An Oxford Scandal

by Maxine Barry

  When he’d first bought the car, he’d had to have a mechanic reposition the seat right back in the car’s body in order to accommodate his long legs. All his friends had laughingly told him that he looked like a stork trying to get into a length of pipe whenever he drove the car, but his Morgan was one of the few luxuries he had ever wanted.

  And, as a general rule, Gideon Welles was used to getting what he wanted.

  He drove straight to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Headington. By now it was fully dark and getting late, but he needed to know for himself how she was doing.

  When he arrived, he had a terrible time finding her. The police had not told him her name, and so he was forced to hang around the huge reception area while they tried to trace his unknown accident victim. Eventually he was told she was in a ward on the sixth floor. The receptionist, naturally, could give no details as to her condition or prognosis.

  The police, too, had given him no indication of her condition, probably because they had not known it. Instead, their dry and precise explanations of the law had had to take precedence, although he’d been assured there were unlikely to be any charges because of the witnesses and their own expert crash-reconstruction skills. He’d obviously not been drunk, had not been speeding, and had not been driving in a reckless manner likely to cause injury.

  It had been a relief, of course, but it had never been his primary concern. Now, as he made his way to the lifts, he felt the tension begin to rebuild in his shoulders. He’d never been responsible for hurting anyone before, and the fact that it had been purely accidental wasn’t really helping.

  By the lifts, two women, each holding big bouquets of flowers, glanced at him as he stood silently beside them.

  They had to look a long way up! One woman, middle-aged and rounding out a little in the middle, glanced across at her companion, a much younger and leaner version of herself. Obviously mother and daughter.

  The mother’s lips twitched at the openly interested look in her daughter’s eyes.

  Not that she could blame her. She’d always liked tall men herself, and this one towered above them both. And his colouring was so striking too. His hair was almost white, but not the white of an old man. No, this had old-gold tints in it and was thick and well-cut, exposing shapely ears, a high forehead, and tapered to a duck’s tail in the nape of his neck.

  At the moment he was staring straight ahead. Both mother and daughter, from opposite sides of him, stared at a classical profile. His eyebrows, of the same old-gold colour, met over eyes that were . . .

  The door to the lift pinged open, and both women quickly moved forward.

  Gideon politely stood to one side to let the ladies in first, and as they both turned inside the large square lift, they were at last left facing him head on.

  The older of the women audibly gasped. She’d been half expecting blue eyes, of course, to go with the man’s colouring, but not eyes that blue!

  Her daughter gave her a quick, half-angry, half-amused look.

  Her mother began to blush like a schoolgirl.

  Gideon, noticing none of this, simply stepped inside and glanced down at the younger woman. ‘Which floor would you like, ladies?’

  The daughter, who’d been busy giving her mother a ‘please don’t embarrass me’ look, suddenly jerked into life and stared up at him, slightly awestruck.

  It was one thing to maintain a dignified distance when contemplating a stranger who stood a few feet away. It was another thing entirely to find a gorgeous giant looking down at you with eyes that seemed to glow like neon blue lights.

  ‘Which floor would you ladies like?’ he asked politely.

  ‘Five please,’ the mother said primly, regaining lost ground and having recovered her dignity sufficiently to give her daughter a silent ‘behave’ look.

  Gideon half smiled in an automatic gesture, and pressed buttons five and six.

  Behind his back, mother and daughter exchanged meaningful glances. Both of them were grinning in companionable kinship when they left the lift.

  Gideon took a deep breath as the lift climbed to the last floor. He was prepared for the worst.

  But, once again, the more coldly clinical side of his brain told him to expect the best.

  The woman had been breathing well. Her pulse had been strong. The paramedics had found no broken bones, and the ‘head injury’ most likely meant a straightforward concussion rather than serious brain damage.

  But the deeply human side of him persisted in being terrified. What if she did develop a blood clot and die? Or if she was left permanently mentally disabled?

