Chapter Eight
Geography maps the space between mountains
and the space between people, with all its
sinkholes, storms, and dangerous magic.
Blazing Trails , W.H. Jackson
“This is not a problem,” Elodie said. “I’m sure we can get a good handle on it.”
“Are you insane?” Gabriel stared at her with amazed disbelief.
“No, I’m saying you need to get a good handle on those horns. You’re not being firm enough. Pull harder.”
Gabriel frowned. The woman might appear angelic in her white dress and the pearly halo of her hair, but Gabriel would swear she was an unkempt devil sent specifically to vex him. “I am pulling with perfectly adequate force,” he said. “It’s not my fault the creature won’t budge. You need to push harder.”
“I’m trying,” she averred. “Besides, a proper gentleman wouldn’t ask a lady to put her hands on a goat’s rear end.”
“You teach male university students. I’m sure you can manage one billy goat.”
“And I’m sure you know all about not budging.” She exhaled an impatient sigh. “Look, we’re professional scientists, we should be able to use teamwork.”
A moment of silence followed as they both considered where teamwork had got them in the past: into this god-awful marriage.
“Push harder,” Gabriel said.
“Pull harder,” Elodie said at the same time. “Angle it more toward the door, and I’ll give a really big shove.”
“Hm,” Gabriel murmured doubtfully, but nevertheless wrangled the creature’s horns as directed. Elodie leaned more heavily at the opposite end, putting all her weight into the effort.
Just then, a whistle sounded in the corridor beyond. “Baby!” came Tegan Parry’s bright, coaxing call.
The goat reacted instantly. With a sanctimonious mehh and a kick of his hooves , he skipped away, tugging Gabriel with him and causing Elodie to fall forward onto her hands and knees on the torn, goat-slobbered mattress.
“Ugh,” she said with disgust.
“Ugh,” Gabriel agreed as he released the beast, stumbling to stay upright himself. Baby disappeared through the doorway, and a moment later the grinning figure of Tegan Parry replaced him.
“All right there?” she asked cheerfully, as if goat wrestling were one of the fun entertainments provided free of charge by the Queen Mab.
Elodie glared up at the young woman through a tumble of hair, but Gabriel saw the exact moment she remembered the Second Rule and hastily transformed her expression into a civil smile. “Just fine,” she said.
“Oh dear, Baby has made a mess of that old mattress,” Tegan remarked, then actually laughed . The jolly sound served to remind Gabriel yet again why he disapproved of other people’s sense of humor. What they found amusing was, on the whole, utterly inexplicable, whereas he lived, breathed, and got science degrees for the explicable.
“Lucky the wily old scoundrel didn’t jump up onto the bed!” Tegan joked.
“Yes, very lucky,” Elodie said, her smile almost viciously courteous as she got to her feet. “Thank goodness Dr. Tarrant and I still have somewhere to sleep. In the sole bed. Together.”
She cast a black look at Gabriel, but he averted his gaze, instead frowning into the safety of the middle distance. This provided a clear signal that the conversation was over, so he found himself confused and annoyed when Tegan spoke again.
“Mr. Jennings mentioned that you were going out early tomorrow. I’ll leave a packed breakfast in the kitchen for you. You should see if you can find traces of the pwcca while you’re out there. That upstart town Llandrindod might have fancy water, but we here in D?lylleuad are even better when it comes to—”
A sudden flash of lightning blazed through the room, making her flinch. Gabriel automatically shifted his gaze to the window, prepared for whatever hazards it might reveal. But all he saw was a lamplit reflection of his wife against the darkness—which, frankly, represented hazard enough.
BOOM!
As thunder roared, Gabriel looked at Elodie, and she met his gaze. The storm’s worsening, her expression said.
Don’t worry, his answered.
I’ll worry if I want, her eyebrows argued.
It would be a waste of your energy, his mouth conveyed with a shrug.
Energy is only wasted when it’s not used, her entire body retorted, becoming as stiff as an exclamation mark. Much like wedding vows.
Tegan, oblivious to this professional discourse, gave a cheerful laugh. “Autumn is such a dramatic season. Last year I wrote a poem about it, which I think I can still recall…‘The sky is dreary, thought the oak tree fairy’…”
Aghast, Gabriel widened his eyes at Elodie. At once, she turned to Tegan with a bright, charming smile.
“Thank you so much for rescuing us from Baby. And for allowing us the use of your bedroom. We’ll let you go now. Have a nice night, sleep well.”
“?‘Her spirit was weary, the wind scary’…”
Somehow, with gentle guidance and polite murmurs, Elodie managed to get the girl out of the room before any further desecration of the English language could be committed. Then, closing the door, she sighed.
“I have a bad feeling about this.” She looked at the window (or perhaps the bed; in the shadowy ambience, it wasn’t fully clear which, although Gabriel had to agree with her on either count). “There’s a sense of things being…askew.”
