Chapter Nineteen
Philomel’s razor notes that, if a rational cause
for natural phenomena cannot be found, it must be magical.
That or you’ve drunk too much beer.
Blazing Trails , W.H. Jackson
Less than two hours later they were in Aberystwyth Station, impatiently awaiting the next train. Elodie shivered within the cold sea wind as she glanced surreptitiously at Gabriel standing nearby. He might have glanced at her too at some point, but if so, she didn’t catch him doing it. Mostly, he frowned at his wristwatch. He’d sent a telegram to his sister in Hereford, advising her of the situation, but one historian would be no match for a cascade of magic, and Gabriel looked like he might at any moment just start running along the train tracks to reach her.
Beyond him, Algernon was pacing nervously and startling at every little noise. And beyond the young accountant, Pimmersby, Hapsitch, and Mumbers posed in various states of manly swagger alongside the Misses Trevallion. The tourists had been so determined to “follow the fun” that not even Gabriel scowling at them had provided deterrent enough. Pimmersby, who’d spent much of the mad gallop to Aberystwyth shouting at intervals, “?‘Half a league, half a league, half a league onward!’?” was now declaiming, “?‘O the wild charge they made!’?” and gesturing grandly, while Misses Trevallion sighed adoringly in a manner Elodie would never do.
At the edge of the group stood Tegan Parry. Her ostensible role was to organize the return of the horses, but she’d insisted on waiting to see them off properly—not so much from any fond feeling, Elodie suspected, but more to soak up every moment of dramatic pathos. Her father had given them only a brief farewell back in the village, having been preoccupied with intense emotion over the destruction of his inn. (The emotion of delight, that is, since not only would his insurance pay for an even better premises, but he now had a source of magical sulfur waters on his property that was even more significant than those in Llandrindod Wells, and visions of the spa he would create dominated his attention.)
“I’m sorry for doubting you about how dangerous the magic would become,” he’d said, however, smiling sheepishly as they saddled their horses.
In response, Gabriel had looked at him.
“Er, and I’m sorry for almost getting you killed,” Parry added.
The look intensified.
“Er, and compliments to your lovely wife, sir.” He’d bowed to Elodie, and Gabriel had at last allowed him to retreat in continued possession of his limbs.
Thankfully, the geyser and its earthquakes subsided enough before they left that Elodie was free to stop worrying about the death and destruction they might cause in D?lylleuad and focus instead on the death and destruction that might strike along the fey line—not to mention the death she herself was about to experience due to freezing.
Gabriel glanced over just then, and she read coat-giving in his eyes. Her stomach dissolved into sparkles. She could still feel his hands clamping her hips while he did things to her that made the violently erupting magical super-geyser seem dull in comparison. But the fact that they’d not since spoken a word unrelated to work confused her. Notwithstanding such interesting claims as “you’re mine,” she wondered if Gabriel had merely been suffering from nervous overexcitement (yet again) or if he only had enough room in his consciousness for one thing at a time, and that the potential end of the world had seized it. To be fair, she could have done with such focus herself. As it was, her thoughts skipped between disaster and kisses and the possibility of being pregnant—which sent her back to disasters again—until she began developing a headache. Perhaps it was she who was the confusing one, not Gabriel, she mused with a weary sigh.
“Such a mournful sound, Miss Tarrant,” came a polished voice behind her. Elodie turned to see Mr. Mumbers looking romantically windswept and smiling, like a poet in search of a rhyme. “I fear you must be chilled by this breeze,” he said, and began to remove his coat.
“Excuse me,” came a voice that was the opposite of suave. It was grim and severe, a granite mountain against a stark winter sky.
Elodie turned back to see Gabriel arrive, just an inch closer than “associates” would politely allow. He began removing his coat. Elodie bit her lip, feeling rather like a damsel caught between two knights except that, instead of weapons, they wielded cashmere garments.
“Thank you for considering Mrs. Tarrant’s welfare,” Gabriel told Mr. Mumbers with stolid civility. The other gentleman blanched, understanding all too well that what Gabriel actually meant was get away from my wife or I’ll suffocate you with that cheap coat hanging crookedly from your flimsy shoulders .
Elodie considered scoffing and then marching away, but instead, inexplicably, she blushed scarlet. This was far from the behavior of a plucky, intelligent heroine, and the only possible conclusion she could make was that sex had deranged her nervous system.
