Chapter Two
If you want things to flow easily,
you have to not give a dam.
Blazing Trails , W.H. Jackson
At first, Gabriel thought his senses were exploding as Elodie reached under her clothing and stroked her bare skin. So this was it, then. The hemorrhagic stroke he’d been expecting since the moment an eighteen-year-old Miss Elodie Hughes walked into Advanced Thaumaturgic Cartography dressed in white lace and with violets in her unbound hair, looking like a Pre-Raphaelite nymph who had strayed into Oxford and decided to take up academia for a lark—and then promptly tripped over her own feet, crashing against his desk and sending his tidy stack of textbooks tumbling.
To say nothing of his mental discipline.
He’d never habituated to her. (Although, to be fair, that was like trying to habituate to a tornado.) Even in that first encounter, he’d failed to find words while she, apparently suffering the opposite problem, had restacked his books in entirely the wrong order, and joked about declensions, and left violets scattered all over his feet. And matters hadn’t improved since. One glance from those amiable green eyes, and his prodigious vocabulary simply went poof vaporized. The only wonder was that his health had held up as long as it had.
Therefore it was most perplexing, this desire to slip first one finger, then two, up her shirtwaist sleeve to soothe her aroused skin and make the words my husband come shuddering from her lips.
Fortunately, before he could, the shock wave from the actual explosion sent him stumbling.
Ensorcelled air hurtled past, shoving Elodie against him. Gabriel reacted without thought, catching her in his arms and holding her close, one hand cupped protectively against the back of her head. For a moment she stiffened, then clutched him as they were buffeted by raw thaumaturgic power.
Gabriel’s bones rattled, but he remained firm. Only twice in his life had he lost composure: after his cousin Devon had been sent to America when they were children, depriving him of his sole friend; and on his wedding night with Elodie, when he found himself inexplicably breathless and trembling as he watched her sleep. If they survived this moment, he would tell her—
“Bloody hell!”
The pained exclamation ruptured his thoughts. Looking up, he saw his assistant, Henry Beetleson, sprawled on the ground, surrounded by the shattered pieces of a hazel and copper dowsing rod. Blood slipped from a gash on the young man’s forehead, and blue sparks of magic flickered over it like tiny vampirical fireflies.
“Sorry, Professor,” he groaned.
Gabriel realized the propulsive energy had vanished abruptly, leaving quiet like a long, heavy exhalation in its wake. Making a rapid survey of the scene, he comprehended that Beetleson had somehow caused the dowsing rod to detonate, releasing the thaumaturgic energy stored within it from previous use. Other than the student himself, no one on the station platform seemed hurt; indeed, they were watching the scene with mild interest. This was Oxford, after all, where the university’s presence meant that at any moment a deadly enchanted bird, possessed artifact, or over-caffeinated student might escape and go on a rampage. The explosion of a thaumaturgic device represented nothing special; all that remained was to see if those in its blast range would turn into flower bushes or large cuckoo clocks.
Frowning, Gabriel stepped away from Elodie—then discovered his body had ignored that command and was still holding her close, reveling in her soft, floral-scented warmth. Baffled, aggravated, he dispatched a stern disciplinary note to himself.
At the same moment, Elodie exhaled. As the gentle gust of air brushed against his throat, the disciplinary note went up in flames.
Mercifully for both his health and dignity, she tugged herself free. “Is everyone all right?” she asked, looking around in a rapid manner that prevented him from examining her expression beyond its blush. He could not miss, though, how excitement illuminated her entire being. “That was fascinating !”
“Hm,” Gabriel said, crossing his arms tightly, determined not to evidence the fascination he also felt. A man couldn’t just go around being keen. It was the kind of thing that led, on one hand, to getting academic degrees, but on the other to being told, For God’s sake, shut up for five minutes about alluvial plains .
It also led to marrying a woman who clambered over hedges to avoid being seen when you walked past.
“I wish I had a thaumometer on me,” Elodie was enthusing. Everything about her seemed in motion: hair, hands, intelligence. “Such atmospheric excitation due to the propulsive reverberation of intensate kinetic thaumaturgic energy is not usually—oh, hello! I say, do I know you?”
At this abrupt swerve in subject, Gabriel turned to see whom she addressed, and his expression became so dour, students still abed two miles away shuddered instinctively.
