CHAPTER 11
Old Hob Quad gleamed gold in the sunlight. An autumn breeze tumbled leaves across the flagstones and batted Emma’s hair around her face.
It felt good to get out of her room. Her fellowship dataset was misbehaving.
No matter what analysis she applied, it threw up glitches.
Like insisting the river animals were larger than they could possibly be, compared to previous years.
It had to be data error, unless they’d all somehow found an extra energy source to feed on.
Nothing of the kind showed in her surveys: no new species, no change in prey populations. It was infuriating.
Emma jogged up the stairs to Jasper and Richard’s rooms. Nobody answered the door. But it was unlocked, so she slipped inside.
There were voices from the living room. Jasper was squared up to a man whose eyes were as bright blue as his own, and whose face was dark with anger.
“—for God’s sake, Jasper, try to get it right. Don’t let yourself down.”
Emma had meant to declare herself, but the rage in that voice stopped her where she stood.
“Dad, it’s just a dinner. I don’t know what you’re so bothered about.”
“You need to be more bothered. This is important for you. The impression you make here will be—”
“I know, it’ll determine the course of my life forever and ever.”
His father slammed a hand onto the window frame, inches from Jasper’s face. “You will take the Society seriously. I won’t have you throwing your chances away with your arrogant, lazy—”
“I’m the president now, not you. This is my dinner. And I’m doing it my way.”
Jasper’s father loomed over him until their faces were inches apart. “It may be your dinner. But it’s my Society. Mine and all of the other old boys. And you’re not going to humiliate me.”
Jasper and his father locked gazes in silence like dogs sizing each other up, the air thick between them.
“Fine,” Jasper muttered.
As Jasper’s mouth tightened, his father’s smile broadened.
“Now, Jasper, what do you reckon to this suit? My tailor is ready to disown me. Says the peak lapel makes me look like an American, but I’m quite partial to it.”
Emma thought the time was right to show herself. She sidled into the room.
“Oh—Emma. I was meant to—Never mind. Dad, this is Emma Curran.”
“Pelham-Curran,” said Emma, and immediately wondered what had possessed her.
She’d never double-barreled her surname, though she’d long suspected that the Pelham family’s place in the annals of the peerage would have unlocked doors for her.
She’d always been proud to be her brilliant mother’s daughter, first and foremost. But something about the tailored man in front of her reminded Emma of her father at his most unreachable.
She found herself wanting to impress him.
Jasper’s father looked at her closely. “Not as in Hugh Pelham?”
Emma nodded.
“Pelham. Good man. Jasper, why didn’t you tell me about your little friend?” Jasper’s father smiled at Emma, all charm. “I see your father in town sometimes. I didn’t realize his daughter went here. I thought you were up at Manchester.”
Emma felt something hard and hot in her throat.
“That’s his other daughter,” she said woodenly. “Poppy. We’re about the same age.”
“Mea culpa,” Jasper’s father pressed his hands together in apology. The laurel wreath on his signet ring glinted. “I’d thought, for some reason, that Hugh and Amal only had the one daughter. Isn’t she a lucky woman to have two girls? And your brother—is he finishing up at Harrow soon?”
“I don’t know,” Emma gritted. “I’ve never met him.”
Jasper’s father raised one brow.
Emma had to force the words out. “They’re his other family. His proper one. My mum and I happened to him before that.”
“Before? And so close in age?”
“There was some overlap.” She couldn’t—wouldn’t—look at Jasper.
“Ah, of course. Understood.” Jasper’s father smiled, suave as a film star, and Emma scolded herself for her suspicions. He couldn’t have been needling her deliberately.
A throat cleared. Emma hardly recognized Richard in the shy schoolboy hovering in the doorway. He had combed his haystack hair into a semblance of neatness. His tie and blazer were precise to a pin.
“My boy!” Jasper’s father beamed. “What’s this?”
Richard was offering him a box. “Snuff, sir—I took your advice and tried it. I hope you’ll do me the honor?”
“Of course.” Jasper’s father snorted a pinch. “Exactly what I like. You have taste, my boy.”
“I should hope so, sir.” Richard’s face was shining. “I sent down to Yardley and Walters and asked them to make me a mix of your sort.”
“Good lad,” Jasper’s father roared. Emma looked from them to Jasper, alone by the window. He was clenching the sill so hard, his knuckles were white. She saw his father glance over, smile at Jasper’s reaction, and turn back to Richard. “Now, what have you been up to, my boy? I want a full update.”
