Shadow Though it Be: An Excursus – Chapter 18
They sat at the table, Elisabeth dividing her attention unequally between cold pack, wineglass, and Giles's tinkering efforts on her glasses with a lit candle, a set of mini-screwdrivers, and a pair of needlenose pliers. A selection from The Well-Tempered Clavier was playing softly on the turntable.
Giles held the stem to the heat of the candle-flame, letting the disturbed air warp the flame around the sturdy copper wire. The dancing flame reflected itself twice over in his own lenses; Elisabeth watched, her eyesight slightly misted from the effects of alcohol and post-adrenaline torpor.
He took the frames away from the candle and applied the pliers for the second time; this time, the bend in the earpiece straightened without warping, and the hinge moved much less loosely. "There," he said. "Try this."
She put down the cold pack; he took a wet corner of the tea towel wrapping it to wipe the earpiece and cool it for her. She took the glasses from him and put them on, then turned her head from one side to the other, modeling them.
"How's it feel?" he asked.
"Good," she said. She tilted her head back and looked at him full-on. "How's it look?"
"It doesn't seem quite centered," he said. "But if it feels all right, that must be an illusion."
"It's probably my nose," Elisabeth said. "I didn't even notice my nose was slightly crooked till I was twenty. One day I looked into the oven window to check on a casserole, saw my reflection, and went, 'huh.'" She tilted her head back again and curled her upper lip, imitating her moment of discovery.
He smiled, and turned to zip his glasses-mending tools back into their pouch; but before he could so much as blow out the candle, Elisabeth reached out impulsively and touched his chin, to hold him there facing her. He looked at her mildly; and she opened her lips, to express something of the urge, the large but homely magnitude of what was moving her. He saw it, and even as she gave up the idea of saying anything at all, he withdrew politely from her touch. "What?" she said, with a little anxiety.
His eyes were, thankfully, honest on hers. "You had the look of one about to give me a compliment I cannot possibly accept," he said softly.
The earnest lines of her face softened somewhat. "Would I do that to you?" she said. "I was merely going to say…I was going to say, 'You'll do.'" She gave him a little grimacing smile. "Is that a compliment you can't accept?"
A pleasing softness had come into his face. "On the contrary," he said, "it seems to me that's a compliment I cannot possibly refuse."
She laughed softly, and let him go. He snuffed the candle, packed up his tools, and got up to put them away. She too got up, to get out her pajamas and toothbrush, and made her way to the bathroom.
When she came out, washed and brushed and dressed for bed, she found him in the kitchen, washing out the wineglass. He had removed his oxford shirt altogether and was standing at the sink in his T-shirt, which was partially untucked from his trousers, the tea-towel still doing valiant duty slung over his shoulder. "Going to bed?" he said, looking up at her.
She had suddenly forgotten how to say 'yes.'
After a moment, however, she did remember how to nod, and she did so, hoping her bruise would camouflage the heat in her face.
"It is late," he said, upending the wineglass on the draining board and turning off the tap. Had she imagined the studied casualness of his tone? "I should go to bed too." He turned suddenly to look at her. "How's your war wound?"
She shrugged. "It hurts."
"Are you feeling dizzy?"
Elisabeth certainly felt something, but whether she could categorize it as dizziness she didn't know. Anyway, she was fairly certain it had very little physically to do with her "war wound," as he put it, so she said: "No."
He took the tea towel from his shoulder and dried his hands. "Well, we ought to check if you're concussed, anyway." He came past her into the hallway, tipping his head for her to follow. She followed him to his desk, where he dug around in a drawer and finally came up with a penlight. She took off her glasses, correctly anticipating what he was going to do. Sure enough, he instructed her to look at him and shined the penlight directly in her eyes; then he grunted, and dropped the penlight back into the drawer.
"What's the verdict, doc?" Elisabeth said.
"Normal," he said.
"Good," she said. "That means I can go to sleep."
She put her glasses back on. Giles took a clothing brush from the desk drawer, went to pick up her jacket from the chair at the table where she'd carelessly hung it while they were repairing her glasses, and began to clean the smudges of dust from it. She watched him work, watched the short hard strokes of his arms going over first one rumpled sleeve, then the other. The jacket looked considerably smarter when he'd finished with it.
