A Thousand and One Read online

  But her face formed a little grin instead of the shamed expression it should have borne. “My theory is that you are about to learn your obsession with poetry, magic kisses and love at first sight is completely ridiculous.”

  So that was why she was so eager to show up at his home uninvited—to crow very loudly that romance wasn’t important at all. To this he had to reply, “What you’re about to learn is that logic and science have no place in Lady Love’s business. Our last case showed me that the Lady only recruited you to teach you a thing or two.”

  Claire tapped the toe of her slipper on the stone floor. Three taps meant she was pausing to give her next words emphasis. Tad smirked as his ears detected a fourth tap. “I helped solve that case.”

  And you’re pretending not to be mad at me again. That was one point for him. “You happened to notice something shiny just before you almost got eaten, and I saved you, in case you forgot.”

  Her pupils contracted violently. “I saved you first.”

  “I…”

  Claire whipped a little book and a charcoal stick from her dress pocket. Her head bobbed up and down. “Mmm hmm…selective memory.” She scribbled something unintelligible and snapped the book shut.

  “You just tell me what you wrote about me.” Tad stared at her without blinking.

  She stared right back at him. “Selective hearing as well, I see. But I won’t bother writing that down since I already did the first day we met.”

  “You’ve been keeping notes about me?” In scientific gibberish, but it still counted.

  “Not because you are interesting but—”

  “So scientists often record things that are of no interest whatsoever?” Tad tried to appear serious in his inquiry but the color rising in her cheeks had his face stretching into a broad smile. “Wasting your time with a useless subject of study when you claim to have important contributions to make to mankind? Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

  Claire’s dimples had expressed themselves again, a sure sign he had provoked her. Lips were twitching, too, and that meant she was trying not to answer, which was two points for him.

  There was only one thing to add to that. “Roselle finds me interesting as well so I can hardly blame you for wanting to study me. Just two days ago she smiled and waved at me in the square.”

  “Yes, I’m sure she smiled and waved, but it was one of those guilty looks a young woman betrays when she’s trying to appear pleasant while thinking of running away. She didn’t want you to ask her about Popo after she’d sworn she’d take care of him, and then she lost him.” Claire’s left cheek twitched. “Can you believe she named him Mister Tiddledinks? What in the world is a tiddle, and what’s a dink? No wonder he ran away. Anyhow, I heard her talking to one of her friends just after they hid from you behind a barrel of ale. From what they said, avoiding you has become quite the nuisance lately.”

  A scowl threated to overtake Tad’s face as he regarded Claire’s amused expression. He changed the subject at once. “Back to your ridiculous notions about our new case. As I was saying it’s hardly possible to be around someone for any amount of time with nothing between you and not know they’re you’re true love.”

  “But if your theory is correct, which is highly improbable by the way, that true love is obvious, then our latest clients must be imbeciles, both of them.”

  “Or possibly…” Tad put up his index finger. “…and this is my theory that I give you permission to quote in your little book…There is some magical mischief involved. Otherwise, it is impossible that they would not have already fallen in love.”

  “I accept your challenge.”

  “Er…what?”

  “You claim your method is superior to mine and that your knowledge of poetry or whatever gobbledygook it is you use in your approach…Whatever it is, it is scientifically unsound, but you believe it works. So…” She lifted her chin and arched her eyebrows at him. “Let’s just see on this case if science or romance is better.”

  Tad suppressed a smile. “Loser admits defeat?”

  “But who will judge?” Claire tapped her chin again.

  “I’ll do it,” Pip said.

  Tad shook his head. “You are biased.”

  “And you are not very clever. I don’t see the difference,” Pip replied.

  “Not I,” Nan said when Tad looked at her.

  Sev redirected his eyes to the rug in front of the fireplace and stared at it with excessive enthusiasm.

  Pip regarded the ceiling. “Wiggy is very wise.”

  Only the kitten had vanished.

