Page 16 of Misadventures with a Professor
I force myself on, past the sitting room overlooking the front garden full of flowers, past the snug with its cozy fireplace, and into the kitchen. It’s massive and rambling and beamed and flagged and vaguely cluttered in a way that speaks to home and hearth rather than true untidiness.
I follow the stairs up to find three bedrooms—two of which are clearly guest rooms, with narrow beds and nondescript furnishings, and the last is obviously Professor Graeme’s. I feel a little guilty peeking inside, but I tell myself it’s simply for orientation’s sake as I get to kn
ow the house. In any case, there’s not much to see. A large bed with an IKEA-looking duvet. An end table stacked with books. Sheepskin slippers tucked by the bed.
Slippers.
Well, if that’s not a marker of advanced age, I don’t know what is.
It’s only as I leave his room and walk back down the hall that I realize I haven’t seen any pictures anywhere. There are paintings—small landscape-ish things that have that unmistakable “acquired by a grandmother” look—and a bust of Charles Dickens with untold years of dust caught in the bronze curls of his beard, but no pictures of Professor Graeme himself. No long-dead wife or kids or grandkids, no obligatory picture frames with nieces and nephews.
Nothing.
That’s a little strange, right?
Mulling over this, I hop down the stairs and find my way to the back of the house, which is dominated by his study. Where I imagine most of the working and cataloging will be. Like the curious cat I am, I push the already cracked door open farther and step inside.
It’s a mistake.
The opening door sends a pile of books and pamphlets scattering across the rug—not that there’s much room to scatter, given that there are piles and piles of books and paper everywhere.
Old books. New books. Rare books. Pamphlets that should be in clear archival envelopes or at least under glass. Folders upon folders of what appear to be photocopies. And a cat. Who opens her eyes at my appearance, stretches all her paws out to the same point, and then rolls over so her belly’s in the air.
And goes back to sleep.
There is a small desk off to the side—mine, I should think…or it will be mine—and a large desk that’s no less cluttered than the floor but at least shows signs of rudimentary organization. An old-fashioned ink pen lies across a closed leather notebook, a blotting paper and inkwell nearby, which does nothing to revise my assessment of his age. And behind the desk, there’s a wide line of windows, stretching nearly the width of the room, showing nothing but silver rain at the moment.
I sigh at the room, at the rare books left carelessly on the floor and the Victorian documents moldering among photocopies and a sleepy cat, and I feel a librarian itch that’s not so pleasant. None of these things will last if they’re not properly taken care of, and between organizing, cataloging, and—now, I can see—preservation efforts, I don’t think I’m going to have any time at all for the books in the hallway.
Or anything else.
I leave the books and the cat and finally walk through a glassed-in conservatory to the back of the house, where a jewel-green lawn studded with wildflowers leads down to the shallow River Wye. Even in the rain, the colorful stones under the water seem to sparkle and flash, and I think of Oliver’s eyes. Green and blue and brown.
And after I remember his eyes, it’s impossible not to remember his hand sowing fire along my backside, his lips on my mouth and my neck and my breasts.
His lips lower down.
The sounds he made as he came.
With an abrupt turn, I leave the river and trudge back to the house through the rain.
Soon there will be too much work to do to think of Oliver Markham and his every-color eyes.
I spend the weekend busily, if not entirely happily. I walk the mile or so to Bakewell and enjoy my first Bakewell tart—or pudding, as I am briskly informed it’s called here. I visit Haddon Hall and enjoy the massive blooming roses with the fat bees doddering around them, and then I have tea at Chatsworth with only myself and a book. I walk the rambling paths around the vales of the Peak District, challenging in the kind of way that makes you grateful to have a drink at the end of the day but easy enough to walk in a dress like the ones I usually wear.
The cat has been left with plenty of food, but I treat her to bits and pieces of chicken from the sandwiches I get in town, and she sleeps on my lap in the evening as I read in the snug.
I absolutely, positively don’t think of Oliver.
Not whenever I catch a glimpse of the river that reminds me of his eyes. Not when I peel off my damp clothes and remember how it felt to be undressed by him. Not in bed, where my curious fingers explore my secret soreness and try to mimic the feel of a haughty man’s mouth.
Not at all, not at all, not at all, until finally on Sunday night, I kick off my covers and climb out of bed. It’s late—close to eleven—but I don’t care. I’m sick of masturbating in an old man’s guest room. Sick of remembering Oliver’s cool, cultivated voice. Sick of pretending I’m too sophisticated to care that the man I coaxed into bed is also mysterious, English, and handsome beyond belief.
It’s like Oliver was some kind of vampire, and now I’m bitten. Now I’m doomed to crave his touch for eternity.
Ugh. And now he’s turning me into the kind of girl who makes stupid metaphors!
I’m stopping this shit right now. I’m going to put so many things inside my brain that there won’t even be room for Oliver Markham and his perfect body.
