Magic and the Modern Girl (14 page)

I straightened my mobcap and fired up my old computer. I had half a dozen e-mails waiting for me, and I quickly settled into a series of short research projects. I could still remember when I’d started at the Peabridge, how every new request sent me delving into incredible specialized resources. I’d loved learning new things, exploring new intellectual opportunities.

Now, it seemed as if I knew my subject matter a little too well. There was one person asking about colonial customs for Thanksgiving. Again. (Our founding fathers did not observe the holiday.) Two more patrons were planning even further ahead, asking about Christmas. Again. (I had a little more to tell them. I already knew they weren’t going to be pleased when they learned there was no Santa Claus, no Christmas Tree and gifts were minimal.)

I enjoyed helping patrons—I still got a thrill out of locating the occasional rare and obscure resource. But these days, there was too much same old, same old about my job.

I got my first interesting question of the day when I opened an e-mail from a woman who lived a few blocks away from the library. She wanted me to track down some finer points of colonial garden layouts, designs that were intended to maximize vegetable yield in poor soil. I wondered whether she really wanted to serve a family of four through the dog days of summer, all on the plantings of her quarter acre lot.

I muttered the research librarian’s motto: Ours not to wonder why. Remembering a specialized treatise that I had shelved a few weeks before, I pushed back my chair and wandered into the stacks, taking along my very own cup of coffee (with a half shot of cinnamon syrup for good measure, and a white plastic lid snapped on top for good stewardship of the library’s collection).

Mindful of past disasters involving my colonial skirts and awkward library shelves, I pushed a step stool over to the stacks with my toe. I set my cup of coffee in a conveniently book-free space on a shelf just below eye level, and then I stepped onto the round step stool as gracefully as I could manage. I stretched for the volume that I recalled, certain that it was hiding beside the ragged leather-bound farm accounts from one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Victory! The planting treatise was exactly where I had remembered!

Still balanced on the stool, I opened the book and paged through the chapter headings, wondering if I had recalled the contents as thoroughly as I’d mastered their location. By force of habit, I started to gnaw on my lower lip. That was a substantial improvement on my past expression of studious nerves—there was a time when I would have chewed on my fingernails as I worked, wearing them down to ragged nibs. Becoming aware of my lip-chewing, though, I reached for my coffee cup, determined to distract myself from all bad habits.

“Ah! There you are!”

I started at the voice, smothering a little cry at the back of my throat. Apparently, I had been more engrossed by colonial gardening techniques than I’d believed; I had totally wrapped myself into the text I was reading. Even as I recognized the speaker, even as I felt an odd, lazy swoop at the pit of my stomach, I tried to step down off the awkward stool, juggling my book and coffee cup. Just to make matters a bit more challenging, my mobcap chose that moment to slip free from its bobby pins (a break for freedom that it practiced at least a dozen times a day).

Well, I rescued the book.

My librarian instincts were strong, even in the most dire of circumstances. I was able to thrust the treatise forward, settling it onto a top shelf without ruffling a single page. Unfortunately, my sartorial instincts were substantially weaker. The coffee cup splashed against my chest, plastic lid bursting open with an embarrassing
pop
that seemed to echo in the stacks, only to be drowned out by the sound of a splash as lukewarm liquid cascaded across the black-and-white tiled floor. Even the splash, though, was drowned out by the noise of my curse as I stared at the ecru stain that soaked my bodice. My lacy bodice. My white, flimsy, now-see-through, lacy bodice.

I turned to face the owner of the hale and hearty voice. “Will,” I said weakly, fumbling to retrieve my traitorous mobcap from my wide skirts, so that I could cover my overexposed décolletage.

“I am so sorry!” Will Becker said, and the look of chagrin on his face chased away any angry words I might have been inclined to deliver. “Oh, God, let me help you with that.” His hand on my elbow was steady as he helped me down from the stool, and he kept his eyes averted from the muslin headpiece that was incompetently masquerading as a camisole. As soon as I was steady on terra firma, he reached down to scoop up my now-empty coffee cup.

He fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and spread the snowy cotton across the milky puddle on the tiled floor. At least there was one advantage to my soaked lace—
most
of the library had been spared a caffeinated bath. He wiped up the rest of the offending coffee with an efficiency that would have made Gran proud—she had always despaired of teaching me the finer points of mopping. I took advantage of his face being averted to pluck the wet cloth from my chest, wishing I had stored enough magical power to mutter a quick spell to dry the fabric.

“I’m sorry,” Will repeated as he straightened, and I reluctantly folded my mobcap-enhanced arms back across my chest. “I should have cleared my throat or something, so that you knew I was there.”

I pictured him standing earnestly at the end of the row of books, clearing his throat like a character in a sitcom. Something about the image made me smile, despite my sodden discomfort. “What brings you here?” I asked, trying to make my question casual.

After a year of lusting after the Infantile Baby, I was leery of any man who came into my library and made casual conversation with me. Particularly any man who had watched me make a fool of myself in public, as I had in Melissa’s yoga class. Especially any man who had bought me coffee and entertained me for two hours with self-deprecating stories about his own social failures, after he had witnessed my yogic disaster.

“I had research to do,” he said, as if that was the most normal response in the world. Which it might even have been, given the fact that we were standing in a research library.

“About what?” I was still suspicious.

“Colonial outbuildings,” he said promptly. “I need them for that Harrison project I told you about.”

The Harrison project. He had mentioned it while we talked. He’d been hired by some dot-com billionaire who had gotten tired of living the high life in a San Francisco loft. The rich guy had decided to return home to Virginia, and he wanted a replica of James Monroe’s home, Ash Lawn-Highland. Will had earned the commission to convert a colonial country home into a twenty-first-century living space suitable for a man as wealthy as the Sultan of Brunei.

Well, colonial outbuildings might be enough to warrant Will’s presence at the Peabridge, but I couldn’t help but bristle. The Ingrate Bastard had routinely come to the Peabridge for his professorial advancement; he had secretly reveled in making me his private research assistant, without offering even a footnote of thanks.

What was it about men and me—men who exploited my good nature and my research skills for their own good? I set my teeth and tested my tone until I could be certain it would be civil—even if it was cold as stone. “Well, let’s go back to my desk. I can check the catalog for appropriate resources.”

“Oh, I already looked up what I need.” He gestured with the hand that wasn’t holding his sopping handkerchief, and I saw that he was indeed clutching a slip of paper. Numbers and letters angled across it in a peculiar style that I’d only seen etched into blueprints before.

“If I read the call number right, books about outbuildings should be here?”

He nodded with his chin to the books behind me, to the shelf immediately across from my own specialized gardening treatise. To the shelf that, indeed, held a couple dozen books on outbuildings on colonial estates.

Will had not been looking for me to complete his research. He’d been doing his own work.

I couldn’t help but grin. “Yeah,” I said, edging past him. I needed to get out of my soaked clothes, the sooner, the better. “They’re all there.”

“I just need some basics,” he said. Apparently, the overwhelming aroma of cinnamon-tinged coffee did not offend him because he went on in a conversational tone. “I’m just trying to get some feel for the design elements. I know that a lot of the original buildings had carved wooden clapboards, so that they looked like stone from a distance. Vanity of vanities, and all that.”

“Just like my cottage,” I said without thinking.

“Your cottage? Where is that?” His smile was easy, interested, and I found my own lips curving again, in response to his good nature.

“Here, at the Peabridge. I live in an old caretaker’s cottage, at the back of the garden.”

“How did
that
happen?”

“It’s a long story,” I said, wondering what he would think if I told him all of it—including the bit about the books hidden in my basement. Another time, maybe. A time when I wasn’t drenched in Eau de Café. “The short version is they let me move into the cottage so that they could cut my salary.”

I could see the question that he wanted to ask. I could even hear his voice forming the words. I could feel my own face flushing, reddening at the thought of this man inviting himself into my home, under the guise of studying the design. And yet I heard myself say, “Would you like to see it? Would it help your research?”

