Page 62 of The Devil in Oxford
Treadway could hardly keep on his feet. His eyes wide and frenzied as he grabbed a bottle of brandy from a nearby table.
“Now, now, lad. It’s all right.” Lord Amberley’s expression sobered.Things were quickly getting out of hand. He reached for Treadway, who shrugged the old lord away.
Reaver had not even broken a sweat. Simply sidestepping the drunken man as one would when humoring a petulant child. “Don’t make a fool of yourself, Jonathan. You’ve more pride than that.” Reaver’s voice was far gentler than mine would have been in similar circumstances.
“Where is she?” Treadway took another swipe at Reaver. “I know you’ve done something to her. You’re the reason she’s gone.”
Ruan tapped my hip again with his thumb.This.This was what he’d heard.
Professor Laurent had joined the onlookers, taking a spot to the left of me, beside Ruan. “Well, I’ll say this is not what I expected when I set out this evening.” An edge of humor laced the old professor’s voice before his tone shifted to one of defeat. “Always a loose cannon—Jonathan was. I thought he would grow out of it with time, but it seems not. Too much of his father in him, I suspect.”
Two of Lord Amberley’s footmen finally managed to subdue the raving Treadway, who continued to shout obscenities at Professor Reaver. The younger’s words slurred enough I could barely make them out.
“Something isn’t right,” I murmured over the rim of my glass.
“What do you think it means?” Ruan remained focused upon the footmen trundling poor Jonathan Treadway out the front door. Professor Reaver plucked an imperceptible piece of lint from his woolen dinner jacket. His calculating gaze met mine and his emotionless veneer dropped. A flash of unbridled hatred shone in his eyes as he stared in my direction, and I knew in that moment that he was capable of anything. Anything at all.
Ruan saw it too. His hand gripped mine and he pulled me toward the door, forgoing even my coat. He simply shoved his own dinner jacket over my bare arms and tugged me out into the night.
Reaver was a danger.
I’d never seen such venom in a man before—and I’d gone to war, confronted murderers and angry mobs. All of which paled against the rage in Frederick Reaver’s eyes.
CHAPTERTWENTY-NINEMidnight Burglary
“Idon’t like him,” I muttered, tucking my arm into Ruan’s as we walked down the darkened Oxford streets. The closeness was for warmth.That was all.And yet somehow my hand unerringly found his, and I slipped them both into the pocket of his coat amongst the various unusual pebbles and stones he’d collect and forget he’d pocketed away. Ruan did not pull away this time. Rather, he squeezed my fingers tighter within his own—tired of fighting whatever this was that existed between us.
Ruan for his part appeared impervious to the cold, dressed only in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat. “He certainly doesn’t likeyou.What did you do to cross the fellow?”
I snorted. “Exist? Truly, I don’t know. I spoke to him this morning and we didn’t leave on the best of terms, but he certainly hadn’t looked at me with such hatred then as he did tonight. Do you suppose he blames me for Treadway’s behavior?”
Ruan made a low sound in his throat. It was a cloudless night, which made everything somehow colder—the stars shone bright overhead as the moon rose high. The scent of woodsmoke thick in the night.
“Did you hear anything useful?”
“Not about your friend. Concern. Anger. Fear. It was all swirling in both of their heads. I could not make sense of why, but the air was thick with it.”
Amused, I paused, looking up at him. “You act like you can smell it. Are you also part bloodhound?”
He let out a low chuckle. “No. But emotion has a… perhapsscentisn’t the right way to explain it. But emotion is a palpable thing. Perhapsessenceis a better word. Gods, this is strange to discuss with you…”
“Why? Because I’m terribly ordinary?” I laughed.
Something flickered in his expression. “There is nothing ordinary about you, Ruby Vaughn.”
The dim glow of the gaslights barely illuminated his dear face. Ruan leaned down, his forehead pressed against mine, and inhaled deeply, drawing theessenceofmeinto his lungs. His willing tenderness was intoxicating. I caught the scent of ginger candy on his breath and for a moment I thought he might kiss me, but instead he pulled back, tugging me on down the lane. “We should get back and check on the girl.”
His words cut through the buckets of champagne that Lord Amberley had been pouring me, crushing the moment to dust.
Right.I felt immediately rotten for having not thought of Annabelle before now, distracted as I’d been by the fracas in Amberley’s drawing room.
Ruan’s step grew more determined than ever before, as if he could outrun the chaos of what we were together if he merely moved fast enough. I did not even notice until long after we were back home that Ruan never released my hand. Not until we were on the way up the stairs to the room where poor Annabelle lay in her sickbed—and for the life of me, I did not know what it meant.
I waited outside in the hall as Ruan knelt on the cold wooden floor beside the girl, murmuring with Mrs. Penrose about what had happened in our absence. “No changes then?”
She shook her head. Her gray hair glinted in the warm electric lights of the room.
The muscle in his jaw tightened, and he set about checking her pulse. “I still worry we should call a physician.”