  Tad shrugged. “We’ll just look at the evidence. If my way is right, which it is, it will be obvious.”

  “Like it was obvious who solved the last case?” Claire lowered her head and shook her curls at him, which gave her a resemblance to a charging bull sporting a distressed hairpiece. “I found the goggles. I solved the mystery of the mirror.”

  “But it was my instructions that broke the curse. And what are the goggles called?” He cupped his hand behind his ear and paused for dramatic effect. “Love goggles, not scientific goggles or whatever gobbledygook it is you use in your approach.”

  Claire opened her mouth but shut it again straightaway.

  That’s what he thought.

  “There is only one way to know for sure,” Pip declared.

  Tad was feeling very benevolent at the moment. “And what’s that?”

  “We’ll ask Lady Love to decide.”

  At this Tad grunted.

  Claire’s eyes twinkled with a hint of a sneaky smile. “But before I show you up…Imogene has invited you to supper.”

  Chapter 4

  Tad stared out of his sitting room window, blinking repeatedly as if this might grant his thoughts some degree of invisibility. He feared they were stamped on his face for Claire and the pigeons to see. How could he turn down Tante Iezavel’s offer without getting himself hexed?

  And this was a double hex since Claire refused to call her landlord by the jinx-binding name like normal people did. Tad’s scientific assistant was definitely responsible for this impromptu civility from the town’s oddest specimen, the one she insisted was not up to no good. But Tad knew a witch when he saw one. He had experience in such matters, and Claire none. Probably.

  “It’s candied peacock.” Claire’s grin got wider. “I let her know that’s a particular favorite of yours.”

  Already Tante’s Iezavel’s enchantment had gone to work. Resistance was futile. Tad meant to magic himself away to think up a good excuse to avoid an ambiguous fate, but somehow found his head nodding, an unspoken agreement that was sure to end catastrophically, probably with him becoming a hunchback or other lowborn slave to unscrupulous, magical sorts. Being that Claire’s combination landlord and roommate certainly dabbled in things unmentionable, affirmative body language was likely enough to seal this dreadful deal, whatever it was.

  Spells bound in the skin of their first victims, caldrons that had not been scoured for generations, spider webs clinging indifferently to his hump. That was his magical future. But maybe Lady Love would retrieve him from Tante Iezavel’s clutches on account of he was her one and only real avenging agent?

  Unless that was Claire’s plan—getting him out of the way so she could take over. He had to admit it was a pretty good one. Lady Love would never suspect a dimpled munchkin had cheated, sold him for naught, or possibly in exchange for a month’s rent. But he didn’t need to worry. There was no way Claire could solve a true love case using science. And, as his mother had remarked repeatedly when he was little and complaining of his chores, he wasn’t a very good slave, anyway. He was indispensable in matters of love and baggage as an evil henchman.

  “I would be delighted to dine with you and Tante Iezavel,” he boldly lied through teeth clenched to keep them from chattering. And he refused to clear his throat of the lump that made it suddenly hard to breathe.

  “Sure?” Claire’s eyes sparkled their delight at his torment.
“I can always tell her you’re too chicken.”

  “Ba-cock,” Pip cawed.

  Tad’s nostrils flared, something that had never before occurred. “Am not.”

  “Good. Then we’ll see you this evening?”

  He pressed his lips together and nodded curtly. “And now let’s get started on the case.” His voice came out in a squeak but he magicked himself to the Library of Love before Pip had a chance to remark on it.

  Three hours later, according to his trusty pocket watch, Tad raked his hand down his face in an attempt to stay awake as he, Claire and the birds watched their newest female client in the magic globe. The events they were observing now had occurred in the prior week, but Tad had also been forced to view everything Della de Courville had said and done in her entire life before that, it seemed. Aside from riding her horse, her routine involved very little exertion. Such a bore.