Gabriel pursed his lips. He placed “a sense of things” in the same category as Father Christmas: fanciful, nonsensical, and one short step away from the outright horrors of whimsy . But there was no point in saying this to Elodie, who had chosen her specialist courses at university by closing her eyes and setting her pointer finger at random on the options list. “We can do nothing now except ensure we’re well rested for tomorrow,” he said instead.
Elodie clearly disliked this logic, but there was no arguing against it. “You’re right, we should go to bed,” she said…
And then some more words Gabriel did not hear over the sudden shouting of his pulse. It sounded a lot like bed!—bed!—bed! Which was not only disturbing but also inaccurate, considering there existed only one (1) bed. He frowned at the mattress on the floor. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as it looked. He could stuff the wool and straw back in…and cover the slobber with a blanket…and pretend that wasn’t goat dung he smelled…
“Sensible adults,” Elodie said.
Gabriel blinked, apprehending that he’d missed a sentence, or perhaps even—judging by the snip in her voice—an entire paragraph to which he really, really ought to have attended. Returning his gaze to her dutifully, he could not help but observe that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, all lush and cream-and-honey soft (scientifically speaking), and since he was soon going to die of discomfort within the world’s narrowest bed, at least his final experience had been of listening to her say…uh, something about the cerebral cortex? or counterpanes?…through those warm, velvety lips that were so incredibly sweet to kiss—
No . He did not want to kiss his wife. He wanted only to complete this assignment without further disaster. Thus he listened soberly as Elodie talked about respect, and staying on their own side of the bed, and bloody hell he loved her eyelashes. Loved them so much that he’d spent hours in the library researching human cilium and other ocular features (which was a scientist’s equivalent of mooning over poetry).
Not that he loved her , please note. One might harbor an affection for certain eyelashes without extending it to the possessor of them, and Gabriel was, after all, a man who extended his emotions only under extreme duress.
Besides, Elodie hated him. And fair enough, he wasn’t all that keen on himself either. As a result, he could admire things like her eyelashes (and eyes, and lips, and the near-translucent skin of her wrists) but he would not, must not , do anything that would overstep the firm boundary she maintained between them.
“Therefore, you should hug me,” she said—and Gabriel’s own eyelashes suddenly fluttered so much, he experienced an internal hurricane that sent all his thoughts scattering into shocked silence.
—
Elodie swallowed dryly as Gabriel stared at her dumbstruck. “I merely think that physical contact prior to entering the bed might desensitize us to any inadvertent bumping—er, I mean, you know. Touching .”
She winced as this clarification not only failed to lighten the general atmosphere but sizzled through it like a burst of fiery magical energy that heated her face even as Gabriel grew pale. “Except not to say ‘touching’ as a verb, no, definitely not, I’m not insinuating anything so purposeful; indeed, there’s no purpose at all, I assure you. Not that you need assurance. Neither do I. Why would we? We’ll be sleeping together purely on a professional level, not as a married couple, even though we are married—er, which is to say, in sum, it’s of no consequence whatsoever that we must share a bed, and I for one am entirely serene, unburdened by concerns that—”
“Elodie.” The interjection was like a steadying hand on her shoulder. She took a deep breath, letting the jumble of words sink into Gabriel’s aura of quiet.
“Of course,” she added, “there’s always the option of sleeping on the floor.”
“Hm.” Gabriel looked at said floor with such fierceness, Elodie was certain he would at any moment lie down upon it and declare himself asleep. Then he shrugged. “We’ve slept together before,” he said in a businesslike tone. “We can do it again.”
They both fell into profound silence as they recalled the last time they shared a bed, and how little sleeping actually occurred. Then Gabriel frowned. “Perhaps desensitization is a good idea. We will…hug. Scientifically ,” he added, giving her a stern look. No doubt he expected this to daunt her, but instead it filled Elodie with sparkles, rendering her so unscientific she essentially became a love sonnet. Taking off his jacket, he draped it neatly over the dressing table’s chair, then removed his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. At this point, Elodie must have fainted just a little, because when she returned to sense, he had detached his cufflinks and was folding up his sleeves as if preparing to delve into action. The sight of his strong, toned forearms set her heartbeat racing.
“Why are you staring like that?” Gabriel asked warily. “You’ve seen my arms before.”
“Uhhh,” she replied—for despite her embarrassment at this verbal equivalent of drooling, she could not seem to produce any dry, sensible consonants.
“You’ve seen my entire naked body,” Gabriel then added. Which did not help.
“Unuhhh,” Elodie managed.
“Hm. Take off your cardigan.”
Surprise jolted Elodie from her dreaminess. “Excuse me?”
