Oxford Shadows

by Croslydon, Marion

Her study appeared to shrink once Rupert started marching across it, back and forth, back and forth. Madison ordered herself to stay put and not give up a single inch of ground. However, the hollowness that had built up since their argument at Blenheim spilled out of her heart and welled up in her eyes. A betraying tear fell over her cheek. She bit her lower lip to wrest control and lowered her head to hide her weakness. The hatchet of rejection—rejection by Rupert—always hung over her head. The fear of losing him—his love or whatever he was ready to give her—dragged her down.

  Too late. Rupert was already camping in front of her. His fingers cradled her face and forced her to stare up and meet his gaze. “I can’t stand you crying. Forgive me.”

  Trusting her towel to stay put, Madison laid her hands on his and shook her head. “No, it’s me. I’m a sissy with all my insecurities.” A sniffle punctuated her confession.

  “I must be a sissy too because I’m rotten with insecurities. You know that better than anyone else.”

  “Come on. You’re the king of the jungle. You don’t talk, you roar, and everyone bows down before you.”

  His response was a muffled laugh. “I don’t care what anyone else thinks about me. I only want you to look up to me, to be proud of me.”

  He locked his words with a kiss. A fierce, devouring kiss. One that radiated his need for her and smashed her self-doubts into a thousand irrelevant pieces. His hands shifted from her face down along her neck to settle in the nook by her collarbone. His fingertips tickled the tips of her shoulders. His kiss deepened, and she had to step closer to him and let her head tilt backward for him to explore her mouth. Rupert teased her tongue with his, challenging her to let go, to open herself to him.

  All hell broke loose when her towel slid to the floor and the air brushed over her naked flesh. Her nipples hardened. She wrapped her arms around Rupert’s neck while his hand took hold of her ass and pulled it so her hips crashed against him. His other hand twisted her damp hair into a ponytail and pulled her deeper into his kiss.

  Madison almost lost her balance when Rupert knelt at her feet. On his way down, he traced a path with his lips from between her breasts to her navel. He circled her waist, and the heat of his gaze burnt at her naked body.

  “I dream of you, Maddie … I dream of being inside you.”

  They made it to her tiny bed, but only later.

  Florence ~ August 1508

  The delicious heat has spread throughout my body. The flames of hell might burn my soul one day, but I do not care about punishment when I lie beside my lover. Complete and satiated.

  My hair falls in waves around my face, and I have to push away the curls to prevent them from tangling with the tip of my quill while I write. My lover tucks them behind my ear, his fingers seizing the opportunity to play with the straps of the loose gown I have covered myself with after our lovemaking.

  “How much longer can you stay with me?” he says.

  I lift my pencil from the parchment and steal a glance at his powerful torso. He has not bothered to dress, and the white sheet covers him from the waist down. His hose must be discarded somewhere on the floor next to my patterned gown with the tied-on green sleeves.

  “My maid will knock at the door when the time comes. I gave her clear instructions to do so.”

  A sensual laugh complements the kiss he lays at the nape of my neck. “If I had not had proof of your innocence, I would have assumed your wickedness had been sharpened by much experience.”

  He is speaking the truth. Since I chose to give myself to him, I have revealed a side of my character I did know existed, but did not dare uncover.

  Supporting myself with my elbow, I shift toward him to prolong the kiss he initiated. “You are my first and only one.” I brush his lips with mine to tease him into the web of my seduction. “My first and last one.”

  He moves away from me, throws his legs over the side of the bed, and I am tipped off balance. The sudden void leaves me dizzy. With a few steps, he swaggers naked to the table where a carafe of Venetian wine stands. He fills two cups and brings them back to us. I take one of them and savor its spicy contents.

  I try and recapture his attention. “I have a few more verses to write and then you can start composing the melody.”

  But his thoughts have departed from our room and flown away, away to his home, away to England. I resent this part of him, over which I have no control and almost no knowledge.

  “I can improvise,” he tells me. “If we indulge ourselves in each other’s bodies one more time, inspiration will strike.”

