Chapter One
Speak softly and carry a big telescope.
Blazing Trails, W.H. Jackson
Oxford, 1890
A geographer behaves with quiet dignity at all times. Elodie Tarrant had been informed of this maxim by many professors over the years, and she took great pains to impress it upon her own students. England's surveyors and mapmakers must be known for their decorum so they are not known for their trespassing and shot at. Consequently, Elodie had chosen to cycle to the Oxford train station that morning, rather than run along the streets-walking in a dignified manner being out of the question, considering how late she was.
And this would have been entirely commendable, except for the small but not untrivial matter of her bicycle being a steam-powered velocipede.
Anyone not immediately witness to the spectacle of a helmet-clad woman perched upon a rickety wheeled contraption, with steam clouds billowing around her and a long, unbuttoned tweed coat billowing behind, was alerted to it by the loud rattling, tooting, and random belches of the machine. At least her skirt did not billow-but as this was because she had it knotted up around her knees, thus revealing her stocking-clad legs, it rather failed to argue in favor of dignity.
"Faster!" she urged the vehicle, as though doing so might make some difference to its speed. "It will be a disaster if I miss that train!"
She spoke literally. News had arrived yesterday that, following a large storm, magic was afoot in Wales, igniting trees and sending sheep airborne. The Home Office had called upon Professor Tarrant to manage the crisis. Being one of England's foremost specialists in exigent thaumaturgic geographic dynamics (otherwise known as "magical mayhem" to people who valued their vocal cords), Elodie received many such requests, and usually delegated them to graduate students. But with the Michaelmas term still a week away, Elodie rather fancied a few days in the autumnal countryside.
Besides, there existed a small chance that this job would indeed require her advanced expertise. The site-Dôlylleaud, a minor village ten miles east of the Welsh coastline-contained a deposit of subterranean thaumaturgical minerals marked as a level five trove on the Geographic Paranormal Survey map, which recorded all known sources of earth magic, along with the fey lines that connected them in a complex web around the world. Level five indicated minerals powerful enough to send dangerous sorcerous energy down the line to Oxford and its various libraries just waiting to explode, then on to London, where an incursion of wild magic would have cataclysmic results.
Immediately, Elodie had packed a suitcase, postponed her milk delivery, and organized to catch the earliest morning train to Wales. It was the perfect rapid response.
At least, up until the part where she forgot to set her alarm clock.
Arriving at Oxford Station with less than ten minutes to spare, she parked the velocipede and was untying the suitcase from its luggage tray when a young man approached, mustache trembling on his thin brown face as he hugged a clipboard of papers.
"Professor Tarrant?" he peeped.
"Ah, there you are, Motthers." Elodie turned to him with a brisk nod. He took in her entirely rational ensemble of coat, white shirtwaist, and gray skirt, and then her altogether irrational stockings exposed to general view (one black French lace, the other green, embroidered with flowers), and he winced so deeply his neck disappeared. "Is everything prepared?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am. I have the emergency response kit, two tickets for the train, and a plentiful supply of sandwiches."
Elodie waited . . .
"Ham with cheese," he clarified.
She grinned. "Well done." Removing the helmet, she shook out her long, pale blonde hair. It tumbled down in reckless waves-magical hair, literally, having been mousy brown until, at age thirteen, she swam in a moonlit lake she had absolutely no idea was enchanted. "Sorry I'm late," she said, sweeping wayward strands from her face. "I overslept, then I started wondering during breakfast about how Persephone went for nine days in the underworld before eating the pomegranate seeds, and I quite lost track of time. Do you know?"
"Know what, Professor?" Motthers asked warily.
"How she survived all that time without even drinking water, of course."
"Um."
"Never mind. I'll ask someone from the classics department when I get back." She hung the helmet on the velocipede's handlebars and began to gather up her hair, looking around as if clips might appear midair for her convenience. Then she noticed Motthers's dazed stare. "What?"
"T-ticket, ma'am," he said, holding it out in a trembling hand. Elodie took it from him, her hair tumbling down again.
"Much obliged."
But Motthers had not done with trembling. "There's, um, a small problem."