  He couldn’t exactly label Della an imbecile. Not yet, anyway. She had a regal air about her, to be sure, but he had for perhaps the better part of the last hour ceased to await her communications with frenzied anticipation. Her companions talked and she answered to the grand sum of the four of them having said precisely nil. Were it not for having so many sisters himself, Tad could have been truly mystified at such an achievement.

  As it was, he had gathered hardly any practical information. Della’s true love was Zaen and she had one friend named Emily, another called Prudence, and a third Cordelia. But other than these tidbits, Tad had only picked up that the lady in question had a great admiration for jewelry, principally gold. Silver she snubbed since it had no regard for her complexion. All of these were useless facts, of course, though Claire hadn’t figured out as much. She observed the inane dialogue as if it were especially informative.

  Tad wanted to get a look at Zaen but his assistant had made it to the globe ahead of him—not that he had tried to beat her. Ladies first. That was what a gentleman allowed. Claire technically qualified as female. And so he propped up his face in his palms, elbows on the table, and tried to remember what life had been like before Lady Love forced a blue-green-eyed she-dragon on him.

  The way Della and her cohorts were chattering, and Claire hovering over their every word, it might be a day or two before Tad had a chance to inspect Zaen. One could only hope the case was not especially urgent. At present, Della sat at the writing table in her bedchamber, her three friends gathered around as she prepared to answer a letter a servant had just delivered.

  “Twenty years of this nonsense. Will he ever quit?” Della pressed the inky tip of her quill to the parchment and began to scratch out a response. “No, I will not be your cream tart, your fairest moon, your galaxy of stars, your wish fulfilled. I will not escape with you to our happily ever after. No, sir, I will not marry you.”

  Tad sobered immediately, straightening himself and pricking up his ears. Whose offer of marriage had Della just rejected, and right in front of the hired help? He saw with dismay that Claire had that look about her again, the one that smugly informed him she had already solved this mystery, or had at the very least conjured up some excessively agreeable theory. He blinked away the haze of the past hours and focused on the ladies. What clue had Claire noticed that he had missed?

  Della replaced her gilded writing implement in its jeweled stand. Her reply she stuffed into the original envelope and handed to her servant without a word. The no-name servant bowed and took away the irksome letter, the usual letter that demanded an equally irksome response, according to Della. She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “I do wish he would desist.”

  “Then why do you keep answering him?” Emily asked.

  “A lady of rank can do no less than answer her suitors’ suits, though Mr. Adeeb has thoroughly tried my resolve in this respect. Zaen is a dear, but what kind of fop begins courting a girl when she is but six years old and he but seven, and is never put off no matter the weather, no matter the occasion, no matter how many times she puts him off? A love letter accompanied by a marriage proposal on the first day of every week since I was six, which is, by the way, the very time I learned to read and he had barely learned to write.”

  The lady’s companions appeared rapturously swept away.

  Della lowered her eyelids at their dreamy expressions. “Every. Single. Week.”

  “You have to admit it is disturbing.” Cordelia rubbed her arms and crinkled up her nose. “It’s as if he thinks he has some claim to her.”

  “But that must be…a thousand proposals, Della,” Prudence said. “I wish I had a man like Zaen.”

  “Please do steal him away.”

  At this the ladies laughed, even Della at her own remark.

  And for another hour there was absolutely nothing else they said of interest, no explanation for why Della had not fallen in love with Zaen or what might have addled her enough to reject his marriage proposal every week for twenty years. The lady appeared sober, trance-free and in good health. Aside from an overzealous application of gold jewelry she was very much an ordinary female in the prime of life. But she must have some hex on her that was simply not obvious to the eye.

  Tad wrestled the love goggles from Claire’s fingers and stared at Della as hard as he could. Meanwhile, his assistant continued to observe the endless prattle about nothing. Thanks to his many sisters, Tad knew these dialogues by heart, and each woman’s replies, sighs, gasps and moans were equally predictable. He was about to stir up a vial of indignation over wasting time on the ladies and insist on viewing Zaen when the conversation took a turn from frivolities.

