CHAPTER 4
When the door opened, Emma had to steel herself not to gasp.
The University was lavish, but she had never known students could have such palatial rooms. Leading off the main space, Emma glimpsed a kitchen and at least two bedrooms. Dark paneling and velvet dominated.
Portraits glowered from gaps between Gothic windows.
Someone had set up a bar in one corner atop what looked to be a sixteenth-century sideboard.
Emma looked up to find she had lost the other fellows. Adrift in a sea of dinner jackets and blazers, she wandered until she spotted Julia Colefax-Lee perched on a sofa.
“Can I join you?”
Julia smiled. “Oh. The natural sciences fellow. Emma, was it? Sorry, come.” She patted the cushion next to her, still scanning the crowd. “People watching is my favorite sport.”
“I thought you captained the running team.” Emma settled next to Julia, trying not to seem far too tall. “I see you sometimes in the Great Hall at Gabriel, with the other runners.”
“Running is my second-favorite sport. You’re observant. I’d forgotten you said you were at Gabriel, if you’ll forgive me. It can make you a little inward facing, this kind of thing.”
She waved a hand at the party. Emma was surprised at how tired she looked.
“‘This kind of thing’ is new to me,” Emma admitted.
“Well, with your keen observation, we can make an expert people watcher of you yet. Now, where shall we start?”
Five minutes later, Emma’s head was spinning. From their sofa, Julia had been classifying the rest of the party into the correct social taxonomies with Linnaean accuracy.
“—and don’t even bother with the ones in the corner, dreadful social climbers.”
“Julia! Brought you a drink. And your friend too.” A large, solid boy had ambled up, his face shining with equal parts kindness and perspiration.
“In a second, Hugo. I’m just educating Emma here.
Now, it’s the University Union election coming up—picking the student body president, you know—so prepare for everyone’s conversation to be the dullest. But nineteen of the last twenty prime ministers have come from the University, so perhaps it’s fair this lot feel there are stakes. ”
“Over three-quarters of all the prime ministers in history,” Hugo added helpfully. “They made us learn that one in school.”
“That many? From one place?” Emma said.
“Well, the odd one came from the next rung down of universities. Oxford or Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh. That sort.”
“They’re still excellent schools, surely.”
Julia wrinkled her nose. “Fine, as later universities go. Oxford and Cambridge were actually born from offshoots of the University proper. But they’ve never really had any big names going for them, have they?
Not like us. Imagine Newton going to Cambridge.
Or Oxford being home to Shelley or Tolkien—you can’t.
The greatest works and discoveries are all from us. ”
“It does mean people expect rather big things from you, if you’re here,” said Hugo, in a doleful tone.
Julia laughed. “Some more than others. Emma, see that group by the fire?”
They wore tailcoats. Their cheeks were gammon pink with wine. They had the laughs of people who’d never worried about how loud they were.
The Society. The thought was instant.
It was the aura of power around them. They almost glowed with it, those boys by the fire.
They stood apart, careless, while the eyes of the party absorbed their every move.
Emma was almost certain she was right. But she said nothing to Julia, remembering that flash of fear in Imogen’s eyes.
Some secrets weren’t meant to be spoken aloud.
Julia leaned in, her voice low. “There’s your future prime minister right there.
Perhaps more than one. Not Francis—the one who looks like Napoleon—or Hugo here.
They’re bound for family businesses and Labradors.
” Julia grinned at Hugo. “No. You’ll want to keep an eye on that tall, dark one.
Keeps his nose clean—in public, at least—and a shoo-in for the Union election.
The one that looks like a Victorian schoolmaster, next to him?
Philip, also a contender. Then Piers—well, I don’t think he’ll ever be top man.
That weaselly sort never are. Minister, more likely.
“Richard was here a minute ago. I’m not sure where—” Julia’s voice softened as she peered over the crowd.
“Well, you might meet him later.” She recovered her detachment and snorted.
“Ed is still convinced he’s going to be a grime artist. His family will stick him in a pretend job at a merchant bank until it wears off.
Atticus Tremaine—the nervy, beautiful one?
Very serious thesp. Film agents already swarming around those cheekbones.
Then Guy’s father is something big in property, so there he’ll go too. ”
“And what about the famous Jasper?” asked Emma. “Which one is he?”
“He’s not here,” Julia said. “Nobody’s seen him all night.”
“At his own party?” Emma resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
“Jasper’s funny that way. He likes to… surprise. It’s part of what makes his parties so fun. You never know what will happen.”
Hugo chuckled. “That one time, with the plane? Nobody knew, but he’d gone ahead and chartered a flight to Paris. Said nothing to anyone, let it sit on the tarmac all night. Then one of the girls happened to say she was hungry. And just like that, he flew us all to Paris for breakfast.”
Julia sighed. “Because ‘the only breakfast worth having is made by the pastry chef at Le Meurice, Julia.’ I still dream about that breakfast. Oh, and there was the swimming pool in London for Piers’ birthday—”
“Filled it with naked ladies,” Hugo said solemnly. “Just filled it. Everywhere you looked, naked ladies. Well, they had little bits over their… ahem. Well. Point is, he’s beyond me. I’m lucky if I remember what day I’m throwing a party.”
Julia leaned forward. “Oh, what about that time he—”
They fell into a patter of unfamiliar names and places, and Emma felt more like an outsider than ever.
So she slipped off, cross at the part of herself that wanted to stay and hear more.
Her mind had no business wondering about the kind of person that might stay up plotting magical surprises for his friends.
Or imagining the crunch of fresh pastry in a Paris sunrise, butter dissolving on her tongue.
