Oxford Whispers Page 4

  Concentrating on a new book, Madison sent Pippa a hurry-up frown. They still had more work to do.

  Fifteen minutes later, when the staff started turning off the library’s computers, Madison burst into laughter. She stopped herself once she saw the disapproving eyes of the employees turned in her direction.

  “I’ve just found the funniest description of the painting,” she said in a conspiratorial tone, “by a man named John Ruskin, a painter and art critic when the Royal Academy exhibited The Wounded Cavalier in 1856.”

  Madison read out loud from one of the art books she had been browsing through. “‘The Cavalier and Puritan is the most admirable and truthful in details,’ bladibladibla … ‘He—the Cavalier—is watched by one of those limp, tall, ludicrous Puritans …’”

  She giggled and then continued in jubilation. “‘He has the face of Smike, and is much the worse for fast and penitence.’” Facing a distinct lack of reaction from Pippa, she tried to share her amusement. “‘The Puritan is simply an imbecile …’”

  Madison laid her hands flat on the glossy pages of the book and smiled, while Pippa stared back at her in dismay. “You really are a geek, you know.”

  Madison tried and justified herself. “I’m just glad someone else thinks this guy is a freak.”

  They jumped in their seats when the bell rang, signaling readers to finish work and leave. Reluctantly, Madison switched off her laptop.

  Pippa had already started gathering their materials spread across the wide desk when Ollie appeared from behind a gondola of books, his laptop bag slung over his shoulder. His face broke into a joyous smile when he recognized his dormmate.

  “Hey Maddie, what are you doing here? With Pippa?” he asked, attracting reproaching looks from staff nearby. His face flushed as he said Pippa’s name.

  Pippa didn’t even spare a look at Ollie when she said, “My good looks might mislead you, Davies, but I have a perfectly formed brain. And I happen to study at Oxford, just like you.”

  Ignoring the comment, Ollie threw a quick glance at the books opened in front of Madison. “You’re interested in William Shakespeare Burton? I like his work too.”

  She blushed. Madison had only shared her interest for the painting with Pippa.

  “Yes, indeed.” Pippa tilted her head and flicked her tousled hair playfully.

  “Have you heard, by any chance, of The Wounded Cavalier?” asked Madison.

  “Well yes, of course. It’s his most famous painting.”

  “I’m trying to determine if Burton used actual historical figures as an inspiration for the three characters in the painting.”

  Pushing his round-rimmed glasses up his long, narrow nose, Ollie said, “Oh yes, sure.”

  “Do you know who they might have been?”

  Ollie’s gaze settled back on the painting displayed on the last book. “No. But very often they used existing portraits, those of their benefactors, or their benefactors’ families.”

  Madison already knew that.

  A member of the library staff passed their desk and firmly reminded them that time had run out.

  “Who was Burton’s benefactor, do you know?”

  “No idea. Sorry.” He seemed surprised, having failed to answer her for a second time.

  “We need to go.” Pippa stood now, clasping the books against her chest. Her lips twitched sideways in an impatient pout.

  Putting her laptop back in her satchel, Madison thanked Ollie for his help.

  “But …” He pointed a finger toward the ceiling in a eureka-like action. “If I remember correctly, Burton spent a lot of time around Oxford, in the Cotswolds. You should look at the prominent local families.”

  Together, they took the books back to the reserve desk and left the Lower Reading Room. When they stepped outside the Bodleian onto Catte Street, the freezing November night air engulfed Madison, and her whole body tensed to face the journey back to Christ Church College.

  Pippa pointed her manicured hand toward Madison’s bicycle. “Now you’re like any other student. Best purchase of the term, I have to say.” Despite being a secondhand one, the bike leaned proudly against the wrought-iron bars around Hertford College. “Bye darling, I’ve got to dash.”

  “Thanks for offering to help with my research.”

  Pippa shrugged, but a frown clouded her face. “Don’t get your hopes up with Rupert tomorrow. You’re not his type, and he won’t be good for you. Believe me, I know him.” She left Madison in front of Hertford’s main door with its embossed, colored flowers.

