The Oxford Inheritance (8 page)

Cassie found a seat on the wide, cushioned ledge of an open window and sipped her wine, watching the crowd and waiting for Evie to return. Observing the scene, she noticed the lack of diversity in the room. In fact, Oxford in general had shocked her on this point: from the sea of pale first-year faces in the Raleigh matriculation photo to the overwhelming whiteness on the streets of the city. Just like the Ivy League, this was clearly still the home of the old elites, for all the self-satisfied talk of diversity and inclusion she'd skimmed through in the college brochures.

“Welcome to Raleigh.” A voice behind her made Cassie turn. A blond man in his late twenties smiled at her, earnest in a pin-striped shirt and corduroy pants. “I'm Miles. Whereabouts are you from?” he asked, before taking a large bite of cracker. Tiny crumbs cascaded down his shirt, and he swiped at them, flushing.

“Smith,” she replied.

He brightened. “Ah, Massachusetts. I spent a semester at Harvard as
a research fellow, under Professor MacIntyre. Don't suppose you know him?”

She shook her head. “No, sorry.”

“Ah well.” He took another bite. Another torrent of crumbs scattered to the carpet. “What brings you over here? I'm doing my postdoc in international law.”

“Junior year abroad,” Cassie explained. “I got the Raleigh Scholarship.”

His eyes widened. “Impressive!” Miles caught a woman as she passed, tugging her into our circle. “Devi, this is the one you were talking about, the girl who snatched the scholarship this year?”

The woman, who was Southeast Asian, raised an eyebrow, assessing Cassie. She had her dark hair pulled back in a loose braid and wore a severe navy shift dress. “Congratulations,” she said in a cool tone. “My cousin made it through to the final interviews. He already received his bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Harvard and was named a young musician of the year for his piano concertos.” She offered a wan smile. “You must have a very impressive résumé to have won the prize.”

Cassie cleared her throat, feeling even more inadequate. “And lucky, I guess.”

Devi twitched an eyebrow again.

“Tell us about your summer,” Miles urged her, before turning to Cassie. “Devi was working with the refugee camps in Somalia,” he explained. “She's studying displacement and rape as a weapon of—” He broke off, catching sight of someone across the room. “Hugo!” he cried, taking off through the crowd without a backward glance, his voice carrying. “What are you doing back, you old rotter? I thought they were finally giving you the heave-ho!”

Devi launched into a description of her time on the Ethiopian border, but Cassie's gaze stayed with Miles, following him to a group of people holding court in the corner of the room. They were dressed for dinner, in formal suits and starched shirts, and the studied way they held their
wineglasses and tilted back their heads in laughter made Cassie think of a scene from an Oscar Wilde play, or some foreign painter's frieze. As she watched, their bodies shifted, revealing the young man in the center of the group, the focus of Miles's adoring enthusiasm.

She froze.

It was the man from that night, the one who'd caught her in the courtyard. Now, even out of the darkness, he was as striking as before: dressed in another expensive suit, draped languidly over his frame, the crisp white shirt open at his throat, revealing skin a pale gold in the lamplight.

He looked up, catching Cassie's gaze from across the room with his dark, piercing stare. She flinched back as if burned and quickly looked away.

“. . . security, you wonder what we're paying for.” Devi was still talking, but Cassie could barely hear a word. Her heart was suddenly racing, a shiver of something new in her veins: panic, mixed with curiosity and fear. The potent cocktail sent adrenaline spinning through her bloodstream, and she felt too restless to stay still a moment longer.

She slipped down from the windowsill, bumping against Devi as the crowd shifted again. “I'm sorry,” she apologized quickly, glancing back across the room. The blond man had been swallowed out of sight, but Cassie's unease remained, a hot surge prickling her skin.

“I said, did you hear about the break-in?” Devi repeated. “Apparently someone was rifling through the old archives the other night.”

Cassie snapped her head back around. “Hmm? Oh, no, I didn't.” She cleared her throat quickly and made an effort to speak normally. “Did they steal anything of value?”

“Nothing was taken,” a petite woman with cropped hair said, joining them with a gossiping expression on her round face. “And Harris didn't get a good look at him.”

“I wonder if it was a rival academic,” Devi mused. “The Raleigh libraries are first-rate.”

“Why not just sign up for a reading pass?” the other woman argued. “I think they were looking for rare first editions. You know the college has a whole stash of Raleigh's manuscripts locked away somewhere.”

Cassie tried to focus on the conversation, but she felt a burning on the back of her skin again, a shiver of awareness. She glanced back across the room, already knowing she would find him watching her.

