Page 1 of The Devil in Oxford
CHAPTERONEEn Garde
OXFORD, ENGLAND
DECEMBER 1922
INmy thirty years of existence, I had come to know myself fairly well. Oh, I harbored no delusions of being redeemable, as I had more than my share of flaws: headstrong—though Mr. Owen, my employer, would say mulish—amiteimpetuous, and most certainly unsteady in affairs of the heart. Yet, as I lay there flat on my back upon the brightly polished wooden floor of the Artemis Club with a blunt-tipped saber pressed to the two-month-old scar on my chest, I realized one other essential truth about myself.
I, Ruby Vaughn, had never,everbefore lost upon the fencing strip.
Not even when said piste was little more than a makeshift rectangle hastily hashed out in the dirt behind a military hospital in France. But I supposed in time everything must change—even me.
“Best of three, eh, Vaughn?”
I glared through my mesh mask at Leona Abernathy, whose saber remained pressed gently against my breast. My muscles screamed in protest as moisture soaked through my thick white fencing jacket. Gasping, I stared up at the ornately carved white scrollwork adorningthe ceiling. Around us, the sound of metal upon metal rang out as other pairs practiced with their blades.
Leona laughed, tugging off her own mask, and offered me a gloved hand. A shaft of light came in through the window, catching in the dark browns and umbers of her hair. She hadn’t aged a bit since we’d been stationed together at that hospital in Amiens. I watched my old friend’s brown eyes dance as she wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her sleeve.
She’d gotten far better since our wartime duels. During the bloodiest months of the cataclysm, teaching her to fence had served as a distraction from the slow, beating drum of death raging outside the hospital walls, and the growing specter of my slipping grasp on sanity. The war had tested me in ways that I did not wish to think on. Certainly nothere. InOxford. During the week before Christmas. The past—that particular past—had no business in my present.
“Best ofthree?” I gasped indignantly, rolling over onto my hands and knees. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“Where’d be the fun of that?” Leona tugged her long dark braid over her shoulder and ran her hand along it loosely. I sprang to my feet with a grunt. I seldom had the opportunity to fence nowadays, spending most of my time in the stuffy old bookshop I ran alongside my octogenarian housemate and employer, Mr. Owen, back home in Exeter. Life as an antiquarian-turned-lady-sleuth-detective had clearly taken its toll on my body.
Though by all appearances, time spent in scholarly pursuits hadn’t taken a toll on Leona at all. She looked much the same as she had during the war, with large brown eyes set into a heart-shaped face and the sort of effortless beauty that would have launched a thousand ships in another lifetime. She was lithe and strong, possibly stronger than she’d been back then. Who knew that sorting through antiquities and translating ancient scrolls would do such wonders for a girl’s health?
She nudged me again with the saber, drawing my attention back to her. “Besides, you’re here for two more weeks. I’ll wait at least until the new year to finish you off.”
“Wonderful… I shall eagerly await my demise.” I adjusted my grip on my own blade, lightly bouncing the hilt in my palm, gaze drifting to the gray world outside the windows. Bundled-up shoppers passed the faintly fogged window as the first fat snowflakes began to fall from the afternoon sky.
My afternoons with Leona at the Artemis Club had become a respite from my worries of the last few months—the increasingly peculiar situations in which Mr. Owen had gotten me ensnared, my multiple brushes with death, the fact that I’d fallen inlovewith a witch who possessed an uncanny ability to hear my thoughts. Dreadful thing, love. Of course, my indecision put a quick end to that short-lived romance. So, when Mr. Owen informed me that we would be spending Christmas in Oxford to attend the annual gathering of his antiquarian society, I leapt at the chance to escape the doldrums of my life and nurse my aching heart. Unfortunately, the trip had the opposite effect—for Mr. Owen’s antiquarian friends had been taking up more and more of my time with each passing day thanks to Howard Carter’s recent discovery of a new tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Egyptology and, consequently, my ability to read both hieratic and demotic scripts had kept us quite busy since arriving in town.
Leona nudged me again. “Where’d you go?”
“What do you mean,where did I go? I’m righthere.”
She frowned, pursing her lips, and gestured vaguely at my chest. “Your body is standing there, but your head has been elsewhere all day.” She tapped the side of my mask with her forefingers. “It’s no wonder you lost the match. You’re distracted and it’s left you flat on your back twice now.”
“I’m fine,” I huffed, swatting away her fingers. My breath uncharacteristically ragged as I tugged off my own mesh mask, gulpingin the warm damp air. “And much as I would love to let you beat me again—I’m late as it is. Another dinner with the antiquarians. Mr. Owen will be terribly cross with me if I don’t show myself.”
Leona laughed merrily, taking a challenging step closer. “The Ruby Vaughn I knew never lost, nor did she worry about being late for a fusty supper full of conversation with men old enough to be her grandfather. Come on, once more for old times’ sake? I’ll buy you a drink after?”
It was tempting, to be certain, but I loved Mr. Owen—far more than I ought, considering the messes he’d gotten me into. “I’d love to—truly. But I can’t. I’ve been busy with the antiquarians from the moment I arrived here in Oxford. You would notbelievethe things they’ve pulled out of their moldering attics for me to examine. I do not know how you stomach it day in and out at the museum.” I laughed, placing my saber beneath my arm as I fiddled with the fastenings on my jacket. It was unbearablyhotin here, as if someone hadn’t bothered to turn down the radiators. I fanned my neck with my glove as another irritating bead of sweat found its way between my breasts.
She grinned. “Welcome to my life. I swear, for the last two months I have been mostly living at the museum. Poor Annabelle must feel like she’s a queen, living by herself in our little flat, with no roommate to bother with. It’s enough to make me wish Howard Carter had never gone to Egypt at all. Let that poor soul rest in peace and not be subjected to all this—” Her hand flung out to the side.
“But you’re happy working at the museum? Truly? You never speak of your work in your letters.”
There was an odd flicker in Leona’s smile. “Of course. And to finally be respected. Treated as an equal to the male scholars there… it’s a heady thing, Ruby. I truly recommend it.”
I smiled back at her, brushing the sweaty curls from my face. It was rapidly growing dark as the sun sank low in the Decembersky, casting long dramatic shadows across the herringbone floor. Mr. Owen had likely already arrived at our host’s home and begun holding court around the fire with a bottle of Scotch if I knew him.
A ripple of nervous silence spread across the room like waves surging upon the shore. I turned to see the source of the disturbance. My blood stilled as any thought for Mr. Owen evaporated into the ether.
It was a man.
In the Artemis Club.
Men were never allowed past the front reception. And it was not just any man who’d breached the gates of our veritable feminine sanctuary—it was my very own solicitor. “Christ on a cracker, it’s Hari!” Mercifully he’d not spotted me yet, caught up in conversation with a woman at the front entrance. I heard her—whoever she was—laugh, a sign that the stubborn man had employed his considerable charm to reach this inner sanctum rather than employing the law for his aims.
