by Davis Bunn
“Where is your job?”
“I’m not sure.” He started leafing through the papers piled on his desk, searching for Peter Austin’s card.
“Young man, I can hardly assist you without that information. After all, Oxford is not some picturesque little village.”
“Here it is. Oxford Ventures is located in Summertown.”
The woman went silent, then, “You’re coming over to work for Oxford Ventures?”
“Is there a problem?”
“Kindly wait one moment, please.”
Adam sat and listened to the call's cost tick skyward with the seconds. Then a reedy voice said, “I would have thought Oxford Ventures would be paying its American employees sufficiently well that they would be seeking riverside flats, not furnished rooms.”
The voice reminded him of his mother’s, aged beyond years by an ailment that robbed the voice of tone as well as strength. “All this has happened so fast, I’m not sure how much I’m actually going to be paid.”
“Always know the figures, young man. That is the second rule of life. Would you care to tell me what is the first?”
He started to say no. Then hesitated.
“I’m waiting.”
“Have a moral compass that sets your course.”
“How very remarkable.”
“That’s what my mother would say,” Adam confessed.
“Well, well. Honesty in this day and age. And from a young man who listens to his elders. Might I inquire, who is your contact at Oxford Ventures?”
“Peter Austin.”
“Yes, I can see how one might be tempted to move on trust and seek answers later. Very well, young man. Being an American gentleman, I assume you are rather overlarge.”
At six four and a hundred and ninety pounds, Adam assumed he should reply, “Definitely.”
She had a chuckle like dry stalks rubbing together. “Then a chamber under the eaves would hardly suffice. Tell Mrs. Brandt I said to give you one of the garden rooms.”
The morning after his dinner at the Austin residence, Adam lingered over his coffee, pretending to read a paper discarded by one of the academics. The house was a massive redbrick pile, with the upper floors given over to paying guests. Of the family who had once lived here, only the widow was left, though apparently her children and grandchildren came through every weekend. All the other residents did biomedical research in the labs that were a short walk away. The residents referred to the widow as Professor Beachley and spoke of her in awe. Over their communal breakfasts, Adam learned the widow and her late husband had formerly been leaders of the Oxford scientific establishment. Adam had spoken to her only once since his arrival, a brief hello. The old woman had been pleasant enough, crouched over her walker as she had maneuvered from her front sitting room to her back bedroom. Adam had been given a middle-floor room with tall ceilings and a view over the unkempt rear gardens.
They breakfasted around the oval dining room table, fed by Mrs. Brandt, the same housekeeper who set out clean sheets twice weekly and collected rent. Breakfast was at seven thirty. Anyone who was not seated on time could still have coffee and make their own toast, but there would be no cooked breakfast and nothing whatsoever if they arrived more than twenty minutes late. Mrs. Brandt had quite a number of such rules and used them as a means of keeping her charges in their place.
Adam turned with the others at the sounds emanating from the front hallway. A young woman emerged from the professor’s study, sniffling into a handkerchief and struggling for control. “Thank you for seeing me, Professor.”
“My dear, let Mrs. Brandt fix you a cup of tea.”
“I have to get to the labs.” She glanced at her reflection in the hall mirror. “I look an utter wreck.”
The professor accompanied the young woman to the front door, leaning heavily upon a cane. “Remember what I have told you. You face not one problem, but two. The first is scientific in nature, the second intensely personal. And no one, my dear, can aid you with the external issue unless you first learn the essential lesson of trust.”
The woman remained blind to the circle of young scientists who watched her from the dining room. “No one can help us. It’s too late.”
“Only if you insist upon making it so.”
She reached for the door. “I should never have come.”
The professor sighed her farewell, shook her head, and thumped back into the front room. Only when the parlor door shut behind her did the breakfast murmurs begin once more.
“Excuse me, Mr. Wright.” Even the housekeeper was subdued by what they had all witnessed. “You are wanted on the telephone.”
He followed Mrs. Brandt back to the kitchen. “This is Adam.”
“Hi, it’s Kayla. Daddy has asked me to take you into Oxford this morning.” She spoke with careful formality, as though reading unfamiliar words. “I hope that’s all right.”
“What about my work?”
“I’ll explain that when we meet. Where are you?”
“Number eighteen, Norham Gardens Road.”
“I have to stop by the office first, so I’ll see you in about an hour.”
When Adam hung up the phone, Mrs. Brandt noted, “Whoever that was, she certainly managed to wind your smile muscles up a notch.”
He found no reason to store his grin away. “That,” he announced, “was the boss’s daughter.”
“Can’t be bad.” Mrs. Brandt dried the morning dishes and stowed them away. “Is she attractive?”
“Very.”
“Rich, pretty, and phoning you your second morning in the country. My dear departed mother would say the pair of you were risking a hefty fine for speeding.”
“Sounds like a smart lady.”
“Oh, there were no flies on my mam.”
Adam thought of his own mother and recalled her words from the previous afternoon. Find an old woman in need, she had said. Give her a heart’s desire, or something like that. Adam asked, “Could I speak with the professor?”