"Oh?" Elodie asked, not really listening as she inspected the ticket. It provisioned her with a second class seat from Oxford to Aberystwyth, after which she and Motthers would take a hired carriage to Dôlylleaud. This was altogether a journey of several long, dull hours, but Elodie didn't mind, feeling that tedium was best described as an opportunity for imagination.
"Just a very small problem," Motthers persisted. "Which is to say, quite large actually, and-and-problematic."
"Uh-huh." Elodie experienced so many problems in her profession that they had to be literal disasters before she started worrying. Motthers, however, was only a master's degree student, and had not yet been caught in a raging flood, let alone outrun fiery boulders that chased him uphill. He needed several more catastrophes under his belt before he developed perspective. As a result, his voice tried to hide behind his tonsils when next he spoke.
"You recall how the telegram yesterday requested aid from Professor Tarrant?"
"Sure," Elodie said, barely listening. Suitcase in hand, she began striding through the station building toward the platform, the heels of her sturdy half boots knocking against the ground as if to announce to other travelers that a professional heroine had arrived-although apparently this was not clear enough for Professor Palgrave, who was forced to leap aside, muttering about "sinful blindness."
"Um," Motthers said, scurrying to keep pace despite his legs being several inches longer than Elodie's (which prompted him to wonder if he should mention the knotted-up skirt, but his courage failed). "It's just, well, it seems a copy was made of the telegram, and someone who shall go unnamed [Ralph Salterling] delivered it to a second office."
"Oh?" Elodie stopped near the edge of the platform and shielded her eyes with her free hand from the limpid morning sun as she peered along the tracks for a glimpse of a train. Incredibly, she had managed to arrive early.
"To be fair," Motthers continued, "we're not exactly sure who the message was meant for in the first place, you or . . . the other Professor Tarrant."
Elodie continued gazing out beneath her hand at the horizon, mainly because she had frozen. Then, very slowly, she turned to look at the small crowd on the platform.
And there he was.
"You," she muttered with such ferocity, it must be cause for amazement that the gentleman did not spontaneously combust. He did not even so much as flinch, however. Indeed, he might have been a statue erected in honor of Elodie's worst memory. All the familiar details were present: tidy black hair, almost-black eyes, olive skin, suit so immaculate he could have worn it to meet the pope, were he not an agnostic. Absent was any human warmth. Behind him, a graduate student fussed with their emergency response kit, but he ignored them, ignored the entire world, staring instead at a small, oblong wooden block in his hand with an expression so stern it made a rock seem like quivering jelly.
Yet Elodie knew that he'd seen her, without a doubt. He saw everything.
Gabriel.
Professor Tyrant to his students (and several members of the faculty when they thought no one could hear them).
Her husband.
Elodie's face blazed. She thrust the suitcase at Motthers without looking, turned on a heel, and began striding back toward the velocipede.
"P-Professor!" Motthers cried out, but Elodie ignored him. She had to get away . . . even while her mind ran headlong into the pit of memory.
She’d married Gabriel on a Monday afternoon in September, almost exactly one year ago. It had been an accident.
If only she'd not gone to the Minervaeum, London's private club for academics, after attending the annual Thaumaturgic Cartography Symposium. If only she'd not felt so queasy from the odors of pipe smoke, steamed pudding, and nitroglycerine swirling through the club's Paracelsus Lounge that she'd decided to open a window. And if only doing so had not brought her close enough to where Gabriel sat with Professor Dubrovic that she overheard their conversation.
"Oh dear," Professor Dubrovic was saying. "Four Balliol students living upstairs from your flat-?" He shook his head sympathetically.
"They are constantly quoting poetry," Gabriel answered, managing to grouch in such refined tones one naturally assumed he was in the right because he sounded like he must be. "And they debate Shakespeare's authorship at the top of their lungs. Or perhaps it's just that they want breakfast at all hours-in any case, if I hear another cry for Bacon, I will go quite mad. I need to find new accommodation before I'm driven to educate them."
"The place across from me on Holywell Street is vacant," Dubrovic said.
"I know, and it would be ideal. I inquired, but the landlady only wants a married couple."
Dubrovic shrugged. "So get married."
There followed a pause in the conversation, due to a chemistry professor across the room having detonated her pudding. While the other patrons variously cheered or complained, Dubrovic smirked over the rim of his whiskey glass at Gabriel. "No need to look so perturbed, old chap. Amor est mortuus. I'm talking about a marriage of convenience."
