AMELIA AND THE ELECTRIC FROG

CHAPTER SEVEN

Knock!, knock!, knock!, and the door rattled from the force. "Amelia!"

"That's Cooper," she said, needlessly, licking her lips. Mr. Gibson nodded and he reached to take the book, now hanging limp and forgotten from her hand.

Crossing the expanse of the library over the third knock-knock-knock- "Amelia!", she squeezed her eyes shut against the urgency in Cooper's voice. She couldn't tell if it was anger or something else altogether. She took a deep breath. He didn't know what she'd just considered doing. She had been discussing the possibilities of plot with Mr. Gibson, that was all. Harmless, floundering Mr. Gibson. No, of course she'd been wrong. It was just coincidence and her own overheated imagination.

There was no reason to feel guilty. Nothing untoward had happened, nothing that couldn't be explained. All that Cooper knew - or surmised, she wasn't sure - was that she was alone in a room with Mr. Gibson. Amelia wasn't going to let him berate her. She'd done nothing wrong. Yes, flaunting the time machine key was foolish, but no harm had come from that, either. If he was angry about her being alone with Mr. Gibson, she would give him a piece of her mind. Because nothing else had happened, nothing else had been said. Not yet.

Amelia reached out and yanked the door open.

"Cooper, this isn't a good time." Amelia pulled herself up to her full height and challenged him with her eyes.

"I don't care -"

"Do not lecture me on the propriety of my interactions with a member of the opposite sex when you are -"

"Amelia, listen!" Cooper stopped her. "Downstairs, just a few minutes ago, Mr. Gibson gave an historical demonstration on how to reanimate the legs of a dead frog. There was a science experiment, the birth of modern electrical physics right in front of me, but I couldn't get it out of my head in a way I didn't expect. Eventually, I realized the experiment was about your effect on me, and like, that dead frog, I can't move without you. So, what I'm trying to say is: you're the galvanism to my heart. The metaphorical kind, not the twitching-legs-of-dead-frogs kind."

"What?" Amelia furrowed her brow at him.

"If I may," Mr. Gibson startled her from behind, "what I believe he is saying, in a charming and delightful way, is that you stimulate him to be a better man, to perhaps do things that he would not otherwise be motivated to do."

"Oh."

"I didn't realize he was here, too," Cooper said. But instead of reprimanding her for being alone without a chaperone or for forgetting her place, he started to turn away, his shoulders low. "Never mind, you obviously want to your privacy -"

"No!" Amelia reached out to touch his arm and stop him. "It's okay. Go on."

Cooper turned back, and she saw him glance over her shoulder, no doubt looking at Mr. Gibson. "Amelia, I agreed to come . . . here, to this . . . place because you wanted to, because I love you and I wanted you to relax and have your frivolity. But I didn't come to recapture some sort of magic between us. Why do you think we need to recapture it? Do you feel we've really lost it?"

"Coop -"

"Let me finish." He put his hand out and ran it along her face. "We've never discussed it, but do you remember when we first met and we were repairing my -" he glanced over her shoulder again "- carriage and you touched my hand? I felt something in that moment, and it's never left me. I feel it every time I touch you, and I remember how it feels every time I look at you. I don't know what it is if, if it's a product of . . . time or electricity, but it was and is the most galvanizing force I've ever known. What I'm trying to say is that if you want to be my wife again, I really want to be your husband. No more games. I just want to be married to you, no matter where we are."

"I really want that, too."

"Good. Because I love you and our life together."

"I love our life together, too."

"Kiss her!" Mr. Gibson cheered.

Cooper looked up him. "You knew?"

Amelia turned around to look at him, too, her mouth open in surprise. She had been so moved by Cooper's speech she had forgotten Mr. Gibson's presence.

The tall scientist nodded. "Yes. To continue your metaphor, the current between you two has been crackling for days. You were either already married or desperately needed to be. Perhaps now would be the time for me to leave." He bowed in Amelia's direction, and Cooper stepped into the room to allow him to pass.

Mr. Gibson pulled the library door closed behind him, leaving Amelia alone with Cooper. For some reason, she suddenly felt exposed and nervous. "Cooper, I'm sorry. I know I being foolish, flaunting this key around my neck."