  He catches my waist and rolls above me, his full weight stilling me. He captures my arms and lifts them above my head. I am at his mercy, and I relish his domination. His knee parts my legs, and I let him ravish me.

  A few moments later, my heart struggles to regain its regular pace. He lies by my side, the sheets of paper with lyrics creased beneath him. He extracts them and starts reading the words I had scribbled down before our second lovemaking. With no effort at all, he sits up and leaves the bed again, naked. I come to hate the dreadful feeling he elicits when he leaves my immediate proximity.

  After emptying what is left of his wine, he heads toward the window. The thick drapes are half drawn, tempering the harsh light of the summer afternoon.

  “Liliana, my love, you are talented and succeed in expressing the heartbreak you plunge me into each time you leave me.”

  His words are more a jest than a confession of his real feelings. To bury my annoyance, I bite my lower lip. His sensual voice starts humming a melody, one I have never heard before. I suspect it is one of his own creations. My lover is an accomplished musician. When I hear my written words sung by his sonorous voice I can hardly refrain from running toward him and falling at his feet.

  Greensleeves was all my joy,

  Greensleeves was my delight …

  With him, next to him, the world is brighter and I am much more than when I am on my own.

  … Greensleeves was my heart of gold,

  And who but my lady Greensleeves?

  11

  THE RHYTHM OF THE melody echoed throughout Madison’s dreams. Insistent and persistent. Liliana’s lustful fever rushed through her veins. Love could destroy any instinct of preservation—Madison already knew that—but the Italian girl’s feelings were doomed.

  Madison fidgeted under her duvet and kicked it away. A film of sweat covered her legs, and she felt clammy. Rupert lay naked next to her, or rather alongside her, given the narrow width of her bed. His arm was thrown across her waist in the possessive clasp she had grown accustomed to. She wanted to indulge in seeing him, to feed her senses with the defined shape of his shoulders and the curve of his lower back and hips.

  Shaking her head, she summoned the brain cells Rupert’s testosterone hadn’t affected yet and shook him out of his slumber. He answered with a groan. Another push and shove. Madison had no musical ear whatsoever. She didn’t play any instruments, and her singing was abysmal. Time was of the essence or she wouldn’t be able to remember the melody.

  “Wake up, please. Wake up.”

  Rupert rolled onto his back, freeing her from his grip. She sat up and wiped away the perspiration that ran down her chest. God, she hated the state these dreams put her in.

  A light kiss on her shoulders softened the blow the memories had punched into her. “Did you have a nightmare?” Rupert rubbed his eyes to push the sleep away, just as he must have done as a child. It was good-enough-to-melt cute.

  “Yes. Euh, no.” They were so much more than nightmares. “I need your help.”

  Rupert checked the digits on her alarm clock that shone through the semi-darkness of her room: 3:42 A.M. “Do we have to do it now?”

  “I remembered something important, something I hadn’t paid attention to before.”

  “Okay.” He took the cushion they had shared only a few moments before, threw it against the wall behind their heads, padded it and rested his back against it in a v
ertical position. “Is it about our ghost?” He shook his head and added, “I can’t believe I just said that. Anyway, fire away.”

  “I know what triggered the man’s appearance at the concert. It was the music. The whole thing happened when the musicians at the concert started playing a certain song. That tune means something to him and the girl he was involved with.”

  “What was the tune?”

  “I’m going to hum it to you. Please don’t take the piss.”

  The moonlight couldn’t hide the smirk that twisted across Rupert’s mouth. “Baby, don’t take it badly but your singing could shatter windows at several hundred places and—”

  A slap on his shoulder stopped him mid-sentence. “Don’t you think I know that? Now listen.” Madison cleared her throat and swept away all her inhibitions. Or most of them. She started humming.

  “Try once more,” Rupert prompted her.

  She obeyed. The sound of her singing could make a preacher cuss.

  “Stop. Please, baby, stop. I’m pretty sure I can tell you the title despite your interpretation.”

