Spellmaker

“I love you more than Barbados, more than magic, more than myself. You are all I think about. And now you are mine. I love you, Elsie.”

With those words, he helped her out of her dress, out of her corset, and out of her chemise.

And showed her.

CHAPTER 22

There would be no honeymoon, of course. Not yet. Not while everything else in their lives was so unsure.

But they certainly made the best of their first night together. Enough so that had they employed servants—that was, servants besides the men Bacchus had brought from Barbados—Elsie might never have left the bedroom. But such was not the case, and things needed to be done. The world would still turn even if Elsie didn’t want it to.

She wanted to hold on to this intoxicating bliss for as long as the universe would allow it.

Bacchus, ever the responsible one, faced the day first. Watching him dress was nearly as tantalizing as watching him undress. It was evident he’d made a full recovery from whatever the siphoning spell had taken from him. With his hair still loose and his cravat dangling on either side of his neck, he returned to the edge of the bed and kissed her, slowly and sweetly. All of it was genuine, for true to his word, he had not a single spell on him. Elsie had checked. Thoroughly.

“If we want to eat, we’ll have to venture out of doors,” he said.

“I’ve heard fasting can be a healthy practice,” Elsie countered. That earned her a smile and a second kiss, but Bacchus moved toward the door anyway.

“I’ll see that we hire a maid and purchase a curricle this week.” He ran his fingers through his dark waves, still sun-kissed on the ends, before pulling the locks back into a tie. “We’ll need both, with all the travel back and forth to Brookley.”

Elsie sat up, holding the sheet to her, her own bed-mussed hair falling over her shoulders. Without Emmeline’s help, she’d be wearing it simply today. Nothing a good hat couldn’t hide. “Perhaps it’s for the best. Another, oh, three years of falsified training will see me contributing to the expenses.”

Bacchus smirked. “I’ll remind you it’s unnecessary. I’m perfectly capable of keeping a wife.”

She loved the way that word sounded on his lips. Wife. “And I’m perfectly capable of keeping a husband.”

His eyes dropped momentarily to her half-covered breasts. “Indeed you are.”

Elsie flushed.

Chuckling, Bacchus excused himself to the privy. With a yawn and a stretch, Elsie let herself out of bed and padded to her larger trunk, finding in it a clean chemise. She picked up her corset off the floor. It laced in the front, so she pulled it on herself. Then, from the smaller trunk, she retrieved her crinkled opus spell and tucked it into the boning.

With her new life situation, a corset might not be the smartest place to hide the thing. Did she need to keep it at all? The worry that had compelled her to carry it around for so long had faded, but it wasn’t as though she could sell it. Perhaps Ogden could make some use of it, if he didn’t already know the spell—

The sound of scratching drew her attention to one of Bacchus’s trunks, as though a mouse had hidden beneath its lid and was desperate for escape. She moved toward it and lifted the lid, listening for the scratching. She moved two shirts and a pair of shoes before the sound stopped, but she managed to find the culprit.

It was a pencil, a tiny, silvery rune glimmering on its end.

She’d left its green partner with Emmeline. Pulling the pencil free, she searched for parchment, but couldn’t find any. Sighing, she took it to the white-painted window ledge. She’d clean it later. In small print, she wrote, Please repeat. I didn’t have paper ready.

Two seconds ticked by before Emmeline’s familiar script wrote, Raven appeared again! He agreed to come back in three hours’ time. He wants to talk to you.

The door opened behind her. “I would say the purple dress, but I rather like this look on you.”

Elsie, clad solely in her underthings, turned about. “We need to go to Brookley right away. Master Raven has agreed to meet with us.”

When Quinn Raven appeared this time, his image was much clearer. This was a phenomenal sign, for it meant he dared to move closer to the stonemasonry shop. Admittedly, Bacchus wasn’t entirely sure how far an astral projection spell could stretch. It likely depended on the strength of the person casting it. And given Master Raven’s previous revelations, he was in the top tier of spellmakers.

“We’ve been unable to locate her,” Mr. Ogden was saying. They’d all pulled up chairs to watch the somewhat murky middle-aged man in the corner. He hovered a few inches above the floor and wore dark clothing. He had a beard coming in and wore a hat. His features were just sharp enough that Bacchus could make out a large nose above a firm scowl and narrow jaw.

“Then you’re not looking hard enough,” spat the American.