Chapter Twenty-Three #2
In her cozy, book-lined flat on Norham Road, she dropped her suitcase without another glance at it and, shedding clothes as she walked through the lounge into the tiny bathroom, she drew herself a bath.
Sinking into its warm, rose-perfumed water, sighing wearily, she closed her eyes.
The darkness behind them felt dusty, cloying, with a ghostlike memory of Ravenscroft Manor.
Only after it finally cleared into fresh, unstained peace did she emerge from the water.
Drying herself, she dressed in her favorite lace negligee, then made a cup of tea.
Dark, fragrant tea in her best mug, with no one watching her drink it. And a biscuit on the side just to complete the experience of heaven.
Leaning against the kitchen bench, she watched sunlight venture over her books, listened to dim sounds from the city, and tried to ignore two students arguing on the street outside.
Slowly, warily, her mind began to emerge from the haze that had been ensconcing it ever since she left Ottersock’s office.
I just quit being a professor! The memory hit her like a punch to the stomach.
Yes, I really did, she answered herself, smiling into her tea.
No more nasty gossip from male colleagues.
No more scorn from her faculty head.
She might even consider wearing a pretty floral dress, now that she didn’t need to present a scrupulously professional front at all times in an effort to deter gossip and scorn.
Granted, she probably wouldn’t be able to afford such a dress, considering she’d just relinquished her income.
Indeed, she’d have to leave this dear little flat…
leave Oxford entirely…perhaps even return home to her parents…
get a job as a receptionist…and learn by necessity how to giggle just to survive…
She was on the verge of a marriage of convenience and significant hyperventilation when the doorbell rang.
She literally ran to answer it. Caleb stood on the doorstep, of course, all smiles and the merest hint of a swagger.
He smelled of fine cologne, and his suit must have cost an entire year’s salary—although the tie was crooked, like an invitation. Amelia’s nerves began to hum excitedly.
“Um,” Caleb said, his eyes widening as he imbibed the sight of her lace negligee (which did not take him long, since it was very skimpy), her bare feet, and her loose, still-damp hair.
Amelia considered slamming the door shut and running away to hide inside a high-necked, heavy black gown, but clutched all her courage to her, along with clutching the edge of the door, and did not move.
“Hello, Caleb,” she said calmly.
“Um…I have something for you.” He looked up into her face with some effort.
“If it’s a written apology from Professor Ottersock…” Amelia began, but stopped as Caleb reached into his jacket pocket, for she wasn’t exactly sure how she would finish that sentence. The question proved moot, however, when he brought out a small black safe bag and handed it to her.
Amelia gasped as she felt the contents’ shape through the material. “My teaspoon!” she exclaimed delightedly. Then she frowned. “You stole a valuable thaumaturgic artifact from Professor Ottersock.”
Caleb shrugged and nodded.
“He’ll fire you!”
“No, he won’t,” Caleb answered lazily. “I quit.”
Amelia’s mouth fell open. She hastily closed it, but not before an incredulous laugh escaped. “You—what—why?”
Caleb tilted his upper body toward her so as to answer in a low, deep voice that transformed the humming of Amelia’s nerves into a full operatic chorus and sent a blush over her cheeks. “Where you go, I go too.”
“But your career is so important to you,” she argued. “Please tell Ottersock that you’ve changed your mind.”
“No.” He smiled as if abandoning the dream that had guided him all through his youth were a matter of little consequence.
His eyes lit with that smile, turning them into the most enchanted summer.
“Don’t look so disconcerted, Meely. I only studied history so I could stay with my best friend.
If you’d chosen to study geography instead, we’d currently be knee-deep in a muddy tidal pool somewhere. ”
“Oh,” Amelia said blankly. If her blush grew any hotter, the negligee would burn right off her (which, she suspected, might have been part of his plan). “Um.”
Caleb’s eyes twinkled, for he knew that he was charming, and he loved it.
“I’m seriously proud of you for resigning.
And even more so that you did so for the sake of self-love.
You should love yourself—you are very, very lovable, Amelia.
” His smile deepened, and the twinkles became sparks that sent thrilling little electric shocks through Amelia’s body.
“Besides,” he added, “I’ve been so bored.
If it weren’t for you, I’d have quit months ago. ”
“But what will you do? Caleb, my dear friend, I admire you in so many ways, but you’re not the best at planning.”
He leaned against the doorframe, hands in his trouser pockets, wholly unoffended by this criticism. “I have a plan. The first thing on it…well, the second thing…is to buy two typewriters. I’m going to write a novel, Meely. I know a publisher, Bernard McDonald, who is keen to buy one from me.”
Amelia’s eyes narrowed. “Bang-Bang McDonald? Didn’t he put the dean’s carriage upside down in the middle of the lacrosse field and blame you for it?”
“Yes, and now he owes me.”
“Hm. Well, that is a good plan. You’ll make a marvelous novelist, and publishing surely pays better than teaching. But why do you need two typewriters?”
“One’s for you, so you can write your future bestselling book about the teaspoon.”
“Oh.” Amelia looked down at the safe bag in her hand, then up again at Caleb, and somehow within that one and a half seconds her love for him grew a thousandfold. “Oh,” she said again, which was oddly more eloquent than real words would have been.
“Is that not a genius idea?” Caleb asked, a little cocky, a little shy.
Amelia nodded. “Mm-hm,” she managed to say.
Inside her brain, several thoughts were already coming up with chapter headings, while several more were designing various experiments she could perform.
Caleb watched her with a fond smile, no doubt all too well aware of this mental activity.
Amelia forced herself back into the conversation and frowned at him with a teacherly habit that would probably take years to break.