"It is I who should apologize for my behavior downstairs. It was appalling. I've been trying to be Mr. Darcy for you, mysterious and aloof -"

"I think maybe Mr. Darcy wasn't the catch I thought he was," Amelia interrupted. "All weekend I wanted my Cooper back. My scientist, the one I could talk to about anything. I shouldn't have wasted my time with Mr. Gibson's friendship."

Cooper shook his head. "It wasn't Mr. Gibson; he's a very interesting man. I need to apologize about Henrietta this morning. I should have refused to leave the terrace with her. I've tried my best to ignore her and hint to her that I wasn't interested, but, well," he shrugged, "excuse my language, but she's a nincompoop."

Her eyebrows raising at such unusually coarse language, Amelia smiled softly, "My! But I never really thought anything would happen between the two of you."

"Likewise." He paused. "It wasn't either of their faults. It was the circumstances of the time that got away from both of us. This charade of my being wealthy and you being poor . . . it only works in novels, it seems. History, real history, would have kept us apart."

Amelia took a step forward and took his hand. "Don't let it. Never again, Cooper. History, real history, brought us together. No more games. Just you and me, husband and wife, wherever and whenever we may go."

"Yes." Cooper squeezed her hand back. "I love that you're a force greater than nature, greater than electricity. I love that you often leap before you look. If you weren't that way, if you knew how hard it could be and what a fool I can be, you would have never leapt into my time machine with me."

"Well, now I know exactly who you are and I'd still follow you anywhere." Amelia grinned. "Now, I believe that Mr. Gibson said something about you kissing me, you brilliant fool."

The words were barely out of her mouth when Cooper's lips were there, instead. He wrapped both arms around her, pulling Amelia in close and tight. As his tongue found its way into her mouth, she did her part by pulling on his broad shoulders. A weekend's worth of pent-up frustration was in the kiss, the way they held each other so close, trying to meld into one being even as they stood. Cooper's height made it hard to keep her balance, and Amelia had to break away sooner than she wanted.

"Should we -"

"Please tell me you're not wearing any underpants. I was promised no underpants."

Surprised, Amelia let out a laugh, and Cooper captured her lips again. His kiss was just as passionate as the first, but this time his hand fell to her side, lifting her skirt and petticoat up inch by inch. She put her arms around his neck, and they walked backward together, a tangle of lips and legs. Just as a shirt ladder resting against the bookshelf hit the small of her back and stopped her, she pulled away with a gasp as Cooper's long fingers brushed her core.

"No underpants," she moaned as Cooper lips trailed down the length of her arched neck.

In a swift demonstration of those shoulders she so admired, he picked her up and plopped her back down on the top of the step ladder. Then he pulled off his jacket and threw it away.

"Oh! Here? Won't we be heard?"

"I don't care. Ugh, all these buttons!" Cooper whined as he set about trying to remove his waistcoat.

Giggling again, Amelia leaned forward to help him with the buttons of his pants. "Crotch flaps aren't has much fun as you thought, then?"

"They're impossible! I'll never understand why Gideon Sundback didn't win the Nobel Prize for the zipper."

"Because there isn't a Nobel for engineering, which you always state is exactly as it should be."

"Not at this moment - finally!" The last button undone, his trousers dropped and his waistcoat swung free, and Cooper pulled his shirt out of the way. "Now, where were we?"

Another kiss, softer this time, as his hand snaked up from her knee to her waiting body, and Amelia spread her legs wide around his narrow hips to give him entrance. Just when she'd sucked in her breath in anticipation as his thumb brushed against the skin of her inner thigh, he stopped. "What's this? There's something tied up in your stockings."

Copper knelt down on one knee between her open legs, and Amelia watched as he gently untied the slender silver band she'd kept secured there every moment of this adventure. "My wedding ring. I couldn't bear to be without it."

The stocking sagged against her leg as Cooper removed the ring and held up to her. Then he reached for her hand and slid the band back on her finger where it belonged. Nothing was said as Amelia watched him and his blue eyes never left hers. Then Cooper reached into the tiny pocket of his waistcoat and handed her his own wedding ring. Taking it with a smile, Amelia put it on his outstretched finger.

"'Love is not love which alters when it alternation finds,'" she whispered.

"O no! it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on time and is never shaken," Cooper whispered back.

Amelia shook her head slightly. "It's tempests, not time."

"But in our story, they are often the same."

"Only if we let them."

"Which we won't again."

"Never." Amelia reached forward and ran her hand though his dark hair, leaving it mussed. "Now, where were we?" she repeated to him.