“Take off your cardigan. The wool looks like it will be itchy. I can’t abide itchy things. Take it off.”
“But—but—”
“It’s hardly risqué, Elodie. After all, I’ve seen your entire naked body too, remember.”
She tried to summon an outraged reply— something something arrogant sod something —but the cardigan was already sliding from her shoulders with wanton ease. As it dropped to the ground, Gabriel stepped forward, and Elodie supposed he was going to pick it up. But suddenly he was embracing her. Or, to be more precise, he was holding his arms around her with a rigidity that felt rather like being embraced by a tree.
“Um, are you sure you want to do this?” she said awkwardly.
“Yes.”
“Because if you—”
“It’s fine. Do you intend to participate also?”
“Oh. Right.” She hugged him close, snuggling against the rock-hard cliff face of his pectoral region. “See, this is easy,” she lied cheerfully. “We should soon become desensitized.”
“Hm.”
They waited in taut silence.
And waited.
“This is taking longer than I anticipated,” Gabriel grumbled.
“Huuhh,” Elodie agreed. Speaking was difficult, for the man smelled of crisp linen and cold nights under a thousand stars, and every time she inhaled, she tipped dangerously toward dreaming.
“I’m exhausted,” he said. “Can we at least lie down?”
“Good idea.”
Still embracing, they shuffled sideways until they came to the bed.
“Pull back the quilt,” Gabriel suggested.
Elodie reached out one hand to perform the task. The bed was low-set, however, and she was forced to lean, taking Gabriel with her.
“Careful,” he said. “Don’t unbalance us.”
“Of course not.” She tossed back the heavy quilt, and the movement caused them to rock on their heels.
“We’re going to fall,” Gabriel warned.
“We won’t,” Elodie scoffed, and promptly toppled over.
They dropped together onto the bed, or more specifically onto each other on the bed.
The world’s first magnitude ten earthquake took place inside their nervous systems.
“For goodness’ sake,” Gabriel muttered, his breath stirring the hair on Elodie’s crown (and other things farther down). “How have you survived this long?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Elodie retorted. “You were too tall, and that made me lose my balance.”
“I was too tall,” he echoed amazedly. “Well, I shall endeavor to be shorter in the future. Move farther left, please. There’s a lump in the mattress.”
“Any farther left and I’ll fall off the bed.”
“Nonsense. I’ve got you.”
This announcement was followed by a brief moment of rose-tinted breathlessness. Then Elodie reminded herself that he in fact did not have her. He’d abandoned their marriage, and any metaphorical roses were spiked with thorns. “You’ve got most of the pillows, that’s what you’ve got,” she retorted.
“Stop wriggling.”
“I need to reach my dress hem, it’s shifting up.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Don’t swear.”
“I’m not, I’m praying for patience.”
“But you’re not religious.”
“I’m being driven to it. Must you wriggle so much?”
“Yes. The telescope in your trouser pocket is pressing against me.”
“I don’t have a telescope in my trouser pocket.”
“Then wh— Oh .”
Silence slammed down.
After several hot, motionless seconds, Elodie ventured cautiously, “Can you reach the quilt to pull it up?”
“Not without moving my…telescope,” Gabriel said.
“That’s fine,” Elodie answered at once. “I don’t need the quilt. I feel quite warm enough.”
“Hm,” Gabriel replied, the meaning of which was anyone’s guess at this point.
The silence returned with a vengeance. The night beyond, however, was a cacophony of sound. Wind howled, sending tree branches and slate tiles clattering around the village. Rain bombarded the inn. It seemed like an oasis compared to the environment in the bedroom.
Elodie closed her eyes. Unable to stop herself, she sank into a dream that Gabriel held her from a sincere wish to be close with her, not just for the scientific pursuit of relief. As the storm rioted outside, she imagined them making a sanctuary for each other, Gabriel’s strength encompassing her with certainty while her soft warmth eased his aches from the day’s travails. She cuddled closer without consciously realizing, and his arms tightened around her.
I really do love you, dreadful man, she thought.
But even as the impossibly beautiful dream melted a smile into her heart, it was succeeded by a pang of shame. Gabriel disliked her, despite what his physiological response to their contact might suggest, so her own pleasure in his touch felt somehow unethical.
“Sorry,” she said, pulling away.
But she’d forgotten just how narrow the bed was, and she would have tumbled right off had Gabriel not caught her. He pulled her close against him once more, their bodies connecting like a hard, fierce kiss. A hundred nerves endings flashed with memory, sending thrills through them like alchemy, shaking their breath to pieces. Instantly, they scrambled to turn their backs, Gabriel cramming himself against the wall, Elodie clutching the edge of the mattress lest she fall again.
“Good night,” Gabriel said brusquely.
“Happy dreams,” Elodie replied.
And wind rattled against the house like laughter, mocking them.