“Easy-peasy,” Miles said. “We find the loot, we discover the identity of Francis Layton’s victim, and then we share the loot with his descendants.”
“Yeah,” Aunt Rosemary drawled. “Easy-peasy.”
“South Africa. That’s the next step.” Miles finished his third biscuit and dusted his fingers. “I’m flying out on Friday” He squinted at me. “Want to come?”
My heart stopped, and then started again in a crazy gallop. “I can’t afford it,” I said, although my mind was already exploring the possibilities.
“We could do a deal.” Miles turned to Aunt Rosemary. “You agree not to charge me rent, and I’ll pay for Alexandra’s trip.”
I’d rarely seen Aunt Rosemary at a loss for words. She stared at Miles, her face a picture of confusion. “All right,” she said finally. Then she blew out a sigh. “Phew. Now I know how people used to feel when they sold their daughters to white slavery.”
“I promise to bring her back intact,” Miles said.
Aunt Rosemary hooted, my cheeks burned, but Miles didn’t even flinch. “Scratch that,” he said. “Not intact. What I meant is undamaged.”
“I can’t,” I told them both. “I’ve got three months to go on my work contract and I can’t let people down.”
And, although I wasn’t going to mention it, I wasn’t prepared to have my trip funded by a man who’d just announced his carnal intentions. Miles guarded his emotions as if they were state secrets. I didn’t want to end up finding that I’d been nothing more than a convenience he’d paid for. I would only go if I could afford the fare, and I didn’t see how that would be possible, unless I accepted financial defeat and sold the car.
Aunt Rosemary must have caught on to my dilemma. “You pay rent, as agreed,” she told Miles. “I’ll give the money to Alexandra for her Christmas present, and she can decide if she wants to come with you.”
Miles contemplated me from between half-closed lids. “Sorry,” he said. “My invitation came out a bit mangled. I’ll go alone for now, but if it takes more than a month, why don’t you come out for Christmas?” He lowered his voice. “It would give us a chance to get to know each other before I have to get back to work.”
I chewed on my bottom lip. His gaze was so intense that I could feel it on my skin, like an army of tiny spiders dancing the waltz on my arms. “Maybe,” I told him. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good,” he said. “You get Christmas off, don’t you? It’s the Bodleian Library you work in, isn’t it? Academic holidays?”
I nodded, ill at ease. I didn’t recall telling him where I worked.
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Chapter Nine
It took us two hours to go through the research Aunt Rosemary had completed the night before. One of her big worries was that the loot didn’t exist, that it had never been more than a prospect of wealth.
“They found gold or diamonds in the Kalahari Desert,” she said, her face furrowed with doubt. “Francis Layton murdered his partner. Then he got lost and died. The gold or diamonds were left in the ground. Someone else could have found them by now. It could all be gone.”
Miles looked thoughtful. “That’s not necessarily a problem.”
Aunt Rosemary frowned at him. “Explain.”
“Prophecies are a matter of principle. It says ‘make amends’. There isn’t a price tag attached. If no fortune was stolen, the amends could be an apology. Admission of having done wrong. Repentance. Certainly, for biblical curses, the main remedy is repenting your sins and forsaking your evil ways.”
“I see.” Aunt Rosemary drew squiggles on her notepad. “South Africa is your first priority, because it’s more important to locate the descendants of the man Francis Layton murdered than it is to find the loot.”
Miles shrugged. “Both are important. And I think the most likely place to find clues for the loot anyway is South Africa.”
I glanced at my watch. “I need to get going. I don’t want to drive in the dark.”
Miles scraped back his chair and turned to look at me. “What time do you normally finish work?”
“It depends. Some days at five, some at eight or ten.”
“How about Wednesday next week?” he asked.
“I can finish at five.” I was on the late shift that day, but I knew I could persuade someone to switch with me.
Miles raked his hands through his unruly curls, looking thoughtful. “In that case, I’ll meet you at the Bodleian at five on Wednesday evening.”