“After that last little incident, I should think she’d like nothing better. Wait one tick, and you can take her in a fresh cup of tea.”
Twice on their way into town, Kayla almost told her father that she’d rather not do the task he had set for her. Both times that Kayla started to speak, her father received phone calls. He wore a headset that she had never seen before. All she could hear was his responses, which were both terse and harsh. Kayla’s protest died unspoken.
She had never seen her father like this before. Nor had she heard this voice, as though he spoke around wet gravel. The second time he punched the button to end the call, he breathed hard, as though he had run a race. “What’s the matter, Daddy?”
“Joshua.”
“Your number two. The man who has been with you since the beginning.”
“Joshua is not often wrong. But he is now. Spectacularly, indisputably, wretchedly wrong.” They passed through the big front gates and drove down the graveled drive.
Kayla followed him toward the office. The morning light was strong, the sky clear, the cold so strong it slipped through her three layers and gripped her bones.
Peter stopped on the top step and declared, “You are an elixir to an impossible time, Kayla. I know you had your own desolate reasons for coming home. But right now, in this minute, I consider your presence a genuine blessing.”
When they entered the foyer, they found Peter’s secretary standing behind the reception desk with Joshua’s secretary and another lady. “Oh, good morning, sir. Mr. Dobbins asked to be informed immediately upon your arrival.”
Peter handed Kayla the car keys and said, “Perhaps you should wait here. Mrs. Drummond, come with me, please.”
Joshua’s secretary, Robin Oakes, possessed a ravenous craw for gossip. As soon as the chairman disappeared, her attention returned to whatever was masked by the reception desk’s over-hang. “Soon as I spotted his photo in the file, I knew I’d seen him before. My daughter downloaded th
is photo off an old fan website.”
Kayla stepped forward, away from the cold radiating off the glass doors as the receptionist replied, “He looks even better in the flesh.”
“I never did care much for the show itself,” Robin Oakes went on. “All backstabbing and nastiness and folks messing about where they shouldn’t.”
The receptionist said, “I remember the critics dubbed it ‘Dallas by the Potomac.’ ”
Robin Oakes smiled at the unseen page. “Our bloke played some staffer with the unlikely name of Blade.”
Kayla stepped around the desk. “Can I see?”
Robin Oakes stepped to one side. “It’s amazing what you can find on the Internet these days.”
Adam Wright looked ready to step laughing and mocking from the page. The force of the photograph was riveting. Above him blared the headline “Coming to the BBC, the show the critics love to hate, Washington Affairs.” Adam stood in a standard male model pose, hands on hips, twisted at the waist so that his entire upper body formed an arrogant angle. He wore a flashy suit and an expression that hit Kayla very hard indeed.
The similarity to her African thief, the man who had stolen her money and dreams and heart, was staggering.
The resemblance was not so much physical as in attitude. Oh, they both had dark copper-blond hair and a handsome strength to their features. Both were tall and wide shouldered and narrow waisted. But Adam’s eyes were a rich brown, while Geoffrey’s eyes were green. And Adam’s chin was not as deeply cleft, nor his nose as sharp. And his lips . . .
The receptionist asked, “You’ve met him, have you?”
Kayla blinked. “Adam came for dinner last night.”
“What was he like?” the receptionist probed.
“Fine. I mean, he was over for dinner with Daddy.”
Her gaze was drawn back to the photograph. Adam mocked them. His arrogance was total. He did not sneer so much as simply not care. And this was what reminded Kayla so much of her former fiancé. Not who Adam was. What he had the potential of being.
Her thief of a lover had never exposed his true nature. Geoffrey’s quick charm, his flashing wit, his ability to smile through the worst they had faced in Tanzania, all this had blinded her to the truth. Until the morning Kayla had arrived in the office and discovered everything she had known about him was a myth. Over the months that had followed, a different image had taken form. One where his smile mocked and his words lied. Just like the man in this photograph.
Kayla’s mental vision shifted from the memory to the man. Not the photograph. Who Adam was now. Because one thing she was totally certain of was, this picture was not the Adam Wright she had met the day before. Something had drastically changed this man.
“And you just happened to be there to dine with them, did you,” Robin Oakes said.
“He’s gotten under your skin already,” the receptionist said.
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Then why are you scarlet as a Christmas ribbon?”
She was saved from needing to respond by Mrs. Drummond’s returning. She handed Kayla a slim envelope and said, “Your father asked me to give you this, Ms. Austin. Along with his thanks for helping out today.”
Kayla left the company, slipped behind the Mercedes’ wheel, and carried the mental image of Adam’s photo with her into town. That and the mystery of what had stripped Adam of the arrogance and the strength and the carefree haughtiness of a pirate.
chapter 7
There was absolutely no reason why she and Adam couldn’t be friends, Kayla told herself repeatedly as she walked the tree-shrouded sidewalk to the last house on Norham Gardens Road. The brick Victorian home was neither a wreck nor a monstrosity, but it had the potential to become both. A vast assortment of bicycles were dumped in the weed-infested front garden. The portico was almost lost to an invasion of ivy, and the roses growing up the side wall had clamped thorny fingers all the way to the roof. The windowsills wept dry white tears.
