by Maxine Barry
From the moment he’d stepped into the theatre, and seen her, he knew he simply had to win a role in the play. Any role. She was like a . . . a vision. Those raven tresses. Those amazing, wide blue eyes. Skin like a camellia. And shy too. He’d watched those blushes, that downward sweep of long eyelashes, that defensive body-posture, and read them all. Enchanting. Utterly enchanting. She stood out from the other women, like a fresh, innocent daisy, in a field of Venus flytraps.
He’d longed to go over and speak to her, but that damned Jared Cowan was always fawning all over her. Kneeling down in front of her, whispering, laughing. But he’d got a lucky break with the arrival of her brother. It had put his rivals into a spin, putting them off their stride. Rupert was impressed by nobody, apart from his father, and that lack of nervousness had allowed him to shine on stage. Now, seeing that Jared was at last talking to that ginger-haired stick-insect who was to be his leading lady, he made his move.
The first Alicia was aware of him was when her brother suddenly stiffened, an odd, uncharacteristically fawning expression crossing his face. She turned and saw the handsome man they’d cast as Sam Blake coming towards her.
‘Alicia,’ Rupert said softly, smiling. ‘I hope you don’t mind first names? Particularly as we’re going to be working so closely together?’
‘No, of course not,’ Alicia said, a bit flustered.
‘My Lord?’ Neville said, formally offering his hand. ‘Your father is the Earl of Warrington, isn’t he?’ he added.
‘That’s right. But here at Oxford . . .’ Rupert shrugged off his title with becoming modesty and Neville smiled. ‘I understand. And congratulations in landing the leading part.’
This of course, Neville thought instantly, changed things. When you had an Earl’s son in the play, then of course, Alicia must continue to be associated with it.
‘Alicia, I really like the part of Sam Blake,’ Rupert said, feeling himself shudder as those blue eyes turned his way. They really were superb eyes. Aphrodite must have had eyes like these, he thought dazedly.
‘Oh,’ Alicia murmured, not sure what else to say.
‘I’m sure the rest of the lines you’ll give him will be as good as those I read today. I was really impressed with the play,’ he added softly, and she rewarded him with yet another look from those blue eyes. And this time . . . yes, a slight smile. Rupert felt like the luckiest mortal on earth. She was exquisite. Divine. Just what he was looking for.
Neville recognised at once the look in those noble brown eyes and smiled. Of course, it was ridiculous to hope for too much, so soon. But still . . . Rupert was obviously smitten with his sister. And since they’d be working closely together from now on, who knew what might come of it? The Normans, for all their literary prominence, had never yet managed to marry into the aristocracy.
‘Lord Rupert . . .’ he began. The other man quickly waved a hand, sensing an ally in the ginger-haired drama critic. ‘Please, call me Rupert,’ he said. Then glanced once more at Alicia. ‘Both of you must call me Rupert.’
‘Thank you,’ Neville beamed. ‘Rupert. I believe our families are more or less neighbours? I must say, I’ve always admired Warrington Manor. It reminds me a little of Chatham.’
Rupert smiled. ‘Thank you. We like it.’ Rupert and Neville Norman gave each other a long, thoughtful look. A look of recognition. Of joined forces . . .
Alicia, trapped between them, felt herself struggling to breathe. Rupert Greyling-Simms was looking at her with such open admiration she knew she should be flattered. But she wasn’t. For some reason, she felt scared. Which was ridiculous of course. What was there to be scared of?
Oh, if only Jared would look at her like that, as if she was an answer to his prayer.
Jared was looking at her, but he was also watching the mutual admiration society being forged between the two men. And he, too, felt a frisson of foreboding.
Neville Norman, however, was too happily contemplating what a perfect prospective Countess his beautiful sister would make for Warrington Manor to think about anything else.
Rupert Greyling-Simms simply continued to stare intently at Alicia.