My legs went limp. “It’s a long drive to Oxford,” I pointed out, and instantly regretted saying anything to discourage him from coming up, even if it was true.
“I need to make the trip anyway. There’s something I need to check, and I’m planning to meet up with a professor I knew at Stanford when I did my PhD.”
“Great.” I almost managed to appear calm, the words merely rushing out a little too fast. “Wednesday at five o’clock should be fine. I’ll see you at the main entrance. I have a map of the Bodleian upstairs. I’ll show you where to meet.”
“I’ll be inside,” Miles said. “I’ve arranged visitor privileges.”
Aunt Rosemary had been observing the exchange, her curious gaze shuttling between us. “We need to sort out communications before you leave for South Africa,” she cut in, sounding impatient. “Email address. Telephone numbers.”
“I’ll do all that with you tomorrow.” Miles flicked a fleeting glance in her direction. “I’ll also leave you a list of topics I want you to research while I’m gone. He turned to me. “For you, I have some documents.”
“Documents?” Aunt Rosemary said, nearly exploding out of her seat. “What documents?”
Miles contemplated her for a long moment. “I brought some papers with me,” he confessed at last. “Documents from the Layton Archives.”
“Layton Archives?” Aunt Rosemary yelled. “If you’re trying to run this operation on some kind of need-to-know basis—”
“All right, I apologize.” Miles held up his hands, palms out, seeking to restore the peace. “But I wasn’t going to spill everything until I knew you were prepared to take me seriously. That I could trust you. I didn’t want to confide in you, and then find the story about me believing in an ancient curse repeated all over the village.”
“How come men always think women can’t keep secrets?” Aunt Rosemary said to me, shutting out Miles. “When throughout history it has been proven that most men think only with their dicks, and any woman with half a brain and lack of moral scruples can wheedle out anything they want to know.”
“Beats me,” I told her, trying not to smile. When Aunt Rosemary gave up hiding behind her dumb blonde disguise, she metamorphosed into a champion for women’s equality. No. Not equality. Superiority.
I turned to Miles. “What documents?”
“Francis Layton’s journals. They are private diaries, with official papers pasted in between the entries. Receipts for lodgings, invoices for supplies, records of funds withdrawn. That kind of thing.”
“Why me?” I asked. “Why not Aunt Rosemary?”
“Because of your job. You know how to handle rare documents. And I need Rosemary for surfing the internet.”
I gave a slow nod, feeling smug. So, Miles didn’t know everything. He assumed I was a qualified librarian or archivist. I wondered how he’d feel when he discovered that I was a temp, qualified only to file things alphabetically.
“Of course,” I said, trying to sound efficient.” Can I take the documents with me now? I could work on them during the week.”
Miles shook his head. “I haven’t finished with them. I’ll bring them out to you on Wednesday, or leave them with Rosemary when I fly out on Friday.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall and decided I couldn’t put off my departure any longer. I had to leave, even though the unfinished romantic business between Miles and me was driving me crazy. I bit my lip and conquered the need to ask him what would happen next. Miles
would not like pandering to feminine insecurities. He was a former naval officer, used to making decisions and giving orders, not dishing out reassurance.
“I’ll just get my stuff and be on my way.” I started to rise from the kitchen table, as slowly as possible.
“You’d better come next door for a few minutes before you leave,” Miles said.
My heart gave a single hard thud. “Why?”
“Because I don’t think Rosemary wants to watch me kissing you.” He got to his feet and laid a proprietary hand over my arm.
Miles went on ahead to unlock Rose Cottage. I barely had the presence of mind to pause in the hall to put on my shoes before rushing out and skidding after him along the paved path that circled around the tiny front garden. By the time I caught up with him, I must have beaten the world record for rushing out of one door and in through another.
“I don’t seem to be able to stop doing this,” he said as he backed me against the front door. The heavy panel still vibrated from the impatient slam he’d given it after we barged inside.