  Her words punched Madison’s ego. Maybe Pippa was just jealous of the time Madison would spend at Rupert’s mansion tomorrow. Forcing herself to forget Pippa’s warning, Madison turned her attention to Ollie.

  “I have to go in the same direction. See you tomorrow,” he mumbled, and started running after Pippa like a puppy dog after his master. Love her, hate her. Maybe Ollie should make up his mind about Philippa Connelly.

  Madison psyched herself up against the cold and opted for the longer way back to Christ Church past Hertford College, along New College Lane. She needed time to think.

  She rode her bicycle around the sharp bends of the narrow street, now her favorite spot in all of Oxford. On her left, a small alley led down to the Turf Tavern through the historic city wall.

  She admired the flying arch linking the two parts of Hertford College, the Bridge of Sighs. And sighing was what she wanted to do. A big, deep and miserable sigh.

  The last week had been spent looking for a cleancut solution to her question: Were the characters in the painting real people? But she had found zip. Nada. Rien. Not even the shadow of a clue.

  The high stone walls surrounding New College Lane now threatened her, their few windows offering limited escape to her entrapped mind. Even if she identified the love triangle in The Wounded Cavalier, she didn’t know yet what she was supposed to do about it. Pay them respect?

  She wanted to find their graves, lay flowers upon them and be done with it.

  But she wasn’t sure it would be enough for the Puritan maiden, Sarah, and her Cavalier. Madison had no desire to go on a crusade and seek revenge for them. If what Sarah said was true, and Peter had really killed her, the crime was three hundred years old. Surely, there was an expiration date on vengeance, even for ghosts.

  At the junction with the High Street, she cycled down the busy thoroughfare. Within seconds she regretted leaving her leather gloves behind in her room that morning.

  Her hands clutched the handlebars in a frozen grip. She accelerated.

  The weather wasn’t perfect for an excursion to an English country estate. The thought of spending an entire day in Rupert Vance’s company put her on edge. Thank God, Ollie would be with her as well. He had begged her to take him with her to the manor. She had asked Rupert, and he had accepted.

  Brushing away any thought of the coming weekend, she negotiated the buzzing Carfax Tower’s roundabout.

  She entered St. Aldate’s and saw the Puritan.

  She recognized him at once, with his black clothes, tall hat and short, white collar. He stood tall in the middle of the street.

  He looked straight into Madison’s eyes, his unwavering gaze piercing deep into her soul. In slow motion, he moved his right arm forward to bring her to a halt.

  She wrenched the bike aside to avoid colliding with him.

  Her front wheel hit the pavement, and she flew head first over the handlebars. She threw her arms forward to soften her fall, but the burning pain in her elbow knocked the breath out of her.

  A few passersby came to her aid. Madison checked and found that her limbs were still in one piece. Relieved, she turned her head toward where Peter had been standing.

  She didn’t know what was scarier—that he had vanished, or that she knew him by his first name. For she was certain that the man Sarah had warned her against, Peter, was the man in the painting. The one who reeked of jealousy.

  And Sarah was right. Peter
wanted Madison harmed, hurt, maybe dead.

  Chapter 8

  SHE LAY ON HER bed in a tiny whitewashed room in Pierre Part, at home in Assumption Parish.

  The mosquito net hung over her like a bride’s veil. The thin silk of her nightgown clung to the shape of her body, to the stickiness of her skin. The mucky Louisiana night air wrapped her without escape within its humid blanket.

  A mockingbird, hidden in the oak tree outside her window, sang an enticing melody, hoping the full moon would lead him to his possible mate.

  The man who lay next to her breathed down her neck, and heat radiated along his body and hers. He touched her flesh through her flimsy garment, his chest steel against her back, their legs entwined. His long fingers teased her.

  Her awareness, his proximity, his brushing hypnotized her, as if she were a deer spellbound under the stare of a rattlesnake. Unable to breathe, she didn’t want to move, to startle him. His hand had now slid beneath the material of her gown, caressing her thigh. He owned her.

