The Oxford Inheritance (6 page)

She was deep in theories of microeconomic preference when there was movement at the table beside her; it was the clerk from the Rad Cam library, Cassie recognized: dark hair slicked back in a retro, fashionable style, black-rimmed glasses faintly fogged from the cold. He pulled off his thick winter coat and draped it over the back of one chair, strewing a scatter of sketchpads and pencils across the table to stake his claim before heading for the café counter across the room. Cassie thought for a moment of the irony: leaving his day job among the library stacks to come here, surrounded by yet more books. But that was Oxford, she supposed: home to bibliophiles. Several times in the Rad Cam she'd seen browsers bend their heads to the pages of an old book and inhale deeply, almost as in prayer. Not for them, the sterile touch of a smooth screen, or the sacrilege of electronic books that could be bought at the click of a button, and just as easily deleted.

Cassie turned back to her textbook, making brief notes for her tutorial the next morning, but she was interrupted by a sudden jolt: the table shuddering as the clerk tripped against it, his coffee spilling over Cassie's book. She cursed, leaping up.

“Oh, shitface!” The clerk abandoned his drink and grabbed a clutch of paper napkins. Cassie dabbed quickly, and eventually the liquid disappeared, leaving only the faintest stain.

“Thank God,” Cassie exhaled with relief.

“Sorry,” he said, sounding wholly unapologetic, “but you shouldn't have left your bag out like that.”

“This is my fault?” Cassie bridled. “You nearly cost me . . . fifty-six pounds?” She checked the price on the back cover and gaped.

“Welcome to the rip-off that is the educational textbook market,” the clerk replied in a sardonic voice. He folded himself into the seat beside her and looked mournfully at his half-empty cup. “Fuck, I really needed that. Someone had me chasing college records all over the place.” He unwound his scarf and relaxed back into the seat, giving her a meaningful look. “You know, every old book you call up, I have to go hunt down from the vaults? Sixty-seven steps, there and back.”

Cassie opened her mouth to object, but then stopped; there was a sarcastic glint in his eye. She pushed over her plate, with the remainder of her cookie. “Bygones?”

“I'd say my forgiveness can't be bought so cheaply, but I'd be lying.” He broke off a corner of the chocolate pastry and offered his other hand. “Elliot.”

“Cassie,” she replied.

Another crowd of undergraduates crammed in at the next table, armed with textbooks and glossy carrier bags spilling new college scarves and sweatshirts. Elliot sighed extravagantly and edged his seat closer in Cassie's direction. “So what in God's name are you looking for down there? If you don't mind me asking.”

“Nothing much.” Cassie shrugged. “I'm just interested in the history of this place, that's all.”

“Fine, be mysterious.” Elliot rolled his eyes. “At least you're not having me fetch up every edition of Mills and Boon romance novels.”

Cassie laughed. “People do that?”

“Oh yes.” Elliot sent his eyes briefly to the ceiling. “We're a copyright library, so we have every book published down there somewhere. There's a grad student who swears it's for research, but she just sits in the Lawler room all afternoon, reading and chewing on her hair. At least, I hope that's all she's doing.”

Cassie relaxed. “Are you a student here?” she asked.

“I was.” Elliot didn't look thrilled at the thought. “Fine art, which as you can so plainly see, perfectly equipped me for the modern job market. I graduated a few years ago but haven't quite got around to leaving yet.”

“It's a beautiful city,” Cassie commented, nodding.

“It has its appeal . . .” Elliot's gaze drifted over to a boy in the corner; he was blush-cheeked with a freshman glow, wrapped in a scarf of black and white: Magdalen colors. The boy met Elliot's eyes and looked away quickly, flushing hard. Elliot turned back to Cassie with an amused smirk. “Give him another term, and he'll be dancing on the tables down at the old Firehouse.” He took in her blank expression and explained, “It's a gay club, over near Park End. You really are new.” Pausing, he eyed her again. “Let me guess, Wadham. No, St. Hilda's. Some dreadfully dull thesis on feminist theory or some such.”

“Raleigh,” Cassie corrected.

“Really?” Elliot dragged out the syllables. “Well, forgive me for not doffing my cap, m'lady.” He mimicked the gesture, bowing as low as the narrow seat would allow.

Cassie laughed. “So it's not just me?” she asked. “I figured everyone here was, you know . . .”

“Posh as a pheasant?” Elliot finished. “No, we all are, but Raleigh students are blue through and through. Blue-blooded,” he added. “Tell me, is it true they serve caviar for formal hall every night, and fire the waitstaff if they dare to look you in the eye?”

