A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [303]
“Leave them in the keeping room,” I told him. “The house will take care of them.”
I continued to putter, doing laundry and straightening up Sarah’s office. It was not until I went up to put our clothes away that I noticed both computers were missing. I went pounding downstairs in a panic.
“Matthew! The computers are gone!”
“Hamish has them,” he said, catching me in his arms and smoothing my hair against the back of my head. “It’s all right. No one’s been in the house.”
My shoulders sagged, heart still hammering at the idea of being surprised by another Domenico or Juliette.
He made tea, then rubbed my feet while I drank it. All the while he talked about nothing important—houses in Hamilton that had reminded him of some other place and time, his first sniff of a tomato, what he thought when he’d seen me row in Oxford—until I relaxed into the warmth and comfort.
Matthew was always different when no one else was around, but the contrast was especially marked now that our families had left. Since arriving at the Bishop house, he’d gradually taken on the responsibility for eight other lives. He’d watched over all of them, regardless of who they were or how they were related to him, with the same ferocious intensity. Now he had only one creature to manage.
“We haven’t had much time to just talk,” I reflected, thinking of the whirlwind of days since we’d met. “Not just the two of us.”
“The past weeks have been almost biblical in their tests. I think the only thing we’ve escaped is a plague of locusts.” He paused. “But if the universe does want to test us the old-fashioned way, this counts as the end of our trial. It will be forty days this evening.”
So little time, for so much to have happened.
I put my empty mug on the table and reached for his hands. “Where are we going, Matthew?”
“Can you wait a little longer, mon coeur?” He looked out the window. “I want this day to last. And it will be dark soon enough.”
“You like playing house with me.” A piece of hair had fallen onto his forehead, and I brushed it back.
“I love playing house with you,” he said, capturing my hand.
We talked quietly for another half hour, before Matthew glanced outdoors again. “Go upstairs and take a bath. Use every drop of water in the tank and take a long, hot shower, too. You may crave pizza every now and then in the days to come. But that will be nothing compared to your longing for hot water. In a few weeks, you will cheerfully commit murder for a shower.”
Matthew brought up my Halloween costume while I bathed: a calf-length black dress with a high neck, sharp-toed boots, and a pointy hat.
“What, may I ask, are these?” He brandished a pair of stockings with red and white horizontal stripes.
“Those are the stockings Em mentioned.” I groaned. “She’ll know if I don’t wear them.”
“If I still had my phone, I would take a picture of you in these hideous things and blackmail you for eternity.”
“Is there anything that would ensure your silence?” I sank lower into the tub.
“I’m sure there is,” Matthew said, tossing the stockings behind him.
We were playful at first. As at dinner last night, and again at breakfast, we carefully avoided mentioning that this might be our last chance to be together. I was still a novice, but Em told me even the most experienced timewalkers respected the unpredictability of moving between past and future and recognized how easy it would be to wander indefinitely within the spiderweb of time.
Matthew sensed my changing mood and answered it first with greater gentleness, then with a fierce possessiveness that demanded I think of nothing but him.
Despite our obvious need for comfort and reassurance, we didn’t consummate our marriage.
“When we’re safe,” he’d murmured, kissing me along my collarbone. “When there’s more time.”
Somewhere along the way, my smallpox blister burst. Matthew examined it and pronounced that it was doing nicely—an odd description for an angry open wound the size of a dime. He removed the bandage from my neck, revealing the barest trace of Miriam’s sutures,