A woman stood before them, dark-eyed, dark-haired, and dressed in a sober traveling suit. She had a small leather suitcase in one hand, a book in the other, and such an aura of dignified unflappability that Gabriel saw Elodie grow calm within its influence, even while his own nerves began to twitch. She scanned Gabriel from head to foot, her demeanor suggesting that, if he was experiencing some problem, she would fix it (whether he wished her to or not) and then, as a helpful bonus, advise him on how exactly he went wrong. Determining that he was uninjured, she turned with a polite smile to Elodie.
“We haven’t met,” she said before Gabriel could think of a way to stop her. “I know I would remember that.”
“Amelia,” Gabriel interrupted brusquely. “What are you doing here?”
Blinking long, thick lashes, she turned the smile back toward him. “Well, this may seem incredible, considering our location, but I’m waiting for a train. I noticed the disturbance and wanted to check you were unhurt.”
“I’m unhurt.”
“That’s a relief. So…”
“So goodbye,” Gabriel said brusquely.
Amelia ignored this with perfect equanimity. “Are you going to introduce me to the lady?”
Gabriel’s jaw clenched. But Elodie extended her hand without hesitation. “Professor Tarrant,” she said.
“How interesting,” Amelia remarked. “That’s my name too.”
From somewhere in the crowd behind them came the murmur, “Oh God, there’s three of them.” Amelia took Elodie’s offered hand and shook it firmly. “I beg your pardon. I don’t know what has become of my manners.”
Elodie laughed. “Manners are for people who don’t have anything more interesting to say.”
That brightened Amelia’s smile. “I’m Miss Amelia Tarrant, a history professor here at Oxford,” she said. “Also, Gabriel’s sister. And you must be his w—”
“No time to talk,” Gabriel said, grasping Elodie’s elbow and turning her away from his sister’s fascinated scrutiny. “I’ll see you at Aunt Mary’s Sunday dinner.”
“Nice to meet you!” Elodie called over her shoulder. Then she snatched her elbow from Gabriel’s grip, speared him with a look that made it clear meeting him had been the opposite of nice, and redirected her attention to Beetleson, who was sitting up, wiping the blood from his forehead. Concern suffused her face. “Oh dear, are you all right, lad?”
The lad (actually a twenty-three-year-old man with a master’s degree) gave her a wan, piteous look. Then, noticing Gabriel’s frown, he went from pale to bright scarlet in what was obviously a very rapid heartbeat.
“F-fine,” he stammered—inaccurately, since in addition to his head wound, he was on the verge of being suspended from Oxford, or by his ankles over a pit of snakes, whichever Gabriel decided was sufficient punishment for his endangering Elodie’s everyone’s life with his careless handling of thaumaturgic equipment. “I don’t understand what happened. I only twisted the dowsing rod’s branches so I could fit it into the pack better.”
“Twisted them? Without first ensuring there was no residual energy contained in the rod?” Gabriel was furious. “You should know better than that, Beetleson. It’s basic safety.”
“Sorry, Professor,” Beetleson murmured dolefully.
“Accidents happen,” Elodie said, casting a chastising frown at Gabriel before she handed Beetleson a lace-trimmed handkerchief and winced with gentle sympathy as he pressed it to his forehead.
Gabriel bristled. “Accidents certainly do not happen. Not with my students. Beetleson is wholly responsible for both the explosion and the fact he now has magic eating at his face.”
“What?!” Beetleson exclaimed in horror.
“Maybe he was in a hurry,” Elodie suggested.
“Eating at my face?” Beetleson scrubbed his cheeks and then wailed, aghast, when blue sparks shot out, buzzing as they formed a swarm and rushed him again.
“Even a child knows to perform a fundamental Hesselthop maneuver to safely ground and discharge thaumaturgic residuum before reconfiguring a thaumaturgic dowsing rod,” Gabriel said. “Beetleson’s ineptitude cannot be excused.”
“Oh my God!” Beetleson could be heard crying from within the swarm.
Elodie set her hands on her hips. “You’re being too harsh.”
Gabriel crossed his arms. “You’re being too lenient. People could have died.”
“But they didn’t.”
“But they could have.”
“I’m going to die!” Beetleson howled.
“Is he?” Amelia asked worriedly, but no one noticed. Elodie and Gabriel were staring at each other for longer than they had in all nine years of their acquaintance. Elodie’s cheeks glowed with hectic color, and Gabriel breathed more than was advisable for the maintenance of a sober reputation. Several people in the crowd whispered to one another that any moment now someone was going to get either slapped or kissed.
Thankfully, Motthers stepped forward in the nick of time, mustache quaking.
“Professor Tarrant,” he squeaked. “And, er, Professor Tarrant. Sorry. The train is here.”