He was leaning against the bar, a wineglass tilted in one hand, his dark eyes fixed on her. She knew she should look away but was unable to drag her gaze away from the elegance of his face. The moment stretched between them, shimmering in the hot, packed room.

Then he raised his glass to her in a toast, his expression still unreadable. Cassie felt his curiosity even through the crowd. Curiosity, and something more, that same recognition that she'd felt when they met in the courtyard that night. His gaze trailed across her body, and Cassie felt as if she was naked.

Hunger. That was it: the sharp glint in his eyes. The realization broke Cassie from her trance. She reeled back. He was approaching now, weaving through the crowd toward her. Cassie grabbed for her coat. She needed to get away, and fast. She'd felt the urge to escape before, on dark streets, and in empty, echoing buildings. It had saved her too many times, and now it was beating so loudly she couldn't ignore it if she tried.

She turned her back on Devi and the other woman without even a mumbled explanation, hurrying through the crowd back toward the exit. But as she approached the door, she found her escape blocked.

“Cassie!” Evie caught her in a hug. “Thanks for waiting; God, the drama never ends. Come meet everyone, I was just telling them about you—”

“I'm sorry.” Cassie tore away from the friendly embrace. “I have to go. I'll see you later!”

If Evie replied, her voice was lost in the crowd. Cassie took the stairs two at a time. She stumbled down to the cloisters and fled into the dark of the college, until the noise of music and laughter faded into the night.

DESPITE SETTING HER ALARM, CASSIE WOKE LATE, AND SHE HAD
to scramble to arrive at her philosophy tutorial in time. She'd wanted to be poised and prepared, but instead she found herself hurrying across the Raleigh campus with her shirt hanging loose and an empty growl in her stomach. As the chimes of the college clock boomed out nine strokes, she turned the corner to the cloisters.

Cassie heard laughter as she rushed up the stairs, and when she opened Tremain's door she found the professor handing out cups of coffee to the two other students. “Sorry,” she apologized, as the chimes faded away outside the window.

“Miss Blackwell,” he said coolly. “Good of you to join us. I'd ask how you take your coffee, but I'm afraid refreshments are only served to those who make it promptly to class.”

Cassie took a seat, confused. Tremain had never seemed like a stickler for punctuality; last week, he'd been the one to show up ten minutes late, with jam staining his shirt collar.

The other girl, Julia, gave her a sympathetic smile. She was slight and dark, her hair pinned neatly up behind her head, her blouse starched beneath a mint green cashmere V-necked sweater. Across from them sat Sebastian, a large, athletic-looking boy slouching on the leather wingback chair with one leg propped over the other and a smug expression on his face.

“Who wants to start?” Tremain folded himself into his rickety chair and looked around. “Miss Blackwell, perhaps.”

Cassie felt a tremor of nerves, followed with sharp relief when Sebastian spoke over her. “I'll go first.”

“Works for me,” Cassie breathed quickly. Julia said nothing at all, simply waited with her pen held, poised for action.

“Very well.” Tremain nodded, rifling through his papers before pulling out what Cassie assumed to be the boy's essay: a thick stack of papers, printed with dense black type. “Whenever you're ready.”

Sebastian cleared his throat. “Does Descartes show that he is not a body?” he began. “How does Descartes think mind and body are related?” He launched into a discussion of empirical thought that left Cassie struggling to keep up. The essay question had seemed straightforward enough to her in the dim light of her midnight attic, but now Sebastian was dissecting theories of authors she had never read, devoting whole paragraphs to different interpretations of a single phrase.

“Good work.” Tremain rewarded Sebastian with the briefest of nods. “Now, about distinctness and separation,” he continued. “Did Descartes think that the mind and body were potentially or actually separate?”

Julia took in a breath. “Actually?”

Tremain turned. “Is that a statement or a question?”

Julia checked back through her notes. “A statement,” she responded, her voice becoming surer. “Descartes thought that if two things could be separated, they were distinct, whether or not they were apart.”

Tremain doled out another approving nod. “As Margaret Wilson noted in her critiques.”

“But that whole argument rests on an assumption of the existence of a God to separate them,” Sebastian argued, and soon they were engaged in fierce debate, with barely a thought for Cassie, silent on the end of the couch. Not for the first time, Cassie was glad to be left unnoticed, watching the clock on the mantelpiece count down to her escape.

“Miss Blackwell.”

She snapped her head up to find Professor Tremain arching an eyebrow at her. “What do you think about Descartes's thesis that he is solely a thinking thing?”

