Moth to the Flame (6 page)

‘I rather think I'll skip on St Agnes. Perhaps I'll include the poem I'm working on now. It's called “The Flame Moth”.'

She felt safer, and much happier, now they were on her home territory. But she made a mental note to herself: this man has hidden
depths.
Make sure you don't stumble into one of them, girl.

Gareth, his lasagne cold and forgotten on his plate, found himself leaning even closer to her. The rapt look on his face was being monitored not only by those under-graduates seated near enough to High Table to be able to see it, but also by his fellow academics. He looked enthralled. Enraptured. Captured. But when academic ears tuned discreetly in, it was to find them talking about anthologies, old martyred saints, and poetry. Nothing at all exciting, such as life with a Hollywood star, or the sexual meaning behind some of her more erotic poems. Perhaps, after all, they mused, Gareth was playing true to form, even with the exotically beautiful Davina Granger. For, of all St Bede's many venerable, respected Fellows, Dr Gareth Lacey was considered to be one of the most dedicated. His vast knowledge of The Romantics, as well as the moderns, was almost legendary. And in a town like Oxford, that was an accolade indeed. Most people put it down to the fact that he had been widowed so early.

He'd married at the age of twenty, just before sitting Finals. But then, barely two years later, he'd returned to their digs one day to find his wife dead, slumped on the sofa.

An unsuspected and undetected heart condition had given her a massive coronary. For the first five years after her death, it had been obvious to everyone that Gareth hadn't
even
thought about other women. Drawn to his tragedy, his love of the Romantic poets, his good looks, status, and distinctive male ‘something', many female students had tried to seduce him out of his celibacy. To the college's extreme collective relief, none of them had ever succeeded. For the past ten years, Gareth had occasionally been seen with other women, but nothing serious.

Now, Rex Jimson-Clarke, who was watching the two of them, rather hoped that Davina Granger was going to be the one to waken the sleeping prince. Gareth was still too young to slide into crusty bachelordom.

‘ “The Flame Moth”,' Gareth murmured now, rolling the words around his mouth, appreciating the subtle alliteration, the erotic image it conveyed. ‘A love poem?'

‘What else burns quite like love?' Davina said drolly.

Gareth gave a quick grimace. ‘Yes.'

Davina, once again about to take a sip of the exquisite wine, looked at him sharply instead. ‘You sound as if you know,' she said quietly.

‘I do. I lost my wife when I was twenty-two.'

Davina nodded. ‘She's been gone a long time now,' she said, softly, warily, choosing her words with care.

Gareth nodded. ‘Yes. Raw pain fades to sad memory.'

He has a way with words, Davina thought
with
a pang. Just like me. No! Dammit, she was doing it again.

At least it was obvious that he was over his wife's loss. It was one thing to kick a man when he was up and fighting, another thing altogether to kick him when he was down. No. Gareth Lacey was still fair game.

‘So, how far have you got with the new poem?' he asked, fascinated by the fleeting ripples of expression crossing her face. For those few seconds back there, when she'd been so lost in thought, he'd detected savagery, compassion, and decision march across her eyes. He knew, without being told, that the world inside this woman's head would be a land of extremes. And it was a land he longed to explore. She was the most outrageous, dangerous, fascinating creature in the world. And although common sense told him it would be wiser to stay away, Gareth had never been a great believer in that commodity.

He was an emotions man himself.

‘Oh, I've just got a basic outline of the poem at the moment,' she admitted easily. ‘A few thoughts. A line or two.'

Gareth nodded. ‘Are you like an artist, who can't stand to have anybody watch her paint, or see the painting till it's done?' he asked anxiously. If she was . . .

Davina was. But for tonight's purposes, things would be different. She could feel how strongly he was willing her to say No. She
shrugged
one elegant shoulder. ‘No, I don't mind talking about it at all,' she lied with a bright, devastating smile. ‘The concept is love as the great deceiver. For centuries poets have regarded it as the ultimate goal. The reason for which mankind was created. The great excuse for murder, insanity, and self-destruction. The Flame Moth is a woman . . .'

