by Alexis Hall
“So this is you?” His eyes did the full sweep, making me shiver. His unrestrained attention wasn’t quite comfortable—I was too worried about coming up short—but it was somehow exciting at the same time. I wanted to be worth looking at. For him.
“Arden St. Ives, reporting for duty, sir.” I threw a pretty camp-looking salute. “Did I make it?”
For a moment, I thought it might have been nothing but an empty game, but he glanced down at his screen, checking the time, before he answered. “Yes. Four minutes, sixteen seconds.”
“What if I hadn’t?”
“That would be telling.” He tucked his tech away, not looking at me. “Shall we go?”
I nodded. It wasn’t far, just across the quad and under the arch—a journey I took pretty much every day—but it felt different to be walking next to Caspian Hart. Well, it was more of an undignified scurry on my part because he had this effortless, horizon-conquering stride that seemed to make everything his wake. And I was a shortarse.
The college was slumbering quietly through the vacation. He’d shed this world so thoroughly it was hard to imagine he’d ever been here. Ever been uncertain or self-conscious. The way I was right now—aching to blurt out something stupid like Is this better? Do you like it? Do you like me?
“You’re reading English, aren’t you?” he asked.
How safe. A question that enforced distance, rather than created intimacy. “Um, yes.”
“How are you finding it?”
“Honestly? I think I’ve gone off books.”
“That seems unfortunate.”
I shrugged. “Well, I’m meant to have read nearly everything written in England between, like, 8 AD and 1930, so I’m pretty much covered.”
“In the same way you’ve read Ulysses?”
I probably should have been mortified I was busted, but all I could think was… “You remembered.”
“I do try to recall the conversations I’ve had with people, yes.”
Even the quelling tone couldn’t diminish my happiness. I grinned. “Well, all right, I can blag nearly anything written in England between 8 AD and 1930. But that’s hardly a transferable skill, is it?”
“You’d be surprised. You don’t have plans for after graduation?”
“I guess I thought something would…turn up. Aren’t you supposed to get invited to be a spy or whatever?”
“Only if you fit the profile.”
“Apparently I didn’t fit the profile.” A flicker of instinctive pique made me scowl. “Hey, why didn’t I fit the profile? What’s wrong with me?”
“It was probably your aversion to black tie.”
“But I’d be an excellent spy. I’d love being menaced by villains.”
Caspian put a hand over his mouth, but I could tell he was amused. “I don’t think that’s an aspect of the role you’re supposed to feel so enthusiastic about.”
“Well, it’s not like I’m going to find out.” I scuffed moodily at the gravel path, sending pebbles springing in all directions.
He was silent a moment. And then, “I’m sure, in reality, it’s very dull. You probably sit in a dark little room in Westminster, listening to world radio.”
Another of his hesitant offerings of comfort. It was getting embarrassing, really, how much I kept making him do that. Part of it was just surprise I could, that he would. My pathetic little insecurities seemed such an unlikely thing for him to care about. I glanced his way, smiling, trying to salvage the situation before he concluded I was utterly hopeless. “Hey, what do you say to an Oxford English graduate?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I have fries with that?”
This time he didn’t laugh. “Why English, then? If you didn’t think it would take you anywhere?”
“Oh God.” I fiddled with the fraying sleeve of my jacket. “I was super passionate about it when I was at school.”
“And now you’re not?”
I shook my head. “It’s just how it goes, isn’t it? It’s not the way you think it’s going to be and the stuff you think is important when you’re eighteen…kind of isn’t anymore.”
We stepped beneath the archway. I tried not think how intimate it could be, standing with him in those gold-struck shadows. Surrounded by centuries of conveniently oblivious stone. I sidled a little closer.
Just, y’know, in case.
I didn’t really believe he was going to be overwhelmed by lust at the sight of me looking vulnerable and available in a gloomy corner, but a boy could dream, right?
“What’s important to you now?” he asked.