CHAPTER SIX
Gareth Lacey walked to the long sets of French windows that led into Hall and glanced inside. Long red velvet curtains hung at the windows and portraits lined the walls. His eyes, however, went straight towards High Table. Dinner seemed to be the only time he could nail her down nowadays. But that beautiful face with its wide green eyes was conspicuous by its absence.
He felt his heart sink. It was a full-fledged physical sensation, and he knew he should be alarmed at just how deeply involved with her he was becoming. But he couldn’t bring himself to be sorry. In just two weeks, he’d found himself hooked, and he was glad. He would glance out of the window during the middle of a tutorial in the hopes of spotting the golden-haired siren, who seemed to want to have nothing to do with him. He found himself practically living in the SCR, just in the hopes that she might come in for a sherry and a blistering attack on Shakespeare’s sonnets. She was not, he had discovered to everyone’s horror, a Shakespeare fan.
When he thought of the intimate closeness of their first meeting, one part of him suspected her of blowing hot and cold in order to disorientate him. Of playing with him, like a cat played with a mouse. The thought made him feel giddy with desire. He was a man who had written books on the love affair between Lady Caroline Lamb and the ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’ Lord Byron. A man who admired a woman’s femininity, her capriciousness, her claws, her passions, her cunning. A man who understood Romance as a living, breathing, life-fulfilling concept. Being stalked by Davina Granger was wonderful. It was bliss. It was making him feel alive, completely alive, for the first time in years. But another part of him wondered whether he’d totally misread the signs. Whether that first, spine-tingling conversation of theirs had been merely run-of-the-mill to her. It terrified him to think that she really might be as disinterested in him as she seemed now to pretend. Having tasted the heady delights of being close to her, probing her delightfully convoluted psyche, bathing in the sights and sounds and scents of her, he wanted more. Much more.
He saw one or two of his students glance at him curiously, and headed back for the stairs.
* * *
Davina paused outside Gareth’s door and glanced around. With everyone in Hall, the silence was eerie. She knew she’d have to be quick, and taking a deep breath she timidly knocked on the door, and then resolutely pushed it open. Nobody locked their doors in St Bede’s, it seemed. As she switched on the light, she could see, to her relief, that the room was empty. Inside, with the door closed, her heart beat fast. Ridiculous to be so nervous, of course. She’d been at St Bede’s long enough to have studied Gareth’s every move.
She was just obviously not cut out to be a housebreaker.
Here, in his rooms, she could feel his presence all around her. Gareth. Just his name . . . Gareth . . . repeated in the quiet fortress of her mind could make every nerve-ending in her body twitch in tingling reaction. And after that first, heart-wrenching, soul-numbing encounter on her first day, she’d been obliged to back off just a little, if only for her own peace of mind.
She needed to wean herself off that sensation of desire and intimacy whenever he was around. So far, unfortunately, it wasn’t working. But he looked puzzled by her reticence, which was no good, of course. No good at all. She was going to have to bite the bullet sometime, and make a much more positive move on him.
Not that that would be easy for her. Even in the staid and ultra-respectable SCR, his grey eyes had been capable of setting her skin jumping, her blood pounding, and her heart reluctantly racing. His lips were the most mobile, kissable lips she’d ever seen on a man.
Realising she was still standing with her back to the door, gazing around at the large, comfortably furnished den, she forced herself forward towards his desk on shaking knees. She sat down in a scuffed, faded red leather chair, and felt he
rself sink into its contours. He’d sat in this chair for day after day, year after year, and he’d moulded it to his body. She could even smell him on the chair—the tangy scent of the pine aftershave he favoured. Grimly she fought off a sudden wave of intense desire. Yet she knew she would only have to close her eyes to conjure up his image in every sharp detail—those wings of brown hair over his forehead that always made her itch to run her fingers through them. Those eyes . . . She gave a small growl of real anger now, and yanked open the first drawer of his desk.
Just get on with it girl!
