to come see me tomorrow, and I’ll get to the bottom of this,” she insisted. “Tomorrow, do you hear me?”
“Give the woman a full day to recover from her wedding night, at least,” Thomas interjected. “Mabel, don’t come tomorrow, make it the next day.”
“Yes sir,” Mabel replied glumly. “May I go now?”
“Of course, of course!” Thomas crowed, too merrily, in an effort to lift the sudden pall. “Back to your celebrations! Again I wish the both of you all the best, long lives and many children!”
As the wedding couple turned and retreated, he glanced at Sylvanne’s face, still simmering with anger. “I freed you from your prison, yet you seek new ways to bring yourself suffering,” he told her, but Sylvanne didn’t seem to hear him. He turned his horse toward home, and her horse followed on its own, unguided by a rider whose thoughts were miles away.
42
“Where’s the Find on this thing?”
“You don’t know how to find Find?”
“I don’t use this browser. Here it is. I’m fine. I’m fine at finding Find.”
Derek’s hard drive had crashed, so he’d invited himself over to use Meghan’s computer. “It’s actually for something we should do together,” he’d said.
“Which is?”
“Research your Thomas of Gastoncoe. Trawl through the Domesday Book and any other medieval census we can get our hands on.”
“You think I haven’t done that?”
“I’m sure you have. I have too, actually. I’d just like to try some more.”
“It’s not just an excuse to get into my house?”
“Do I need an excuse?”
“No,” she’d said. “Come on over.”
She’d been working upstairs in her studio, and invited him to sit at the computer there. While he conducted his research she worked freehand at her drafting table, glancing over at him occasionally. She felt a delicious tension, knowing that they would soon be lovers. How could he not know it too? The last time they’d been together they’d kissed, and she’d told him she was ready. Now they sat in a hurricane’s eye, pretending a kind of quiet domesticity, as if they were already lovers of long standing. She felt eager, yet patient—she wanted him to start the wheel in motion. He sat at the computer, muttering about Latinate surnames and the incompleteness of documents. She’d lost herself in a drawing when she heard him say, “I’ve found him.” She looked up quickly to see Derek swivelling in his chair toward her, a big boyish grin on his face, his hair pushed down and falling over his forehead in bangs, the way Thomas wore it.
“Very funny,” she smiled. He looked very handsome that way.
“Do I look like him like this?”
“A lot.”
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” he said. “If you want to get to know me better, it’s good we’re here on your home turf. At my place there would be too many surprises—threadbare sheets and empty toilet rolls. And if you want to imagine that it’s Thomas, come to you from across the centuries, you can take him to the same bed you’ve dreamed him in.”
“You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you,” she said.
He came close to her. His skin really did smell of Ivory soap.
“Betsy’s in school till when?”
“We have three hours.”
“Perfect.”
She took his hand and led him to her bedroom. The sheets were white linen. “Looks comfy,” he said appreciatively. “Home field advantage was the right choice.”
“Derek, don’t say anything.”
“That’s gonna be diffi—”
“Shhh! Nothing.”
She was wearing a tank top and jeans. She pushed him back on the bed, then slipped the top over her head, and peeled her jeans past her hips to the floor. She stepped out of them, clad only in black bra and panties.
“You’re so lovely.”
“I had a funny feeling this morning,” she said. “I chose these specially—I just knew I’d be showing them off.”
She smiled, but then the look in her eyes became so very serious, so possessed, that for a moment Derek felt uncertain, almost frightened. He pulled her to him on the bed and cloaked her face and shoulders with a rain of kisses, hiding himself in the concave privacy of her neck, to keep himself from looking into those fierce eyes. Him, Thomas, Meghan, Sylvanne, sanity, insanity, truth or hallucination, it didn’t matter—he felt the urgent need of her body, and met it with his own. She was beautiful, possessed, and too impatient to unbutton his shirt, tearing at it blindly like a child shredding Christmas wrapping. He took hold of her wrists for a moment to slow her, whispering, “Let me help you.” Then they were