“If this was second on your list, what’s first? ”
Caleb’s smile vanished. He straightened away from the doorframe.
“Er, well, yes, well, I’m not quite prepared for that yet,” he admitted, rubbing his hands up and down the expensive cloth of his trousers.
“I need to rent a marquee, you see, and get together a string quartet, and then there’s the difficulty of finding three dozen roses at this time of year. ”
“Right,” Amelia said, blinking bemusedly. “That sounds very…extravagant.”
He bristled. “Of course it is. A man can’t just propose marriage while standing on a doorst—”
He was abruptly silenced due to Amelia leaping on him.
She threw her arms around his neck in a manner that her mother would vehemently denounce as contradictory to Tarrant dignity.
But Amelia did not think of her mother in that moment.
Her feet left the ground, and Caleb, with a joyous laugh, wrapped his arms around her so that she was safe against him.
He walked them both inside, kicking the door shut behind him.
“Sorry,” Amelia began. But she proceeded no further before he was kissing her.
The flutters fluttered, and sparkles sparked, and Amelia wrapped her legs around him as he strode across the room at a speed that felt wildly thrilling after all the years of waiting and wishing.
Pressing her back against a random wall, he kissed her so thoroughly, her bones seemed to melt.
Amelia could have stayed there all day, kissing the time away.
But Caleb soon advanced the conversation, setting her on her feet, extending his kisses along her jaw and against the shy, sensitive place behind her ear.
Amelia’s only contribution now was a moan of pleasure, but this seemed sufficient for Caleb, and she felt him smile against her skin.
By the time he had kissed down the length of her neck, she’d made her second monumental decision of the day.
Stepping back, she looked at Caleb with all the love and longing that had been archived in the secret recesses of her heart for so many years.
His eyes darkened in response. Cupping her face with one hand, he stroked a thumb across her cheek, as if she were a priceless antique whose magic he yearned to experience.
He said nothing; but then, words never had proved capable of encapsulating the depth of friendship between them.
Taking his hand, Amelia silently led him into her bedroom.
Two weeks ago, she’d have derided this as an unwise decision.
Before Ravenscroft Manor, she’d have suggested taking their time.
Had the Hereford teaspoon never come into her life, she’d still be standing with him on the doorstep right now, discussing publishing schedules and the cost of typewriters.
Or worse, continuing to listen in demure silence as Professor Ottersock berated her.
Furthermore, a small, well-trained part of her mind began fretting that she’d not yet offered him a cup of tea, but she ignored it.
Instead, the minute they entered the bedroom, she pulled Caleb against her and resumed kissing him.
He tasted better than tea, even the Earl Grey variety.
And judging from the passion of his response, he did not regret her lack of proper hostessing.
Their hands, which had been playing together for two decades, got down to business at once.
Buttons were released, shirts removed, shoes heedlessly thrown across the room.
Nakedness being achieved in short order, the hands then drifted in an enchanted dream, causing a thousand little flares of sensation that had Amelia gasping.
She stepped backward, drawing Caleb with her, until she met the edge of her bed.
But then he stopped, holding her still. He looked over her shoulder, and a confused, uncertain frown tumbled across his brow.
“Only one bed,” he said.
Amelia laughed. “Of course only one. Did you think I’d have bunks?”
“I mean, a bed for only one person. It’s awfully narrow, Meely.”
She glanced back at it, taking in the neat brown counterpane, the patchwork quilt folded at the end, the single heavy pillow, and she frowned too.
Her bed had always been just a place to sleep—she seldom even read there, for that was deleterious to healthful sleep patterns—but now she appreciated that it could fairly be described as the most unenticing bed in existence.
“It’s all I’ve needed,” she said.
“You’re going to need something a lot larger before I’m through with you,” Caleb told her in a husky whisper.
To which there was only one reasonable reply. Turning away from him, Amelia began yanking the counterpane from the bed.
“What are you doing?” Caleb asked, laughing.
Amelia gave him a hot, fierce look. “You told me that you’d never shared a bed with anyone before. Show me what you do instead.” And throwing the counterpane, quilt, and pillow onto the carpeted floor, she presented him with a mess cozy opportunity.
“Oh, Amelia,” he said in such adoring tones, it was fortunate there was now soft bedding on the floor, for she veritably swooned.
They went down together in a sweetness of tangling limbs and tangling tongues.
“I love you,” Amelia whispered. Or perhaps it was Caleb who did.
At that point, there felt little difference.
All the promises he’d made the night before, while standing on a moonlit path in the middle of England, arousing her to pleasure with simple descriptions and tempting smiles, he kept now.
But the experience of it was so much more intense than Amelia had imagined.
(And she’d done quite a lot of imagining during the train journey back to Oxford.) She’d never guessed how her very soul would stretch even as her body did to accommodate him.
She’d not thought that “slow” would involve long, luxurious moments of just gazing at each other as they reveled in the experience of being united.
And while she had anticipated Caleb’s joyful tears, she’d not believed herself capable of them also.
Together they wept, and smiled, and whispered compliments, all jumbled up in an intimate treasuring that was so lovely it almost hurt.
By the time they reached the “fast” part, Amelia was in such a haze of soft delight that every sensation felt like an electrical storm, scorching, exhilarating.
And when they climaxed, she cried out Caleb’s name just as he’d promised she would, regardless of any neighbors who might be trying to enjoy the peace of their gardens at that moment.
Amelia had never known such perfect freedom.
Sagging into the quilts, laughing in delight, she closed her eyes to relish the fluttering aftermath.
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
“I suppose that, since you continue to insist on the nickname, I won’t complain,” Caleb told her, grinning. And then he kissed his way down her body, settling between her legs, where he employed his tongue to show her just how good a friend he could be.