* * *
Gareth knocked on Davina’s door in Wolsey. In his mind’s eye he could see her opening it, her face bearing a fierce scowl, or that dreamy, other-worldly expression that meant that she’d been working on ‘The Flame Moth’. She would laugh, ask him if that was the time already, and . . . But the door remained shut. He knocked again, his ears straining for the sound of movement within, but there was nothing.
Perhaps she was dining out of college tonight. The whole of Oxford, by now, knew that she was here. She was probably inundated with invitations. Grimly he walked back to the main door and stepped out on to the grass. Off to his right, the hoops of the croquet lawn glinted palely in the moonlight. It was a night for walking hand-in-hand along the banks of the Isis, watching the swans on the riverbank and listening to the choristers practising in Christ Church. The whole of Oxford was bathed in a full moon just waiting for him, and he had no Davina to share it with.
As he crossed the lawn towards Becket Arch, he glanced across at Walton. And saw that his lights were on.
* * *
Inside, Davina was feverishly flicking through the desk drawers. Her trawl so far wasn’t very helpful—a student’s essay he was in the middle of reading, a desk diary, assorted stationery. The next drawer down contained College printed papers, but the drawer under it, however, was locked. Her heart suddenly skipped a beat. A locked drawer usually meant something to hide.
Feverishly she tried the drawers on the left hand side—all were open and one contained a small silver key, right at the back, hidden under a pile of brown envelopes. With a small whoop of triumph, she tried it in the locked drawer, mentally crossing her fingers as she turned the key. Yes! She pulled open the drawer and removed a large, heavy, black folder. Heart beating, she opened it and began to read.
* * *
Outside, Gareth Lacey began to cross the lawn towards Walton. He was sure he’d turned off the light after dressing for dinner.
* * *
At first, Davina wasn’t sure what it was that she was reading. It seemed to be a series of old exam papers, scribbled notes, research . . . Then she saw a letter from the Principal of King Canute College in Banbury, and she suddenly realised what they were. Gareth was setting some exam papers for King Canute’s summer exams. Damn!
She leaned back in the chair, feeling utterly dejected. But what had she expected? A secret diary, whereby he admitted bullying a student to the point of causing his suicide? A stack of ugly pornographic magazines? A . . . Suddenly she lurched upright on the chair and pulled the folder towards her again. Exam papers. Exam papers not yet finished, that students in King Canute would be sitting this summer . . .
She knew, of course, that Oxford dons were often asked to set papers for colleges outside Oxford, and that this was a very responsible job. Colleges had to ensure that nobody got to see them, save the Department Heads, before the exams were taken. No wonder he’d locked the drawer . . .
Davina began to feel dizzy with excitement. Here, at last, in these dry, cleverly-designed questions, lay the key to Gareth Lacey’s downfall. If only she could think how . . .
* * *
Gareth pushed open the heavy outer door to Walton and began to climb the set of stairs.
* * *
Davina leaned back in the chair, her mind racing. She could always photocopy a set of the questions, when he’d finished them. But then what? And suddenly the idea popped into her head. Of course! If she could find a pupil at King Canute College willing to play along, she could give Gareth Lacey a taste of his own medicine, and then some!
See how he liked being branded a cheat.
All she had to do was bribe a pupil to say that he’d bought a set of the exam papers from Gareth Lacey! The money from her latest prize was still sitting in her bank account, doing nothing, so she could use some of that. She’d have to find a student who knew that he or she was likely to fail their English Finals. Somebody who was lazy, who hadn’t done the work . . . Just the sort of person who would buy exam papers in order to give him an edge. Just the sort of person, in fact, that a greedy examiner would try and sell them to.
Yes. Oh yes. David, oh David, this revenge is going to be so sweet. So apt. So . . . poetic.
* * *
Outside, the thick carpet muffled the sounds of Gareth’s footsteps as he walked along the corridor towards his door.
* * *
Quickly Davina gathered the folder together, carefully placed it in the drawer, relocked it, returned the key and got up out of the chair.
