“Yes,” she answered.
Twenty minutes later, she was standing in a chapel, trying hopelessly to repair her coiffure while Gabriel persuaded the vicar to marry them.
Ten minutes after that, they were pronounced man and wife. Gabriel lowered his head to kiss her.
“Er, we don’t do that bit in the Church of England,” the vicar interjected, but he could have broken into a flamboyant aria and Elodie wouldn’t have noticed. Gabriel mustn’t have noticed either, for he went ahead and pressed his lips gently against hers. Although he touched her nowhere else, Elodie felt embraced by his entire being. Her knees began to weaken, and her heart turned to sighs…
And he stepped back, not looking at her. As Elodie swayed dizzily, he turned to the vicar and said, “That’s an unusual inlay on the altar. Is it Italian marble?”
Afterward, they walked across to Holywell Street, Elodie feeling uncharacteristically shy. They were married. It seemed like a magic spell held in place by the gold ring on her finger, which Gabriel had unexpectedly produced. Neither of them spoke, but that was fine, for the memory of their kiss was singing in the space between them. On the doorstep of ninety-nine, Gabriel introduced her to the landlady as his wife. That Elodie managed not to giggle would have made her parents
But the landlady barred the threshold to them. “I’ve already rented it,” she said.
“We had an agreement,” Gabriel replied in a tone that would have terrified the woman, were she educated. As it was, she merely shrugged.
“Sorry. Dr. Costas made me a better offer.”
“Dr. Andro Costas?” Gabriel asked.
“You know him?”
“Tall. Blond. A bachelor.”
The woman winked at Elodie. “Yes, well, he’s going to supplement the rent with free massages for my nervous condition. He has a special vibratory device.” And she shut the door in their faces.
They stood in a silence so comprehensive it could have built a whole new house. Elodie’s heart clenched with pain for Gabriel’s disappointment, and she almost reached out to pat his shoulder. But, losing courage, she verbalized her sympathy instead.
“You should have secured the keys straightaway.”
No, stop! her brain shouted in frantic confusion. That’s not what I meant to say! She began blushing even before Gabriel turned to stare at her thunderously.
And that had been that for their marriage.
—
“Professor!” Motthers squeaked, trying to juggle suitcase, clipboard, backpack, and wits as he hurried after her across the platform. “The train!”
“I won’t be catching it,” Elodie said, walking faster. In the past year since that wedding day, doubt over her respectability had spread beyond the geography department to most of Oxford and even as far as Shropshire, where her parents declared themselves bemused (but, alas, not entirely surprised) that she would marry a colleague on a sudden whim then abandon both him and her reputation to continue living alone. And Gabriel’s search for accommodation had been completely derailed, since an estranged husband was considered even less reliable a tenant than a bachelor was. All in all, the marriage had turned out to be very inconvenient indeed. But having no grounds for an annulment without making matters substantially worse, they were stuck with it.
Each blamed the other—or, at least, Elodie blamed herself, but since Gabriel made no effort to persuade her otherwise, she turned quite happily to blaming him. In short order, they moved from being acquaintances to enemies without any interesting stop at lovers along the way. No conversation passed between them other than a few curt greetings when absolutely required, and one particularly fiery verbal skirmish over whether to stock chocolate jumbles or plain digestive biscuits in the faculty tea cupboard.
Furthermore, Elodie learned to be a veritable escape artist, disappearing through doorways, behind hedges, and down stairwells whenever she saw Gabriel; once she even jumped out a first-floor window—the consequences of which to her ankle were luckily healed now, thus enabling her to move at speed across the train platform. Certainly, a master’s student with a flimsy mustache could not stop her.
“But the magic!” Motthers cried.
“Professor Tarrant—the other one—will attend to that. You can join his team.”
“But soil contamination from aeolian transportation of explosively thaumaturgized Neoproterozoic-Cambrian rock particles!”
Elodie’s heart sank. Damn. Motthers was right. Dôlylleaud was sure to be in a bad way. She imagined the starved faces of children deprived of vital sustenance from…(she paused to search her memory for the area’s main produce)…er, pears.
“Fine,” she muttered, coming to a halt.
“Pardon?” Motthers asked daringly.
Elodie turned, casting him a brief glare before taking the suitcase back. “Fine. I’ll go.”
Motthers grinned so widely, his mustache appeared in danger of sliding off. “Hurrah!” Then he grimaced. “Um, er, you might want to…”
As he flicked a finger at her lower half, Elodie glanced down and realized that her hem was still knotted. She hurriedly untied it, then began to trudge once more toward the tracks with the air of a French soldier approaching Waterloo. To the south, a cloud of steam signaled the train’s approach. With luck, she’d have only a minute to talk with Gabriel before it arrived.
Approaching him was the hardest thing she’d done in a long while, and this was coming from a woman with a doctorate that had required extensive knowledge of trigonometry. She hated the cold-hearted, unforgiving man. Absolutely, completely loved—wait, no, loathed him. Arriving at his side, she murmured a greeting.
But Gabriel just went on staring at some unknown vision, his face so beautiful in repose it made Elodie’s throat ache. Ache like I’ve just swallowed poison, she amended furiously. Setting down her suitcase, she cleared her throat, and when that failed to elicit a response, tried to decide which exact swear word she would shout…
“Do you feel that sound?” Gabriel asked suddenly, not shifting his gaze.
It seemed good morning or even I say, aren’t you my wife? were surplus to his conversational requirements. Elodie found herself thrown from aggravation into utter confusion.
“Um?” she said.
Um. A master’s degree, a doctorate, a professorship, and all she could say was “um”? Her intelligence rolled its eyes in embarrassment.
But Gabriel hadn’t noticed, of course. Pulling herself together, Elodie tried again. “You mean do I hear a sound?”
“No.”
Aggravation stomped back into her brain, shoving confusion aside. “I don’t feel anything,” she said frostily.