  The humiliation had been worth it. “Then don’t sit like a frog on a log. Tell me.”

  “It’s called ‘Greensleeves.’ The composer is Vaughn Williams, and it’s an English classic.”

  Her hand flew to her chest in relief. Madison: one. Ghost: zero. At last there was a piece of information she could bite on. She let Rupert pull her against him, his fingers massaging the tight muscles of her neck.

  “Does that make better sense to you?” he said.

  “Actually, I think it does.”

  She cuddled him and tugged herself around his legs and chest, trying to steal some of his strength. His comfort drew her back into sleep. She heard the music again. Liliana’s lover whispered the words in Madison’s ears this time. Again and again.

  Greensleeves was all my joy,

  Greensleeves was my delight,

  Greensleeves was my heart of gold,

  And who but my lady Greensleeves?

  Madison pedaled down Woodstock Road. Her early morning tutorial couldn’t have been over too soon, and she could swear she still had pieces of the pencil she had been chewing stuck between her teeth. Telling Jackson about “Greensleeves” had been her top priority since waking up that morning. Well, not exactly true: her top priority at alarm-bell time had been making love. Thank God she had been lucky enough to score Rupert. If she had waited twenty-two years to have sex and ended up with an average-performing lover, it would have sucked. Big time.

  The gravel on Jackson’s driveway crunched underneath the wheels of her bike. Since her return from Louisiana, his house had become a second home. With Ollie as her partner-in-crime, they had turned Jackson’s bachelor pad into their headquarters. What the oh-so-sophisticated and mature Professor Jackson McCain thought about their Scooby Gang invading his personal space remained TBD. To be determined.

  Madison caught her breath while she waited for him to answer the door. She would have to kickstart that fitness regime of hers.

  Jackson half-opened his door. “Madison?”

  She had always known her tutor and mentor was an attractive man. What she hadn’t expected was that his bare chest would look quite so impressive. She swallowed. Hard. What was he doing with tousled hair and wearing ripped-off jeans at ten in the morning? The explanation came when a female voice called his name in the clipped manner of the English upper classes. Madison relished that kind of accent in Rupert, but with this woman, whoever she was, the effect was nerve cringing.

  “I can come back later,” Madison managed to articulate while heat set her cheeks on fire. While she had been feeling guilty about Jackson’s broken heart, he had proceeded in sexing-up Oxford’s female population.

  “Come in, please. We were finished.” He ruffled his hair, which accentuated his out-of-bed look.

  Finished with what? Sex on the sofa? In the kitchen?

  When Madison reached the living room, she got a better view of what had kept him occupied the night before. The girl could have been described as both curvy and leggy, which in Madison’s book was a terrible combination. What else to expect when her schoolmates had always used the adjectives “short” and “flat” to describe her.

  “Elizabeth, this is Madison, one of my students.”

  Elizabeth arched one expertly plucked eyebrow and threw out a “How do you do?” without giving Madison a second look. After Elizabeth had slid her pedicured feet into a pair of designer flats, he accompanied her to the entrance door.

  Jackson McCain had sex. He was a sexual being. Madison had never really seen him that way before. It would have been like imagining her own parents active in the sack. Yuck. Well, actually, Madison knew her mom had one-night stands; she didn’t come home every night. Still, the thought wasn’t as unsettling as imagining the man Madison had put on the pedestal of wisdom and infinite knowledge getting down and dirty, hot and sweaty.

  “Coffee?” Jackson asked, without meeting her eyes.

  Madison accepted the offer while she pretended to admire the original artwork hanging from the walls. When he stepped back into the living room with two foaming hot cups in his hands—and a shirt covering his lickable abs—Madison breathed again. Back to normal. She brought the cup to her lips and swallowed the hot liquid. It was strong enough to float an iron wedge.

  “Too strong?”

  She wasn’t sure if Jackson was assessing her reaction to the coffee or to his one-night stand. Or maybe it wasn’t just a one-night stand. She answered with a shake of her head, still digesting the Elizabeth encounter.