  “Your father must have a gold mine to be able to afford you,” Emily said.

  Cordelia held one of Della’s earrings to her cheek as if considering if it might suit her much better than its current owner. “And that groom never could.”

  Della tilted her head this way and that as she inspected a necklace of gold and pearl that lay against her bosom. “He will never be bothered with affording me because I am not going to accept any of his silly proposals.”

  “Why do you keep rejecting him?” Prudence asked.

  The other ladies gasped.

  Prudence shrugged. “Sure, he’s not nobility or even a wealthy merchant, but if a man loved me enough—”

  “He has convinced himself that he is smitten with me, but it is all nonsense,” Della replied. “I have never given him cause to think highly of me, let alone fall in love with me. We are friendly acquaintances, nothing more.”

  “I think you are more than that. I’d say he’s your best friend, the way you expect his suits and talk like you’ve never been apart, but then you go and reject him. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Prudence, she can’t marry a mere groom.” Cordelia quirked her eyebrow. “But, Della, dear, you’re not getting any younger.”

  Della frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know very well what it signifies.” Cordelia shook her head at her ridiculous friend. “Just this morning you forgot your own name. Senility is the first sign you’re approaching spinsterhood.”

  Prudence’s brow turned quizzical. “I thought it was lowering one’s expectations in a marriage partner.”

  The other ladies laughed.

  “Well, she can hardly get any lower than Zaen,” Cordelia pronounced.

  Emily sighed deeply. “I think he’s sweet.”

  “And poor as a mouse.” Cordelia placed her hand on Della’s silk-clad arm. “But even he would be preferable to turning out an old maid. You must at least look for a suitor.”

  “It’s true a lady must not leave everything to her fairy godmother,” Prudence said in a voice dripping with milk and honeysuckle. “Not that you need a fairy godmother. I don’t mean to say that you are unattractive or…You are quite lovely and kind at heart. But I don’t think you do Zaen justice with your dismissals.”

  “Prudence, your parents misnamed you so,” Della replied. “I have never commanded the art of graceful speech or general good
ness, and you come naturally by both. You should have been called Rose or Honeydew or Lavender, anything charming and sweet. But I have the lovely name, a label that suggests beauty as well as coquettish charm, though a great beauty I am not. I also happened to be the most determined coquetteless woman who ever lived. Zaen is no doubt responsible for this. Such demands on one’s ability to repulse have never been made of any lady. I answer him as I am able, with complete sincerity and a lack of ceremony as we are so well acquainted. And, my dears, you are entirely mistaken in your assumption that I desire a husband. I have excellent friends, money and title, a loving mother, a doting father. I have a trusty steed to bear me where I will—”

  “Wasn’t it Zaen who rescued you when your trusty steed almost landed you on your backside? Caught you in mid-air, as I recall,” Prudence said.

  Della’s eyes narrowed at her companion. “That may have happened just the once but I have since grown eleven inches and learned to keep my seat. As I was saying, I have a trusty steed and an army of servants to attend my every whim. There may be a thousand superior to me in beauty, ten thousand superior in intellect, and more than a few superior in charm. But there is one area where I simply outshine them all.” Her friends stared at her as if her next words might be truly astonishing. “I am supremely content.” Gold bracelets jangled as she turned up one palm. “Why should I give up all of that for the sake of marriage?”

  “Indeed.” Claire put her lips next to Tad’s ear. “At last, a woman with good sense.”

  Tad ignored her breath tickling his ear and swooshing down his neck. Such unromantic sentiment was unworthy of a clever riposte.

  “Mark this down in your memoires, ladies. I will never attach my heart nor my soul nor my corporal person to anyone. I, Della de Courville, will never fall in love.”

  “Are you done with her, already?” Tad said. “Maybe now I can get a look at Zaen?”

  “Go ahead. I’m ready to start my field research.” Claire spared a superior glance at him out of the corners of her eyes. “…logically, methodically….”