Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
Although the cat—Duke—was already out of the bag—the book—I went upstairs and washed my face and hair to get the remainder of the dust off me.
The dust had worked its magic already and was now powerless.
Unfortunately, that power had been spent on one of Duke’s books and not on the book that I needed now—the book that had been stolen.
When I returned to the library, Duke remained sound asleep on the sofa. But he had company now. Koshka lay curled on his chest, his small gray head tucked under Duke’s chin.
Intellectually, I knew having Duke here was a huge mistake, and if I didn’t get him back in his book soon, I could be in even more trouble than I was already.
Once he was awake, I’d send him home, where he belonged.
But for a long moment I watched Duke and Koshka, letting myself luxuriate in the simple, stupid joy of being in the same room again with the only man I’d ever loved.
And my cat.
“My boys,” I said softly, smiling.
Koshka briefly lifted his head and looked at me.
“Don’t wake him up,” I whispered as I sat on the floor in front of the fireplace to air-dry my hair. “I know you missed him. But don’t get used to him because he’s leaving as soon as he wakes up.”
To that, Koshka hissed at me, then put his head down again, closed his moss green eyes, and fell asleep.
At some point, I must’ve fallen asleep too, because a few hours later, I woke with a start.
Disoriented, I looked around and found myself in a bed. My bed? I switched on the little lamp on the side table.
Yes, my bed in my room that overlooked the garden.
In the mornings, silvery light poured in through the windows, but now the windows were dark.
Pale blue walls and built-in bookcases painted white.
A queen-size bed, more than big enough for me and Koshka, who somehow took up half the bed every night even though he only weighed nine pounds.
A glass door led to the balcony and the little secret garden I made up there of potted plants and hand-painted fairy houses.
It was all so familiar, so peaceful, that for one moment I thought that maybe I’d dreamed the whole crazy evening.
I dreamed about Duke all the time anyway.
If it had all been a dream, that meant Duke wasn’t really in the house, which meant I wasn’t about to get on Dr.Fanshawe’s bad side for all eternity and be expelled from the Ink and Paper Coven—and possibly from the International Order as well.
I threw off the covers and called for Koshka. He usually slept with me, glued to my side or curled up between my feet. I checked my bedside clock. Nearly three in the morning. Breakfast was hours away so she should’ve been there.
“Koshka?” I called a little louder. Mrs. Turner had hung my bathrobe on the back of the closet door. I put it on and crept out of my room, heart pounding.
Silently, I made my way down the dark stairs to the library. Peeking in, I saw…nothing. I inched inside and turned on the table lamp.
By lamplight, the Pilcrow House library looked like a professor’s secret reading room—the sort of shadowy place where one is compelled to study alchemy, the transmigration of souls, or how to slay vampires. In other words, it looked perfectly normal to me. Maybe I had dreamed the whole thing.
As I was about to let out a sigh of relief, Duke waltzed through the door with a teacup in one hand and a piece of cake in the other.
“Duke!”
“Hello, darling,” he said as he strolled over to the fireplace. “Glad you finally woke up. Now I can kiss you properly.” He bent and brushed his lips against mine, then smiled. “There. That’s better. How was your nap? Shouldn’t you still be asleep, love? It’s barely the witching hour.”
The old carriage clock on the mantel chimed three a.m.
“I…” I stared at him for a long time and for multiple reasons.
Reason one—he looked incredible. Sometime while I’d been asleep, he’d woken up and changed into a new suit.
A pin-stripe charcoal gray three-piece with a light blue button-down shirt.
He wasn’t wearing the jacket or a tie now, so his collar was open at the throat, and I admit most of my staring was concentrated on that area.
But mainly I was staring at him because he was there, in my house.
Duke waved his hand, beckoning me to continue my sentence.
“You were saying, my love?” he asked.
“You are here. I didn’t dream it.”
“Yes and no. I am here. But you were dreaming about me. And it must have been a good one, the way you said my name in your sleep.” He sipped more tea. “I came to shortly after midnight, and you were asleep right there.” He pointed to the rug that lay in front of the fireplace.
“How did I get into my bed?”
“I carried you,” he said as if it were the most ridiculous question he’d ever been asked. “Mrs. Turner found a fresh suit for me in the attic—”
“You carried me to bed?”
He gave me that wicked grin of his.
“Can’t fathom why you’re so surprised. It wasn’t the first time I’ve carried you off to bed. Won’t be the last either, I hope. Right now if you’d like?” He finished his cake with one final bite.