Oddly, kisses and various minor fumblings with other men in her youth had never induced this problem. Mind you, she’d not spent almost a decade dreaming about those men. And Gabriel certainly had not fumbled; he’d got straight to the point. When he’d lifted her off her feet, it had felt like her only connection to the world had been his strong and vigorous…
She blinked suddenly, noticing that Mr. Mumbers had gone and Gabriel was standing in patient silence, holding out his coat. Focus, Elodie, she grumbled to herself as she took the coat.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling.
“Hm,” Gabriel replied, and went to ask the ticket clerk how much longer the train would be.
Finally it arrived, and the group made haste to board while Tegan waved goodbye, a rather forlorn look in her eyes. Elodie wanted to run over to hug the girl and put in a final encouraging word about tertiary education, but there was no time. She found herself jostled as she tried to board. Just as she was contemplating a bit of unladylike elbow-jabbing and hip-shoving of her own, Gabriel stepped up behind her, acting as an effective bodyguard. Entering the train compartment, she turned to thank him.
“I’ll see you in Hereford,” he said before she could speak. He stepped back—
“Wait!” Elodie stared at him in astonishment. “Are you not coming?”
“Of course I am,” he replied.
“But—why—?”
“I bought myself a first class ticket. I could not tolerate hours in company with those tourists and Jennings.”
( “Hey!” Algernon cried out indignantly from behind him.)
Elodie watched, utterly gobsmacked, as her husband departed for the front of the train without another word.
Of all the confounding behavior! Of all the arrogant soddishness! Elodie flung herself into the corner of one bench seat in a haze of fury, ignoring the others settling in around her. She glared with such intensity into the middle distance that, as the train began to move, Algernon could be heard pompously advising Mr. Mumbers that “Dr. Tarrant is a brilliant scientist, and it’s best not to interrupt her when she’s cogitating about disasters.”
“Cogitating about disasters” summed up pretty well what was indeed occurring in Elodie’s imagination. She had Gabriel divorced before the train even cleared Aberystwyth Station, rendered homeless as they passed Bow Street, and trapped in a Scottish bog during a thaumaturgic thunderstorm that rained down worms upon him while Mr. Mumbers led everyone else in a game of charades.
But there is only so long a woman can torture her husband in phantasia before she grows bored. Charades offered no distraction (indeed, she would rather have jumped into quirksand than taken part), and the view out the window was blocked by a Miss Trevallion’s hat. Thus bereft of entertainment, she rummaged in Gabriel’s coat pockets, discovering therein something small, flattish, and wrapped in a white linen handkerchief.
Instantly enlivened, she stared at the little parcel. The handkerchief was so well ironed it might have been fresh from a boutique store’s cabinet, but it carried the clean, cool aroma of soap that always accompanied Gabriel. The folds were so carefully made, he had clearly lingered over them. Elodie sensed this was a treasure of some kind—perhaps a small collection of leaves, from the feel of it—and she told herself to put it straight back in the pocket.
Unfortunately, her fingers did not hear this and had the handkerchief opened before she could stop them.
Inside were several raggedy bits of paper, stacked with care. Curiosity rather than nosiness ( Yes, there is a difference, she told her horrified manners) saw Elodie lift the first piece and unfold it.
Her pulse swooned. She refolded the piece, set it aside, and turned over another. Now her breath threatened to swoon also.
These were hers . There were notes about a river’s flow through a farm outside Chipping Norton…an old shopping list…a limerick about cheese that she’d composed during her Thaumaturgy Theory lecture while her students were copying down equations from the blackboard…sketches of wildflowers growing around Oxford. She’d taken them from her own pocket outside the graveyard in D?lylleuad and handed them to Gabriel while she extinguished the fire that had engulfed his umbrella. She’d forgotten to take them back. Evidently he’d kept them.
No, he’d done more than keep them. He’d smoothed out their wrinkles, folded them gently, and wrapped them in linen and… oh my goodness …pressed a wild violet between two.
Stunned, Elodie felt her fingers tingle as if the tiny flower were imbued with magic, rather than a sign she was hyperventilating. Trying to reconcile the romanticism of Gabriel treating her pocket detritus as treasure and his standoffish behavior at the Aberystwyth train station, she found herself caught, as it were, between the devil and a beautiful, sparkling, deep blue sea, with no compass to guide her.
Folding the handkerchief around the notes as accurately as she could, she tucked the tiny parcel back into Gabriel’s coat pocket and reengaged her imagination.
