'I had a great night, thank you, hope you slept well. I promise I'll do some serious reading today.'

James' reply, which she finally read a couple of hours later, made Siena push the pack of crackers she had brought as breakfast and snack to work back inside the pocket of her cardigan. She sipped at her coffee instead as she stood hidden in the shadows of the small paved yard surrounded by tall, renaissance walls lined with plentiful classrooms' windows of the prestigious liceo, keeping out the low, September morning sun, a pocket of peace and silence which the teachers used during their free hours and breaks, weather permitting. 

Frowning, quite without realising she was doing it, Siena stared at Ale until he, spotting her even as he appeared in the door leading into the yard, started walking towards her across the cobbled square of ground with the new physical education teacher in tow, narrowing his eyes at her in a warning. He really seemed to have made quick friends with this Enea guy, and expected her to behave, and give him a chance too, she mused.

She sighed and smiled at them, her nagging thoughts about how exactly James had spent his night weren't their fault. And if Ale liked Enea, then he must be a good guy who deserved her friendship; Ale had something of a gift of divining people's characters almost at first sight. That made her wonder what he would feel about James.

"Hello, beautiful," Ale said in greeting, pulling her in their usual hug immediately, speaking English for the sake of his new friend whose Italian, she noticed yesterday when they were introduced, wasn't perfectly fluent yet. 

Siena returned his embrace, revelling in his solid, brotherly closeness and care. He was almost as tall and well built as James and she wondered briefly whether that was one of the reasons why she had felt so close to the charming Scot from the moment they had met, why he captured her heart so soon...  

Banishing James from her thoughts again, she focused on her best friend. Even if the world around them crumbled, even if she allowed someone to break her heart, she could rely on Ale to put her back together-- this was a belief that kept giving her courage ever since she had met him. Without him in her life, she wouldn't be half as brave and self-confident as she was. In a world without Ale, she would never have gone to London to meet the shady Bibliophile Society-- even though she hadn't told him about the invitation, it was he who had taught her to taste and try everything that life had to offer. In a universe without her Alessandro, she would be a different Siena, one who would never have met James.

She almost groaned aloud; apparently, she would not get her 'partner' off her mind until she found out how he had spent the night... Right, she would find a reason to call him while reading Frankenstein in the afternoon and a pretence to bring their conversation to her impossibly vivid dream. She blushed and bit her lip as she recalled how she had asked him to kiss her, and he had obliged, and more than once, and their hands... she could still feel the softness and warmth of his large hands on her skin, his skilled touch becoming bolder when she didn't protest, those hands straying under the silk of her nightgown to explore and tease...

With a deep, shaky breath to clear her mind she forced herself to focus on the two men in front of her, hoping that the tall, blonde, athletic looking and gentleman-like Enea wouldn't take her blushing cheeks as a response to something he had said, which she had entirely missed.

James ran as far as his menhir-like milestone and bayond, allowing his thoughts to stroll freely to Siena. He pondered her delicate, outward beauty of the white flowers whose perfume she wore, which he would try to capture in his paintings in the evening. Then, for much longer, he reflected about the unique beauty of her character, invisible to the eye, which, he was certain, no one but the people closest to her had had the luck to perceive as well as he had, during their trips into the book worlds when they both left most of their inhibitions behind with their modern clothes and objects of everyday use. 

Siena was... a dream, she was what he had always hoped to find in a woman. As the years passed and he had not met anyone like her, he had persuaded himself that he was an unrealistic dreamer, that some things only existed in books, and he, like all the people he knew, learned to settle for less than a dream. He let himself fall for women and stay in relationships, some short, others years long, all starting wonderfully only to dwindle to an end where both sides were ready to quit. And then, just as he had decided that he wasn't someone to be tied in a relationship-- unless he met that woman of his dreams-- Claire had claimed him as his and he had allowed it, thinking that maybe the sort of 'intimate friendship but nothing beyond' she had proposed was something he wanted as much as she did. 

He hadn't noticed when that had changed for her, when she had started to see him as something more, something he didn't desire-- only now, in hindsight, did he realise that it had. Only now, after he had met Siena, his dream, his view on his 'non-relationship' with Claire became clear. He... shouldn't really feel responsible for the feelings they had never agreed on; love wasn't a part of the deal... And yet he was feeling responsible now; he didn't want to hurt her-- Claire was his closest friend after Angus. Would his meeting a woman he might actually fall in love with-- a woman he believed he had fallen in love with at first sight-- hurt Claire? Would it cause a rift between them?

He shook his head as he spotted the roof of his cottage, grey stone tiles shining like silver under the layer of dew, through the trees lining the placid lake's shore in front of him, his feet disappearing in the damp sand morphing into the tiniest stones in alternating irregular strips. He felt sorry for Claire because she had allowed her feelings for him slip where they shouldn't have, she had known from the beginning that he could never see her as more than than a friend, he had told her as much before he had allowed her to lead him... astray... 

Had she been hoping to make him fall in love with her from the start? And if she had, could he blame her for that? No. Not now after he had met Siena-- he would do almost everything to win his 'partner's' love. 

If Claire was really in love with him, then he couldn't judge her ways of trying to make him fall in love with her... But her feelings greatly complicated things for him now, he mused, spotting the black haired woman he was thinking of waiting for him outside his cottage, her black curls flowing on the wind, hiding her face, her long legs dangling off the stone wharf where she sat, the tips of her black high heeled boots almost touching the water level. He shook his head; only Claire would walk the three kilometres long path separating his house from the parking lot in such unsuitable footwear.

Even without the heels she was almost as tall as him, James mused inconsequentially, tall, slim, dark haired and olive skinned, an image of a strong, self-confident and independent woman, a complete opposite of Siena who with her blond mane, soft curves and short stature, and those always blushing ivory cheeks awakened the knight inside of him, making him want to offer her the protection she seemed to need from the vicissitudes of life.

He sighed, slowing into a walk to give himself a couple of minutes before facing the waiting woman. He had meant to call Albert and tell him about the effects of the powder, about the too vivid dream, but his parallel, Book Traveller's life would have to wait. His reality in the form of Claire needed to be dealt with first.

"Hey," he said, smiling and sitting down next to her, busying himself with the instruments monitoring the waters of the lake for him so he wouldn't have to look at her directly. He knew well that look in her eyes, that curve of her lips which he had spotted already from a distance; there was something she wasn't happy about.

"Angus sent me up," she said. "He needs your articles in today, and he sends you notes about this new ghost mystery,"-- the way she pronounced the two words made him smile, unlike him and Angus, Claire wasn't a believer-- "someone just emailed him about. He begs you to look into it as soon as you can and include it in this month's issue if you'll manage to find enough information."

Sending drops of water flying from his fingers back into the cool depths of his loch, James looked up then, meeting her eyes, hoping beyond hope that this was the real reason for her coming to see him, that she really didn't care as much as he had thought about them, that she would simply allow the things between them to settle into what they had been still this time last year, letting him go without asking too many questions or creating obstacles the moment he desired to be released, as they had agreed at the beginning.