‘You don't think men get their wings singed as well?' he interrupted, challenging her concept without fear.

‘Not so many, and not so often,' Davina responded firmly.

Gareth, much to her surprise, thought about that, then slowly nodded his head. ‘Perhaps that's true. Many men, psychologically, have a certain protection.'

‘But not you,' Davina thought, then realised, when he started and threw her an astonished look, that she'd actually spoken the impulsive, instinctive thought right out loud.

Too late to take it back now. She looked at him with steady green eyes. Gareth felt his breath catching. It had been an outrageous thing to say to a man she'd known less than an hour. But she was spot on. He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I suppose living and breathing the Romantic Poets for the majority of my life, has caused my hard shell to be rubbed away.'

Davina felt like crying. Damn him, he was doing it again. Undermining her. Where was the swaggering bully David's letters had
conjured
up so vividly? Where was the bitter twisted man who could drive one of his students to suicide?

Obviously, he was a far more complex character than she'd ever imagined. A mass of contradictions, human failings, human majesties . . . Just like herself. No! No, she must not keep linking them together like this. He was the enemy!

She reached for her wine and this time took a hearty gulp. It didn't seem to help much.

‘So, you have a Flame Moth. A female . . . ?' he prompted, eager to steer the conversation away from such soul-scraping intimacy. Although he already knew, in his heart of hearts, that they were already destined to become lovers, already set on some predetermined course, it didn't mean that he had to rush ahead like a blind, stumbling fool.

‘Yes,' Davina dragged in a wavering breath, forcing her mind to concentrate. ‘A moth who learns that “Love is a flame for gossamer-minded fools . . .” And that's the only line I've written so far!' She laughed, a bit nervously, showing that she, too, was not quite so comfortable with heart-shattering revelations as she might appear.

Gareth leaned back, both physically and mentally. Time to come up for air. And did he need it! His heart was thundering so hard in his chest he felt as though he'd just swum a mile under water.

As
if sensing the sudden change in atmosphere, Sin-Jun chose that moment to rise. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of St Bede's,' Sin-Jun bellowed, to sudden silence. Fluently he went on to introduce Davina, explaining her Honorary status for the duration of Hilary Term, her commission to edit the anthology, and his hope that the English Literature students would attend the lecture she'd agreed to give on the 22nd of April. There was the expected enthusiastic round of applause.

Seated at her table beside Jared, Alicia especially felt a rush of heady excitement. Once she told her father that Davina was at St Bede's, he was bound to come down, hoping to wangle an interview with her. She wrote such powerful, awe-inspiring, sometimes frightening poetry. If only Alicia could get up the nerve to speak to her. But that night, after Dinner had finished, the poetess was quickly surrounded by avid students, so she and Jared left early, she to write up her notes on the play, he to revise for his finals.

Finally, nearing midnight, Davina managed to escape Hall. It seemed to Gareth that she left an ominous feeling of emptiness in her wake.

As she walked through the semi-lit darkness of the college, through Becket arch and across the lawns, she paused to stare down at the pond. A light was on in the library—some poor soul burning the midnight oil no doubt—and it
cast
just enough light on the pond for her to see the ponderous turning of a black-edged fin. Did fish sleep, she wondered? And imagined a poem where she was a fish, never sleeping, turning endlessly in a pond that never grew any bigger . . . Restlessly, she turned the poem off, and walked to her new Rooms, undressing and stripping off with a leaden-limbed weariness that had her tumbling into bed in exhaustion.

But, such is the way of things, once she'd done so, she quickly discovered that sleep was suddenly a million miles away. Instead, she lay in the unfamiliar bed, looking at the ceiling, thinking of him. Gareth Lacey. She found herself cataloguing him, listing the ways in which he was so different from what she'd expected. He was young, not old. Good-looking, not ugly. Sensitive. Clever. Passionate about poetry. Lovely eyes. Lovely voice. And he understood her.