“I . . .” Cassie glanced down at her notebook, as if the crosshatch of aimless lines would hold some answer. In other rooms—other lives—she would have relished the chance to bluff and argue, but all her usual confidence had fled, and even she recognized that she was out of her depth. Just as her silence was becoming unbearably awkward, the bells began to chime ten o'clock. Tremain gave a nod.

“That's enough.” He closed his leather-bound file. “We can explore the meditations more next week. Perhaps an essay on error and the will; check Williams again, maybe some Carriero too.”

The others collected their things and exited, but Cassie was stopped by a sharp summons. “Miss Blackwell?”

Cassie turned, bracing herself. Professor Tremain held her essay paper aloft, gripped between his thumb and forefinger as if dangling something particularly distasteful. She approached him and took it, expecting a river of red ink, but to her surprise, there was not a single notation on the pages. No comments, or angry strikeouts. Cassie looked back at him in confusion.

“I think we both know it would be futile to bother with that.” Tremain's eyes bored into her, coal black with derision. “I'd rather you turned in nothing at all than something so amateurish.”

Cassie felt her cheeks flush. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I thought I was getting the hang of it, but I guess I'm still finding my feet here. I'll do better next week.”

“That's what I thought last time. I let your lackluster effort slide then, but two weeks at this level is unacceptable.”

Cassie felt the sting of criticism. “I'm sorry,” she murmured again, feeling like a failure. She bundled the offending pages in her bag and turned to make her escape.

“I read your file,” Tremain added, stopping her short. “I sit on the Raleigh scholarship committee. I had my concerns then about awarding you the place. Raleigh is an exacting academic environment. Filling it with substandard candidates does the rest of us a disservice. Your classmates, for example, should have enjoyed another perspective in their debate, instead of . . . what was it you brought to mind? An addled spectator at Wimbledon.”

“I can do better,” Cassie protested. “Now I've seen the way you expect—”

Tremain cut her off. “Some things can't come with practice. Either you have a grasp of the fundamentals, an intuition for argument, or you don't. To pretend otherwise is a foolish error. Let's not forget your place here is dependent on your grades. If we don't see progress, and fast, we may have to terminate your scholarship.”

Cassie took a breath, opening her mouth to respond, but Tremain was already looking away, flipping through a stack of papers on his desk. She was clearly dismissed.

As she made her way back through the cloisters, Cassie burned with anger. What gave him the right to speak to her like that? She'd dealt with her share of high-minded professors at Smith—the patronizing, the world-weary, the men too wrapped up in their own quest for academic glories to bother with something so lowly as teaching mere undergraduates—but she'd never in all her years of education come across one as dismissive as Professor Tremain. Weren't tutors supposed to teach, to nurture and encourage? Her mind was to be molded, her potential realized, but Tremain had only looked at a single essay—no, before that, her application file!—to decide Cassie wasn't worthy of his time and expertise.

But as quickly as the anger swept through her, it receded, leaving Cassie with a new fear. She hadn't realized her study-abroad place could be rescinded. She could be sent back to America empty-handed. Locked
out of the hunt for her mother's past for good—and just when she was beginning to find answers.

She couldn't let that happen.

Cassie felt worn-out by the time she arrived back at the attic. She found
Evie yawning, wearing a crumpled nightshirt, a phone trapped between her bare shoulder and ear. “Want to grab breakfast?” she whispered, dark shadows under her eyes. “I'll be ready in ten minutes.”

“I'll jump in the shower,” Cassie agreed, glad for the chance to recover from her tutorial ordeal. She ran the water as hot as she could bear, and stood, head bent, under the torrent. The bathroom was old-fashioned, equipped with a claw-foot bath and mustard tiling that had survived decades, if not longer, but the shower was blissfully modern and soon filled the small room with a haze of steam. Cassie let the water beat into her tired muscles, trying to send her tension and unease away. One bad tutorial, that's all it had been. Professor Tremain was simply trying to scare some diligence into her. She would have to put her research into Margaret aside, give herself more time with the next assignment.

She lost track of time under the fierce heat of the water. When she remembered Evie and their breakfast date, Cassie wrenched off the faucet and wrapped a towel around her body, piling her wet hair on top of her head. “Sorry,” she called, emerging from the bathroom. “Just let me grab some clothes, and I'll be ready.”

“Don't feel the need to dress on my account.” The voice was male and edged with wry amusement. Cassie froze, two steps into the living room, and found herself staring into piercing dark eyes.

It was
him
.

Blond hair, angled cheekbones. He lounged on the couch, relaxed and totally self-assured. Cassie's heartbeat quickened as she took him in, remembering their strange encounter in the midnight courtyard, and his predatory stare at the mixer.

