it at once.’ Oliver stood squarely in front of her and cupped her chin so that she looked up into his face. He was mock-serious, grinning at her as he dropped his hand again so that she wanted to say, Come back. ‘It can’t be good for you. And highly thought of by whom? Hart has discovered that Spurring has got some kind of senior-member responsibility for As You Like It. Of all the tedious little men.’
So Oliver dismissed the bright star of the English faculty. How confident he is, Helen thought, as she followed him.
Oliver dropped the pile of books haphazardly into the well behind the seats of his open car. It was waiting for them at the kerbside, looking to Helen absurdly low-slung, sleek and highly polished. She had often seen Oliver driving around town in it. Now she said, ‘It’s such a pretty car. What kind is it?’
He opened the passenger door with a flourish, handed Helen into the leather bucket seat and swung him legs over the door on his own side.
‘A Jaguar,’ he said, with deep satisfaction, patting the walnut fascia. ‘XK 150. Rather old now, and quite rare.’ The engine roared throatily into life and Oliver beamed. ‘Looked after for me by a little man in the Botley Road. He just loves the innards of old cars, isn’t that lucky? Me, I don’t have any taste for sprockets and oil. I just want to drive her, the faster the better. So, really, the three of us have a perfect relationship.’
Helen watched him, fascinated. She had never met anyone so vibrantly pleased with life, and so certain of himself. The introspective moment of the other evening when he had sat staring out into the darkness of Canterbury Quad, and Helen had thought that after all he might make the perfect romantic hero, was forgotten.
They were bowling through the wide, tree-lined streets of North Oxford now, where the pavements were drifted over with golden leaves. The few people who were about were strolling with newspapers under their arms, or walking dogs who scuffled in the piles of leaves.
‘Where are we going?’ Helen asked.
‘Where would you like to go?’ Oliver countered. ‘Anywhere in particular?’
‘No.’
‘Well then, you might as well leave it to me. We’re going to have lunch, as it happens. And to see a man about a dog.’
Helen asked no more questions. Instead she sat back in her seat and let the wind blow away everything but the immediacy of this extraordinary morning. When she closed her eyes, the sunlight and the shade from the trees flashing past dappled patterns through her eyelids. When she opened them again there was the long, black car bonnet in front of her, the outskirts of the city dropping away, and Oliver beside her. He drove negligently, one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the polished wooden knob of the gear lever. They sliced in and out of the traffic on the busy road and then, suddenly, they were in the open country. Helen felt the acceleration pressing her back into her seat as the car surged forward. The shadows swept over her face, faster and faster, and the wind whipped her hair back.
Oliver glanced at her, sidelong. If Helen had known him better she might have recognised the small, secret smile with which he always congratulated himself on getting his own way. When she looked round at him again the smile had vanished and he asked, casually, ‘Warm enough? My coat’s in the back if you need something to put over your knees.’ It was the brown leather aviator’s coat which he had been wearing the other evening. Helen instinctively pulled her own well-worn duffel coat more tightly around her.
‘I’m fine. Thanks.’
The car swept on. They were in the Cotswolds now, driving through villages built of honey-coloured stone and past winter-ready fields showing countless shades of brown and ochre.
‘It’s a beautiful day,’ Oliver said, stretching back in his seat and bracing his arms straight against the wheel. ‘Better than mouldering with all that lot in some library?’ He jerked his head backwards at the pile of books behind them.
Much better, Helen told herself, shutting her mind resolutely to the niggling voice of conscience and another, much fainter, murmur of apprehension. She didn’t feel safe with Oliver Mortimore. But then, what was so appealing about safety? Helen wriggled a little deeper into her seat and stared along the low line of the Jaguar’s bonnet at the open road hurtling towards them. She thought, fleetingly, of Chloe; feeling safe wouldn’t be high on Chloe’s list of priorities, she was certain. Perhaps, after all, it didn’t come so high on her own either. Helen couldn’t explain to herself why she had been swept up by Lord Oliver Mortimore. But it gave her an unfamiliar glow of flattery and excitement. And now she was here she would enjoy it, whatever was to come. The recognition of that whatever, too, gave Helen a thrill of recklessness. She so rarely did anything without thinking very hard about it first. But there just wasn’t any leeway for thinking, where Oliver was concerned. He had just happened to her, and she was ready to accept that.
Just as he would have to accept her.
Helen was clear-sighted enough to know that there was nothing to be gained by pretending to be something she wasn’t, in the hope that would make her more interesting to him. Whatever it was that he had seen in her in the first place would have to go on being enough, and Helen lifted her chin determinedly at that. But she definitely wanted him to go on seeing something in her. Her eyes were drawn to him again as he sat negligently at the wheel. He was unusually good-looking, yes, but his attraction was more magnetic than that. It was the ease, the casualness and the assurance that drew Helen, who possessed none of those things. She felt as if she wanted to warm herself by him. And there was something else, too. She thought she detected a sensitivity in him, under all that urbane gloss, that made him doubly attractive. A little mysterious, too.
Be careful, Helen’s sane little inner voice warned her. Another, louder voice responded. I’m always careful. This time I just want to see what happens. I don’t care if it isn’t real. If it doesn’t last any longer even than today.
The Jaguar was slowing down. They had left the main road and, at the end of a much narrower road, they came to a compact little village. A cluster of stone cottages around an uneven triangle of green, a church with a squat stone tower masked by a belt of yew trees, and at the apex of the triangle, there was a pub. A mulberry tree was painted on the sign over the low door.
Oliver switched off the ignition and his smile flashed at her again.
‘This is where we’ll have lunch.’ Again there was no possibility of disagreeing with him, even if Helen had wanted to. Instead, she let him escort her across the green to the door under the mulberry tree sign. Oliver’s arm sat lightly across her shoulders as they walked. Inside, there were log fires and high-backed oak seats.
‘You’re always so cold,’ Oliver grinned down at her. ‘We’d better sit close to the fire.’ His hand touched the nape of her neck again, just briefly, under the tangle of black curls.
‘Morning, Lord Oliver,’ the man behind the bar greeted him. ‘And Miss.’ This was Oliver’s home ground in some way, Helen realised.
‘Hello, Bill. Drink, Helen?’ A quick glance round the bar confirmed Helen’s instinctive choice.
‘Sherry, please. Dry, with ice.’
‘Quite safe, but a little dull.’ Oliver’s voice was teasing. ‘I’m going to have champagne, and I think you should too.’
The drinks arrived at once, Oliver’s in a silver tankard and Helen’s foaming in a tall, narrow glass. Twice in one week, Helen thought, amused. And I’ve hardly ever even tasted real