“Just go with the flow,” I told him, and buried my fingers into his dark curls, pulling him down to me. Just before our lips met, his body stiffened. For a moment, panic seized me. He was going to change his mind, pull back. I froze, unable to move, even breathe.
With an agonizingly slow tilt of his head, Miles closed the remaining distance. Gently, tenderly, his mouth brushed across mine, tracing the arch of my top lip, pausing to savor the contours of my lower lip. At the same time, his searching hands burrowed beneath the hem of my sweater and settled around my waist. The raspy pads of his thumbs swept up and down, stroking the sensitive skin on my belly, sending shivers all over me.
“I’ve dreamt a long time of doing this,” he muttered.
The nearness of him scrambled my mind. The cryptic comment raised no questions, only an idle assumption that the male attention span must be shorter than a gnat’s, if since yesterday could be considered a long time.
Bolder now, the fear of rejection fading, I darted the tip of my tongue between his lips. A growl vibrated low in his throat. His fingers tightened around my waist and his mouth grew possessive. His body molded against mine, the hard muscles trapping me against the solid panel of the door. I hardly noticed the lock biting into my back, my senses distracted by the insistent bulge that pressed against the apex of my thighs.
My hands became alive again. Tangling in his hair, caressing.
My body arched into him to intensify the intimate contact.
Hot and hungry, the embrace went on forever, like the fantasies that I’d conjured up the night before. I listened to the sounds of his ragged breathing, felt the frantic beating of my pulse. Warm, calloused hands roamed upward inside my sweater. When they met the edge of my bra, instead of pushing the fabric aside, they halted there.
Lifting his mouth from mine, Miles straightened and took a step back.
“We’d better stop,” he said in a rough voice. “Otherwise I won’t let you go.”
“I...yes...no...” Faltering, I fought the urge to say that I could stay the night. He’d be leaving for South Africa on Friday. As much as the temptation heated my blood, I didn’t like the idea of a brief fling. I might have fallen in love, but before I tumbled into bed with him, I wanted some reassurance that he wanted the relationship to grow.
Miles studied me in silence, his chest rising and falling. His eyes looked nearly black in the low light. He lifted his hands to his hair, raking his fingers through the curls that already stood in disarray. “Let’s not jump into things,” he said after a long pause. “We’d better take it slowly, make sure we know what we’re doing.”
He’d been the one to call a halt, but the agonized expression on his face eased my vanity. And, he was right. The whole village agreed that I didn’t know what I was doing when it came to men. The fact that my relationships always failed was ample evidence of my lack of judgment.
“All right,” I told him. “We’ll take it slowly. I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
“I didn’t mean that we—” He broke off with a crestfallen look.
“It’s all right, Miles,” I said with a hint of amusement. “We can take it slowly on Wednesday too.” In an awkward rush, I wished him goodbye and made my exit, leaving him standing in confused silence in the middle of the hall.
****
On Wednesday, I was too nervous to eat lunch, so I wandered aimlessly around the Covered Market in Oxford, breathing in the smells of fish, freshly ground coffee, and flowers from the stalls that lined the aisles.
My heart jolted when my phone beeped to indicate a message.
Miles hadn’t asked for my telephone number, either at home or in the library, or a mobile, but I assumed he knew them. My contact details were listed in a small binder prominently displayed on the bookshelf in Rose Cottage. I was a backup contact, in case the holiday renters had a problem and couldn’t get hold of Aunt Rosemary.
Last night, I’d received an impersonal email from him, consisting of a single line to confirm our arrangement, but he might have changed his mind when the morning came and was calling to cancel. I stopped by a patisserie. The glass counter was filled with handmade chocolates and a tiered wedding cake in pink and white. The groom standing at the top resembled Miles, and the bride beside him looked just like me. I blinked and refocused. The bride and groom reverted into featureless blobs of marzipan.
The text was from Aunt Rosemary. “AVIS car gone since 10 am. Have fun. Call 2nite when solo.”