“I wouldn't know. I don't really go to those things.” She caught Elliot's disappointed expression, so she mustered what shred of gossip she could recall. “But they were serving sauterne like it was lemonade at the president's tea. I counted at least a dozen bottles out for pouring.”

Elliot clucked in delight. “Bastards,” he said fondly. “I'm only jeal
ous because I couldn't get in. It was a blessing, I suppose. God knows I'm not so high and mighty as that lot.”

“Oh really?” Cassie teased.

Elliot laughed, a bright snort of mirth. “I stand corrected: some of you aren't so high and mighty at all.”

Cassie stayed another hour in the warm café, enjoying Elliot's insider's
guide to the city. Each of the colleges, she learned, had its own character and reputation: from Christ Church's wealthy exclusivity to the serious scholars of Merton and the private-school socialists at Wadham. Then there was Raleigh, aristocratic to the last. From the mix of awestruck envy in Elliot's tone, Cassie deduced that it was the most revered—and despised—of all. Famously cliquey, Raleigh's students rarely ventured out to socialize in the clubs and bars of Oxford, instead taking the train or private cars down to London to enjoy the members-only clubs where they could mingle with their circles, away from regular student life.

Cassie finally checked her watch. “I should really get back,” she said. “But I'll see you tomorrow in the library.”

“My poor calves can't wait,” Elliot shot back. “You know, you should tell me what it is you're looking for in those archives,” he added. “I'm not just a pretty face, I know my way around a card index. I could be of some help.”

“We'll see.” Cassie laughed, avoiding the question. “Have a good night.”

She headed back to Raleigh, feeling torn. It would make life much easier to simply tell Elliot who she was looking for, but she couldn't help but remember the secrecy that shrouded this mysterious period in her mother's life—and the ominous tone of the note she'd been sent.

You can't hide the truth forever.

There was a reason her mother had never uttered the name Raleigh. The fewer people who knew what she was searching for, the easier she'd sleep at night.

When she arrived back at the garret, as Evie liked to call it, the attic was
empty, her roommate's papers and books strewn about the living room. Cassie yawned, moving to clear them from the coffee table. She had more work to prepare for her first tutorial on Friday, notes and articles that she should have read already. For all her hours in the libraries, she had barely put a dent in her real college work, and she anticipated a long night of study ahead.

Then her eyes landed on Evie's book bag, spilling folders and lip balm on to the floor.

And her student pass-card to the Raleigh library vaults.

CASSIE CAUGHT HER BREATH. SHE CHECKED EVIE'S ROOM, JUST
to be sure, but she wasn't home. The apartment was silent.

Her heart beat fast as she scooped up the card, weighing the slim plastic in her hand.

This was her chance.

Cassie swiftly pulled her boots and coat back on, gathered her notebook, and quietly let herself out of the apartment, closing the door behind her with a click.

She hurried down the stairs. It was late, past ten
P.M.
, and the dark campus was quiet as she skirted back around the courtyard to the library. She hugged the walls carefully, keeping to the shadows, and was relieved not to see another soul as she made her way back to the main library.

Inside, the library was hushed and empty, too early in the semester for any all-night cramming sessions. Cassie slipped unseen through the stacks, back to the entrance to the vaults. She heaved the first door open, flinching at the groan of the hinges, then descended the stone steps to the second door. She pulled out the pass-card, holding her breath as she swiped it through.

The security point beeped. The light turned green. The door clicked open.

Cassie let out a shivering breath of relief, stepping through the door into a long corridor lined with stone and lit by flickering neon strip lights overhead: a curious mix of old architecture and new. She must be under the courtyard, she realized, heading back in the direction of the
cloisters. A maze of tunnels and vaults below the surface of the college, out of sight, secret from the world.

Her footsteps echoed fast on the stone until she reached the end of the hallway and stepped through a doorway into the main room: a long, low-ceilinged space filled with old bookshelves and filing cabinets.

She was in.

Cassie flipped on the lights, illuminating storage boxes and archive shelves stacked neatly against every wall, the vast collection extending deep underground in the distance. The floor had a slight slope downward, and Cassie could imagine it continuing for forever into the shadows, a vast archive the size of a football field at least, buried under the main college grounds.

Pulling out her notebook, Cassie began to make her way down one of the aisles, looking for some kind of system to the storage. She found a reference desk midway down the aisle, with a diagram showing the filing system: the years she wanted were buried in the middle of a set of library stacks, in boxes marked with the date and color coding.

