Page 27 of The Devil in Oxford
“Oxford?” My voice came out hoarse—throat burning from the smoke of my dream. “We’re in Oxford…”
“Yes… Oxford.” Ruan’s roughened palms framed my face, his fingers tangled in my sweaty hair as he began murmuring to me in Cornish. Words I hadn’t a prayer of understanding. The reassuring pressure of his hip pressed firm against my side as he tugged me, inch by inch, from whatever horror I’d been locked in. Hadhebeen what I was seeking? Or washemy captor? Even still as the memory of the dream fled, I could not quite recall. Could not grasp onto the ephemeral thought.
Nor did I want to.
Flecks of silver faded from his pale eyes. A remnant, I’d discovered, of him reaching for his power. He’d been listening to me—andwhile at one time I might have found that an intrusion—I could not feel angry about it. Not now.
My stomach heaved and I scrambled off the bed onto the cold wooden floor, gathering a nearby chamber pot, and promptly vomited up the contents of my stomach.
Silently, Ruan pressed a glass of cool water into my hand. Taking it, I rinsed out my mouth, spitting into the bowl. Uncanny how he always knew precisely what I needed, but I had grown oddly accustomed to it in our short acquaintance. Enough that I missed that same intimacy now that we were at odds with one another.
I sat down on the floor, cross-legged, and raked my gaze up from his bare feet to his misbuttoned trousers where he crouched beside me. Heat rose to my cheeks.
“You’re safe,” he murmured, rubbing his broad hand over my back, sending that familiar soothing rush of cold through my veins as the room once again took on the faintest scent of electricity.
My rioting pulse disagreed.
Nevertheless, I crawled back up onto the bed and slid over, making room for him to join me on the mattress. It was a silent invitation, one he’d likely reject if the uncertainty in his eyes was any measure. The temptation to flee must have been great, but instead of leaving he sat down, gathering me against his side as he had that horrible night in Scotland when I’d been so afraid. I didn’t need him to vanquish my demons, I simply wanted him alongside me while I fought them myself. I closed my eyes and rested my cheek on his scarred shoulder.
“Tell me what you saw.” His thumb traced gentle circles at the base of my spine. My mind eased considerably, worries chased away by whatever it was he was doing with his thumb.
“Could you not hear the dream?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know how to describe it. It wasn’t like my other dreams.I was in the dark. Trapped. There had been a fire… or perhaps an explosion?” I wrinkled my nose trying to recall. “But the strangest part was that my senses were all distorted. I couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. Could scarcely hear. I cannot decide what to make of it.”
“Has it been like this before?”
I shook my head. “Not in years. During the war, of course, my dreams were terrible then. In the months leading up to my parents’ deaths and the several years after. I… for a while I was quite convinced I was going mad.”
Ruan let out a low, not-at-all reassuring sound in his chest.
“The dreams worry you, don’t they? Do you think I’m going mad? BecauseIthink I’m going mad.”
“You’re not mad… you’re finally…” The rough stubble on his jaw caught on my hair as he thought better of what he was about to say. “No, Ruby. You’re not mad.”
I was too tired to argue and nuzzled closer into his neck, inhaling the green scent of him. “How can you be certain?”
He didn’t answer. Ruan’s fingers tenderly grazed my exposed shoulder, before he pulled the thick blankets up over me.
“Why are you being so kind? I thought you didn’t like me very much.”
He let out a soft laugh. “Liking you has never been the problem with us. But I intend to be clear on things this time. My feelings for you have not changed. But I refuse to live in no-man’s-land with you in some hellish child’s game where I do not know where I stand. I will be your friend. I will be your lover, but I cannot continue teetering between the two. Iwill notbe a part of that with you. You are far too precious to me for that.”
Precious.The word settled beneath my skin and I closed my eyes, allowing myself this tiny indulgence, for come morning this tenderness between us would disappear. I slowly began to fall back asleep, listening to the gentle patter of rain on the windowpane. My life had been an enduring nightmare—from the time I was alittle girl in America until the moment I met Ruan on a Cornish shore when something bone-deep snapped into place. As if in finding him I’d found the answer to a question I’d been seeking my whole life. It wasn’t the man himself; no, it was nothing romantic like that.
It wasme.
I’d found some inexplicably lost shard of myself on that shore and somehow that same piece was tied to him. It made no sense at all, and yet somehow all the sense in the world.
CHAPTERTWELVENothing a Bit of Cake Won’t Fix
WHENI woke the next morning Ruan was gone. I might have thought his late night visit was a dream itself, if not for the fact that my room smelled vaguely of him. He must have stayed after I fell back asleep. The cowardly part of me was glad that he had left, for with him gone I could pour myself entirely into figuring out who killed Julius Harker.
I poured cold water from the pitcher into the cheerful yellow porcelain basin and washed my face, before taking a damp cloth to the rest of my body. Fiachna raised his furry black head from his spot on the foot of the bed and shot me a judgmental look.
“Oh, hush. I know all about what you get up to in Exeter, you little feline lothario.”