She walked to the door, looked around to make sure she’d left no sign of her presence, then turned off the light. A satisfied smile crossed her gamin face, and her green eyes glowed with satisfaction. At last! Step two could be put into operation. She opened the door and walked straight into Gareth Lacey’s arms. The contact and the surprise and those damned oceanic eyes of his knocked the breath right out of her. ‘Gareth,’ she said. ‘I . . .was . . . looking for you.’
Gareth hands had instinctively come out to catch her, and his surprise at having someone come out of his room instantaneously changed to an intense and sudden awareness that the whole wonderful length of her was pressed close against him. He dragged in a breath.
She heard it, and suddenly her own breathing fell to pieces.
Her knee was bent and pushing just between the gap in his own legs. She was wearing a pair of worn jeans, with a white woollen, polo-necked jumper underneath, and she could feel the warmth of this body penetrating the materials, making her own skin flush with borrowed, answering heat.
‘Gareth,’ she said again. He noticed her pupils dilate. Her lips fall open as she said his name. He knew he should do something. Say something. But he couldn’t. At last, at last, what he’d wanted most in the world was suddenly his, and the only thing he could think to blurt out was something utterly banal and irrelevant.
‘What were you doing in my room?’ He didn’t actually care what she’d been doing in his room. He only cared that she was now in his arms. Where he’d wanted her to be. Where he knew destiny had always destined her to be. He believed that fate was a force of nature as tangible as any earth, wind or fire. From the moment he’d watched her walk towards him in the SCR in her lilac and silver dress, he’d known this moment was going to happen. Sometime. Somehow.
To Davina, however, his question sent every alarm bell ever invented clanging into her head. What could she tell him? To her own mind, her guilt must be written in huge red letters right across her forehead. In a flash, excuses flowed through her mind. I was leaving you a note . . . I thought you might like to walk me into Hall . . . I wanted your opinion about an anonymous poem I found in one of the books in the library . . .
None sounded feasible. All sounded pitiful. So she said the one thing she knew was guaranteed to distract him. And the one thing she’d wanted to say, above all other words, from the moment she’d first met him. ‘I wanted to ask you to make love to me,’ she said, her voice as soft as thistledown, her tone as demanding as nails.
Gareth felt the ground lurch beneath his feet. His arm around her waist tightened instinctively, as every inch of his body responded to her demand. She watched the grey eyes churn into the dangerous waters of uncharted territory, and instead of feeling afraid—or even ashamed—she felt her stomach clench in a sudden, savage snap of sexual desire.
The hot moistness between her legs felt like fire. Her nip
ples, pressed against his dark blue jacket, suddenly stiffened with sensitivity, growing harder with every minute movement he made.
‘But you weren’t here,’ she added, her voice a mere weak whisper now.
‘I’m here now,’ Gareth said gruffly. He began to move her backwards, into the darkened room, his heart pounding so hard it was like a drumbeat in his ears. After Martine, he’d never expected to find love again; and certainly never dreamed he’d find it in such an explosive, all-consuming way. What he felt for this woman was so urgent, so fierce and inescapable. It was as if she’d taken his safe and gentle life and shaken it as a dog shakes a rat.
Davina reached out to slam the door shut behind him. The moonlight shining through the window was their only illumination now, but it was enough. Her hands rose, to curl around the lapels of his jacket. Such a formal garment. So right for dinner at High Table. She hated it! She attacked the buttons, then yanked it off his shoulders, letting it fall around their feet to be trampled and crushed. Underneath, the shirt he wore was white, cool-to-the-touch cotton, and she slowly lowered her head, letting her lips caress it, smelling once again that smell that was pure Gareth Lacey.
She kissed the cool soft material at his shoulder, feeling the warmth of his flesh beneath begin to penetrate. She dipped her head, using her now-sensitised lips to travel across the hard muscles of his chest.
Gareth groaned loudly, his voice echoing off the walls of his room.
In retaliation, Davina flicked out her tongue, moistening her lips, and then gently, tenderly, kissed the damp material. She pressed her hands hard into his shoulders and kissed him again lovingly.