luninosity

It's time for the JMS Books Advent calendar - one free ebook every day, counting down to Christmas! Mine will be the December 8 spot - and it'll be the first Character Bleed book, Seaworthy! (Just in time for the baking show bonus story, which should be out the week after!) So many lovely authors, and so many free romance books! Come celebrate with us! <3

Also, I might've mentioned that K.S. Murphy and I were working on the Secret Project with Regency magicians...well, now it's official! With a signed contract and everything! Book one should be out in January, and we're working on book two - there should be three total! Want the opening?

~

Theodore Burnett did not like surprises.

He did like order and tidiness, which made him an excellent head librarian for the Royal College of Wizardry. Certain requests might be unusual or challenging—Theo never had worked out how young Mr Graceleigh had managed to turn that copy of Stones and Ley-Lines of England into actual stone itself, though he’d patiently undone the spell-knot and rescued the poor book—but in general his days were predictable, regulated, neatly catalogued as his shelves.

Everything in place. Magicians politely placing requests for rare back-room volumes using the forms he provided. Readers and students and researchers tucked away quietly at their own individual desks. All according to order, and if anything wasn’t he’d fix it promptly.

He preferred life that way. Less messy. More comfortable. More sensible: following rational principles, instead of adding to the bumbling chaos of the world. Particularly now, a bulwark against the outside world and the ebbing wake of war and Napoleon’s ambitions and the loss of so many of England’s young bright magicians.

Theo’s library was a refuge. Familiar. Structured. Everything put to rights, as expected.

All of which was why, gazing at the scruffy long-legged man presently asleep in the overstuffed leather chair in the second-story reading room, Theo’s first and second and third emotions involved annoyance, rapidly followed by irritation, followed by disapproval.

The man shouldn’t even be here. The library had closed for the evening, all scholars and students dispersed to nighttime studies or revelry. The man also did not look as if he belonged at the College; his boots were good quality but extraordinarily muddy, he was unshaven, his cravat did not bear speaking of, and his hair stood up precisely like a hedgehog’s might, if that hedgehog possessed soft-looking auburn spikes and an open-mouthed quiet snore. He had lovely cheekbones, though his face appeared rather too thin, as indeed did the rest of him; he had long red eyelashes and an impressive extension of legs as they sprawled outward.

Theo, being short and inclined toward softness himself—a fact which he battled with lengthy walks and strict self-denial regarding buttered crumpets—had always appreciated tall and elegant men. Delicious, like the crumpets. Splendid for the occasional indulgence.

This particular man, however, was presently an entire country’s worth of far from elegant. With the looseness of his coat, the stubble on his face, he might’ve wandered in from a pub or off a sailing ship or out of any number of other disreputable places. And had been exhausted enough to fall asleep midway through—Theo checked the title, visible on the man’s lap—Johnson’s Complete History of English Magic, Volume One. Well, Johnson’s dryness was quite boring enough to send anyone off for a nap, Theo considered.

He had the fleeting impulse to go over and adjust the man’s head. That tipped-over position couldn’t be convenient for rest.

He wondered why he’d wondered about the softness of the man’s hair.

He regarded the man. He contemplated options.

He’d meant to do a final check of the library and return to his own rooms, a small but functional tower suite on the College grounds. He’d planned to toast some cheese for supper, and to read the most recent Miranda Carness historical novel—not at all magical, but entirely brand-new; it’d only just come out—and to go to bed at a sensible hour.

He had not anticipated a lounging dead-to-the-world gentleman, if that was the word, in his library chair. The reading room was not a place for making one’s bed.

Theo said as much aloud. The man did not stir.

Theo sighed, went over, and put out a hand to shake him into wakefulness. Up close the man was even thinner, not precisely visibly ill but not precisely healthy either, as if worn to the bone. A stain marred the sleeve of his jacket with—Good Lord, was that blood? Theo stared very hard at it. Dried, at least, if an unnerving hue.

He touched the man’s shoulder, exceedingly gently. And the room erupted in white light.

Theo, blinded, stumbled back a step and blinked dazzled eyes. A voice said, “Oh, damn—drat, I mean—my apologies, I didn’t—” and a hand caught his elbow. “It’ll fade. I’m sorry about that.”

The voice sounded gentlemanly and polished but unutterably weary, flattened under some boulder-sized weight. The hand was quick and apologetic but also tentative, touching Theo’s arm and lifting away.

Theo blinked again. Murmured a mental word or two, channeled a bit of magical energy into clearing up his sight. Focused.

“I’m very sorry,” said the gentleman, and he did sound as if he were genuinely contrite. “It’s just I’ve been—I don’t react well to being startled, you see, and—and reflexes, well. They exist. But I did pull it back as much as I could.” His eyes were the sort of blue that was nearly grey, the pale smoky hue of a London sky caught just before rain.

“Er,” Theo said, distracted by fascinating watered-silk color, “thank you, then, and perhaps I shouldn’t’ve startled you. But, you see, you were sleeping in my library.”

The man’s eyebrows shot up. “Your library.”

“The College’s library. But I’m the head librarian here. And you’re clearly a magician, though I don’t know you. What did you say your name was?”

“Most people,” said the gentleman, with a hint of something like admiration, “would be much more distraught at temporary blindness. I thought Sir Roderick was the head librarian.”

“Sir Roderick passed away last year. Peacefully, as far as I know, though all fifteen of his grandchildren are currently arguing over the terms of his estate. I wanted the position. You haven’t answered my question.”

“To be fair,” countered the gentleman, “you haven’t introduced yourself either. I shall be polite and set an example.”

“An example—”

“Captain Henry Tourmaline, lately of His Majesty’s Army and the Magicians’ Corps in particular, former aide de camp to the Duke of Wellington, Royal College of Wizardry graduate, and decidedly not the possessor of any overdue volumes.” He even said this with a smile, albeit a very tired one. Henry Tourmaline, Theo decided, must have once known how to be charming; the smile no doubt worked wonders on susceptible ladies and gentlemen.

To his further annoyance, it seemed to be working on him as well, or at least that had to be the explanation for his sudden desire to take Captain Tourmaline back to his own rooms and feed the man toasted cheese until some of the dreadful thinness went away.

Theo firmly squashed that thought under a mental mountain of unshelved books, and retorted, “Theodore Burnett, College librarian. Now that we’ve established our mutual understanding of social niceties, could you find someplace to sleep that isn’t my library?”