He rose from the sofa and approached. “Hugo Mandeville,” he introduced himself, those dark eyes trailing over Cassie's naked shoulders, still dripping wet. She paused a moment, clutching her towel. Her mind raced. Had he tracked her down somehow?

“You must be the roommate we've been hearing so much about.” He smiled. “Evie is . . . Well, I don't know where she went, but the door was open, so she can't be far.”

Evie. They were friends then, that was the reason he was here, Cassie realized, not to accuse her over the break-in at the vaults.

Cassie breathed in relief as Hugo extended a hand and reached slowly to shake hers. His fingers were cool and long, like a concert pianist's, but his skin seemed to burn against hers. Cassie snatched her hand away almost immediately, bringing it back to clasp her towel tight around her chest. She was painfully aware of her body, naked under the thin towel.

“How's your hand?”

Cassie blinked. “What?”

“You hurt your hand, that night.” Hugo looked at her curiously. “I didn't recognize you for a moment, without the . . .” He gestured to his eyes, to indicate the layers of eyeliner and mascara Cassie usually wore. “You should leave it off more often,” he added, his lips curving in a smile. “You're prettier this way.”

She stared, thrown by the comment. Up close, Hugo's eyes were lined with thick lashes, flecked with a gold that gave a strange halo to those fathomless dark irises.

“Did you want something?” Finally, Cassie found her voice. “I can tell Evie you stopped by.”

A flicker of amusement crossed Hugo's face, as if he could tell how unsettled she was. “I'll wait.” As he spoke, he sat back down on the sofa, completely at ease. “Aren't you going to offer me tea—or a coffee, perhaps; that's more American, isn't it?”

Before Cassie could reply, Evie piled through the door, laughing. “He didn't!”

“I swear it, right on the floor at Annabelle's.” Another voice trailed her in, followed a second later by its owner, the girl who had so unceremoniously ejected Cassie from her first dorm room. Olivia.

“Hugo!” Evie lit up. She had pulled a men's black cashmere sweater over her nightshirt and applied a slash of bright pink lipstick. “Perfect timing. This is my new roommate; she just had a tute, poor thing. Remember those days?”

“Remember?” Olivia hugged Evie from behind, kissing her cheek affectionately. She was wearing black jeans and an elegant white T-shirt slouched off one shoulder, a tangle of gold chains Cassie recognized as belonging to Evie twisted around her neck. “I have finals this year; I have nothing but bloody sleepless nights ahead.”

Hugo. Cassie looked back at him and realized Olivia had been calling to him in the stairs at Carlton Hall when she'd evicted Cassie from her room. They must be related; there was a definite resemblance in the honeyed tone of their hair, and the sharp angles of their profile—not enough to be siblings, perhaps, but bound by blood in some way.

“Please,” Evie giggled, rolling her eyes expressively. “Until you have thesis advisers on your back all day, you don't get to complain.”

Hugo laughed. “I hate to pull rank, but I've been pulling all-nighters and thesis meltdowns for seven years now, so none of you know my pain.” He sauntered over to Evie and dropped a casual kiss on her lips. “Ready to go?”

“Cassie?” Evie turned, expectant. “Coming?”

Cassie faltered. She'd been looking forward to breakfast with Evie, but the prospect of a group trip—with this effortlessly elegant clique, and Hugo's smirk of watchful amusement—was different. “I don't know . . .” she demurred. “I still need to get dressed—”

Olivia tugged on Evie's arm, brandishing her cell phone. “Evie, come look!”

Evie crowded around to see. “No!”

“Ladies!” Hugo sighed. “Can we perhaps move this somewhere with
coffee, before I grow old and weary and have another five years in this place pass me by?”

“It's your own fault, cuz.” Olivia thumped his arm good-naturedly as she passed. “Daddy says if you'd just finish the damn thesis and graduate . . .”

“Ah, but why would I do that, when there are so many delicious distractions around?” Hugo swept Evie into a hug, burying his face in her neck. She squealed, protesting, but it was clear from her smile that she was delighted. Hugo's eyes met Cassie's for a moment over Evie's head. He gave her an arched, teasing smile, a small, private expression that, to Cassie, felt dangerously intimate. She turned away.

At last, with Hugo's urging, the group hustled out into the stairway. Evie turned back almost as an afterthought. “Cassie, do you want to come? We can wait down in the lodge, if you want. I need to check my mail.”

“No, it's fine.” Cassie forced a smile. She was already backing away in the direction of her room, anxious to put a locked door between her and Hugo. “I'm too tired. I'm just going to crash.”