She tossed violently on the bed, not liking that last thought at all. In her rehearsals for how things would go, she'd pictured herself as a Mata-Hari-type figure, wrapping a happy, smitten, panting Dr Lacey around her little finger.

He might be feeling happy right now. Even a man with no sensitivity at all wouldn't have been able to miss the strong sexual signals she'd been giving out. And he might be smitten. She was a big enough girl to know
what
a dark, deepening look in a man's eyes meant. But she'd seen no sign of panting. And certainly no sign of a willingness to be wrapped around her little finger. She tossed again. Dammit, this was no good. Young or old, good looking or not, sexually attractive or not, he was still the enemy.

OK. So, as things stood, it was beginning to look as if she wouldn't be able to entice him into her orbit, make him want her, perhaps even love her, and then flit away again without getting her own wings singed a bit. All right.

She could cope with that. She just had to concentrate on her two goals.

Dr Gareth Lacey had betrayed the Student/Tutor trust, and for that he would know what it felt to be betrayed himself. He was going to fall in love with her, dammit, just so that she could throw that love right back in his face. Even if she had to cut out her own heart to do it.

But Dr Gareth Lacey had also driven her brother to suicide, by labelling him a cheat, and having him sent down from his beloved Oxford. And for that, he, too, would be labelled a cheat. He too, would be ‘sent down' from Oxford, kicked out by his college and ostracised by the university.

Tonight, she'd begun step one.

Tomorrow, she would figure out a way to accomplish step two.

CHAPTER
FIVE

By her third week in Oxford, Davina was becoming desperate. She'd talked to practically everyone in college who knew Gareth Lacey personally, right down to the scouts who cleaned his rooms, but nobody had a bad word to say about the man. She'd managed to pump both the other English dons for every little titbit concerning him, from the strictly professional to the downright personal. But nothing.

The scouts came up with such facts as that he didn't smoke, liked his coffee with cream and one sugar, always folded his clothes neatly, and shaved with a wet razor. Very helpful!

The undergraduates were more easy to get gossiping about possible scandals, but even they were of little help, and Davina was getting heartily sick of all the adoration the man inspired. Why couldn't they see through him?

For some reason, she was never able to bring herself to steer the talk around to David. But if she had, she had no doubts everyone would roundly lecture her on how it was not poor Dr Lacey's fault. And that, Davina simply could not have borne.

Her shoulders were unconsciously slumped with dejection as she crossed Wallace Quad. She was going to the Bodleian Library, the
world-famous
institution which was given a copy of every book ever published in the world. But even that thought could not cheer her. Still, like it or not, it was time she did some work on the anthology. She'd been the one to bully her publishers into supporting the idea, knowing she needed an ‘in' at Oxford. Now she was stuck with it.

The last of February's cruel wind teased her flapping blue coat as she trudged along. She had to find a way to get to the man. But how? He seemed to have every-body fooled.

She almost bumped into a tall, elegantly dressed man as he stepped through the main gates. ‘Miss Granger! I had no idea you were in Oxford. Neville Norman,' Alicia's brother introduced himself.

Davina smiled politely at the theatre critic. Neville Norman's reviews usually demonstrated that he knew what he was talking about, and he was one of the few critics who could actually give constructive criticism, but she was in no mood for idle chat, and quickly excused herself.

Neville ambled his way towards Webster, but his sister was not in. It didn't take him long to discover from a third year theology student down the hall, that Alicia Norman was to be found in the theatre nowadays. She was writing the Easter play. This startling news both amused and annoyed him. Why hadn't she written and told them all about it?

The
theatre held a modest one hundred seats, but it was well appointed, the stage simple but adequate. At the moment, only the stage was lit, and Neville was able to creep silently forward, unseen and unheard, and take a seat just a few rows back from centre stage.

He'd caught them, it seemed, it mid-audition. Even as he watched, the good-looking man next to Alicia gave a plea for quiet. Alicia, her ever-present notebook in her hand, looked up and smiled. She was glad Jared was in charge of casting the play—the whining and wheedling pleas for inclusion just seemed to roll from his shoulders like water off a duck's back.