"Thanks," she said feebly, as he went to hang it up by the door.
For answer he gave her a smile over his shoulder.
It was just as well she was going to bed.
By the time she had got herself firmly ensconced in her nest, with an accent pillow borrowed from the easy chair to elevate her pillows, and her copy of Lord Peter open on her lap, he had finished puttering around, and came out of the kitchen with a glass of water, turning the light off behind him. He came to stand by her bed on the couch; she took her eyes out of the book and looked up at him, letting the book fall back on her lap. "Thought you might want this eventually," he said, gesturing with the glass of water.
"Thanks," she said. He put it down on the coffee table, then looked over at her, clearly wanting to sit by her side; so she gave him one of his own humorous looks and closed her book. She took off her glasses, pinned them with her thumb to the cover of the book, and arched her back to put them both on the end table behind her head. "Budge up," he said, and she scooted over to make room for him to sit. When they had both settled comfortably in, Elisabeth found herself lying in the same position she had been in that morning, hands crossed over her belly, except that now instead of looking at the ceiling she was looking at Giles.
What did she know? The way the pieces moved on a chessboard—
Apparently Giles's mind was similarly occupied. "Have you any more blessings for me?" he asked her softly.
"No," she snorted. "You've exhausted all my Latin."
He ducked his head and laughed into his lap.
She added, "I used to know the one that means, 'No, I don't want an ear of corn,' but I've forgotten it."
He took his glasses off, still laughing, and turned them over in his nimble fingers. After a moment he looked up at her again and said: "What are you like when you're not in dire straits?"
She leaned her head back, thinking; drawing a blank, she looked up and served it back to him. "What are you like when you're not in dire straits?"
He leaned his elbow on the back of the couch and scratched his head quizzically, still smiling. "I'm not sure," he said, turning his eyes down to her again.
"Neither am I," she said. "A little less prickly, probably."
"It's endearing," he said.
She snorted again. "Have you noticed how debatable that is?" she said.
He lowered his eyes and smiled wider.
"At any rate," she said, "any peace I get is usually the eye of the hurricane."
He nodded sympathetically, and reached forward to lay his glasses next to hers on the book above her head, so that when he pulled back, he was resting with his arm braced along the back of the couch, looking down at her. A small part of her mind noted how well and subtly it was done; the rest of her (feeling no objection to any such subtlety on his part) was focused on him, on the quiddity of him—his hair (sticking up in back again), his crow's feet, the pink marks his glasses had left on either side of his nose; his well-worn white T-shirt. She let her eyes travel the length of his arm above her, with some idea of studying the bones of his wrist; but her eyes were arrested at the soft pale hollow of his forearm, and the small dark tattoo riding the base of the broad muscle. Unthinkingly she reached up her forefinger to touch it, to trace the sigil; it looked as fresh as if it had been drawn there yesterday. Without looking at his face, she could sense the hard lines of worry taking over the gentleness of his expression.
A thought came to her; she blinked and looked up at him. "It won't do anything, will it? touching it like this?"
He cleared his throat. "Not," he said, trying to be light, "unless you know the proper incantation." He frowned. "You don't, do you?"
She raised her eyes from the Mark to his. "No."
"Well," he stammered, "good." He let out a heavy sigh and turned his own eyes to the tattoo. "Were you even born when I acquired it?" he murmured.
"Does it matter?" she said.
Again their eyes met. He was the first to look away.
"She was right about one thing," he said morosely. "I am old enough to be your father."
Elisabeth sighed. "You're what, twenty years older than I am? Tell me, would you have made me a good father at twenty?"
He snorted. "No."
"And," she said, watching him carefully, "are you tempted to father me now?"
He tilted his head to look at her, as if seeing her for the first time. She watched the changes in his face as he studied her features, and didn't realize she'd been holding her breath until he shook his head.
She made a little shrug where she lay against the pillows, and sat back to let him figure it out. To her gratification, much of the trouble cleared from his face within a minute. Finally he looked down to meet her eye.
"I have, however," he said, "been suffering a temptation to opportunism."
