Blooms of Consequence (Dusk Gate Chronicles Book 4) (19 page)

“That should be interesting,” she said with a wry expression. “I don’t think Charles likes me very much.”

“That has nothing to do with you – he obviously had his own agenda before he came here.”

“So it wasn’t just me who noticed that?”

“Definitely not. Alvin had him pegged, too.” Just as he always had everyone pegged – it hadn’t escaped his notice that Alvin had pulled Quinn to the side for a moment as everyone was saying goodnight. He’d decided not to ask her about it, though, figuring she would tell him about that when she was ready.

She sighed, and he went to her, putting his arms around her, kissing her on the forehead. “You did great in there.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

“You did, though. Hey,” he said, suddenly remembering, “I have something for you.”

She frowned.

“Well, we were supposed to be celebrating your birthday tonight.”

“That doesn’t seem like the most important thing right now.”

“Anything that celebrates you is important to me, Quinn. Besides, you should take it while you can get it. Birthdays are sort of rare here – it’s a few thousand days until your next one.”

Her eyes widened, and he smiled. “Yeah … that was one of the few things I really liked about going to Bristlecone when I was little. I didn’t have to wait as long for things as my brothers and sisters did. And then there … people have birthdays all the time. If there were twenty-four kids in your class, that was like two birthdays a month. And people brought cupcakes…” As he talked, he walked over to the chair where he’d laid down his cape, and picked it up, retrieving the little package from the pocket.

“It’s not much,” he said. “But, I found it a couple of weeks ago when I was going through some old books, and … I really couldn’t believe it. I had no idea I’d done this. I wish I remembered it, but I don’t. I guess another downside of spending time here is that my childhood was a
really
long time ago.” He handed the gift to her.

She was curious now; he could see it in her eyes. And he felt his cheeks warming, a little embarrassed now; he didn’t know what she was going to think.

When the cloth came off, revealing a small, old, slightly tattered sketchbook – purchased in her world – she frowned up at him.

“Apparently, when I was little, I thought I’d try my hand at drawing,” he said. “I still do a lot of that, but now it’s all diagrams and stuff like that. I’m mostly only artistic with the carving…”

He was definitely nervous now as she opened the cover.

“Wow, Will,” she said, sucking in a breath. “These are good.”

He wasn’t sure how old he’d been when he’d drawn them, but it was in the first couple of years he’d been in Bristlecone – still at the elementary school. The whole sketchbook was filled with drawings of things he’d seen there – the trees, the shops, the cars … and quite a few pictures of the kids at school.

There were kids studying at desks, chattering as they ate lunch together, playing at recess. And there was one picture – the only colored picture in a sea of pencil drawings – of a little girl playing on a swing by herself, daydreaming, by the look in her soft gray eyes, her long auburn hair blowing back in the wind.

Those eyes looked up at him now with tears in them.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I did – even then, it seems.”

This time she pulled him into her arms and kissed him, starting with the pink spots that were quickly fading from his cheeks, pooling instead into a warm glow deep inside his chest.

“I love you, William Rose. This is the best birthday present I’ve ever had. Not this,” she said, touching the book gently before setting it down on the table, “although I love it very much, but
this
,” she placed her hand over his heart, “
this
is the present I’m most grateful for. Thank you for trusting me with it.”

“Thank you for giving me yours,” he whispered, placing his hand over her heart, and then leaning in to kiss her on the lips.

They held each other for a long time, just hugging, gently swaying back and forth, William’s heart overflowing with tenderness for her. But finally, she yawned.

They both chuckled, and he kissed her on the nose. “You should at least sit down,” he said.

“Okay,” she agreed, heading toward her couch. He intended to follow her, but almost immediately, she stood up again, light pink filling her cheeks.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.” But the pink was growing darker.

“What, love?”

Her cheeks were decidedly red now, but she giggled under her breath, relaxing him. “It’s just... As soon as I sat down, I realized how much I want to be out of this stupid dress.”

He looked down at the soft folds of the material, unable to stop himself from reaching to take some of the fabric of the skirt in his hand. “I don’t know if I’d call it stupid...”

She rolled her eyes.

“So go change. You should go to bed anyway; you’ve got to be exhausted.”

“Yeah ... the problem is I can’t get out of it myself.” She turned her back to him, showing off an impressive line of tiny, intricate buttons. “And I’m sure Mia and Linnea are already both asleep.”

“It’s lucky for you I know how to operate a button. Otherwise, you’d have to sleep in this thing.” He understood her blush now; warmth crept up his own neck as he reached for the top button. The heat rose higher as his unbuttoning revealed the lacy top of the cream-colored slip she wore underneath the dress.

His breath caught, and she twisted her head to look at him. “This is dangerous,” she whispered.

“Very.” He ran his hand across the silky lace, and then up her also-silky neck. Buttons forgotten, she turned to face him, and his lips found hers.

He was thankful that she had the wherewithal to pull away from him a few minutes later – because he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to. “Sorry.”

She raised an eyebrow, her expression teasing, not angry. “Are you?”

“Only because I want to do this right. At this particular moment, I’m wishing we were already married, and that I could have this job permanently.” She kept her arms around his neck as he worked on the remaining buttons behind her.

“I wish that right now, too. It’s going to be hard to wait.”

He closed his eyes. Yes, traveling with her all the way to Philotheum like this was going to be next to impossible. As he stood there, trying to re-regulate his breathing, another course of action occurred to him. “Maybe we shouldn’t wait.”

