Margaux was ignoring her, her liquid gaze fixed imploringly on Peter’s face. “If it’s honestly a Woolf, the stuff in this notebook will set the entire field of Modern English on its ears, Peter, you know that — ”
“Naturally! That’s why I brought it to you!”
“And I’m immensely grateful.” She wrapped herself around him again suddenly, her lips lingering on his. “Delicious. So you’ll leave it with me? Just for tonight? I’ll look it over once more in the wee hours and hand it straight back to you in the morning, with my best possible judgment?”
“Margaux — ”
“Smashing,” she breathed.
So that was where Peter’d picked up the habit.
Margaux stroked her long fingers through his hair, patted his head like a good puppy. “Meet me at the Queen, eight o’clock tomorrow. Café au lait. We’ll talk. It will be just like the old days. I’ll bring the notebook.”
Without pausing for a no, she slipped the small brown binding into a Hermès tote idling by her desk, waggled her fingers at Jo, and gave Peter one last caressing look. “Until tomorrow, then. You’ll let yourselves out?”
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DID THAT,” JO SAID BLUNTLY AS THEY crossed the Magdalen quad a few minutes later. “My plans didn’t include Oxford tonight, Peter. I’ve got no time. There’s a client of mine waiting in London — ”
“Is that the bloke who tried to get you drunk in the middle of the morning?”
She stopped short and glared at him. “Is that any of your business?”
“Staying at the Connaught? Sending cars for his gardener? Buying a complete replica of the White Garden? I already loathe him.”
“I don’t see why! You’ve never met Gray.”
“Oh, yes, I have. He’s the sort who buys futures in Burgundy, my dear, merely so he can display the exorbitant labels in his climate-controlled cave.”
“That’s not the point,” she retorted hotly. “The point is that he sent me here — I’m traveling on his nickel. My time is Gray’s own. And it doesn’t include an overnight in Oxford. I’m supposed to have dinner with him.”
“Perhaps you should have thought of that before you contacted me.” Peter’s tone was unexpectedly savage. He was walking fast, now, toward the car park, where he’d left his old Triumph, his eyes on the ground and his interest in Jo absolutely zero. “You don’t open Pandora’s box in order to slam shut the lid. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Are you talking about the notebook? Or that woman?”
His steps slowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s perfectly obvious you’d never pass up a chance to see Margaux Strand again. And my time and interests are being sacrificed to your… your…”
“Crotch?”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” He gave Jo an unexpected, defeated smile. “I’m hopeless around her, I know it. She’s had that effect on me for years. You’re right, Jo — I owe you an apology.”
His sudden capitulation was unsettling.
“You owe me the notebook and a ride back to London.”
He shook his head.
“Peter, I don’t even have a toothbrush. And I have no time. I leave England in a few days — ”
“But your notebook is temporarily unavailable,” he reminded her gently. “We’ll never track Margaux tonight — I know her habits of old. We’ll just have to hunt for a hotel instead.”
Chapter Fourteen
THEY FOUND ROOMS AT THE OLD PARSONAGE, AN inn on the Banbury Road better suited to Peter’s tastes than either the Malmaison Oxford — a boutique hotel in a former prison, all neon and pulsing music — or the anonymity of a Best Western. Jo was beginning to realize that small details mattered intensely to Peter: the quality of what he ate, what he wore, where he slept. Authenticity was his touchstone. That explained a good deal about how he’d ended up at Sotheby’s.
“They do a pub supper here that’s simple but brilliant,” he said as they parted on the stairs. “I’ll be downstairs in a quarter-hour, if you’re hungry.”
She tried to evaluate the neutrality of this statement: Did he want her company? Or was he hoping she’d crash for the night, order room service (if the Parsonage even offered such a thing), and leave him free to prowl after Margaux? It was impossible to interpret the good manners of Englishmen. In a sudden fit of petulance, she slammed the bedroom door behind her and threw her purse on the bed.
Her first call was to the Head Gardener’s office at Sissinghurst; she reached only an answering machine, and told Imogen she’d be back the following day, notebook in hand. Then she screwed up her courage and dialed Gray’s cell.
“Where are you?” he said.
It was his usual question, and the note of hope in his voice almost undid her.
“Oxford.”
There was silence.
“I had to consult this woman about the Woolf manuscript. Or the one I think might be Woolf’s. And that meant a road trip.”
“I see.” His tone was careful, now.
“I should be back in London tomorrow,” she said, “and I’m not expensing this sideline, Gray. I realize I’m not on your time clock right now. I hope you don’t think I’m abusing the privilege of being sent to England — ”
“Cut it out, Jo. What’s going on?” There was a rustle as Gray sat down on what she presumed was his bed. “What is it, with this notebook?”
“I tried to tell you earlier.”
“That you’re a hopeless romantic?”
“Not just that. Gray — I’ve never mentioned my grandfather. He… died… a few months ago.”
“I’m sorry.” The automatic response.
“He worked at Sissinghurst as a kid. I didn’t know that until I got here,” she added in a rush. “And when I found the notebook — it had his name on it.”
“ — On this book you think was written by Virginia Woolf,” he repeated, trying to understand.
“Exactly.”
“So your grandfather owned it?”
“I don’t know. He’s actually in it. Like a character. Or… someone she met. Someone she knew.”
“How is that possible?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Jo — ” He sounded exasperated, now. “Isn’t there a better way to go about this than chasing all over the English countryside? Couldn’t you talk to a… book expert of some kind?”
“That’s what I’m doing in Oxford, Gray.”
He considered this. “Did I scare the hell out of you?”
“Yes.” The word was out before she could stop it. “But I really meant to get back to London tonight. I wanted to talk to you.”
“That’s all we do,” he said. “Talk.”
This time, it was she who fell silent.
“Look — I’ve got to go. Dinner. With a British fund manager. Can I call you tomorrow?”
“Of course.” From your plane, she wanted to say, or your hotel?
After that, Jo had no interest whatsoever in food. She called down to the bar for a glass of wine, drank it in the bathtub, and curled up in front of the BBC.
THE QUEEN, AS MARGAUX STRAND HAD CALLED IT, TURNED out to be a coffeehouse on the High Street, shoehorned between Queens’ College and St. Giles.
“Claims to be the oldest coffeehouse in England,” Peter confided, “but probably isn’t. And now that they’ve tarted up the place, it’s lost all character — might as well be a Starbucks. Used to be a claustrophobic hole. Did smashing fry-ups.”
He glanced disapprovingly around the Queen’s interior, which Jo gathered had suffered an expansion at some point in the past two decades, then sniffed at his coffee in its trendy glass mug. “Used to be filtered,” he observed. “Now it’s Americano. Can’t think why Margaux bothers. Must be habit. Or convenience — ”
Neither habit nor convenience seemed to drive Margaux this morning, however. She had ordered them to meet her at eight o’clock — Jo distinctly remembered her saying eight o’clock — but as the coffee drained from their mugs and the croissants were consumed, the doorway remained stubbornly Margaux free.