—
Elodie looked away from Gabriel, releasing a breath she’d not only been holding but had tied up and gagged too. There was no point trying to compel her nerves into tranquility; she might as well attempt meditation in a hurricane. Gabriel was so damned vexing , the most arrogant man she’d ever known!
(He’d also embraced her, risking himself to protect her! And his sister clearly knew that Elodie was his wife, which suggested that he’d mentioned her to his family! )
Oh yes, and there had been an explosion.
Preoccupied with these italics, Elodie only vaguely noted that the other travelers on the platform had begun bustling toward the train. Motthers was removing pages from his clipboard and handing them to her; she folded them absentmindedly and handed them back. Amelia, turning slowly on a heel to inspect the lingering blue tinge in the atmosphere, murmured something about “thaumaturgic residue,” but Elodie only dimly registered the words. He’d mentioned her. To his family!
“What a mess,” Gabriel grumbled.
Elodie managed to focus then, supposing he was about to continue their argument. Her stomach clenched. But in fact his gaze was on Beetleson, who remained hunched among the dowsing rod’s remnants, trying frantically to brush away the glimmering cloud of magic that now engulfed his entire head.
“I want a full report of this episode on my desk, Monday morning,” Gabriel told the young man, his voice like a dormant volcano: quiet, calm, but with the potential to erupt with terrifying effect at any moment. “Accompanied by an essay on Newton’s first law of motion.”
“Aghhhh,” Beetleson replied.
“Motthers, help the poor boy get to the infirmary,” Elodie said without thinking—then did think, and winced at the realization she’d just consigned herself to going on the assignment alone with Gabriel. But it was too late; Motthers had already dropped his clipboard and shrugged off his emergency response kit with such an eager haste Elodie would have been offended had the train’s conductor calling, “All aboard!” not distracted her.
“Should I try to follow after you tomorrow?” he asked, making it sound like he was proposing a trek up Mt. Everest.
Elodie frowned as the question reverberated through her tangled nerves. “I don’t know,” she murmured, and turned to discuss the situation with Gabriel—only to find he’d picked up his suitcase in one hand, his ER kit in the other, and was striding for the train.
Just like that.
Elodie glared after him. Beside her, Amelia gave a heavy sigh that sounded a lot like Elodie’s heart felt. “He’s so uptight,” the woman said. “I can’t remember the last time he relaxed, let alone laughed.”
“I saw him smile once,” Elodie said, then immediately shut down her memory of the moment before it triggered a catastrophic tsunami of emotions. She looked around for her suitcase, which was in fact sitting by her feet, along with Motthers’s ER kit. Motthers himself had already gone to help Beetleson, apparently thinking that, if he didn’t get an answer from Elodie, that was as good as a no. Her brain felt too askew to manage the decision, so she just hauled the kit onto her back, lifted the suitcase, and tucked one side of her hair behind her ear in lieu of a proper coiffure. Then she nodded to Amelia.
“Sorry to dash, but it really was nice meeting you.”
“And you,” Amelia replied, then glanced at Beetleson. “Is the student going to be all right?”
“Oh, he’ll be fine once the magic dissipates,” Elodie said. Then she leaned closer to add furtively, “Besides, this fright will teach the lad not to be so careless about basic safety rules when it comes to thaumaturgic tools.”
Amelia blinked for one startled moment, then laughed. “I’m off to Hereford,” she said, “but when I get back, perhaps we might have tea? It’s no concern if you’d rather not.”
“I would like that indeed…” Elodie said, but her voice trailed off as she noticed Gabriel across the platform. He’d paused in boarding the first class carriage and was frowning at her, no doubt wondering if she intended to catch the train. For a moment, she considered again not doing so. Spending several days in the countryside with her husband might be a secret wish of her heart, but it was also one that only the most devious of fairy godmothers would make come true.
And yet, although she often failed at being dignified, she was in every other respect professional. Whatever her personal issues with Gabriel, she was going to do her work, and do it well, like a grown-up. So there!
“Well, good luck,” Amelia said. And watching her brother as he entered the train, she added, “I’ve a feeling you’ll need it.”
“Oh?”
“It’s going to be a disaster zone.”
“That’s the job,” Elodie said.
“The job?” Amelia smiled wryly. “Oh yes, that too.”
“Final call!” the conductor announced. Elodie dashed for the train. She had just entered when Motthers began frantically hollering her name. Pausing, Elodie turned to see the student waving his clipboard at her. “Professor, wait! I forgot to tell you! It’s urgent! There’s another problem—!”
Toot!
The conductor shut the carriage door, and as Elodie tumbled into a seat, the train began its journey toward magic.