Page 41 of The Devil in Oxford
I struggled to keep up with his long strides, panting. “Could you slow down for a moment and tell me what happened in the cells?”
Ruan came to a dead stop, and I almost ran into his back. He shushed me, his variegated gaze drifting over my shoulder to the street behind.
My jaw dropped. How dare heshushme? Of all the— But before I could finish the thought, he took me again by the elbow and pulled me into the lee of a nearby shop festooned in garland and red ribbon. “You could have been killed back there, and the very first words out of your lips are about whatIdiscovered?”
“In case you didn’t notice, I’m not dead and we still have a murder to solve,” I replied hotly.
He muttered to himself in Cornish before looking up at the sky in what I distinctly sensed was a plea for his old gods to save him from stubborn American heiresses. “If you must know immediately, without concern for either of our safety, then Mr. Mueller is dead.”
Dead?Of all the things he could have uttered, that was the last I expected. The wind whipped through the wide street.
This was bad.Verybad. “Natural or otherwise?”
Ruan sighed, turned, and continued to bustle me toward the corner of Cornmarket, letting out a low dark sound of amusement. “Someone cracks your head, and you ask me if the dead man in the prison cell that very same morning died of natural causes? Truly, Ruby, I am beginning to grow concerned that perhaps you are not as well as you claim.”
Point taken.I folded my arms mutinously. “I was simply making certain.”
“I know…” His expression flickered, and he wrapped his fingers painfully tight around my upper arm.
What had possessed him? Ruan didn’t speak, instead he dragged me across the street and into an inviting candy shop with its brightly painted front window frames.
“Good God, Ruan, what has gotten into you? I am not a rag doll to be dragged about on your whims!” The bell rang merrily as we entered the warm storefront. I tugged my arm from him, tired of being trundled around.
“There was a woman.” He leaned close to me, murmuring in my ear low enough so only I could hear. The air inside the candy shop was sweet and reminded me I’d only eaten a solitary saffron bun today—and that had been hours ago.
“Looks like I’m not the only one seeing things and jumping atshadows.” I rubbed the sore spot on my arm before glancing out the window.
Ruan did not rise to the bait, keeping his focus trained on the street outside between the high-stacked jars of sweets. To all the world he appeared like a man struggling to decide between the ginger and the horehound candies. The light coming in through the multicolored jars refracting like water droplets in the sun.
“Do you see her? The woman in the gray hat.” He inclined his head to a figure waiting across the street, not far from where we’d been arguing moments before. A slight woman with flaxen hair, combed and pulled back, stood waiting. Watching.
I shifted to get a better look at her, inadvertently poking my belly with the stolen file. I’d nearly forgotten I’d taken it in our haste to leave the police station. I craned my neck, peering between the lemon drops and anise. “I don’t recognize her.” And she certainly wasn’t the one who attacked me. This woman was several inches shorter and far slighter than I, wearing an oversized dark coat, looking more like a child playing dress-up than any true threat. Had Ruan not trundled me off into the sweetshop I might not have noticed her at all. But he was right. She was waiting for someone.
A coincidence. Just a random woman waiting for a friend.
Ruan shook his head, overhearing my thoughts. “No. It’s not. I saw her outside the police station when I entered. And again, now on High Street. She’s following us, and she’s not very good at it.”
My stomach tightened at the thought. Minutes ticked on as my mind raced with ever growing panic.I’m being followed. I’ve been attacked. Mr. Mueller murdered.And yet I was no closer to finding Julius Harker’s killer than I had been at the start.
At long last, Ruan cleared his throat and gestured to a glass canister. “Ginger and lemon?”
“Are you asking me to buy you candy or fixing my tea?” I grumbled, glancing up at him.
The familiar divot of worry between his dark brows had eased, and his chest trembled with amusement. I peered between the canisters and understood at once his immediate change of mood. The woman—whoever she was—had given up on us and left. “Which do you prefer?” he asked gently.
“I… whichever you want.”
Ruan took a wax-paper bag from the counter and lifted a silver scoop. “I haven’t been in here in years.… Ernst and I would stop in after class on our way back home. We’d take turns buying sweets, even though the gods know I couldn’t afford it—but I was too bloody proud to let him buy mine.”
I gave him a faint smile. “He sounds like he was a lovely person.”
“He was. I hadn’t thought about it in years. Not until we came into the shop. Ernst and I would always get a mixed bag. Half lemon, half ginger. I never cared for lemon myself, the flavor too sharp and biting.” Ruan’s voice took on a wistful tone. “Yet for years after he died, whenever I’d come across a candy shop I’d find myself buying the lemon only.”
I watched him spellbound as he was lost to his own memories, my own heart breaking with his words. I knew so little about him truly. Only the glimpses he’d shared, and I wanted—needed—to know more.
“It seemed terribly unfair back then, that of the two of us, he would be gone and I’d remain. Somehow having the lemon… it kept him near. It’s absurd, I know.”
It wasn’t absurd at all. I reached out for him, half expecting that he would shake me away as he had every other time I’d touched him, but instead he turned his palm over, closing my fingers within his, and squeezed. “What’s yours?”