A clock struck ten. She waited for the nagging ache to return to Gabriel Tower to strike with it.
But there was a strange, empty space where the longing for her own room usually lay in wait.
And how much more of a triumph would it be, she wondered, to return to Nat with something to show for the evening?
You need more friends than just me, Emma.
Well, she would say casually, leaning against his door, I’ve actually already made some.
Unaware that her jaw was set and her face radiating determination, Emma forged her way into the crowd.
Behind her, a group had gathered by the window. Julia was holding court on a sofa. Next to her, Venetia Kent amused herself by freezing passing boys like rabbits with her cobra gaze, then releasing them with a slow smile. A sprawl of young notables lay at their feet, passing bottles of Bollinger.
There was only one topic of conversation.
“So now that Jasper’s back, is he really going to be president of—you-know-what?”
“What, because he’s changed his mind about ‘finding himself’ on a beach in Fiji?”
“Hugo, surely you’ve heard something.”
Hugo shifted uncomfortably. “I can’t say—”
The conversation cut over him. “But who else would it be?”
“Richard Wellesley-Jones was up for it.”
“Bit of an odd choice. Quiet, isn’t he?”
Julia’s face softened. “Poor Richard. It was his year, really.”
“I can’t see him minding,” Hugo volunteered, in his shy, slow voice. “It’s not really his thing, all that being-in-charge business. Much happier with a book or a bottle, I’d say.”
Julia threw him a warm smile, and Hugo blushed up to his ears.
Venetia tossed back her hair, straight into Imogen Baldock’s face. “God, you’re all dull. I already said: Jasper’s back, and he’s president. Move on.”
Imogen fished several blond strands from her drink, glowering.
Hostilities between Venetia and Imogen, always on the verge of breaking out, had been especially vicious of late.
Imogen had already endured a full evening of unavenged barbs.
Which is perhaps why she risked life and limb—and the likelihood of ever receiving another invite to the Kents’ famous summer parties at their villa in Tuscany, which was far more important—by turning on Venetia Kent in public.
“You know, I don’t think any of this is true.”
“Really, Imogen darling, keep up. After I said so?”
“No,” Imogen leaned back with a belligerent smile. “Because you said so. Maybe I think you’re a liar, Venetia darling.”
One of the boys actually laughed.
Venetia turned in his direction. He fell instantly silent. There was dead stillness as Venetia inspected her nails. “Well then,” she said, in the softest of voices. “If we’re calling names… No, perhaps not. We are at a party, after all.” She stood in one flowing motion. “If you’ll excuse me.”
With that, she stalked off into the crowd, and the courtiers on the sofa dispersed.
Hugo lingered, offering a hand to help Julia up. “That was a relief. For a minute there, I expected Venetia’d—well, do the usual. Blood and brimstone and all the rest. But she took it rather well, don’t you think?”
“A little too well,” Julia murmured.
Hugo tugged her arm. “Come on, Julia. They’ve set up a keg stand in the kitchen. Oh, I knew you’d look at me like that. The great Julia Colefax-Lee could never be seen drinking beer through a funnel,” he teased.
“Oh, all right,” she said. “But just for a bit.”
So she didn’t see Venetia stroll up to the bar and hand something to a girl there with a whispered laugh. Something that, when Imogen Baldock approached the bar a few minutes later, made its way into her drink without anyone noticing.
Emma, meanwhile, was not quite ready to admit defeat.
She should, perhaps, have anticipated that the mating habits of the silkworm—as fascinating as they were—might not be a winning topic of conversation.
But she suspected that the crowd in the room that night were just not in the mood to be befriended.
Worse, standing alone was attracting notice. She felt someone staring at the girl without friends, clutching her drink in an empty corridor. So Emma groped for the nearest door and slipped inside, away from the stranger’s gaze.
She knew immediately that she was in Jasper’s bedroom.
It was just as she’d expected: Eton memorabilia on the walls, a gold-buttoned blazer slung over a trunk.
A decorative saber hung above the bed. A persistent smell in the room nagged at the back of her throat: likely a mix of the unwashed rugby gear in one corner and the cologne that hung over everything.
She wrinkled her nose and sighed. There was no point being out for the night if she was hiding in a bedroom she didn’t even like. She put an eye to the crack in the door. The corridor was clear. She stepped out.
Someone had turned up the music in the main room.
She could hear the cheers and feel the bass buzzing through the floor.
But she hesitated, her eyes drawn to a second door.
The one that would belong to Jasper’s roommate.
The quiet one. With a darting glance for any watching eyes, she twisted the second knob and slipped inside.
The room was a treasure trove. It was lined with framed photographs.
Deserts. Rivers. Waves boiling on rock, waves crashing on sand, waves limpid in the flat calm of a bay.
Some places she recognized. Like the cove in Tasman National Park, where eight-year-old Emma and her mother had run down to the tide pools.
There, beside the famous organ pipe rock formation this boy’s photograph had captured, she had watched the seal colony for hours.
The eye behind the camera had caught the feel of the places.
Had felt something for them, just as she had. She could see it.
There was nothing else in the room, she realized. No school memorabilia. No sports gear strewn in a corner. The whole was thoughtfully and peacefully tidy, as though to focus the eye only on the photography.
Quieter. Yes, she could imagine that the mind who had created these images knew about quiet. They had felt the peace that filled her mind in a silent crouch before a riverbank. They knew the wonders that nature would reveal only to the patient.
She had begun to feel conscious of her own intrusion in this boy’s sanctuary. As silently as she could, she backed out of the room. And stepped neatly into the embrace of the person waiting behind her.