Chapter Eighteen
Chivalry did not die, it was murdered.
I, on the Past, Cornelius Ottersock
There was only one horse. Caleb accepted this without complaint, but Amelia worried that the poor creature would be overburdened by having both of them on its back.
Moreover, considering that neither she nor Caleb had ridden since high school, when trotting around a yard on ponies a few times was deemed part of their essential education, sharing a horse seemed not only ridiculously clichéd but also a strategy for disaster.
“Sorry, miss,” the footman told her when she tried offering money for a second steed. “It’s all we’ve got.”
“Thanks,” Caleb said, smiling at the horse and patting its neck. “Any idea when the next train goes through Staveley?”
“There’s one at seven,” the footman said. “You’ve only got half an hour to catch it, though, and there isn’t another until morning.”
“We’ll gallop,” Caleb told him.
The footman shook his head worriedly. “It’ll be dark soon. And there’s rain coming.”
“Then we’ll get wet,” Caleb said.
“You might develop pneumonia,” the footman persisted, apparently dedicated to maintaining Ravenscroft Manor’s miserable gothic atmosphere.
“We’ll be fine,” Caleb assured him—or perhaps disappointed him, judging from his expression—then turned to help Amelia into the saddle.
But just at that moment, Sergeant Sheffield jogged up.
He was rather more breathless than a professional soldier ought to have been after such brief exercise, and his eyes seemed wild.
“You have to stop!” he urged, holding up a hand like some kind of traffic controller as he staggered to a halt.
Amelia stared in astonishment. This was the first she’d heard him speak, and his reedy, high-pitched voice so contradicted her imagination that she could not summon a word in reply.
“What’s the matter?” Caleb asked. “Did something explode again? Please say it was Throckmorton’s pipe.”
“Caleb,” Amelia murmured. They had a thief to apprehend and a college to save; this was no time for jesting.
And evidently Sergeant Sheffield agreed with her, for he produced a pistol from beneath his coat and, gripping it in both hands (which was a lot more frightening than with just one), he pointed it directly at Caleb.
“I have urgent business and I need that horse. Stand aside or I’ll make it so you can’t stand at all.”
“Oh God, not again,” Caleb groaned. “Why are people being so mean to me today?” He stepped protectively in front of Amelia, which was swooningly gallant of him—but unfortunately she also stepped protectively in front of him at the same time, and they collided.
There followed a brief tangle of limbs as they each strove to get ahead of the other, stopping only when Sheffield discharged his pistol into the air.
The horse startled, almost tugging its reins from the footman’s grip, but Amelia and Caleb immediately froze, clutching each other.
“Et tu, Sheffield?” Caleb said with dismay.
“No, I haven’t et,” the sergeant retorted. “And why the bloody hell do you care about my dinner? Stand back, I say!”
Amelia and Caleb (and the footman) obeyed, for there is no wisdom in arguing with a man who doesn’t understand basic Latin.
Swinging up on the horse, Sheffield galloped away into the deepening twilight—leaving them in, alas, not a cloud of his dust but instead spattered with mud, thanks to all the recent rain.
“Damn that man!” Caleb shouted furiously. “My Savile Row trousers!”
“My teaspoon,” Amelia countered.
“What kind of urgent business would he have out here, at this hour?”
Amelia shook her head with something very close to frazzlement. “I don’t know and there’s no time to discuss it.” She turned urgently to the footman. “We need another horse.”
“We could borrow one from a neighbor,” the footman replied with a shrug. “But that would take about an hour. You’re doomed, I’m afraid.”
“No, we simply must run,” Amelia said resolutely.
Her brain knew this was a daft idea, considering the distance that must be covered while wearing a long skirt (her) and expensively inadequate shoes (Caleb).
Her lungs cowered at the pain they knew was to come.
But her heart was full of determination.
She taught university students; she could do anything!
“Well then, cut across the fields to the road,” the footman advised, pointing the way. “And remember, it’s not the thief you’re racing but the train. If you get to Staveley before it, you’ll have time to catch her.”
