Oxford Shadows (8 page)

With a muffled moan, Madison turned off the shower and wrapped herself in her towel. The thick cotton material cuddled her wet skin, and she wallowed in its softness. After massaging the Deep Heat into the most painful parts of her body, she grabbed her wash bag and exited the bathroom she shared with Ollie.

She stopped in the doorway as her heart leapt. Rupert was leaning against the frame of her bedroom door, his ankles and arms crossed. When their eyes met, heat exploded in the pit of her stomach. She tightened the towel over herself.

“You know I’ve already seen you naked, Maddie.” His low tone traveled along her nerves and played
va-va-voom
with her senses.

“Go inside.” She pushed him aside so she could open the door to her bedroom. Before following him in, she checked that no one else had seen him or overheard his words. Having done so, she waved her hand in front of her face to cool the heat that flushed her cheeks.

“We’re both consenting adults. You won’t go to jail for having sex with me,” Rupert teased as soon as the door shut behind them.

“Twenty-two years of being a virgin have left their mark,” she snapped back. “I might never recover from it.”

“I love your blushing self.” With two steps, he narrowed the space between them. She expected him to overwhelm her with full force. Instead, his lips were feather light on hers. He had bent down toward her but he kept his body separate from hers, leaving a gaping void over which she was dying to jump.

“I love seeing the effect I have on you.” With that, he proceeded to suck on her lower lip … and she melted like a sundae in the midday sun.

Not that easy, boy.
Madison tore herself away from him. “I thought you were spending the day at Magway with your dear father.” She wasn’t quite ready to forgive yesterday’s rejection at Blenheim, even if her need for his touch made her hungry.

“I had to come back to Oxford.”

“Why?”

His smile evoked images of old-fashioned Hollywood stars. “Because I missed you.” He delivered the compliment with a shrug of his shoulders.

She tightened the towel around her breasts to strengthen her will.

“Why are you angry with me?” He wasn’t completely oblivious to her body language.

“You treated me like dirt yesterday.”

He placed his hands on his hips, like a captain on a ship. “Seriously, you’re pissed off because I asked you to wait a little before replaying
Ghostbusters
to my father and his pregnant wife?”

“When it’s about protecting them from a very real danger, yes, I think it’s worth it. Unless …”

“Unless what?”

“Unless you still don’t believe in me, in my powers.” With her voice quavering under the strain of the memories, she pointed at the rug that lay between them on the threadbare carpet, her index finger shaking.

“Miss Lindsey really died in this bedroom.” Hillary Lindsey had been Christ Church’s censor. She had surprised Peter after he had broken into Madison’s room and it had cost Miss Lindsey her life. “And Pippa is now six feet under in a cemetery near Dublin.”

Rupert rubbed his face with his hand, and a frustrated growl escaped from his mouth. “I believe in you. I thought I’d made it clear.”

“Then why don’t you want me to talk to Camilla? I’m not totally naïve. We’ll have to choose our moment. But until then we can ask her some questions. Maybe she’s seen something as well.”

Her study appeared to shrink once Rupert started marching across it, back and forth, back and forth. Madison ordered herself to stay put and not give up a single inch of ground. However, the hollowness that had built up since their argument at Blenheim spilled out of her heart and welled up in her eyes. A betraying tear fell over her cheek. She bit her lower lip to wrest control and lowered her head to hide her weakness. The hatchet of rejection—rejection by Rupert—always hung over her head. The fear of losing him—his love or whatever he was ready to give her—dragged her down.

Too late. Rupert was already camping in front of her. His fingers cradled her face and forced her to stare up and meet his gaze. “I can’t stand you crying. Forgive me.”

Trusting her towel to stay put, Madison laid her hands on his and shook her head. “No, it’s me. I’m a sissy with all my insecurities.” A sniffle punctuated her confession.

“I must be a sissy too because I’m rotten with insecurities. You know that better than anyone else.”

“Come on. You’re the king of the jungle. You don’t talk, you roar, and everyone bows down before you.”

His response was a muffled laugh. “I don’t care what anyone else thinks about me. I only want
you
to look up to me, to be proud of me.”

He locked his words with a kiss. A fierce, devouring kiss. One that radiated his need for her and smashed her self-doubts into a thousand irrelevant pieces. His hands shifted from her face down along her neck to settle in the nook by her collarbone. His fingertips tickled the tips of her shoulders. His kiss deepened, and she had to step closer to him and let her head tilt backward for him to explore her mouth. Rupert teased her tongue with his, challenging her to let go, to open herself to him.

All hell broke loose when her towel slid to the floor and the air brushed over her naked flesh. Her nipples hardened. She wrapped her arms around Rupert’s neck while his hand took hold of her ass and pulled it so her hips crashed against him. His other hand twisted her damp hair into a ponytail and pulled her deeper into his kiss.

Madison almost lost her balance when Rupert knelt at her feet. On his way down, he traced a path with his lips from between her breasts to her navel. He circled her waist, and the heat of his gaze burnt at her naked body.

“I dream of you, Maddie … I dream of being inside you.”

They made it to her tiny bed, but only later.

Florence ~ August 1508

The delicious heat has spread throughout my body. The flames of hell might burn my soul one day, but I do not care about punishment when I lie beside my lover. Complete and satiated.

My hair falls in waves around my face, and I have to push away the curls to prevent them from tangling with the tip of my quill while I write. My lover tucks them behind my ear, his fingers seizing the opportunity to play with the straps of the loose gown I have covered myself with after our lovemaking.

“How much longer can you stay with me?” he says.

I lift my pencil from the parchment and steal a glance at his powerful torso. He has not bothered to dress, and the white sheet covers him from the waist down. His hose must be discarded somewhere on the floor next to my patterned gown with the tied-on green sleeves.