The woman who answered the door was brisk in the manner of one long used to saying no. “Can I help?”
“I’m here to collect Adam Wright.”
“Which would make you Mrs. Austin.”
“It’s Miss, actually. How did—”
“Of course it is, how silly of me.” She pushed open the door. “This way.”
The housekeeper walked to the door of the front parlor and knocked. “Miss Austin is here, Professor.”
“How delightful. Do please show her in.”
Adam stood by the parlor’s fireplace as she entered. He gave her his fractured smile in greeting. “Come have a look at Dr. Beachley’s family.”
The room held a very genteel clutter. A sterling silver tea set was also home to a dozen tiny Smurf dolls. An antique ivory sailing vessel anchored a stack of infant’s picture books. A gold card-box held marbles. A children’s puzzle covered a priceless French Imperial side table. Books were piled on chairs, on tables, on mantels and shelves. They formed pillars beside the fireplace and the doors. “There are twenty-seven in this picture,” Adam said. “Her children and grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.”
A tiny old woman was almost lost in a high-backed chair by the front windows. The sunlight made it difficult to see her clearly. “The photograph you are admiring was taken in the mas-ter’s garden at Christ Church. Christ Church is the largest of the Oxford colleges, endowed by Henry the Eighth. My husband and I were both tutors there. Do you know that term, tutor?”
“Probably not the way you mean it.”
“The tutorial system is drawn from the dawn of Western civilization, when students met alone with a teacher who guided their study. It is the portion of my work at Oxford which I miss most. Sparking the latent hunger in an active young mind.”
Kayla turned from the picture. There was something about the voice, or perhaps the manner of delivery. A woman from a distant past, asking gentle questions that probed deeply. The old woman continued, “Lewis Carroll was also a tutor at our college. His young niece used to come and play with the master’s Cheshire cat. Which is how the story of Alice and the world beneath the tree came to be written.”
“I remember you,” Kayla said softly. “You’re Professor Beachley.”
The old woman smiled. “As do I remember you, my dear Kayla. I recall fine warm summer afternoons, not all that long ago, when another young lady came to play in that very same garden. Your mother was one of my favorite students, which was odd in a sense, as biomedicine was just one of her hobbies.”
“Passions,” Kayla corrected.
“Quite right. Hobby is much too faint a word for how immersed your mother became in her interests.” She waved at Adam. “Be so kind as to draw another chair over for your young lady.”
“Sure thing.”
“Thanks, but we really need to be going.”
“You resemble your mother to an astonishing degree. Though whether she ever had a suntan quite like yours is questionable. Where have you been?”
“Tanzania.”
“Working on your own store of passions, no doubt.” The professor’s gaze tracked back to the picture above the mantel. “We are actually twenty-nine now. My husband is gone, and I’m still rather cross with him for leaving me here alone. But I’ve since gained another two grandchildren and a third great-grandchild, and I do so enjoy their company. If only the hours between their visits did not drag so.” Her keen gaze returned to her two visitors. “I don’t know what I would do without these visits from my paying guests. Are you quite certain you can’t join me for tea?”
“Another time.”
“I shall look forward greatly to that occasion, my dear Kayla. I find such pleasure these days in seeing the past come alive again. In the meanwhile, would you pass on my best to your father?”
“Of course.”
“A most remarkable gentleman, Peter Austin.” She smiled at Adam but directed her words at Kayla. “Be good enough to say that I heartily approve of his new
young man.”
“What was that all about?”
Adam shut the front door and followed Kayla down the walk. The morning sky had become veiled in clouds light as winter’s first frost. A bird chirped defiantly against the chill. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“You first.”
“Do you want the long version or the short one?”
“We’ll walk into town and you can regale me the whole way.”
“What about work?”
“Daddy asked me to do this with you.”
“Are you warm enough?”
“No, but the walk will help.”
“I remember when Mom got back from Africa, she couldn’t get warm for weeks.” He unfurled the scarf from around his neck and handed it over.
“What about you?”
“I’ve never been bothered much by the cold. Why do you sound so American one moment and English the next?”
“The proper term is cross-cultural.” Kayla led him to the end of the road and down a path that connected to the first set of university playing fields. “My parents both came from America. They met while studying at Oxford and never left. My mother did not want me to grow up sounding totally British. When I was twelve she sent me back to the States to her own private school. I hated being away from my parents. After one term Mother let me come home. But she made me promise to return to America for university.”
“Then she died. Your mother, I mean.”
“When I was thirteen.”
“Did you go back?”
“Yes. To Amherst.” Kayla resisted the urge to press for an answer to her original question. Either he would talk, or she was wrong in her estimation. She had certainly been wrong about men before.
Adam said, “My mom has been having dreams. At first, I pretended that they were just the result of her meds. She’s on megadoses of some really heavy stuff. But she’s also very religious. No. I take that back. She hates it when I call her religious. She says religion can get in the way of what’s important. Don’t ask me what that means. I’ve spent my entire life blocking her out whenever she gets going on that subject.”