I knew, in some distant way, this was ridiculous, but I couldn’t deny I was enjoying it. Feeling silly and eager and panicky all at the same time. And thudding along with my quickened heartbeat, the need to please.
I had no idea how long I’d taken, so I didn’t dare linger over my choices. I just shucked the rest of the formal wear, pulled on my skinniest skinny jeans (the ones that, it had been suggested, made my arse look like a ripe apricot) and my MANIC PIXIE DREAM BOY T-shirt. Then I grabbed my plum velvet jacket from the armchair and sprinted back to Caspian Hart.
Chapter 4
He was sitting on the bench beneath the lime tree, one leg crossed languidly over the other in the way that only really tall people seemed able to manage. He was diddling with an iDevice but he looked up as I skidded to a halt and smiled at me. Not his usual polite, half-smile, but a real one, all heat and unhindered pleasure.
I’d given him that.
“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?”