Amelia marveled at this excellent advice but feared telling him so in case he demanded her pearl earrings in payment. Settling for just a grateful nod, she turned to Caleb.
“Ready?”
Abandoning a futile effort to brush clean his trousers, he met her eyes with the cool professionalism that overtook him in extreme situations like this. “Let’s go,” he said.
They began to run.
—
Five minutes later, they slowed to a jog.
—
Three minutes after that, they were walking.
Caleb’s pulse beat hard, but he could have continued jogging easily enough (or so he told himself).
Amelia, however, was stumbling on every pebble and clump of grass at his side, and he had no intention of leaving her alone out here in the wilds, vulnerable to every passing feral dog or vampire.
Eventually she stopped altogether, breathing heavily and clutching her side with a pained expression.
“Go ahead without me,” she urged. “I’ll catch up. ”
Caleb did not bother answering such brave nonsense.
He stopped too, rubbing her back as he frowned through the darkening field to the road, which still seemed an inordinate distance away.
“We should have got there by now,” he said, turning to judge how far they’d come.
His frown deepened, and not only from the stress of trying to do math.
“Amelia,” he said with a calm that sounded as cold as the sensation creeping through his blood. “Look.” He pointed behind her.
Amelia glanced over her shoulder, then abruptly stiffened with alarm.
She turned slowly to stare back across the field to Ravenscroft Manor.
The house wasn’t hard to miss, considering it stood no more than one hundred yards away, an ominous bulk looming against the storm-colored evening sky like a troll who had been watching with amusement as they tried to escape its clutches.
Several of the lamplit windows winked at them.
Smoke fumed from chimneys, and the gargoyles sneered.
“Oh dear,” Amelia said.
“That’s one way of putting it,” Caleb countered grimly. He himself could think of several words that would be more eloquent. “I’m no athlete, but I know it doesn’t take me ten minutes to go such a short distance, even in dress shoes. We’re magicked.”
Without further discussion, Amelia strode toward the house with the attitude of a one-woman army intent on storming it.
But after half a dozen steps she abruptly stopped, staggering.
Caleb’s muscles automatically tensed to catch her if she fell, although she was in fact too far away for him to do so.
Steadying herself, she reached out, slapping at the air experimentally.
“Ow!” she yelped, snatching back her hand and shaking it with pain.
Striding to her side at once, Caleb took her hand in both of his, inspecting it for harm. “There’s an invisible barrier,” she told him. “We’re trapped.”
“Sh,” he said gently, brushing his thumb against a tiny scrape that looked days old.
She did not appear in need of soothing, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him from doing it anyway.
“Everything’s going to be all right. But you must take more care with yourself, Meely.
No matter how capable and brave you are, you can’t just go around slapping the sky. ”
Amelia scoffed at this, but Caleb noticed with a little flutter in his heart that she did not take her hand from his. So he bent to kiss her fingers once—twice— What teaspoon? What magic? Why not just stay here, kissing her until his lips tired?
He couldn’t blame himself for the sweet, romantic reverie. It was Amelia’s fault, what with the way she emitted such a beautiful moon magic from her very being, magic that tasted like wine, and that would revive his flagging energy if he kissed her just one more…
Stop, growled the small part of his brain that bore the burden of professionalism. Sadly, Caleb knew that it was right. Releasing Amelia’s hand so he would not be further tempted, he turned abruptly, kicking the air.
A spark of pain flashed through him as his shoe’s tip impacted forcefully with a hard surface. “Damn!” he cursed, hopping and clutching his agonized foot. Amelia watched him with little sympathy.
“Now that you have proven in a proper, manly way what I already proved about the air’s solidity,” she said, “might I dare suggest that we’re caught in a thaumaturgic bubble?
There must be an active fey line here.” Setting her hands on her hips, she frowned at their surroundings as if she could chastise the enchanted minerals out from beneath the earth.
Caleb set his foot down and attempted to look somber, or at least adult. “Perhaps. Or perhaps something else is buried out here, like the pocket watch was.”
“Why would someone do that?” Amelia asked.
“Does it matter right now?”