“My maid will knock at the door when the time comes. I gave her clear instructions to do so.”

A sensual laugh complements the kiss he lays at the nape of my neck. “If I had not had proof of your innocence, I would have assumed your wickedness had been sharpened by much experience.”

He is speaking the truth. Since I chose to give myself to him, I have revealed a side of my character I did know existed, but did not dare uncover.

Supporting myself with my elbow, I shift toward him to prolong the kiss he initiated. “You are my first and only one.” I brush his lips with mine to tease him into the web of my seduction. “My first and
last
one.”

He moves away from me, throws his legs over the side of the bed, and I am tipped off balance. The sudden void leaves me dizzy. With a few steps, he swaggers naked to the table where a carafe of Venetian wine stands. He fills two cups and brings them back to us. I take one of them and savor its spicy contents.

I try and recapture his attention. “I have a few more verses to write and then you can start composing the melody.”

But his thoughts have departed from our room and flown away, away to his home, away to England. I resent this part of him, over which I have no control and almost no knowledge.

“I can improvise,” he tells me. “If we indulge ourselves in each other’s bodies one more time, inspiration will strike.”

He catches my waist and rolls above me, his full weight stilling me. He captures my arms and lifts them above my head. I am at his mercy, and I relish his domination. His knee parts my legs, and I let him ravish me.

A few moments later, my heart struggles to regain its regular pace. He lies by my side, the sheets of paper with lyrics creased beneath him. He extracts them and starts reading the words I had scribbled down before our second lovemaking. With no effort at all, he sits up and leaves the bed again, naked. I come to hate the dreadful feeling he elicits when he leaves my immediate proximity.

After emptying what is left of his wine, he heads toward the window. The thick drapes are half drawn, tempering the harsh light of the summer afternoon.

“Liliana, my love, you are talented and succeed in expressing the heartbreak you plunge me into each time you leave me.”

His words are more a jest than a confession of his real feelings. To bury my annoyance, I bite my lower lip. His sensual voice starts humming a melody, one I have never heard before. I suspect it is one of his own creations. My lover is an accomplished musician. When I hear my written words sung by his sonorous voice I can hardly refrain from running toward him and falling at his feet.

Greensleeves was all my joy,

Greensleeves was my delight …

With him, next to him, the world is brighter and I am much more than when I am on my own.

…
Greensleeves was my heart of gold,

And who but my lady Greensleeves?

11

THE RHYTHM OF THE melody echoed throughout Madison’s dreams. Insistent and persistent. Liliana’s lustful fever rushed through her veins. Love could destroy any instinct of preservation—Madison already knew that—but the Italian girl’s feelings were doomed.

Madison fidgeted under her duvet and kicked it away. A film of sweat covered her legs, and she felt clammy. Rupert lay naked next to her, or rather alongside her, given the narrow width of her bed. His arm was thrown across her waist in the possessive clasp she had grown accustomed to. She wanted to indulge in seeing him, to feed her senses with the defined shape of his shoulders and the curve of his lower back and hips.

Shaking her head, she summoned the brain cells Rupert’s testosterone hadn’t affected yet and shook him out of his slumber. He answered with a groan. Another push and shove. Madison had no musical ear whatsoever. She didn’t play any instruments, and her singing was abysmal. Time was of the essence or she wouldn’t be able to remember the melody.

“Wake up, please. Wake up.”

Rupert rolled onto his back, freeing her from his grip. She sat up and wiped away the perspiration that ran down her chest. God, she hated the state these dreams put her in.

A light kiss on her shoulders softened the blow the memories had punched into her. “Did you have a nightmare?” Rupert rubbed his eyes to push the sleep away, just as he must have done as a child. It was good-enough-to-melt cute.

“Yes. Euh, no.” They were so much more than nightmares. “I need your help.”

Rupert checked the digits on her alarm clock that shone through the semi-darkness of her room: 3:42 A.M. “Do we have to do it now?”

“I remembered something important, something I hadn’t paid attention to before.”

“Okay.” He took the cushion they had shared only a few moments before, threw it against the wall behind their heads, padded it and rested his back against it in a vertical position. “Is it about our ghost?” He shook his head and added, “I can’t believe I just said that. Anyway, fire away.”

“I know what triggered the man’s appearance at the concert. It was the music. The whole thing happened when the musicians at the concert started playing a certain song. That tune means something to him and the girl he was involved with.”

“What was the tune?”

“I’m going to hum it to you. Please don’t take the piss.”

The moonlight couldn’t hide the smirk that twisted across Rupert’s mouth. “Baby, don’t take it badly but your singing could shatter windows at several hundred places and—”

A slap on his shoulder stopped him mid-sentence. “Don’t you think I know that? Now listen.” Madison cleared her throat and swept away all her inhibitions. Or most of them. She started humming.

“Try once more,” Rupert prompted her.

She obeyed. The sound of her singing could make a preacher cuss.

“Stop. Please, baby, stop. I’m pretty sure I can tell you the title despite your interpretation.”

The humiliation had been worth it. “Then don’t sit like a frog on a log. Tell me.”

“It’s called ‘Greensleeves.’ The composer is Vaughn Williams, and it’s an English classic.”

Her hand flew to her chest in relief. Madison: one. Ghost: zero. At last there was a piece of information she could bite on. She let Rupert pull her against him, his fingers massaging the tight muscles of her neck.

“Does that make better sense to you?” he said.

“Actually, I think it does.”

She cuddled him and tugged herself around his legs and chest, trying to steal some of his strength. His comfort drew her back into sleep. She heard the music again. Liliana’s lover whispered the words in Madison’s ears this time. Again and again.