By the time the train reached Shrewsbury, she had Gabriel and herself installed in a handsome town house on the outskirts of Oxford, with a green velvet sofa, a magnificent library, several detailed maps on the walls, and a large, comfortable bed, which she put to such good use that Mumbers, seeing the brightness of her eyes as she stared into the middle distance once again, declared that “Dr. Tarrant looks like she’s cogitating up a veritable storm!” Which actually wasn’t that far from the truth.
A changeover of trains at Shrewsbury required fifteen minutes’ waiting in the tranquil aftermath of a rain shower. The sun was the color of light reflecting off a wedding ring. White wish-doves fluttered about the station with trailing ribbons of magic that rippled through the air like hope made visible. Elodie found the quiet serenity rather eerie, considering they had left one disaster and were racing toward another. Tapping her foot restively, she gazed south as if she might see evidence of trouble. Nearby, Gabriel was doing the same. But the sky was an innocent azure blue, with nothing more deadly in it than chimneys.
While the others sought tea within the station, Elodie approached Gabriel, intent on demanding why he had abandoned her to the second class carriage. It would be most annoying to die in the coming magical cataclysm without having been at least that brave. But his expression was so guarded, as if she were equivalent to a marauding band of Vikings come to loot him, that she quite lost the heart for confrontation. Instead, she took off his coat, with its hidden treasure of notes, and returned it to him.
“Are you no longer cold?” he asked.
“I’m quite warm, thank you.” The lie fell clumsily from her lips, and to compensate she attempted a smile. It seemed to stretch her mouth like a grimace, however, so she tried sobriety instead. But then she felt like she was dour, so she just looked away into the distance—which did not help, for the view really was lovely, peaceful, bejeweled with silver drops of light after the recent rain; and moreover, she was alive in it, when not too long ago she’d been anticipating death’s imminence. Her eyes filled with tears.
Gabriel took an alarmed step back. “Are you unwell?”
“Lovesick for the beautiful world,” she told him.
This apparently was poor reassurance. “All I can see are a lot of buildings,” he muttered. “And Mr. Mumbers staring out moonily through the station’s window. I suppose the two of you have had much intercourse on the journey so far.”
Elodie nearly choked on her breath. “No, we haven’t talked at all,” she said. “The group played charades most of the time.”
“Oh my God.” He stared at her, aghast.
“Yes, it made my headache considerably worse.”
His frown deepened. “I would have bought you a first class ticket also, but I assumed you’d want to be sociable.”
Elodie blinked at him. Or, at least, at his right ear. Looking into those heavy dark eyes felt far too intimate now. “Why would you assume that?”
“You like people.”
“I like my people. I’m not so keen on quantities of random strangers.” I like you, daft man, she would have said had she been able to locate courage anywhere within her.
Gabriel tilted his head as he regarded her, seemingly at a loss. “But you smile at them all the time.”
“And you frown,” she answered.
“Ah.” Comprehension lit his face. “Wait here,” he said, and without further discussion he departed for the station’s interior. When he returned, it was with a first class ticket. “My apologies for misunderstanding,” he said, handing it to her.
“Oh, gosh.” Elodie came perilously close to fluttering her eyelashes. “I’ll repay you once we get back to Oxford.”
“There’s no need,” he answered gruffly.
“Oh,” she said again, which was all she could manage since her intelligence was busy wrestling with her emotions to prevent her from hugging the ticket. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. The Home Office is paying.”
Upon that romantic note, he turned away, for the southbound train was arriving. They crossed to it, and Gabriel opened a compartment’s door for Elodie. She stepped inside.
And watched bemusedly as he turned to the neighboring compartment. “See you in Hereford,” he said. “Try to get some rest, it’s going to be a long afternoon.” He entered the compartment and shut its door, and Elodie found herself blinking at the space from which he’d disappeared.
“Phooey,” she grumbled to the elegant velvet emptiness of her compartment. Now that she was alone, courage sprang to the fore again, armed with all manner of clever retorts and bold statements she should have made while talking to Gabriel on the platform. Agitated, she tried to pace, but there was inadequate room. She tried to sit nicely, but her legs jiggled and her thoughts dissolved into a melee of irritated opinions. She even considered returning to second class, where at least she’d have people to scowl at, but the train began to move.