  “I need your help,” she said. “You said that if I found out anything about the vision at the concert, I should tell you.”

  “You can tell me anything, Madison, you know that.” He perched on the edge of his sofa and crossed his bare feet.

  “I caught something in one of my dreams. It happened last night, and I don’t remember everything but enough to know what brought that man to me.” The two faces of the English ghost came to her: the one smeared with blood, and the other one Liliana had been so enamored with. “It was the music, the music they played at the concert.”

  “Did you recognize it?”

  She could have explained how Rupert had been the one who had provided the crucial piece of information, but that would have hinted at the fact that they had shared the same bed. Not that Jackson cared at all about her sleeping arrangements. But hey, no kiss and tell.

  “Have you heard of ‘Greensleeves?’ ”

  A spark of interest ignited in his brown eyes and without a word he moved toward a CD rack standing in the opposite corner of the room. Ollie had spent many hours drooling over Jackson’s stereo and music collection. Now came the moment to put it to good use.

  Soon the ballad played throughout the room, its melody both familiar and foreign to her ears. The words talked of broken vows and hearts, of deception and undying love. The combination seeped into Madison and squeezed her lungs so tightly she gasped for breath. Her hand flew to her chest and she rushed toward the stereo to click the red stop button. When the music stopped, a groan exploded from her lips. She covered her mouth to repress the noise and the wave of nausea threatening to splash over Jackson’s polished wooden floors.

  He reacted fast. He engulfed her in his arms and forced-marched her toward the tiny bathroom lodged beneath the staircase. She crashed down onto the tiles, her forearms resting on the sides of the toilet seat, and vomited up her breakfast. Jackson kept her hair from falling over her face. Once she had emptied her stomach, Madison shifted and leaned back against the wall. She shut her eyes and cut herself off from her surroundings, from the noise of the toilet flushing, from Jackson moving around.

  The touch of a wet cloth over her lips softened her wounded senses and dragged her back to the here and now.

  “Have a sip of water.”

  Jackson brought the glass to her lips and she managed to swallow a couple of sips. Her guts k
ept clenching and unclenching, while spasms rocketed through the rest of her bruised body.

  “I’m so sorry,” she sputtered. Jackson had spent the night with an elegant and mature woman and now he had this poor, stupid student of his throwing up in his downstairs toilet. “I swear I’m not hungover or anything like that. It’s that song.” Her voice quivered on the last word. She sat huddled against the wall with her arms wrapped around her knees.

  Jackson slid down by her side, mimicking her posture. “I know.” He conveyed his comfort by encircling her shoulder, and she nestled her head in the small of his neck. “We’ll have to work at making you stronger because I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

  “I’m scared of failing again.” She kept her confession to a whisper.

  “We’ll make this trip back to the Tudors short and sweet. Count on me.”

  Madison raised her head. “The Tudors. What do they have to do with all of this?”

  12

  “VAUGHAN WILLIAMS is supposed to be the official composer, but Henry the Eighth is believed to have written ‘Greensleeves.’ Before you shared that story with me, I thought it was unlikely the music itself was by him because of its Italian origin. Now I guess it could make sense. The lyrics are thought to be his attempt at courting Anne Boleyn.”

  “He can’t be my ghost.”

  “You sound awfully certain.”

  A giggle eased the pent-up tension inside her. “Let’s put it this way. The guy I saw in my dreams wasn’t fat, or greasy, or yucky. A bad boy, yes, for sure.” But a swoon-worthy one. Without the blood, of course.

  “Maybe the ghost is connected to Henry,” Jackson ventured.

  “There’s a girl in my dream, too. They speak in Italian. Don’t ask me how I can understand what they say. It’s one of those mysteries. She’s the one who wrote the lyrics.” The facts she knew about Henry the Eighth didn’t reconcile with the glimpse of the love story Madison had stolen from the lovers. “And she wrote the lyrics for him.”