That was unexpected as well. You wouldn’t have thought a man like Caspian Hart would be a good listener, but there was a quietness to him that intensified my tendency to babble. All the same, I wasn’t so desperate for his attention that I couldn’t see the other side of it: the more I spoke about me, the less I learned about him. I shrugged and muttered evasively about still trying to figure it out before changing the subject. “What made you go for PPE?” Not exactly deft but it did the job.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “Oxford carries a certain cache. And PPE was…a subject.”
“Wow, see praise comma faint comma damning.”
He looked a little abashed. “It seemed most likely to be useful to me.”
“No great adolescent passion for the German philosophers, then?”
“I’ve never been particularly driven by passion.”
I leaned against the wall and tilted my head back so I could look at him. I’d thought he was joking, but his face reflected no hint of it. His mouth was very stern, very sexy. “I’m pretty sure you don’t get to be the third or fourth richest man in the UK without passion for something.”
“On the contrary, that’s achieved through hard work. Passion is a hindrance to business.”
“But you must be pretty driven? Otherwise we’d all be billionaires instead of people with Twitter accounts.”
“Perhaps. Though I think I would call that resolve.”
“What kind of headline is that? ‘Caspian Hart: Mildly Inclined to Succeed.’ How are they supposed to write you up in the Arrow now?”
“They’re not. I don’t give interviews to school magazines.” I couldn’t quite suppress a giggle at that. The Book of Making You Feel Bad About Yourself was meant to be taken very seriously indeed. “And besides,” he went on, “attaining success is considerably more than a mild inclination for me.”
I realized then how easily he wore his wealth. How naturally power became him. “I can’t imagine you growing up on the wrong side of the tracks.”
“Everything I have, everything I’ve done, is mine and mine alone.” He didn’t sound proud of it, though. Just sad. “But you’re right, my family has always been prosperous.”
“Is that what it’s about for you? Proving something?”
“Perhaps.” He turned his head away, offering me only the cold outline of his profile. “But as a point of principle, I don’t take anything I don’t deserve.”
“Caspian—” If I’d had time to think about it, I wouldn’t have had the bollocks to say his name, but there it was, between us like an outstretched hand.
“We should go.”
He turned abruptly, vanishing up the spiral staircase, and there wasn’t much I could do except hurry after him.
The Melmoth Room was named after a nineteenth-century poet. As you’d expect from a St. Sebastian alumnus, he wasn’t actually very famous. Mainly, he’d died of syphilis in a Parisian gutter.
It was a nice room, though, in the usual Oxford style: dark red walls, gold ceiling, oak paneling, epic fireplace, random off-limits balcony that everybody snuck onto anyway. A student in the ’80s reputedly plummeted to his doom while shagging against the parapet, but that might just have been the sort of thing they put about to stop you trying. There was also a portrait of Melmoth, looking cloudy-haired and limp-wristed, that was supposed to be by Rossetti but probably wasn’t.
We were beyond even fashionably late, and I slunk in after Caspian, hoping nobody would notice. Or, at the very least, everybody would be too busy swooning at his incredible gorgeousity to pay attention to the guy standing behind him.
But I needn’t have worried. It was already pretty busy in there. So many people in monochrome that it made my eyes buzz like static. Honestly, my heart sank when I saw the evening I was in for. I’d known anyway, having spent the last three years in Oxford, but the prospect of free food and wine had somehow made me forget how much I didn’t enjoy making stilted small talk with strangers who didn’t get me. It wasn’t that I was particularly shy or introverted. More that my personal taste in parties centered on opportunities for dancing and pulling. And less on standing around discussing citation indexes and the latest policies of the Planning and Resource Allocation Committee.
At least there was champagne. A whole table’s worth, the flutes arranged in shining rows. I peeped up at Caspian. “I hope you’re going to get me drunk and take advantage.”
His eyes held mine for a too-long-not-long-enough moment. As if I was the only person in the room. “I don’t think it would reflect very well on either of us if you had to be intoxicated.”