  His palms were sweating as he approached the nurses’ station, and he had to surreptitiously clear his suddenly dry throat.

  Once again, none of his turmoil showed on his face.

  Nurse Clare Fielding looked up to see a man striding confidently towards her. He was dressed casually but very well, in grey slacks and a black jersey. His black suede jacket was still at the police station, where he’d forgotten to claim it.

  ‘Good evening,’ Gideon approached with a smile, once again oblivious to the effect it had.

  Clare felt herself react immediately. Her breathing quickened, and her whole body seemed to snap to a sort of instinctive sexual attention.

  At five feet four, and dressed in frumpy scrubs, she suddenly felt like a rather ugly duckling in the presence of a swan. There was something about the man that practically oozed elegance. Perhaps it was because he was so lean as well as tall, but with hard muscle about the chest and arms.

  Perhaps it was his colouring, so silvery-fair.

  Perhaps it was the voice. Those two simple words had been spoken with a classical Oxford precision, and in a deep-timbred tone that made her toes curl.

  Perhaps it was the clothes: casually elegant, offhand expensive. Whatever — it had certainly brightened up a rather dull, routine night shift!

  ‘I was told you have a patient here. She had an accident on her bicycle on the Woodstock Road, about six thirty this evening? Young, long black hair.’

  Clare knew instantly who he meant. ‘Oh yes, she’s here.’

  ‘Can you tell me how she’s doing?’

  Clare’s eyes suddenly focused into a more professional curiosity. So far, they had no name to go with the victim. Unlike car-crash victims, who had driver’s licences with them and other numerous means of identification, casual bike riders were sometimes brought in with no identification on them at all.

  Such was the case with the patient in 4B. Her clothes, like this man’s, had been casual but expensive. She had a receipt for the bicycle she’d been riding in the pocket of her jeans but, since she’d paid in cash, the bicycle shop had been unable to supply them with a name from a cheque or bank card. No purse had been found on her person either; all they had been able to retrieve was a few notes and coins stuffed into her back pocket, along with the receipt, and what looked to be a set of door keys. Nothing at all with which to identify her.

  The police probably had better things to do than trace her. She would no doubt be able to give them all the details they needed for their respective paperwork when she woke up in the morning.

  ‘Do you know her?’ the nurse asked abruptly. ‘I mean,’ she amended hastily, ‘are you a relative?’ She suspected not, since he hadn’t offered the patient’s name on arrival.

  Gideon shook his head. ‘No. Mine was the car she collided with.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He watched the nurse’s eyes, a rather expressive hazel in colour, suddenly darken. As a psychologist, he could easily read her body language. Heading it off, he calmly explained what had happened, emphasising that he wasn’t to blame and that the police were pressing no charges. ‘I’m just worried she might be seriously injured,’ he admitted frankly.

  She still hesitated, so he quickly offered her some identification of his own. Learning that he was a fellow of St Bede’s, a respected Oxford don and a pillar of the community, the last of Clare’s barrier
s finally broke down.

  ‘Well, strictly speaking, the patient shouldn’t have visitors who aren’t relatives,’ she began, giving a quick and guilty look over her shoulder.

  Gideon already knew that. ‘She hasn’t had anyone come and see her before now?’ he asked, somewhat surprised.

  Clare shook her head. ‘We don’t even know who she is, I’m afraid,’ she admitted, more openly than the matron would have approved of.

  Gideon shook his head slowly. He hadn’t expected this complication. ‘But you can tell me how she’s doing?’ he asked, allowing his voice to drop an octave. ‘I mean, she is going to make a full recovery?’ he gently persisted.

  Clare, realising the poor man must be on tenterhooks no matter how well he hid it, suddenly gave him a bright, sympathetic smile. ‘Oh yes, it seems she’ll be fine,’ she reassured him. ‘She was X-rayed the moment she was brought in and has been seen by a neurologist, although the poor girl was far too groggy to tell us anything. Probably didn’t know where she was or that she was even awake, by the sounds of it. Looks like a simple, straightforward concussion. I think she’ll probably be released tomorrow, once the doctor’s seen her again and spoken to her. We have to make sure there’s no loss of memory or any speech problems, you see. Of course, ideally she should be kept in for observation, but what with the bed shortage being like it is . . .’