"Opportunism?" she asked him, mockingly.
He raised his eyes and tilted his head again, in that gesture that always sent the hilarity through her sinuses. "Well, yes," he said. "I mean, I find you attractive, and you're good company, and with a little practice you can play me chess—and you seem to like me—and I, well,—"
He stopped, flushing. She was smirking at him.
"Rupert. That's not opportunism."
"No?"
"No. It's called good luck."
"Oh. Is that what that is," he said, with a sudden little smile.
"Yes," she said. "So let's put your suffering to an end, shall we?"
"Right," he said.
But he seemed suddenly paralyzed, unable to do anything but look at her.
"And anyway," she said, "if anyone's suffering from a temptation to opportunism, it's me."
"Are you sure it's not good luck?" he said softly.
"In Sunnydale?" she said. But it was a gentle jest; he read her eyes and smiled.
They sat this way, looking at one another, mutually paralyzed, until she said, flushing: "At what point of these proceedings are you going to kiss me?"
It was enough to break the spell, and he sputtered a short laugh. "Whatever point you like," he retorted with a grin.
"In that case…." She reached up an inviting hand, and as he bent close, she murmured, "now would be good…," just before his lips touched hers.
She would have rushed it. In her nervousness she would have pressed the kiss too far too soon, but after the first awkward moment she sensed his delicacy and began to take his lead. Which, she discovered almost at once, was quite effective. He made one kiss out of very many little kisses: a kiss she could draw a breath through, and did, trembling. She slipped her hands up to the back of his collar; he took his arm down from the back of the couch, from which it had already begun to slide, and nestled it snugly alongside her. She moved to accommodate his touch, and at the same moment their kiss deepened under his influence, flavored faintly, sharply, with the last of the wine.
Outside their notice, the well-tempered clavier finished its perambulations, and the needle arm took its bow and returned to rest. The turntable stopped with a click.
She felt his fingers bury themselves in her hair, still careful of the bruise on her face; her hands had already found a place, one in his hair and one at his collarbone.
Strengthen me with apples, refresh me with raisins—or is it strengthen me with raisins, refresh me with apples—or is it—refresh me—?
She was kissing him with the same leisured abandon he was using to her; and in fact, though he was the one guiding them, she had somehow come to feel as though his kiss waited upon hers, and had always done so. How do you do that? she wanted to ask him, but that would involve breaking the kiss, and she had not the smallest intention of doing that. Instead, she brought her hand round from the graceful back slope of his skull and traced the rim of his excellent-mouser's ear; then buried her fingers once more in his hair.
In response he gathered her closer, his left hand conforming where it touched her; she arched comfortably into his new embrace, and tilted her head to get a better angle for kissing him. He moved his kiss unexpectedly, from the corner of her mouth to the round of her unbruised cheek, to her closed eyelid, to her temple....
"Do I still," she whispered breathlessly, "taste of Grand Marnier?"
She felt his equally breathless laughter in her ear, then the warmth of his kiss beneath the angle of her jaw.
She drew a deep, sudden breath as every fiber of her body tingled awake.
It startled her; it startled him. He lifted his head, abandoning his kiss at her throat, to look her in the eye at close range. For a moment they breathed together; then she murmured: "Now look what you've done." Before he could respond, she lifted her head enough to give him the smallest kiss on the mouth; and with a little sound in his throat he melted into the kiss, no longer holding back.
There followed several confused, incandescent moments, in which Elisabeth's skin glowed hot and Giles's hands sought a closer fit to her contour—
With a wrenching effort he pulled himself clear of the kiss and rested his forehead on hers, breathing hard. "That," he said after several hard swallows, "was rather unexpected."
If you wanted to get technical, Elisabeth thought, it really wasn't—but she knew what he meant. Her temperature had turned the blankets over her into a veritable earthenware oven, and his warm proximity wasn't helping any. What could be more natural than this? and yet, how did they arrive here so quickly? And, speaking of arriving—
She opened her eyes just as he raised himself to look down at her. She felt his forefinger move to stroke the crown of her head under the surface of her hair.
There seemed nothing to say. She unearthed her fingers from his hair and smoothed it once, and then once again.