  His lips titillated the tip of her ear. He groaned. She wanted to scream, not out of fear, but anticipation. He murmured reassuring words, the familiar velvet of his voice barely recognizable. He had always been so protective of her, but she sensed danger now.

  He pulled her onto her back and climbed on top of her. She had kept her eyes closed, but the knowledge of his naked body covering her was enough to send shivers down her spine.

  His tongue tickled her lips, but she resisted. Impatient, he grabbed and lifted her against him.

  She opened her eyes and stared into … the dark blue of his. Not dark brown as she had expected. Her mind registered his face, his features, as fragments of a satellite image.

  When she knew who the man lying on top of her was, she woke up.

  Sitting in her Oxford single-bed, her hand on her chest to calm her elevated pulse, Madison cursed herself.

  Dreaming of sex with her young history tutor would have been disturbing enough, but Rupert Vance had no right invading her dreams.

  “DON’T WORRY, HE’LL come. The dude has too much to lose.” Ollie tried to reassure Madison.

  They’d been waiting for ten minutes in the morning gloom, Madison pacing on St. Aldate’s pavement, Ollie flicking through the pages of his book with his black curls falling over his eyes.

  It was colder than a well-digger’s butt in Dakota.

  And if that wasn’t enough, Miss Lindsey stared at them from the porter’s lodge.

  “We agreed he’d pick us up at nine.” Madison got a faint smile back from Ollie, one that said “I wish the girl would shut up.”

  She had a packed agenda for the day, going through the personal diaries of Godfrey Dallembert, the first earl of Huxbury, a benefactor of the arts in the seventeenth century.

  No way was she going to let that English brat compromise her first chance at proving to Doctor McCain what a damn good research assistant she could be.

  “He has my cell number. At least the idiot could have called me. I’m calling him now.”

  “Calm down.”

  But Madison didn’t want to calm down. She hadn’t yet recovered from her bike accident yesterday, her skinned elbow a sore reminder of the ghost she’d bumped into.

  She forgot about the itching when Ollie’s wideset puppy eyes popped out of their sockets. Madison followed his gaze.

  Rupert had arrived. So had his car.

  “What the hell,” she muttered, “How are we going to …”

  “A Morgan Roadster,” Ollie interrupted.

  She turned toward him with a frown. “It’s a two-seater. There are three of us.” But this detail didn’t seem to bother her friend. He was practically drooling.

  Madison crossed St. Aldate’s, blind to the traffic. From behind the wheel, Rupert’s smile spread from one ear to the other. She knocked at the window and he rolled it down.

  “You’re ten minutes late and when you turn up, it’s to show off your little toy.”

  He clasped his hands in a fake prayer, but Madison wasn’t going to be pushed around. “Is this a revenge on Doctor McCain for forcing you to take me to your family nest?”

  He bit his lower lip and apologized, his good humor now down by a notch. With a conscious effort, Madison took a deep breath. By the time she regained her composure, Ollie was by her side.

  “Which model?” he asked.

  “1991, 3L9 injection fully loaded.” Rupert chortled with the glee of owning this precious object, which meant oh-so-little to Madison.

  She interrupted their exchange on full-stock engines. “Only one of us can go today.”

  Rupert looked back and forth between Madison and Ollie. “Sorry. I forgot it was the two of you. It’s a genuine mistake.”

  Madison believed him, but she could have slapped his arrogant face on the spot. For the heck of it. Ollie didn’t seem to share her irritation, so she decided to cut him loose. “I’m sorry. Rupert will take you there another time. Won’t you, Rupert?”

  Without waiting for his answer, she walked around the car, opened the door and sat on the red leather passenger seat. She didn’t spare a glance for the wooden dashboard. Instead, she focused her eyes straight ahead on the road.

  “So it’s you and me together all day.” Rupert’s brow arched and snapshots from some old James Bond movies flashed through Madison’s mind.

  “Don’t sit there like a frog on a log. Take off.”