For several more long minutes (two), Elodie continued to brood, then jumped to her feet, flung open the compartment’s inner door, and stormed down the corridor to knock on Gabriel’s door. He looked up in surprise from the map he was reading, and she nearly squeaked and ran away to hide. But she forced herself to stay, for while her time in Wales had not necessarily made her into a stronger woman, it had at least shown her that Gabriel was a gentler man than everyone assumed. Arrogant, yes. Obnoxious, aloof, enigmatic, and annoying…uh, but definitely gentle too. When he was not scowling and grumbling and making demands, that is…
Quickly abandoning this increasingly unhelpful line of thought, Elodie flounced moved with energetic purpose into the compartment and sat down opposite Gabriel.
“Er?” he said.
“Are you angry with me?” she demanded, crossing her arms and glaring at him.
“Um?”
“?‘Um’ is not an answer,” she informed him tersely. “Why are you angry with me?”
He removed his reading spectacles so as to better stare at her in utter, complete confusion. “I’m not.”
“Then why are you avoiding me?”
“Avoiding you?”
She rolled her eyes. The man had all kinds of university degrees; surely he could conduct a conversation more efficiently! “Is it because of what happened in the cellar?”
He went red. “No.”
“Are we even going to discuss that?”
“No.”
Whew, thought her heart, which was only just holding on to its rhythm as it was. “Fine. But at least explain the separate compartments.”
Gabriel went stiff, his expression opaque. “You said you have a headache. I purchased you a private compartment for the sake of your comfort. The attendants will be bringing you cream of chicken soup from the dining cart, along with a rug and pillow.”
“Oh.” Elodie gulped. “Cream of chicken, you say?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s my favorite.”
“I know.”
“And a pillow?”
“Hm.”
She rose awkwardly, pointing with both hands to the door. “I’ll just be—I’ll—uh, see you in Hereford, shall I? Much obliged for the soup. Cheerio.”
“Elodie.”
“Yes?” She paused in the doorway but was too mortified to look at him.
“You can stay here if you would prefer.”
The offer was made in rigid tones, and yet Elodie did not think he spoke reluctantly. In fact, she wondered if his stiffness was perhaps akin to her own jitteriness, and if he felt as shy and awkward as she did after their cellar adventure.
“I’d appreciate your opinion on this map of Hereford, and where we might make a defense against the cascade, if your head isn’t too painful,” Gabriel added, gruff, cold…and yes, bashful , Elodie was sure of it. The realization was profound, making her question everything she’d supposed about his behavior these past years. Could there be a soft heart beneath that grouchy exterior?
“Tsk,” he said just then. “You’d think the railway company could spare a little effort to make these seats less torturously uncomfortable.”
Elodie pressed her lips shut and laid her forehead against the glass panel of the compartment’s door, trying to ward off laughter. Clearly, the grouchy exterior went all the way through. Thank goodness. What would she do with a softhearted man? He wouldn’t be her beloved Gabriel.
Smiling, she turned back in to the compartment. Gabriel shifted so she could sit beside him (nearest the window, he insisted, for the sake of her headache), and they discussed the geographical surrounds of Hereford (quietly, ditto). When luncheon was served, they set aside the map to eat, and the conversation turned instead to where one found the best soup in Oxford’s winter…how snow made the city appear “wondrous” (Elodie) and “white” (Gabriel)…and what lectures they most enjoyed giving in the Hilary term. Upon both of them answering “magical cartography,” Gabriel shared with her the gist of his latest studies on the topic.
But he stopped suddenly, in the middle of describing recent developments in thaumaturgic theodolites, and his expression hunched in on itself with troubled thought. Then he began again, more slowly. “Indeed, the lens is an enchanted mirror of silver grace, unveiling a world of magic.”
Elodie gave a confused laugh. “What?”
Gabriel shrugged uncomfortably. “I am not so hidebound that I can’t take a lesson from a young man, such as that Mumbers fellow. I know you appreciate language that is more…lyrical.”
Elodie stared at him, incredulous. “No. I don’t want poetry from you, Gabriel.”
His eyes shuttered with darkness. “You don’t?”
She smacked his arm lightly, causing his lashes to flutter and his breath to catch. “You invigorate my mind with your intelligence and your scrupulous vocabulary. Don’t try to be something else, I beg you.”
“I invigorate your mind?” he repeated in wary astonishment.
“Of course,” she said cheerily, and stole a leftover piece of bread from his plate.
The train staff came to clear the dishes away, after which Gabriel laid the rug over her lap. But Elodie needed no pillow: lulled by the rhythmic motion of the train and Gabriel’s low voice talking about angles and measurements, she fell asleep where she was sitting, her head leaning against his shoulder.
—
Gabriel was not a religious man, but in that moment he knew heaven.