  Clare suddenly realised she was babbling and quickly shut up. But it was those eyes that were doing it. Watching her so steadily. Burning like blue flames right into her deepest, darkest, most private . . .

  She took a shaky breath.

  Those eyes should definitely carry a public health warning, she thought ruefully. Then, with a sinking heart, she noticed the Sister just leaving the ward at the end of the corridor.

  ‘Look, I’ll have a word with the Sister,’ Clare offered bravely. ‘She might let you pop in to see her. You know, just to put your mind at rest . . .’

  But don’t hold your breath, she thought silently.

  But Sister Jenkinson had heard of him. Apparently, her niece had been one of his students several years ago. She was now, she proudly informed him, a psychologist in a private practice, making a lot of money.

  Gideon, who had a phenomenal memory, was able to give the Sister a rather flattering amount of information about her niece’s academic prowess. And so it was that, against all the rules, when Laurel Van Gilder struggled towards consciousness some nine hours later, Professor Gideon Welles was sat by her bedside.

  Laurel came to slowly, wondering why it was so hard to open her eyes. They felt almost glued together.

  Usually she awoke instantly, with an alertness and good humour that was envied by poorer risers.

  Today, even before she was aware, even before she had opened her eyes, she knew that something was not quite right. After several tries, she eventually forced her eyelids apart and blinked.

  Her first sensation was of whiteness. Then of movement.

  Sound. Rattling cups, cheerful voices . . .

  What on earth?

  She made to jerk upright, then wished she hadn’t, as her head began to throb warningly.

  ‘You’d better lie still.’

  That voice was much closer than the other background noise. Her head turned in its direction, fast at first, and then, as her poor aching head protested, much, much slower.

  She felt as though she had the worst hangover ever recorded. Had she got drunk last night? Laurel had been eighteen when she’d first got drunk. On champagne, at one of her cousin’s weddings. She’d vowed never to again.

  Then, as her head continued to turn in the direction of the voice, she noticed other things. An old woman in a bed opposite her, a bottle of lemon barley water standing on a tray that was positioned over her thin legs.

  She noticed a vase of flowers on the small bedside cabinet beside her.

  And, suddenly, she joined all the dots together. Hospital. She was waking up in a hospital.

  Then she remembered a flash of green. The squeal of brakes.

  Her bike! Oh no, she’d crashed her new bike!

  ‘Damn,’ she said venomously, in an unladylike but very honest reaction.

  Her head turned the rest of the way, and her large black eyes widened even further.

  Sat beside her was a silver vision. Some incredible spirit of ancient fable, or an alien. Then she realised that it was only the sunlight, streaming through the cracks in the venetian blinds that covered the windows, that was playing such hideous tricks on her.

  It was only a man who sat beside her. One slat had allowed light to shine in a channel right across the top of his head, making his very fair hair shine almost painfully bright.

  Another ray fell right across his eyes. It illuminated the fair brows and the bright, startlingly electric-blue eyes, turning him into a fantastic-looking figure. Then he leaned slightly forward on the chair, and his whole face emerged into the normal light.

  And Laurel found herself face to face with the most handsome man she’d ever seen!

  Two things happened at once. She remembered flying over the bonnet of a green car, and the brief glimpse of white-blond hair and electric-blue eyes.

  Her head began to hurt in earnest. She put a hand up to her temple, then leaned back against the pillow with a small groan.

  ‘Oh damn,’ she said again, this time more weakly, more wearily. It was her favourite curse word — not as vulgar as some, not as tame as others. When she’d been growing up her father had chastised her severely for using it, which was probably why it had been such a favourite.

  Now, though, it seemed to sum up the state of her life to perfection.