“What do you mean?” She frowned. “We talked about this, I thought…”

“We did,” he said quickly. “That’s not what I mean … I meant, maybe we shouldn’t wait to get married.”

“We’re leaving in a couple of days, Will. We can’t just get married.” There was a catch in her voice that he didn’t understand – like something had just clicked, and she wasn’t telling him.

“We can’t have a big wedding, no – though all things considered we probably will still have to have a big, public ceremony sometime.”

“So, what, like a small private ceremony here, and then we’d already be married when we go?”

“Why not?”

“Do people do things like that here?”

“Sure. It’s not standard practice in my family, obviously, but these are not standard circumstances, either.”

“Would your parents be okay with it?”

He walked around her and started working on the buttons again. “Quinn, I love my parents, and I know you do, too. And your parents – your mom, at least, is really starting to grow on me. But we’re not talking about our parents here.”

He reached the last button and, then, still talking, made his way across the room to retrieve her dressing gown from its hook in her bathroom. “I want to be respectful to our parents, of course, but you and I are both adults, and we’re talking about marriage. This is about what’s best for us – not them.”

She slipped her arms out of the dress and into the robe, tying it around herself before he helped her step the rest of the way out of the skirt. “When did you turn into such a grown up?” She slumped down onto the couch, clearly relieved to be free from the heavy dress. He laid it carefully over the back of a chair before sitting down next to her.

“I am technically ten times older than you,” he teased. “Since I grew up in this world.”

“I don’t know. You spent quite a bit of time in mine. It’s possible now that Thomas and Linnea are older than you are. Maybe we should ask them.”

He chuckled. “I’m sure we’ll hear their opinions on the subject in the morning. Right now, I’m more interested in yours.”

“Well, we are going to get married anyway.”

“I hope so.”

“We are, Will. I’m not wavering on that. I’m just trying to process a lot of things right now.”

“I know, love.” He scooted closer to her on the couch, and took her hand in his. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. I should let you sleep.”

“I’m wide awake now.”

“So am I.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever been more awake.

“It would make some things easier.”

“We could be sure to have your mom here, for one thing.”

Her eyes widened, and he immediately felt bad – she obviously hadn’t thought about that – that if they waited and were married after they arrived in Philotheum, there was a good chance her family
wouldn’t
be able to be there. “My mom is leaving in three days. There’s no way we could plan a wedding in three days.”

 “My mother could probably put together a wedding in three hours if she had to, Quinn. I’m not worried about that. If you want,” he said, softly stroking her hand, “we could make this ceremony more like one in your world. Do all the traditional things you’d do there. I don’t know what all of them are, but I’m sure we could find a way. My mother is a good planner; you can just tell her what you want. The hardest part of the whole thing will be finding someone to perform the ceremony on such short notice.”

She chuckled once under her breath.

“What?”

“I don’t think that part will be a problem.”

“Why?”

“Alvin tonight – I didn’t know what he was hinting about, but he pulled me aside and told me that he’d be nearby for the next couple of days, in case we needed his
services
. Now I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

“Laughing is usually best, I think.”

She smiled. “Okay. So we get married sometime in the next three days, then.”

He pulled her hand up to his lips and kissed her ring. “That sounds good to me.”

Taking his hand in hers, she pulled it to her cheek. He ran his thumb against her cheekbone, smiling when it warmed to a light pink.

She tucked herself up under his other arm. “It’s going to be awfully hard to be ready to say good-bye and leave everyone so quickly.”

He wrapped his other arm around her, too. “Would that part be any easier if we had a hundred moons to prepare? Of course, I always imagined there would be more time – that our wedding would be a little more traditional and celebratory ... but that’s not what matters to me. I’m leaving the places where I grew up, sure, but I’m not leaving
home
, Quinn. You’re coming with me.”

“Don’t make me cry. I still have makeup on.”

He chuckled, and leaned in to kiss her nose. “You would be beautiful even if there were black streaks running down your face. But I don’t want you to cry.”

*          *          *

William was reliving some of his memories of laughing with Quinn as he walked down the hall to his room. One in particular – the memory of their first kiss in Ellen’s basement – actually had him smiling, even though the situation had been very stressful at the time.

“Do you always smile like that when you’re coming back from my daughter’s room in the middle of the night?” Megan’s voice made him nearly jump out of his skin.

“What? No! Megan, it’s not like that...” he stammered, blanching.

She raised an eyebrow, but as he finally caught his breath, he realized that she didn’t look angry. In fact, she was almost smiling.

“Really, Megan,” he said, a little calmer, “I would never disrespect Quinn like that.”

“I know,” she said. “Or at least I hope I do. I heard the two of you come back up here just a little while ago. What’s up with all the late-night secrecy?”

The change in his expression must have been obvious, because hers immediately registered concern. “What, William?”

“Would you like some tea?”

She frowned. “Is that all you do around here? Drink tea in the common room?”

“Twice a day, at least.” He chuckled. “It’s just what we do. People in your world watch television if they can’t sleep, or if they’re bored in the afternoon. We don’t have television. We have tea.”

 “The stove’s been cold for a long time.”

He shrugged, walking into the common room. Once he reached the kitchen area, he opened one of the cabinets, and pulled out his electric kettle. “I used to keep this in my room,” he said, as Megan settled herself on one of the stools, “it was sort of my own private thing from Bristlecone. I have trouble sleeping sometimes – or sometimes I’m just up all night working on some research project. But after Thomas told me he found Quinn in here one night, lighting the stove by herself, I moved it in here.”