My thumb danced over the keys as I deleted the message, my hand tightening around the telephone. Such an innocent request, but I knew Aunt Rosemary’s purpose was to find out what time Miles left me that evening. I expected she’d wait up until the AVIS car reappeared. Heck, she’d probably write it up in her research notes. “The impact of emotional involvement between team members on the achievement of objectives.”
When I got back to work, it was my turn to shuttle to the stacks. The Bodleian wasn’t a lending library in the normal sense. Some of the reading rooms contained open access shelves, but most of the books were in closed stacks. People had to look up details in a catalogue and request for the books to be fetched.
Just when I was about to get started, my colleague June grabbed me. In addition to her normal duties, she acted as the Disability Coordinator for the library. Her no-nonsense approach and her unflappable nature made her ideal for the role. Over the years she’d developed a permanently benign expression, meant to reassure the disabled visitors that their requests were never too much trouble.
“Can you go and get these Hansards for Professor Maitland?” She passed a handwritten list of dates to me.
I glanced at the wheelchair in the corner of the reading room. “Right now?”
“If you’re not tied up with anything else.”
“No.” I studied the list. “I’ll go straight away.”
“Can you let him know that you’re on your way?” June cocked her head and sent me an apologetic smile. “You know how he is. Wants it yesterday.”
I grinned. “No problem.”
I’d seen Professor Maitland arrive. He came in every day, and kept the library staff busy with requests for books from the closed stacks, or from the other reading rooms, some of which were not accessible by wheelchair.
Many people didn’t realize that the Bodleian wasn’t a single building. The main library consisted of the New Library, the Old Library, and the Radcliffe Camera. In addition, there were a dozen offshoots scattered around Oxford. The largest was the Radcliffe Science Library on Parks Road. That’s where I expected Miles to have gone, since his field was physics. And, as Professor Maitland was a chemist, the odds were that I’d be headed there too.
I made my way through the quiet reading room. Professor Maitland was in his early forties, good-looking with sandy hair that flopped across his brow when he forgot to get it cut, and a friendly face with heavy contours. He’d been in a motorbike acci
dent in his youth, and had been in a wheelchair ever since.
“What do you want now?” I asked him gruffly.
“Bloody hell. It’s you again.” His blue eyes twinkled at me.
“I’m the lowest in the pecking order, so I get to do your carrying and fetching.”
“You’re off to the Radcliffe.”
My pulse picked up. The Science Library had five floors. If I pretended that I had trouble finding what I wanted, I could spend some time wandering around, searching the crowd for a glimpse of Miles.
“It’s a fair walk,” I told the professor. “I might be an hour or more.”
He gave a derisory snort. “I could do it faster myself.”
“Then why don’t you?” I asked. “They have wheelchair access.”
“Radcliffe Camera, you fool. Not the science library. I want Hansards.”
“Hansards?”
“How long have you worked here?” he blustered, tossing down his pen in a show of disgust. “Hansards are the daily records of parliamentary debates.”
“I know what Hansards are, but what I don’t understand is why you’d want them.”
“Bloody cutbacks,” he muttered. “There was a debate about academic research funding, and I want to know what went on.”
I nodded. “I see.”
“You don’t see anything,” he fumed. “Robbing the future. Bloody fools.”
I examined the list June had given me and checked the dates he wanted. “Aren’t these available on-line?”
“Hurts my eyes. Bloody computers.”
“All right,” I told him. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Professor Maitland grinned and raised his arm to check his watch. The frayed cuff of a shirt peeked from the corduroy jacket sleeve. I’d never seen him dressed in anything but his fawn corduroy jacket. The fluffy shawl thrown over his knees was always the same pattern of green tartan. Everything always seemed clean, so I assumed he owned several identical sets and rotated them for laundry.
“Time’s a-ticking,” he announced.
I spun on my practical shoes. “I’m on my way.”
The Layton Prophecy Page 8