Cooper raised a single eyebrow, his most devilish and becoming look. "I seem to be right here." His eyebrow was still at attention when he leaned forward and kissed Amelia in the most wondrous of places.

The long awaited pleasure was a shock, and Amelia bucked backwards on the ladder, gasping and reaching out to hold on to anything. Failing, her hand settled, squeezing the spines of several books. It seemed the ladder wasn't quite level and it rocked slightly in time with Cooper's mouth.

Just when she thought she couldn't take it any more, Cooper stood, eyeing the time machine key against her chest. "I had hoped for some heaving bosoms and it seems I have found a way to achieve them."

Grinning at him, Amelia said, "I think, as scientist, you should find all the ways to make them heave."

"Should I?" First he ran the back of his fingers along the top edge of her dress, letting his thumb dip to brush her beneath the layers of fabric. "Ah, there's one." Then those same long fingers slipped beneath the fabric and quickly found her nipple, which, being so near to the top of her dress, was not difficult. Rolling it gently, Cooper leaned forward to murmured into a kiss on her earlobe, "There's another."

Fashion being what it was, it took almost nothing for him cup her breast and pull it free from the confines of her dress, and he trailed his kisses down the side of her neck toward her exposed nipple before settling his lips there.

"Oh, Cooper . . ." Amelia moaned, throwing her head back against the books. Then, louder, sharper, "Oh, Cooper!" as she felt him rubbing himself against her.

"So many ways . . ." He said, capturing her lips as he found his way into her with a swift movement.

It felt like a Regency novel Amelia bought without realizing it was dirty: Cooper's broad shoulders, the way his body filled her so completely, the way her legs wrapped around him to pull him close, the play of his fingers on her breast and his lips on her neck and her face. She arched back, her head lolling against the books on the shelves, one set of fingers curling around the spines of some volumes, and the other pulled Cooper's shoulders closer. Just like every romance novel cliché ever, she let him take her there, in the library, against the bookshelves. And she wanted taken, there was no other word for it, urging him him on, faster and harder, noticing but not caring how loud the ladder was now, the no-mistaking-what-it-was rhythm that it pounded out on the wooden floor. She threw her head back with abandon as the she felt the sizzle and the tug from down low building, building, building . . .

"Is - this - enough - I'm -" Cooper panted.

"Oh, God, yes," Amelia said, pulling her knees up as high as she could, and Cooper's next thrust hit her sharply just in time and she let go with him, the force of pleasure contracting every muscle in her body so that even those poor books she'd been handling so roughly fell from the shelf with a rumble and clatter that didn't even begin to drown out the sounds of their release and joy.

For a moment there was only silent panting as even the ladder had stilled, and then Amelia started laughing, laughing so hard that Cooper pulled back to look at her in surprise. "What's so funny?"

"I read this book once," she managed to say around her quieting chortles, "a trashy Regency romance, and it wasn't nearly as good as that."

"I don't think that stuck-up prude Mr. Darcy would ever dream of doing such a thing." Amelia broke out in another fit of laughter.

Knock, knock, "Excuse me!"

Amelia yelped at the sound of Mr. Gibson's voice on the other side of the door, and she reached up to cover her mouth. Cooper pulled away from her, hastily trying to reassemble his clothing.

"Just a moment!" he yelled.

Setting up straight, Amelia tugged her dress back down and tried to shove her breast back into the top of it.

"I'm so sorry to intrude," Mr. Gibson said from the other side, "it's just that, um, your , er, reconciliation has been noticed, and I do not know what excuse I should give -"

Together now except for her hair, Amelia leaned forward to help Coper finish buttoning his pants. Just as the last button was in place, Cooper strode to the door and opened it quickly, pulling Mr. Gibson in before slamming it shut.

"We were heard?" he demanded.

"I believe so. I just now heard approaching voices on the stairs."

Cooper ran his hand through hair, and looked over at Amelia. "What do we do?"

"Walk out with our heads held high?" she suggested. "We've done nothing wrong. We're married."

Mr. Gibson shook his head. "I think that Mr. Shelton is correct, Miss Amelia. It would be best for you to leave."

"But we have no way to leave, to get back to our -" Cooper stopped his words short.

"Take my horse. I was having him saddled for my own departure before I returned here to bid you adieu and heard you -"

"But then how will you leave?" Amelia interrupted him. Just how much had Mr. Gibson overheard?