Cassie settled cross-legged on the floor in the aisle between the shelves and got to work, checking each box in turn and sifting through their contents. Rutledge had been right: everything related to college life was stored down here, with little thought to consequence or order. In one box she found a stack of menus from the dining hall bundled beside chaplain's reports and handwritten minutes from a meeting of the bursars; in another, a collection of snapshots from a lively college dance and a haphazard stack of student essays.

She was thorough and methodical, hunting carefully through the night for any mention of Joanna Blackwell, but still Cassie found nothing. She saw the same student names appear over and over, until she felt intimately acquainted with the class of '95, but the one name she longed to see more than anything still eluded her.

Finally Cassie lifted her head from the files and yawned. She checked her phone. There was no reception here underground, but her clock told
her it was after 1
A.M.
She deliberated how much longer she could keep searching. She shouldn't stay out too long; Evie's hours were erratic, and there was no telling when her roommate might come home, or go looking through her purse for something and find the pass-card gone.

Cassie assessed the boxes around her. Just another couple of hours, that should be long enough to find something. If there was anything here to find at all. She stretched her aching muscles and bent her head again to check the next box, reaching for a file marked “Yearbook.” Inside lay a stack of loose photos, remnants from that year, she supposed. Now-familiar faces flashed past as she flipped through the scenes: students in the bar, sporting teams, formal dinners. The fashions were grungy and draped, and Cassie noted with amusement that she'd seen several groups of students around town that afternoon outfitted in a similar way, the cycle of fashion turning full circle.

Then she froze, her blood turning to ice in her veins.

Joanna.

Her mother had been snapped in a candid photo wearing the crimson-and-black Raleigh sports uniform, a hockey stick slung over her shoulder. She was turned away from the camera, only her head glancing back, as if someone had caught her attention at the last moment.

She was real. It was true. Cassie's heart pounded as she flipped the photograph over.

Margaret Madison. Raleigh Hockey X11.

Margaret? Cassie blinked. But before she could check the box again, she heard the sound of a door closing, loud in the thick silence of the vaults. She froze, looking wildly around. Heavy footsteps were approaching down the stone corridor, getting closer to the library.

There was no time to get the lights, or clear the mess of boxes and papers she'd pulled down. Cassie tucked the photograph into her sweatshirt pocket and shrank back against the library stacks, scuttling quickly down the aisle to take cover behind a long shelf of hardbound books, out of sight of the front entrance.

The heavy footsteps came to a stop just inside the vaults. Cassie silently moved a book aside and peered through the gap in the shelves.

It was one of the porters, a man she'd never seen before: in his forties, perhaps, with a pinched face and a potbelly bulging under his coat. He looked around the room with deep-set eyes. “Hello?” he called out. “Anybody here?”

Cassie shrank back out of sight and held her breath. The man's footsteps sounded again, and she peered back through the stacks, hoping he was leaving. But instead he continued down the aisle and came to a stop by her corner of research. He took in the mess of files. “This is a restricted area.” The man's voice rang out sternly. “You'd do well to come out now, and we'll sort this out.”

Cassie backed away from her vantage point, panic rising. She wondered if she could fake it: saunter out of the stacks and play the overworked student, try and hurry past him before he had a chance to question her closely. But he could demand to see her pass-card. He might know Evie personally from around college, and then she'd be caught for trespassing, and stealing her roommate's access card in the bargain.

No. She would just have to stay hidden until he left. Cassie pulled her hood up over her head and melted into an alcove, waiting for the porter to tire of this mystery and return to the lodge for a cup of coffee and the racing post. But instead he began a methodical search of the space, pacing in turn up and down each aisle.

Cassie squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, desperately trying to think of an escape. The layout of the room was all wrong: she had no way of dashing for the main entrance without revealing herself, and back behind her there was only darkness and endless rows of library stacks receding down the gentle slope into the black.

The footsteps sounded louder, closer.

A familiar heat began to rise in Cassie's chest. The squeezing choke, cornered and desperate. Cassie clutched at her pendant and tried to think clearly. There had to be another way out. She hitched her bag and
quickly tiptoed down the aisle, deeper into the vaults, doing her best to tread silently on the dusty concrete floors.

The deeper she plunged into the unknown, the thicker the air seemed, dense and untouched. Then she felt a whisper of fresh air dance across her face.

She stopped. The draft was coming from the wall beside her. As she moved closer she could see this section was hung with a dense tapestry, and when Cassie lifted it aside, she found a narrow passage and a spiral staircase cut into the stone, twisting upward.

“Hey!” The shout came from behind her. Cassie spun around to find a flashlight beam, bright and dazzling from the end of the aisle. The porter started toward her. “Stop!” he called.