“I really don’t.” I’d been reaching for the booze, but I dropped my hand so fast I nearly punched myself in the leg.
His lips curled upward very slightly, color creeping across his cheekbones. “One glass, perhaps?”
I nodded. He could have said, How about a live crocodile? and I’d have nodded.
As Caspian Hart lifted two champagne glasses and passed one to me, it felt a bit like the scene in a black-and-white movie when the hero lights a cigarette for the heroine. Under the brush of his fingers, silvery condensation gathered and ran down the side of the glass. It made me think of sweat and skin and bodies moving together. Of glistening under his hands. Because I was clearly depraved.
I should have probably done a witty little toast thing but I was too flustered. Instead I just took a massive uncouth quaff and winced as the bubbles shot up my nose.
He looked a little shocked. He probably thought I was a burgeoning alcoholic.
“Sorry. I…” I had to stop and sneeze, and it burned, making my eyes water. “Um. Sorry. I’m not that into champagne.”
He took a neat little sip from his own glass. “Well, this is a Piper-Heidsieck Rare Vintage from 2002, reputably their best year since 1996.”
Oh dear Lord. I was so outclassed. “You know that just from tasting it?”
“It’s, ah, written on the bottle behind you.”
His tone was very careful, his expression unreadable, but his eyes were full of secret mischief. And my heart just gave this…lurch, even as I laughed. “You shouldn’t have told me. I was all impressed.”
“I don’t find it necessary to lie in order to impress people.”
My head was fuzzy with fizz. “You wouldn’t need to. You’re—”
“Mr. Hart?” It was a teeny-tiny field mouse woman—who I’d have noticed circling if I’d had eyes for anyone, or anything, but Caspian.
But even as I resented it, I was thankful for the interruption. It meant he would never know what I thought he was, which was for the best because it was going to be some overwrought, champagne-bright word like magnificent or glorious.
“Yes?” He turned away from me.
“I’m Hannah Rowan, the college’s Alumni and Development officer. I’m delighted you were able to make it. It’s such a pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
They shook hands, and the next thing I knew she was shepherding him expertly off. Away from me. To where the important people were.
Inevitable, really.
I tried not to…what? Feel sad? Lost? Faintly jealous? I had no right.
I watched his back, a ripple of navy in a sea of black. I imagined being able to recognize him anywhere from the line of his spine, the set of his shoulders. Like if we were back in that movie, I’d be on some pavement—sidewalk—in New York and a man would pause in the gray haze of a crowd. He’d turn, and it would be him, and I’d smile an Audrey Hepburn smile, and the credits would roll.
Yeah right.
I idly picked up the little cardboard doohickey that was supposed to tell you about the champagne. Floral character apparently. Hints of manuka honey and demerara sugar and notes of cigar leaves.
Cigar leaves? I took another gulp. No cigar leaves.
Which was surely a good thing?
I wished Caspian was still with me. I could have shown him, and he would have…well, he wouldn’t have laughed, but his mouth, his stern, beautiful mouth, would have promised mirth the way some promised kisses.
This was getting silly—lingering by the drinks like a wallflower, pining after a man who’d taken my absence for granted. I tossed back my drink and defiantly helped myself to a second glass. He had been so sure of me, so sure of being obeyed, I half expected (hoped?) to feel the heat of his body behind me, the pressure of his fingers on mine. I said have one.
Except no.
I spotted some of the students I’d got to know during the telethon and insinuated myself into their conversation. Nobody ever talked about anything real or interesting during these sorts of events, but it was important to look part of something. I thought I caught Caspian’s voice sometimes, no words, just the tone or the timbre of it, woven through the blur of other people’s. It was all I could do to stop my head turning, seeking him. An iron filing jumping to a magnet.
His presence was everywhere. Filling up the room. I could feel the attention of people who didn’t even know who he was straining toward him. Sometimes I’d catch their eyes when I was doggedly not looking at him.