He shrugged. "I will find another way tomorrow." He stepped closer to them. "I do not think you are returning all the way to London, are you?"

Cooper and Amelia's eyes met and had a silent conversation. "No," Cooper finally admitted. "We have a - a carriage waiting in the next village."

"Take my horse and leave it at the public house there. I will retrieve it later."

A faint murmur outside the door had grown to a rumble of voices, and Amelia said to Cooper, "We do not appear to have a choice."

"But we have to walk through that! If Mr. Gibson is correct, and we were heard . . ." Then Cooper straightened his shoulders. "No, you're correct. We walk out with our heads held high."

Amelia grinned at him. "I knew you'd see it my way."

"Your powers of persuasion are most impressive. As always." Cooper held out his hand, and Amelia reached for it and they walked to the door together.

They were not met with an angry mob. Instead, there was silence and shock on the faces of the few who met them, their hosts and the Blandlys among them. Cooper gripped Amelia's hand tighter and walked up to Sir Totel. He bowed slightly. "Thank you for you most gracious hospitality, but my wife and I will leave you without further disruption of your festivities."

"Your - your wife?" Henrietta cried from where she and Susan were staring with slightly open mouths.

Pulling herself up as tall as she could, Amelia looked her squarely in the eye. "Yes. We apologize for the subterfuge but Cooper - Mr. Shelton - and I are bound so tightly that neither distance nor time nor even your attempts to capture him could break us apart."

"Indeed," Cooper echoed. "If you'll excuse us, we'll be on our way." They turned and walked toward the stairs together. Amelia could feel every head swivel to watch their march.

"But - but - she doesn't have a dime in her dowry!" Henrietta called after them, all her italics lost along with her hopes of being the wealthiest woman in the county.

Cooper and Amelia stopped, their hands still linked, and turned to look at each other although did they not turn all the way around.

"Someday, Miss Totel," Cooper said as he looked at Amelia, "may you be lucky enough to learn that there are riches other than money, and Mrs. Shelton here is overflowing with them."

"Also," Amelia added, her lips curling up at the edges as she watched Cooper, "you're a bitch."

"Amelia!" Cooper gasped just as loud as everyone behind them, but then he grinned wider and added, "What's more, you're a nincompoop!"

With a great laugh, Amelia pulled his hand down the stairs, leading him on a run out of the mansion, dodging people as they went. As they ran, the small orchestra downstairs struck up again, breaking the silence. Once out of the house, they found a horse waiting there, just as Mr. Gibson had promised. The circle drive was alight with multiple lanterns near the house and torches lining the drive up. A groomsman was just lifting a saddle to put over the blankets and, with minimal fuss, Amelia was able to convince the groomsman to leave the saddle off and to convince Cooper to help her swing up and over the horse's back. She pulled herself forward and had just instructed Cooper to hang on tight when Mr. Gibson came running out of the house after them.

"Mr. Gibson!" the groomsman cried. "I tried to tell them it was your horse and that -"

"No matter," Mr. Gibson said, waving his hand, "I gave them leave to borrow him." Then he lifted something up to them. "You forgot your book. The one we were discussing in the library."

Amelia looked down at him with confusion. "It isn't my book."

"Oh, but I think it is."

But it was Cooper who reached out and snapped up the slender volume, pulling it to his chest. "We don't have time to debate this. Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Gibson. I don't how you knew we'd need you, but I am grateful. I'm sorry we didn't get to discuss science more."

"There is always time," Mr. Gibson replied, his grin as mysterious as ever. "Until we meet again."

Before they could reply, Mr. Gibson slapped the horse's hindquarters and it started running down the long lane. Cooper wrapped his arm tight around Amelia's waist as he held a lantern high behind her with the other. Its dim light encircled them, as they huddled together and escaped at a gallop into the English night.

Once home, safe and warm, and back with her son and her friends, it took Amelia a few days to recall the little book Mr. Gibson insisted that she take. It was still setting in the time machine, having fallen under the seat in their rush to return. Cooper was out with his friends, so she opened its waterlogged pages again, carefully turning past the title page so as to not damage it further, and what she saw took her breath away.

Yes, Amelia, time travel is real. But then you already know that. - DG

THE END

Thank you so much for reading my little story and thank you for your kind reviews.

Yes, I know, you have questions. Ahhh, but what is life - and time travel - without a little mystery? Some day, maybe, I'll answer them. ;-)