  ‘Do you feel all right?’

  The moment he said it, Gideon could have kicked himself. And when the woman turned those huge, expressive black eyes in his direction, a look of half-sneering, half-exasperated frustration on her face, he was already aware of having set himself up for it.

  ‘Do I look all right?’ Laurel snapped.

  ‘No. But then, if you go around flinging your bike under sports cars, you can’t expect to, can you?’

  Once again, the moment he said it, he wished he hadn’t.

  Of course, the psychologist in him knew why he was so angry and so totally lacking in sympathy.

  All night long he’d sat here, watching her sleep. At first, he’d felt only relief. It was a mild concussion after all. She’d be all right, there was no harm done, nobody’s life had ended. Then the relief had, classically, given way to guilt and then anger. Guilt that he hadn’t been using his mirrors more. Hadn’t been paying proper attention. Guilt had convinced him that he should have been able to second guess her. Should have known what was about to happen.

  But no human being had the gift of foresight, and so that unreasonable sensation of guilt had transformed itself into anger.

  Just what had she thought she was doing, scaring him like that? Not to mention leaving a hideous cherry-pink scratch on his precious car!

  Of course, he hadn’t planned on giving way to any of his anger. In fact, in his mind, he’d played over this scene a hundred times in the night.

  She’d wake up. He’d reassure her that all was well. Kindly explain to her exactly what had happened. Get names off her of her nearest and dearest, and assure her that he’d phone them and get them over here. He’d tell her who he was and how the accident had happened, being very sensitive to her feelings and lightly skating over the fact that it was all her fault.

  She’d be grateful and appreciative, he’d buy her some flowers from the shop on the first floor, and then he’d leave, never having to set eyes on her again.

  Now he found himself trading insults with her in the first few minutes. He took a calming, warning breath. Cool down, he ordered himself. Don’t let her rattle you!

  Laurel could hardly believe her ears. What was he saying to her? Of all the pig-headed, insensitive louts!

  ‘What? What do you mean?’ she squeaked, indignation
making her huff and puff like a fish out of water. ‘Do I always ride my bike into cars? Of course I don’t. Do you always run over cyclists? I seem to remember that was some fancy sports car you had,’ she accused, her voice sharpening into its more confident, loud tone. ‘You were speeding, I suppose,’ she finished, just for good measure.

  She watched, suddenly speechless, as a tide of red spread across his face and then receded. She’d never seen such a rapid colour change in a man before.

  He really was most extraordinary . . .

  Belatedly, she began to notice details. The very fine quality of his skin — so fair and so British. The scent coming off him — aftershave that smelled of forests but mixed with a more natural aroma that was musky and totally male. Suddenly she noticed the creases in his clothes, the tired lines around his very lovely mouth, the faint shadows underneath those piercing eyes.

  ‘You’ve been here all night,’ she said abruptly. It came out more like an accusation.

  Gideon felt his own lips turn into a sneer now. Accusing him of speeding! She was the one who’d ran into him. Literally! Of all the damned nerve!

  ‘Yes. Silly of me, wasn’t it, but I actually wanted to make sure you were all right,’ he snapped back icily. ‘I was worried that you would wake up alone and frightened.’

  Hah, he added mentally. As if! If she woke up alone in the midst of a wolf pack it would be the wolves that ran off howling.

  ‘Oh,’ Laurel said meekly, the wind taken well and truly out of her sails.

  ‘You’re an American, I take it,’ Gideon said. Her accent had struck him immediately. Trust him to get saddled with a kamikaze American female. She was probably neurotic as well.

  ‘Yes. I got here yesterday. No. It must be . . . two days?’

  Her black, well-shaped brows creased into a frown as she fought a sudden sensation of panic. ‘How long have I been here?’ she snapped, fear making her sharp as she began to wonder what kind of damage had been done.

  Had the press got hold of it? Had anyone told her mother? Hell, she hoped not. She could just imagine her telling all her uncles that she wasn’t up to this.