“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.