Whatever he had, it wasn’t charm exactly. He made no effort to engage anyone, but he drew them regardless, like planets to the sun. I didn’t know what else to call it but…mastery. That unyielding certainty of power.
It wasn’t…nice. It was a feral thing, perhaps a cruel one.
But I wanted it anyway. I wanted him. All his ice and strength and darkness.
His rare smiles.
Though he probably didn’t think about me at all. Or if he did, it was likely only as a diversion, a curiosity. Someone it amused him to temporarily indulge.
“Arden St. Ives?”
I cringed. It was the junior dean. Or Bad Cop as she was known. I’d spent most of my first and second years being nonsexily castigated by her for various negligible infractions.
Probably because she suspected I was involved in the Bog Sheet, St. Sebastian’s most informal student newspaper. Which was fair because I did run the thing. Not one for the CV, really, but it did mean I got to cast her as a deranged Space Nazi in the weekly cartoon. It was pretty accurate.
I pasted a smile on my face. “Uh, hi, Tash.”
“Did you not read the invitation properly?” She glowered at me from behind thick, black-framed spectacles. She was in a tuxedo herself, doing the full Dietrich, and I would have normally thought it was cool. But she was Dr. Tash Vijayendran and she ate fun for breakfast and I refused to think anything good about her. “You do know there’s a dress code? Why aren’t you in black tie?”
I opened my mouth to answer. But I had nothing. What was I supposed to say? Because Caspian Hart told me not to?
“Well?”
I felt like a kid who had come to school without his uniform. “Um…”
“Because”—Caspian hadn’t even raised his voice but the room fell quiet around him anyway—“he doesn’t like it.” All that determined not-looking for him and he’d been close enough to hear me speak.
Tash blinked. “Oh. Well. All right, then.”
Of course, it wasn’t a real explanation for what I was wearing. If I’d tried to say something like that…God, my mind flinched from imagining it. Best-case scenario—everyone would have laughed at how fucking ridiculous it was. As if two hundred years of Britishness were just going to roll over for
the sake of my comfort. I’d never have been able to get away with it. Not in a million years.
But Caspian could.
And he’d done it for me.
I tried to catch his eye as conversation resumed, but, actually, it didn’t matter if he looked at me or not. It was enough that he was aware of me. Watching out for me. I liked it. It made me feel sort of…his.
As though he could claim me again without a glance or a word, simply by willing it. Like that G.K. Chesterton thing about the unseen hook and the invisible line.
The rest of the evening went pretty much the way these things always did. We milled around for a while in Melmoth, there was a brief (well, brief in the Oxford sense, meaning under an hour) welcome from the Master, and then we trooped along to hall for a fairly decent three-course meal. With great poise and finesse, I managed to use all the right cutlery and I didn’t put my elbow in my bread roll once. But, as the hours trickled past, boredom seeped into me like drizzle.
I was too far away from Caspian to be able to steal secret glances at him or listen to his conversation. And by the time we were herded back to Melmoth for yet more booze and speeches, he was nowhere to be seen.
He’d probably already gone. I should have expected it, but somehow I hadn’t. And I wasn’t quite prepared to be disappointed. To be hurt. I wasn’t exactly picking out wedding crockery but the least he could have done was say goodbye.
The Alumni and Development officer was going on and on about the St. Sebastian’s campaign. And my eyes were stingy with tears because I was sad over the loss of a man who had never been mine anyway.
What an idiot.
I slipped onto the forbidden balcony to wallow in aforementioned idiocy in private.
And there he was.
Chapter 5
It was as though he’d been waiting for me all along…except, well, he hadn’t.
He was standing by the crenellations, looking out at the city, which was all shadows and spires and streams of golden traffic in the distance. Cliché or not, he looked good by moonlight. Sculpted in silver and steel, a man so coldly perfect he was barely real at all.
Maybe it was some essential contrariness but his very untouchability made me want to…touch. To spark his beauty to life with passion and surrender.