Gabriel frowned. "Oh? And where would I find a wife at such short notice?"
I'd marry you, Elodie thought with a wistful sigh. She'd adored him since the day they met in Advanced Principles of Thaumaturgical Cartography, two eighteen-year-olds embarking upon a master's degree far sooner than their peers. He'd got there via a bachelor's degree (First Class Honours with Distinction), whereas her route had been through exceptional entry, having spent most of her life in the fields of Europe and Canada with her geographer parents. It was a difference in education that reflected their contrasting personalities, and yet Gabriel had from the very start represented Elodie's ideal of manhood, since even as a young man he'd possessed compelling gravitas and exceptional intelligence (along with perfectly aligned facial contours).
But he also scrupulously ignored her existence. Elodie could not blame him, however. She was neither beautiful nor thin, she lacked proper refinement, and then there was that time she accidentally dented his expensive, thaumaturgically charged copper sieve when using it to swat a fly in the classroom . . .
Suddenly, a ringing silence made her look up from the window's latch, whereupon she discovered that Gabriel had become very aware indeed of her existence, and was staring at her in a way that made her feel like a map of some newly discovered shore.
For one frantic second, Elodie mentally cataloged every wrinkle and ink stain on her dress. Then she dragged together whatever dignity she could find within herself and stared right back at him. "What?" she said defensively.
"You'd marry me?" he asked, echoing the thought she'd apparently spoken aloud.
Oh, damn.
“The other professors don’t respect me,” she explained two days later, back in Oxford, as they walked to a church, the landlady having accepted Gabriel’s application. Elodie’s hair was unraveling from the intricate arrangement she’d spent hours concocting, her white dress was really far too matrimonial for the occasion, and somewhere along the way she’d lost her quiet dignity, perhaps in the same place as the handkerchief she’d bought for the traditional “something blue.” Every few yards she glanced at her husband-to-be, still not quite believing the situation she found herself in. He just stared ahead, giving the impression he was walking alone. Nevertheless, Elodie couldn’t stop talking.
"They think an unwed female professor is a terrible idea. That's why I'm agreeing to marry you." (Well, and the fact that she was an idiot, unable to keep her thoughts in her own head.)
"Uh-huh," Gabriel answered, glowering at a nearby oak that was casting its old russet leaves like wishes onto the footpath.
Actually, now that she mentioned it, Elodie felt quite heated on the subject. "Women have been allowed tertiary education for a hundred years now, thanks to Queen Charlotte's sponsoring it, and yet Oxford's geography staff think a woman with a doctorate is something bizarre. Never mind that there's a female ornithology professor even younger than I am; never mind that I know what I'm doing. I have more field experience than most of them put together, but do they care?"
"How strange," Gabriel said as he watched a squirrel scamper up the tree with a paperback novel in its mouth.
"Yes, exactly! Strange is just how I would describe it. Strange, and yet so very common. Misogynistic. The departmental secretary told me outright that I'd plague other professors with my 'tempting availability.'"
"Hm."
"My mother said that was probably just his way of asking me on a date."
Gabriel almost tripped on the edge of a cobblestone. "What?" he said, looking at her finally, his forehead creased with a frown.
"I know! Can you believe it?"
"Did you believe it?" he asked in return.
She huffed a laugh. "No. The only dates Hammerson knows about are the ones he buys at the greengrocer's in an effort to be cosmopolitan."
Gabriel glared at the church farther along the street as they continued toward it. He clearly did not want conversation, but if Elodie had ever found an off switch within herself, she'd lost it again long ago.
"When I'm married to you, they'll have to respect me." (For no other reason than the fear that, if they didn't, Professor Tyrant might come and look at them.)
"So," Gabriel said, "if we do this, I get decent housing, and you gain the respect of your peers? And you think that's a good deal?"
Elodie recognized that he was offering her a chance to withdraw, and she considered it-which is to say, immediately, completely refused it. Her proposal may have been accidental, but the opportunity to marry Gabriel Tarrant was, as her more modish students would say, a no-brainer.
In other words, she failed to apply her brain to it.
"Yes," she answered.
Twenty minutes later, she was standing in a quiet, sun-spangled 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.
Copyright © 2025 by India Holton. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