  Rupert hit the accelerator on his sleek Jordan or whatever the goddamned car was called. They didn’t talk, and while they drove away from Oxford Madison relaxed, lulled by the steady humming of the car’s engine.

  She peered through the window and struggled to hide her enthusiasm. Back home, she had dreamed of the English countryside, its rolling hills and its storybook villages. Nothing compared with the real deal, though. She stared at the honey-colored limestone cottages, their thatched roofs and oak doors. Every turn revealed a medieval church here or an old manor house there.

  After half an hour sitting in the plush car, Rupert hadn’t yet said a word. She was increasingly aware of the man who sat alongside her. A jerk he might be, but a damn hot one. His proximity caused her heart to pump her body’s fluids faster in excitement.

  Madison shuffled in her seat, and the leather squeaked. She forced herself to remain still and pretended to look at the view. Her palms clasped her thighs so she wouldn’t do anything to embarrass herself, like running her fingers through his hair.

  He finally broke the silence. “It’s your first time in England.”

  Thank God … Chitchat was better than nothing. “First time out of the U.S.”

  “I went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans a few years back. One of my father’s friends has an estate near New Iberia, so we stayed for a few days.”

  Madison didn’t care about his rich American pals. No doubt a Southern belle with the right pedigree had entertained him there. But nothing smart and witty came to her mind. In fact, the only thing she paid attention to was the smell of his fabric softener. With all his good looks, it was the fresh scent of Rupert’s clothes that turned her on. A lavender scent, now she was sure of it.

  Her gaze shifted towards his left hand on the gearstick and the firm grip of his fingers on it. Even the way he handled it, accelerating, decelerating, was a turn-on. She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone bone-dry again.

  Pathetic.

  The car slowed down, and Rupert turned into a private road. At the end of the graveled path, Magway appeared.

  With a silent woah, her mouth opened wide. Today was her first time in a real-life manor house.

  As soon as Rupert stopped the car in the central courtyard, Madison leapt out of her seat. She gazed at the pitched roof, cross-gables, and chimney pots. She clenched her hands, as if to refrain from touching anything or anyone.

  What an amazing place to do some research. Jackson had given her the best job ever. The main fortified body dated back to the medieval era, but the two wings, wi
th their narrow, jutting bay windows, claimed Tudor influence.

  Rupert was leaning against his car, cross-legged, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. The extravagant car didn’t look out of place anymore, but was the perfect accessory to his family nest and smoking virility.

  The guy probably bought a new boat each time his other one got wet.

  “I hope you’re suitably impressed. You’ll be nice to me now that you’ve seen my house?”

  It was obvious he thought people liked him because he was loaded. His anorexic excuse of a girlfriend does, for sure … All things considered, for a guy that rich, he seemed relatively down to earth. Emphasis on relatively.

  “Rupert Vance, even if you owned Buckingham Palace, that would not make me like you more, or dislike you less.” Once the words were out of her mouth she blushed, because she also felt something else toward him that her body couldn’t hide.

  She’d never liked the kind of Rupert Vance. Rich, self-confident, acting as if everything was owned to them. But still, she should give him the benefit of the doubt and get over her social prejudice.

  His face had frozen, as if she had actually hurt his feelings. Then he burst into laughter, moved toward the imposing entrance door and opened it.

  With that, Madison learned something classic: rich people didn’t need keys.

  Inside, a double red-carpeted staircase framed both sides of the entrance hall and led up to a mezzanine.

  Rupert took her duffel coat and handed it to a stiff-looking man. Jasper the butler, she decided.

  “Before we go to the library, I’ll show you the portrait gallery on the mezzanine.”

  Climbing the staircase, she absorbed every detail of this historic home, from the wallpaper with its Victorian floral patterns, to the dark wooden floors and the rich hand-embroidered fabrics of the drapes. Never could she have imagined a house so full of valuable artwork. The wealth of it rendered her speechless as she wandered from one ancestral portrait to the next.

  Remembering she was here to work, Madison retraced her steps. Then her eyes lingered on a smaller painting, similar to the others, judging by the golden ornamented frame. She stepped closer.