My Oxford Year(46)

“Just getting some food,” I lie as I close in on my unsuspecting prey.

“Doesn’t Moo-Moo’s close at five?”

You think you know me so well, Dr. Davenport. “Tell me exactly where you are in the library, the precise spot,” I whisper, entering the main room of the converted church.

Wow. I was not expecting this. It is gorgeous. Soaring white marble ceiling with painted blue insets, high arched windows, an open floor with wooden stacks jutting inward like ribs, and a long table in the center. Religion for bibliophiles. There’s even a late-medieval tomb topped with the horizontal carving of a knight, sword clutched atop his chest, a mirror image of the bones the sarcophagus contains. Eerie, but I love that it’s still here. Someone clearly doubted the spiritual wisdom of removing it. A few books sit atop it, waiting to be reshelved.

“Shall I tell you what I’m wearing as well?” Jamie chuckles.

“It does kind of turn me on. Imagining you sitting there, working away. I can see myself—”

“Right.” Jamie coughs. “Well then, allow me to assist.” He drops his voice, murmurs, low and sweet, “In between the stacks are study carrels. Last row in the back. I like the one on the right, closest to the window overlooking the High. Sometimes there’s an unfortunate fresher in my spot and I challenge him to a duel.”

“Ooh, blood sport. Hot,” I coo, padding lightly down the center aisle.

“I take my chair, prepare my tablets and books . . . er, unbutton my jacket, and then I, well, I suppose I sit down—” He stops abruptly, voice suddenly less phone sex and more awkward telemarketer. “This can’t be remotely exciting.”

“You have no idea.”

“I want to see you,” he groans. “I hope soon.”

“Sooner than you think,” I say smugly, closing in on the final stack.

“Bollocks. The librarian’s onto me. I have to go. Chat soon, yes?”

“Uh-huh,” I answer, grinning. I hang up just as I turn the corner, his carrel, no more than fifteen feet away, coming into view.

It’s empty.





Chapter 16


But though with seeming mirth she takes her part

In all the dances and the laughter there,

And though to many a youth, on brief demand,

She gives a kind assent and courteous hand,

She loves but him, for him is all her care.

Charles (Tennyson) Turner, “A Country Dance,” 1880

What did I say to him? What did I say when this whole thing started? I said don’t lie to me. Simple. I said honesty is the only way this is going to work. Honesty about when we’ve reached the end of the road, honesty about what we’re feeling for each other. I ignore the obnoxious little voice inside my head that points out I haven’t been entirely honest about that last bit and focus instead on Jamie’s duplicity.

I even gave him the benefit of the doubt. I walked every aisle, looked in every carrel. He lied to me.

As I wend my way through the throng on the High, I group text Charlie, Maggie, and Tom:

Meet me in 20. We’re going out.

“HUGH!” I EXCLAIM, banging into the lodge. “Put the champagne on ice! Ella Durran’s hitting the town tonight!”

He pauses in his nightly ritual of powering everything down, gazing at me over the tops of his glasses. “Indeed, Miss Durran?”

I keep walking. “Indeedy-do, Hugh! I’m blowing this Popsicle stand!” I abruptly halt. There’s a long-stemmed rose sticking out of one of the pidges.

My pidge.

“Hugh,” I breathe. “When did—”

“This morning, Miss Durran. I was growing rather concerned it might wilt. Just about to place it in a bit of water for you, actually—”

I yank the rose out of my pidge, throw it to the floor, and stomp on it. Repeatedly. He dares sully my pidge with his lies? The nerve!

The smell of crushed roses brings me back to myself. Breathing heavily, I look at Hugh. His expression hasn’t changed in the slightest during my tantrum. He still watches me as if I’ve entered the lodge with the sole purpose of boring him. “No water, then?”

I look down at the rose in disbelief. “Sorry,” I mutter, bending over to scoop up its masticated petals.

“I’ll attend to it,” Hugh says quietly.

“I’m so sorry, I don’t know what—”

“Miss Durran.”

I look up and see Hugh standing over me with that same dulled expression, but a changed tone. “Allow me.” He squats down next to me with a slight grunt, knees creaking. His kindness overwhelms me and my throat tightens. “I’m so sorry—” I offer again, but Hugh just shakes his head.

“’Tis nothing. Best be off, Miss Durran. You’ve Popsicle stands to blow.”

This kind man reaches into the ashes and pulls a smile out of me. “Thank you, Hugh. You’re a keeper, you know that?”

“My ex-wife would disagree with you there, Miss Durran.”

I muster one more smile and flee the lodge.

I hoof up my staircase. Charlie’s door is open and, upon hearing my footsteps, he emerges, dressed in his Gatsby suit and smelling like a French hooker, bless him. He holds a bottle of whiskey by the neck like a dead duck. Maggie, brow perpetually furrowed in worry, appears behind him, Tom—still wearing his bike helmet—beside her.