Chapter Fourteen #3
Her stomach lurched as she realized how close she’d come to letting those men steal not only her career but her self-esteem.
Turning so fast she dizzied herself, she went to recover the letter.
But a footman had appeared out of nowhere (in fact, from beside the front door, where he had been standing all along) and had taken up the tray.
He was sorting through the letters on it, and Amelia saw a mailbox in his eyes.
With a murmured apology, she retrieved her letter from atop the stack and tossed it at once into a nearby hearth fire.
As she watched it shrivel within the flames, she released a breath she’d been aware of holding, psychologically speaking, for far too long.
Pretending she’d not noticed the footman pretending not to be amused by her antics, she hastened back to the study.
The scene that met her was just as it had been when she left.
Throckmorton and Dummersby were discussing the possible cause of King George III’s madness (“It was mania!”—“No, it was because he had all those children!”); they gave her a disdainful glance as she entered, then returned to their debate.
Sir Nigel was describing the history of a silver dish, indifferent to the fact that no one was listening.
Vanity had Caleb backed into a corner and was quoting at him from Tennyson’s The Princess, a poem to be lauded for its support of women’s higher education, but equally to be despised for how Vanity was not so much reading it as giggling it.
Only Sergeant Sheffield stood quietly, hands clasped behind his back, face bearing the blank detachment of a man who doesn’t care where he is, so long as his shoes are dry and no one talks to him.
Amelia was becoming fonder of the fellow with every day that passed and every conversation they did not have.
Feeling another headache coming on, she trudged over to the table of antiques.
But so carefully was she not watching Vanity and Caleb out of the corner of her eye that she knocked against a side table, sending its cargo of clockwork dolls into a tumble.
A baby doll with enormous eyes began to wave its arms and emit a high-pitched wailing.
“Bloody hell, Tarrant!” Throckmorton shouted, clasping his ears.
“Mind your damned language with ladies present!” Dummersby shouted in response.
Meanwhile, Vanity was shrieking, for no apparent reason other than taking the opportunity to make noise.
Sir Nigel ran over to grasp the doll and stop its wails describe its provenance in detail.
Amelia turned in search of an escape from the cacophony, but a servant approached her with a tray of drinks, and someone tossed another log on the hearth fire, and Vanity’s shrieks transformed back into giggles that were equally eardrum piercing. And then Sir Nigel said—
“It’s going to be okay.”
Except Sir Nigel never spoke with those beautifully modulated tones, the result of many years’ elocution training.
Only one voice was like silk gliding against her skin in that way.
Amelia knew she was being rescued a second before Caleb’s hand clasped her wrist, its cool firmness breaking her from the throbbing daze into which she’d fallen.
She blinked at the sight of his smile and was horrified when a tear spilled down her cheek.
She never cried, not even when her mother looked at her in her doctorate graduation attire and said “Jolly well done, dear, even if it is just a DPhil in history.” To her relief, Caleb gave no sign of noticing the tear, however.
He began tugging her, and she went with him deafly, which required as much trust as if she went blindly.
But then, trust in Caleb was one thing she always had to spare.
“ ’Scuse me,” he said as he plowed a track through the room’s occupants. “Professor Tarrant is about to vomit. ’Scuse me.”
Everyone promptly gave way for them, and within moments Amelia found herself in the cool tranquility of the corridor, with no one around to further trouble her senses (other than servants dusting the light fittings).
Introversion breathed a long, pained sigh of relief.
Caleb closed the study door, then turned to cup her face in his hands.
“Meely,” he said chidingly, or perhaps gently; she could not tell. He swept a thumb across her cheek, erasing its renegade tear. He had noticed after all.
“Caleb,” she whispered, and hers was most definitely chiding—for what if someone saw them? Beneath her voice, however, a whole ocean of tears threatened.
And maybe Caleb recognized that, for he kissed her forehead; then, as she feared the ocean might rise in a tsunami to overwhelm her, he stepped back.
Taking her hand, he proceeded to tow her along the corridor.
Amelia stumbled a little, trying to keep up, but Caleb showed no concern for this.
He was clearly prepared to dismiss any excuse or apology she might make.
Somehow, it was lovely. At least the flutters in her stomach seemed to think so.
“Did you have to tell them I was going to vomit?” she complained.
“Yes,” he said. “Otherwise they’d be out here with us, wanting to know what we’re doing.”
“What are we doing?”
He flashed her a grin. “I’m taking you up to the attic. Come on.”
But Amelia stopped, requiring him also to halt or else be ungentlemanly. He looked at her as if preparing an argument.
“Wrong way,” she said.
“Oops.” Transferring his hold from her wrist to her hand, then setting his own free hand on her waist, he danced her around in a half circle until they were facing the correct direction.
Amelia did not even have a moment to recover from sweet, tingly dizziness before he let her go and began to lead her toward the stairs.
“But why the attic?” she asked. “Why not another room in the house? We have so much work to do.”
“Not this afternoon we don’t,” Caleb answered firmly. “You are going to take a break, Professor Tarrant. And you’ll be doing it in the attic because, for a start, no one will look for us there. But also because I was exploring the other day and found something I want you to see.”
At this, curiosity, the essential trait of all historians, sparked within Amelia’s wearied brain. “Ooh. What?”
Caleb waggled his eyebrows at her. She knew all too well what that meant.
They were about to have an adventure.