“No, no, we’re not doing this,” I said. “You can’t be here.”
“I am here, so clearly I can be here. You might think I shouldn’t be here, but that’s another matter entirely, love.”
“No love. No darling. None of that. No sugar, sweetness, angel, poppet, pet.”
“I have never once called you ‘poppet.’ I will, however, upon request.”
“Duke,” I said, putting my hands on his shoulders.
“Ah, this is more like it.” He wrapped his large hands around my waist and leaned down for another kiss.
“Halt.” I put my hand over his mouth. “You have to go home immediately.”
He took my right wrist into his hand—very gently, I might add, maddeningly gently—and then kissed the center of my palm, making intimate and downright knee-buckling eye contact the entire time.
He lifted his head and sighed. “I have missed you ordering me around like a lapdog,” he said, “almost as much as I’ve missed ignoring those orders.”
“You can’t—”
Mrs. Turner entered then, wheeling the tea trolley. She bobbed a curtsy to Duke. This was the dark side of having a very English, very Victorian housekeeper. Duke’s merest wish was her command.
“More tea and cake, Your Grace,” she said.
“I do love these black-and-white cakes.” Duke took one off the trolley and devoured it in two bites. “My compliments to the chef.”
“Those are Little Debbie Zebra Cakes from the grocery store,” Rainy said.
“I don’t know this Little Debbie,” Duke said. “But she is a giant in my eyes. Thank you, Mrs. Turner. That will be all.”
She curtsied again and left us alone in the library.
Duke poured another cuppa for himself. “Tea?” he offered.
“How can you drink tea at a time like this?”
“Darling, I drank tea during the zeppelin raids of 1915. A proper English gentleman can drink tea under any circumstances.”
“Your author was American.”
His dark eyes widened. “No need to be insulting.” He pulled out a chair at the reading table and faced me. “Come, sit on our lap and tell us what’s troubling you.”
“For starters, you are here, and you shouldn’t be. That’s troubling me. Second, I am not sitting on your lap. We broke up.”
“Did we? I thought all that was only for show? Keeping the bosses happy when really you were biding your time, waiting for a chance to be with me again. And voilà.” He gestured to himself before stretching out his long legs, crossing them at the ankle, and then clasping his hands behind his head, the very picture of arrogant entitlement.
“Stop being gorgeous,” I ordered him, pointing at his face.
“You first.”
“You cannot be here. Okay? I hate to speak in small words, but you have to leave. Right. Now. Yes?”
“No.”
“No is the wrong answer. You have failed this test. You are now expelled.”
I started from the library and went to the kitchen, where Mrs. Turner was fussing over the next round of tea and cakes. “Duke is cut off,” I told her. “No more tea and absolutely no cakes. Not even a cookie.”
“Very sorry, Miss March, but a duke outranks a mere commoner.”
“Are you calling me a commoner?”
“I am not calling you a commoner, Miss March. You simply are a commoner.”
“Good help is so hard to find!”
I jogged back to the library, where “His Grace” was holding my cat in his arms like a baby and staring up at the portrait over the fireplace.
“Rainy, who is that man above your mantel? He’s new, isn’t he? Never seen him before, and I’m intimidated by his striking good looks.”
“Pops gave me that painting for Christmas. His name is LeVar Burton, and he hosted a television show called Reading Rainbow. He’s basically the patron saint of Book Witches.”
I gave Mr. Burton the traditional salute—palms together and then opening them as if my hands were a book or butterfly wings.
“Should I be jealous?” Duke asked.
“He’s married, and you’re leaving. Now. ”
“You’re being quite hasty, darling,” Duke said. “You hired me, after all.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“But I did,” Mrs. Turner said, carrying in another tray of Zebra Cakes.
I looked at him. I looked at Mrs. Turner.
To both, I said, “You’re fired.”
—
They ignored this news, of course.
Mrs. Turner poured two cups of tea. Duke took one graciously. I took the other one far less graciously.
“Hello, I fired you both, remember? No offense. Either I fire you both or I get fired, and I really don’t want to get fired. I’m a Book Witch. There’s no other job in the world that calls for the only skill set I have.”
“Allow me to remind you,” Duke said, “I never quit a case once I start it, and I’ve never failed to solve a mystery. So you could do worse than me.”
He was right. You could no more stop a fictional detective from working a case than you could knock the moon out of orbit with a peashooter. The odds of me solving the mystery increased exponentially with a fictional detective on the case.
However…
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. Do you know how much trouble you got me into?”