“I don’t want to impose,” he said, not quite smothering his eagerness with reluctance.

I started to sigh but stopped when I realized that motion stretched my clinging bodice tighter. “Well, I’m going to have to go home and change anyway.”

He winced. “I really am sorry. I insist on paying to have that cleaned.”

“No worries,” I said. Maybe by tonight I’d have a little spell ready. One that would make laundry a breeze. No reason for him to know all my secrets, though, within twenty-four hours of meeting me. (Had it really only been twenty-four hours? A lot had happened to me since then.)

After all, it was one thing to have a clumsy woman body-check you in a yoga class. It was another to learn that the clumsy woman was a rogue member of the local Coven, capable of weaving spells with a single word. At least in theory. I thought about reaching out for Ariel, to see if I could bolster my powers yet, but I wasn’t sure I could do that without some strange expression crossing my face. I didn’t want to look any more bizarre in front of Will than I already did.

Apparently, I was entirely successful in hiding my unusual train of thought, because Will was shrugging and saying, “At least let me buy you lunch, then.”

I should have heard the jangle of warning bells.

No man ever just asked me out to lunch. At least, no man who wasn’t enthralled to me in a spell. Or attempting to commit adultery with my all-too-eager assistance. Or intending to discipline me for setting aside my witchy studies.

And yet, I didn’t feel a single thrum of warning. No tingle of imminent danger. No threat of disaster, looming, if I said yes.

There was always the possibility that my relationship radar had gone on the blink along with my magical powers. Okay, okay, there was the possibility that my so-called relationship radar had never
actually
functioned—that would explain my horrific mistakes with my Imaginary Boyfriend. And the Coven Eunuch. And David.

I wasn’t going to think about David.

Instead, I’d cross my fingers and hope—pray to whatever dating gods might be listening—that going to lunch with Will wouldn’t be a complete disaster.

It couldn’t be, right? I mean, I wasn’t expecting anything to come of it. I wasn’t pinning every girlish hope that had ever crossed my heart on what we’d discuss over platefuls of food. I could even picture myself ordering spaghetti at the little Italian place down the block—a first date culinary and sartorial violation that would have sent Melissa into conniption fits.

But this wasn’t a first date.

And my lace bodice was already soaked with milky coffee. A drop or two of red sauce added to whatever fresh clothes I collected from the cottage couldn’t make me look any worse than I did now. Besides, I honestly, truly had no goal or intention to impress this guy.

“Lunch then,” I said. “Yes. I’d like that.” I led the way out of the stacks, back toward the front of the library. “Let me just leave this book on my desk, and then we can go.”

Kit was behind the coffee bar, serving up the last of Melissa’s baked treats for the day. She raised an eyebrow as Will hurried off to collect his own books, and I managed to quirk an unobtrusive smile. There wasn’t any need for that “conspiratorial girlfriend” look on her face. There was nothing going on between Will and me. Nothing at all. He was a patron in my library, and he just happened to be interested in the false stone siding of my cottage.

And if I had believed that there was anything else at stake, my illusions would have been destroyed as we approached my home, walking side by side on the Peabridge path. “Hollyhocks!” he exclaimed. “Pennyroyal and sweetbriar! You’ve planted a complete colonial garden!”

“Well, not me personally,” I said, feeling strangely proud of my employer’s efforts at verisimilitude.

“The Peabridge, though. I’ve always known that the library was here, but I never thought about checking it out in person until I met you.”

“I guess you should thank the yoga nazis, then, who got us both into that class.” We laughed together as we reached my front door.

For just a minute, I hesitated. It was one thing to invite a man out to inspect the walls of my home. A plumber or electrician could do as much, and there wouldn’t be any hidden meaning in his presence. It was another thing entirely, though, to invite a man inside while I slipped into something a little more comfortable (or at least a little more dry).

As if he possessed his own magic skills, Will seemed to sense my discomfort. He stepped off the marble doorstep, demonstrating tremendous interest in the wooden facing that was routed to resemble stone. “This is it? This is the way they created the false facade?”