Cassie bolted into the passageway and raced up the stairs. She could hear the porter chasing loudly after her, his labored breathing echoing in the narrow space. Higher she climbed, heart pounding, praying fervently that she'd find an escape at the end of it, but when the ground finally leveled out, Cassie found herself in a long, narrow passage.

She raced on. The porter was still lagging on the stairs; she'd put some distance between them, but for all she knew she was racing headlong into a dead end. And then there it was, at the end of the corridor: a window set high into the far wall. She could have cried out with relief, but instead she reached up to get the catch. The hinges were rusted and stiff, but Cassie finally flung the window open and pulled herself up to the ledge.

The night air was cold and sharp after the stifling air of the vault, but she barely had time to glance down and register she was on the first floor, high above a cobblestone passageway, before the noise of the porter came again down the hall. Cassie swung her legs over the ledge and gripped hold of the rough stone ledge, lowering herself until her legs were dangling, fifteen feet above the darkness.

Cassie said a quick prayer, and let go.

She hit the ground with a shuddering jolt, rolling quickly to her side to absorb the force of the fall. But not quickly enough. Pain shot up
through her ankle, so fierce she had to bite down on her lip hard to stop the cry of agony. She struggled to her feet, feeling the sting of her grazed palms against the stones.

“Hey, you!” the porter's angry yell rang out in the dark courtyard.

Cassie turned to see him leaning out of the window above her. She quickly bent her head away from him and limped through the narrow pathway. She was toward the back of the college, by the service entrances to the kitchens; boxes were piled in heaps by the doors, and the trash bins waited in neat rows. Every step sent a fresh shard of pain ricocheting up her ankle, but she didn't have time to slow. He would be coming after her, she knew, doubling back through the vaults or taking some other route out of there.

She slipped through an archway, and through a series of small courtyards, trying to get her bearings as her heartbeat thundered loudly in her ears. This was a part of the college she'd yet to explore, away from the main study rooms and student haunts, and she lost precious time ducking down a walkway only to meet a dead end by the walls.

Cassie retraced her steps, shivering. It was still dark out, but a lamp was shining from the top of the tower, and she used it as a navigation beacon, making her way through the rabbit warren of passageways until finally she emerged into the main courtyard.

“Watch out!” The voice came as Cassie hurtled into a tall, solid mass that caught her by the arms before she could stumble. Cassie braced herself, expecting to find the porter and all his rage. Instead, she looked up to find a stranger staring back at her.

Cassie felt her breath still. He was tall and blond, in his twenties, perhaps, with his suit cut precisely over a taut, lean torso. Backlit by the glow from a nearby lamp, she would almost have said he looked angelic. Then he moved into the light, and that simple description fell away: his features were too bold, too deeply etched for such a soft, sweet description. No, this was a fallen angel: all angles and razor-cut cheekbones, his eyes unnervingly dark against the pale gold of the rest of his coloring.
His eyes met Cassie's, and she felt a chill in her chest. A flash of recognition.

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” he asked, arching an eyebrow with amusement.

Cassie stepped back fast. “I . . . the library,” she managed to lie. “My computer just crashed, and I have an essay due.”

His lips curled into a smile. “A fresher,” he said, lingering over the words. His low drawl sent a shiver down Cassie's back. “Don't worry,” he told her, smirking. “The tutors all like to scare you, but they won't bite.”

“I should really . . .” Cassie gestured vaguely. She glanced behind them anxiously, expecting the porter to appear, but the courtyard was silent and still.

The man's face changed. “You're bleeding,” he said quietly.

Cassie looked down at her hand. “It's nothing,” she said quickly. “A scrape.”

Before she could move away, the man took hold of her hand, prying the fingers open to reveal the cut.

“I'm fine,” she protested again, thrown by his touch, but the man didn't let go. He ran his thumb lightly over the wound, his eyes not leaving hers. Cassie stared back, trapped. For a moment, she felt the old anger rise up in her, a surge of fierce heat. Then he pressed down, hard against her wound, and pain shot through her hand.

Cassie yanked away. “Ow!” She clasped her fist closed over the bloody wound. “What the fuck?”

“My apologies,” he said smoothly, but Cassie was already backing away. She didn't have time for this, not with the porter so hot on her heels. “The library is that way,” the man added, pointing in a different direction from the one in which Cassie had been heading.

“Thanks,” she replied shortly and limped away without another word. She didn't look back, not until she'd found her way across campus to her rooms and up the stairs, locking the attic door tight behind her, finally safe and out of sight again.