A Discovery of Witches(230)

It was already dark, and Em and I were making dinner when the meeting broke up. Nathaniel and Sophie were talking quietly in the family room.

“I need to catch up on a few calls,” Matthew said after he’d kissed me, his mild tone at odds with his tense face.

Seeing how tired he was, I decided my questions could wait.

“Of course,” I said, touching his cheek. “Take your time. Dinner will be in an hour.”

Matthew kissed me again, longer and deeper, before going out the back door.

“I need a drink,” Sarah groaned, heading to the porch to sneak a cigarette.

Matthew was nothing more than a shadow through the haze of Sarah’s smoke as he passed through the orchard and headed for the hop barn. Hamish came up behind me, nudging my back and neck with his eyes.

“Are you fully recovered?” he asked quietly.

“What do you think?” It had been a long day, and Hamish made no effort to hide his disapproval of me. I shook my head.

Hamish’s eyes drifted away, and mine followed. We both watched as Matthew’s white hands streaked through his hair before he disappeared into the barn.

“‘Tiger, tiger, burning bright / In the forests of the night,’” Hamish said, quoting William Blake. “That poem has always reminded me of him.”

I rested my knife on the cutting board and faced him. “What’s on your mind, Hamish?”

“Are you certain of him, Diana?” he asked. Em wiped her hands on her apron and left the room, giving me a sad look.

“Yes.” I met his eyes, trying to make my confidence in Matthew clear.

Hamish nodded, unsurprised. “I did wonder if you would take him on, once you knew who he was—who he still is. It would seem you’re not afraid to have a tiger by the tail.”

Wordlessly I turned back to the counter and resumed my chopping.

“Be careful.” Hamish rested his hand on my forearm, forcing me to look at him. “Matthew won’t be the same man where you’re going.”

“Yes he will.” I frowned. “My Matthew is going with me. He’ll be exactly the same.”

“No,” Hamish said grimly. “He won’t.”

Hamish had known Matthew far longer. And he’d pieced together where we were going based on the contents of that briefcase. I still knew nothing, except that I was headed to a time before 1976 and a place where Matthew had played chess.

Hamish joined Sarah outside, and soon two plumes of gray smoke rose into the night sky.

“Is everything all right in there?” I asked Em when she returned from the family room, where Miriam, Marcus, Nathaniel, and Sophie were talking and watching TV.

“Yes,” she replied. “And here?”

“Just fine.” I focused on the apple trees and waited for Matthew to come in from the dark.





Chapter 41

The day before Halloween, a fluttery feeling developed in my stomach.

Still in bed, I reached for Matthew.





“I’m nervous.”

He closed the book he was reading and drew me near. “I know. You were nervous before you opened your eyes.”

The house was already bustling with activity. Sarah’s printer was churning out page after page in the office below. The television was on, and the dryer whined faintly in the distance as it protested under another load of laundry. One sniff told me that Sarah and Em were well into the day’s coffee consumption, and down the hall there was the whir of a hair dryer.

“Are we the last ones up?” I made an effort to calm my stomach.

“I think so,” he said with a smile, though there was a shadow of concern in his eyes.

Downstairs, Sarah was making eggs to order while Em pulled trays of muffins out of the oven. Nathaniel was methodically plucking one after another from the tin and popping them whole into his mouth.

“Where’s Hamish?” Matthew asked.

“In my office, using the printer.” Sarah gave him a long look and returned to her pan.

Marcus left his Scrabble game and came to the kitchen to take a walk with his father. He grabbed a handful of nuts as he left, sniffing the muffins with a groan of frustrated desire.

“What’s going on?” I asked quietly.

“Hamish is being a lawyer,” Sophie replied, spreading a thick layer of butter on top of a muffin. “He says there are papers to sign.”

Hamish called us into the dining room in the late morning. We straggled in carrying wineglasses and mugs. He looked as though he hadn’t slept. Neat stacks of paper were arranged across the table’s expanse, along with sticks of black wax and two seals belonging to the Knights of Lazarus—one small, one large. My heart hit my stomach and bounced back into my throat.

“Should we sit?” Em asked. She’d brought in a fresh pot of coffee and topped off Hamish’s mug.

“Thank you, Em,” Hamish said gratefully. Two empty chairs sat officiously at the head of the table. He gestured Matthew and me into them and picked up the first stack of papers. “Yesterday afternoon we went over a number of practical issues related to the situation in which we now find ourselves.”

My heart sped up, and I eyed the seals again.

“A little less lawyerly, Hamish, if you please,” Matthew said, his hand tightening on my back. Hamish glowered at him and continued.