands against his back. They were married. That was what mattered.
After breakfast, they rushed Martinelli’s widow home—Beatrix silenced by the terrible thought that his death was her fault, no matter how unintentional—and then they had to make appearances at no fewer than four rallies, all of them in districts of swing-vote senators who had until one o’clock the following afternoon to make up their minds.
It was, at least, an excellent distraction.
She clapped until her hands ached, collected more petition signatures and told the large gaggle of reporters at each event that yes, this was exactly how she wanted to be spending her honeymoon.
Which was both laughably false and absolutely true, because she would be damned if she didn’t do everything in her power to get this measure passed.
“Well,” Lydia murmured as participants at the final rally dispersed in the darkness, “what do you think our odds of success are, Senator?”
Gray gave an expressive shrug. “On paper, we’ve got the votes. But if you’re asking me what will actually happen tomorrow—well, I’m not counting my chickens before they hatch.”
“It helps to have the Senate leader on board, at long last,” Rosemarie said.
And that was true. But Gray’s point weighed on Beatrix as they drove home for a final pre-vote conversation—just her, Peter, Lydia and Rosemarie—within the privacy of spellwork. What was the magiocracy up to that might hit them tomorrow?
Inside the second-floor room being repurposed for brewing, Lydia pressed both palms on the preparation table they’d managed to drag up the stairs earlier.
“All right,” she said. “All the confirmed supporters in the Senate have promised they will be in the building by seven-thirty tomorrow morning, which is a half-hour before the legislature can legally schedule any votes. We’re going to place a volunteer at every meeting room in the building to make sure that neither the time nor the location is switched without everyone knowing about it.
And we’ll be visiting with all the senators willing to give us a few minutes so we can counteract any last-minute strong-arming by wizards.
But what else should we be doing? What could the magiocracy spring on us that we’re not thinking about? ”
Beatrix sighed. “More smears.”
“Or quid-pro-quo deals,” Peter said. “You know—‘we’ll give you funding for your district, Mr. Senator, if you kindly change your vote.’”
“Or ‘change your vote if you want your district to keep the funding you’ve already got,’” Rosemarie put in.
Lydia nodded slowly. “Can we counteract any of that? I mean, in advance, not just reacting if and when it happens?”
A moment of grim contemplation followed.
“No,” Rosemarie said finally. “We mustn’t bring it up first. We don’t want to put the idea in their heads that the magiocracy might retaliate if the thought hasn’t occurred to them.”
“We’d better remind all the volunteers to communicate to these senators that their reelection could well hinge on how they vote,” Beatrix said.
Peter gave a thin smile. “That reminds me: plum job appointments. That’s another way Washington could swing this.”
They spent a few minutes working out how they would react to the federal-funding issue if they got wind of that being the magiocracy’s last-minute point of attack. There was no preparing for the other problems, alas, only weathering them.
“How many more states can we afford to lose?” he asked, slipping a hand into hers. “Five?”
“Yes.”
“And there’s, what, seven states scheduled to vote tomorrow?”
“Eight,” Lydia said, “but only Maryland and California are on the bubble. The other six are firmly supportive. In fact, all the other states with bills in play are supportive, so we really do have momentum on our side.”
Beatrix knocked on the wooden table. She wasn’t normally superstitious, but it seemed impossible that the wizards didn’t have a plan to head this off.
“Listen,” Lydia said, switching from quiet undertones to her speechmaking voice, “we can do this. Think of everything we’ve handled so far. Good God, Beatrix, think of everything you’ve managed. Whatever they throw at us, we will find a way.”
They all nodded, Beatrix still feeling as if this occasion would be the exception.
“Say it: We will find a way,” Lydia demanded.
“We will find a way,” they dutifully repeated after her.
Lydia crossed her arms. “Again—and mean it this time.”
It was almost like magic. As she said the words more loudly and forcefully, Beatrix did feel as if they might come true.