They stared at one another long enough for his breathing to slow. At length, he blinked several times and drew a long breath. He opened his lips, but no words came out.
Elisabeth thought she understood. And in fact, meeting his eyes again, she knew she did. She sighed.
"So," she said quietly, "is this us, deciding not to—"
He took another breath. "Yes," he said hoarsely, "yes, I think so."
"For a number of excellent reasons."
"Yes, quite a few." He sat up with an effort, scraped his hands down his face, and swallowed again.
His absence left her a little cooler, but it was a poor trade-off for not touching him any more. She said tentatively, "What's the reason you were thinking of?"
He cleared his throat; cleared it again. "I was thinking," he said, still hoarse, "that perhaps making…er, stronger ties in this world would do you harm when you're trying to get back to your own world."
"That's a good reason," she said, looking at him steadily.
They looked at one another for another moment, then he said: "What was the reason you were thinking of?"
"I was thinking perhaps I didn't want to carry my involvement too far. I mean, there's involved, and then there's involved, y'know?"
"Quite," he said. "That's…that's a good reason."
"And," she added, "for the record…I think it's more likely that I'll hurt you than that you'll hurt me."
The calculating look was back in his eyes, though his face still looked warm. "I'm not the only one with an overactive urge to protect, it seems," he said.
She lowered her eyes, accepting it. Then she looked up at him again. "Otherwise…," she said.
She watched a smile come into his face without quite touching his lips. "Yes," he said.
Elisabeth's mouth was dry, and her pulse was, sadly, returning to normal, leaving her slightly shaky. "I think I'd like that water now," she said.
"Oh! of course," he said, reaching for it. She sat up a little and took the glass from him. He sat and watched her sip the water; she raised her eyes over the rim of the glass as she drank, meeting his gaze. When she was finished she handed the water to him; he made a facial shrug at it and took a drink of it himself before putting it back down on the table. Then he drew a long breath. "I'd better go to bed," he said.
"I was going to say, you have a cold shower to take, don't you?" she said, sympathetically.
He rolled his eyes. "Something like that." He rose reluctantly, wearily, and retrieved his glasses from the end table at her head. "I'll see you in the morning."
"And therwithall, so swetely did me kysse, And softly sayd: deare hart, how like you this?" Elisabeth murmured as he moved to the foot of the couch.
He turned, his mouth quirking. "'They flee from me that sometime did me seek,'" he said. "I hope you're not feeling ill-used, if you're quoting Thomas Wyatt."
"By Fortune," Elisabeth said, "not by you."
He grinned.
"By the way," Elisabeth said as he began to turn away, "something else happened this evening."
"Oh?" he said, looking rather apprehensive.
"Yes." Elisabeth picked lightly at the blanket covering her. "I remembered my last name this evening."
"Oh," he said, his tone changing. "That's…encouraging."
"Yes," she said; but she did not quite smile.
He stood looking at her for a long moment, until she gave him a question-face.
"What is it?"
"What's what?"
He smiled dryly. "Your surname."
"Oh. It's Bowen. Like Elizabeth Bowen, the twentieth-century Irish novelist, except my first name's spelled with an 's' not a 'z.' I say that to people when I tell them my name, and they look blankly at me, and then I think, oh, I'm such a dork. Nobody knows who Elizabeth Bowen is, I might as well save my breath, but I keep doing it. See? I do keep doing it." She stopped to breathe.
He was smiling. If he wasn't kissing her, at least he was smiling.
"Well then," he said, with a sort of dry gallantry, "goodnight, Elisabeth-Bowen-spelt-with-an-'s'."
She smiled back. "Goodnight."
She lay back and listened to the sounds of him brushing his teeth in the bathroom; he came out, gave her a friendly blink, and went upstairs, where she heard him moving about the loft bedroom. At last the loft light went out, and a small creak announced his getting into bed. With the single Tiffany lamp burning above her head, Elisabeth listened to the now-familiar nocturnal settling noises of the flat. Beyond that there was no sound; she heard no faint snores from upstairs. Whether that meant that Giles was as wakeful as she, she could not tell.
At any rate, she heard nothing from him in the eternity it took her to fall asleep herself.
*
Chapter 19