“Certainly, sir. Military History Society keeping me busy. If you want to step into my room, there are a few things I saved. I thought they might interest you?” Richard was practically frisking at his heels.
“So thoughtful. But I still have business to attend with Jasper here. If you’ll excuse me?”
It was a dismissal. He turned his back on them and steered Jasper into a bedroom. Emma saw the look on Richard’s face as the Balfours left. The chagrin and hurt, raw in his eyes. She stood with him by the ancient window, and the silence stretched.
It galled her, seeing Jasper’s father play them off against each other. Constantly shifting the balance of favorites, turning a word of praise for one into a barb for the other. She looked sidelong at Richard, his hair slipping from that neat schoolboy comb-over, and felt desperately sorry for him.
“You could show me those military history things,” she said. “I’d like to see them.”
Richard rubbed a hand over his face. “No, you wouldn’t. But thanks. You’re a good sort.”
Dust motes danced in the sun. Their shadows stretched long on the floor. The voices of Jasper and his father were a dim buzz from the other room.
“My father can be like that,” Emma said. “Like there’s something much more important over your shoulder, and you’re keeping him from it.”
Richard laughed, then stiffened as though stuck with a cattle prod. “I shouldn’t—They’re the best family in the world, and they’ve been so good—”
“No, of course,” said Emma, feeling like an idiot. “I don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t even see my father much. At all, really.”
“My father’s not here either. Dead, though.”
Emma was taken aback. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Long time ago. But it’s like there’s a shape, everywhere I go. A shadow cutout, where he’s not.”
“I get that,” Emma said. “Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if he was here. How things would be different.”
“Me too.”
They leaned against the windowsill, framed in the arch of medieval stone. The sun warmed their backs. Her other friends loved to talk. But Richard seemed as comfortable in silence as she was. For a moment, she wished Jasper were more like him.
A door slammed. Jasper burst into the room like a hurricane.
“God, he’s such a dick. He said he wants you in there now, Rich. Probably to lecture you too.” He grabbed Emma’s wrist. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“Away from here.” Shouldering his camera bag, he pulled her from the room and out onto the quad.
Jasper kept up a stormy pace through the courtyards and cloisters of St. Dunstan’s. The famous spires of St. Dunstan’s Cathedral rose above them.
He finally slowed. “Up there has the best view of the University.”
Emma looked at the roof, impossibly high against the sky. “We’re not climbing it, are we?”
“There’s a secret staircase. I bribed the warden. Come on, it’s perfect for a shoot.”
He led her up narrow spiral stairs inside the vestry.
They emerged into the open air on the cathedral roof and waded up the tiled slope together.
The ridge at the top was just wide enough to sit on.
So high up, the city lay before them like a gift, washed gold in the dying light. Emma breathed it in.
“I didn’t come back to the University because he told me to,” Jasper burst out. His vehemence was startling.
“What, your father? I wasn’t think—”
“I only came for my mother. She asked. I didn’t care what he said. It’s not like I’m scared of his threats or anything. I actually couldn’t care less.”
“I—I get it.”
“I know you do.” A smile spread across his face. Like sunlight, like butter. “No one understands me like you.”
For a moment, Emma wasn’t sure if he really had said it. He lounged back on his elbows, grimacing at the skyline. “I hate this place. It’s all been laid out for me. Who I have to be, what I have to do.”
“Like heading up your mysterious ‘Society’?” Emma teased.
“Oh, the Turnbulls?” Jasper yawned. He shot upright. “Oh God,” he groaned, clapping his hands to his face. “Not supposed to say that yet. I am not cut out for this. Put me on a boat, point me at a horizon, I’m your man. But all these rules, these traditions—”
He dropped his head onto her shoulder. Emma forgot how to breathe. “I know you’re cool. I can trust you. Just don’t tell anyone else, yeah? I’d be in so much trouble.”
She could feel the warmth of his cheek, even through her jacket. She wondered if he could hear her heart beating. “I won’t tell.”
“The Turnbulls’ve been a secret society since the founding of the University. It’d be embarrassing if all our mysteries got splashed around on my watch.”
“But that would be—what? Founded a thousand years ago? That can’t be true.”
“Can, actually. The founding chancellor of the University, John de Turnbull? He had this group of scholars that were his mates. Or his followers? Same thing. Anyway, they started the club and named it after him. All in the records.”
“Really? So is the University chancellor still involved?”