The Independent Bride Read online

  Steven’s eyes crinkled wickedly. ‘Purely practical. I don’t carry a corkscrew. With champagne you don’t need one.’

  She gave up and served the food.

  He approved her choice, savoured the olives, raved about the cheese. He also plied her with a lovely creamy, biscuity champagne from a coolbag and put her through the third degree. Sitting cross-legged opposite her, he dragged stuff out of her she had not even told her cousins.

  ‘So what happened to the feud?’

  Pepper spilt some of her third glass. ‘What?’

  ‘The first time we met you said you were going to try to make peace in a family feud.’

  She was surprised. ‘You remember that?’

  He toasted her silently. ‘I remember everything you ever said to me.’

  ‘Even when you were so vile to me at Indigo?’

  He had the grace to look ashamed. ‘It was a bad day for me. And then you started throwing your weight about and it seemed as if you were the worst sort of aggressive woman. I think I was so nasty because I felt a fool.’

  ‘A fool?’ She didn’t understand.

  ‘I told you,’ Steven said levelly. ‘I remember everything you’ve ever said to me. On the plane you were—wonderful.’

  Their eyes met. All of a sudden Pepper was breathless. Maybe he was a little bit dazed after all, then.

  He leaned towards her.

  A great wave of confusion washed over. She looked away, straightening, swallowing. It was the tiniest recoil. Her body moved a few millimetres, that was all.

  But Steven stopped as if he had been shot.

  There was silence. Fool, fool, fool, yelled Pepper’s inner commentator. But she could not think of a thing to say.

  And then Steven was saying easily, ‘So, tell me about the feud.’

  She was grateful for the lifeline. And disappointed that she needed it. She paddled back into shallow waters and tried to concentrate.

  She drummed up a smile from somewhere. ‘Peace made. In fact, I’m rooming with my cousins.’ She smiled more easily at the thought. ‘They’re great. A real education.’

  Steven replaced her spilt champagne. ‘How so?’

  ‘I’ve never done girl-talk before,’ Pepper said seriously. ‘Ask me about a P/E ratio and I’m fine. But all that sitting round rapping at midnight—hell, no.’

  He was bewildered. ‘Sorry—not with you.’

  She grinned. ‘How to be hot. How to be cool. How to say more than you mean. And how to find the ES.’

  Steven blinked. ‘I’m lost. What’s the ES?’

  Pepper bubbled over. ‘Endangered Species. The single, straight, solvent male.’

  His eyes danced suddenly. ‘Now, there I’m with you. And you can stop looking.’

  All desire to laugh left her. ‘What?’ she said uncertainly.

  He took her hand. His grip was very strong and his hand was hot. She scanned his face. There was a faint colour along his cheekbones and his breath was definitely coming faster. It wasn’t exactly the pirate back, but there was more than a hint of recklessness in his dark eyes.

  Maybe this was better than dazed, thought Pepper in confusion. Was it her imagination, or could she feel his blood pulsing through in time to her own?

  ‘Only area of debate is my solvency,’ he murmured provocatively. ‘Come back to my place and I’ll show you my portfolio.’

  It hung in the air, half a joke, half a step further on the road. A road she wanted to travel. Didn’t she?

  Pepper gulped. This was the sort of sexy teasing that she knew Izzy and Jemima relished. She knew you were supposed to tease right back. Only she could not think of a thing to say.

  She froze, and sat there, wretched at her own incompetence.

  Steven Konig seemed to forgive her. More, he seemed to understand. He touched her face very gently, like a promise.

  ‘Time to read to you, perhaps?’

  Was this where he read her some wildly sexy love poetry? Would that make it easier to take that crucial next step? Pepper found she was torn between excitement and acute embarrassment. But the book he produced was a paperback and she knew the title.

  ‘The Wind in the Willows?’ she said incredulously.

  ‘You said you loved it,’ he said simply. ‘And this is supposed to be a perfect day.’

  If he had still been holding her hand she would have responded to him then. Without thought, without reserve.

  But he wasn’t holding her hand any more. Or even looking at her. He was opening the book and resting it against his bended knees.

  ‘Now, listen,’ he said, and began to read from the book.

  It was, indeed, a perfect day.

  He read to her. And then they talked. Then they lay peacefully side by side, watching the play of light on water, not saying anything. The shadows lengthened and the birds began to wake up. A little breeze arose. Pepper shivered in her market-bought top. But she did not want to leave the shelter of the willow curtain.

  ‘We should go,’ said Steven.

  Everything in Pepper screamed, No! Not yet!

  But he did not move. It was as if he, too, did not want to venture out from their enchanted hiding place.

  Not looking at her, he said, ‘Want to come back and see the college properly?’

  Pepper was hugely relieved. ‘Sure.’

  She had no idea what time it was, but the evening was certainly gathering in. She had a day return ticket on the train. But she did not even ask about the timetable of the last train to London. Somehow she felt that the day had a natural rhythm and it would be bad luck not to go with the flow.

  Well, that was what she told herself. In her heart of hearts she admitted that she just wanted to be with Steven Konig for as long as she could get. She had never wanted to be with anyone like that before. Usually she could not wait to get back to the project of the moment. To her real life, as she thought of it. Only now this felt like the only thing in her life that was real.

  They took the punt back to the boathouse. It was even busier than it had been in the afternoon.

  ‘We could eat here, if you wanted?’ Steven nodded at tables under the trees. ‘Or a drink?’

  Pepper shook her head. ‘Not hungry.’

  Well, she was. But not for food or warm English beer.

  She packed up the remains of the picnic and the bag containing her business suit as he pulled the punt into its mooring with expert precision. He handed her out of the boat.

  ‘Careful,’ said Pepper, wobbling a bit as she put a foot to dry land, ‘you don’t want the elephant to drag you into the water. I can be a real klutz.’

  He looked at her frowningly. But an attendant came up to take the cushions from their punt and Steven had to take time out to pay him.

  When that was done he turned to her and said, ‘Are you seriously calling yourself an elephant?’

  Pepper flung up a hand. ‘Don’t let’s talk about my failings,’ she said dryly. ‘It’s been such a lovely day.’

  His frown deepened.

  But she said, ‘Please?’ and he gave in, though he continued to look disturbed.

  ‘Walk back? Or I can call a taxi? Or we can ride part of the way on the bus. Very ethnic.’

  Pepper voted for walking. ‘You said it, after all. Food in, energy out. Exercise is exactly what I need.’

  Steven stopped dead. ‘Will you please stop putting yourself down?’ he said furiously. ‘I’ll walk to the North Pole with you if you like. But no more insulting yourself, please.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Pepper, taken aback. She moved slightly away from him, clasping her arms about herself. As always, when she felt criticised, she heard her voice turn frosty. ‘You’ve got it.’

  ‘I didn’t mean—hell!’ His eyes sharpened. ‘You’re cold. We are certainly not walking back if you’re cold. Here, take this.’

  He had been carrying the jacket of his business suit over his arm. Now he stopped and swung it round her shoulders.

  H
e took her back to the college. There were a lot more students than there had been this morning. They stood around, in the porter’s lodge and chatting outside in the sunshine. It must be her guilty conscience that made her feel that they were all looking at her, Pepper thought.

  Or, if not conscience, then her tee shirt and turquoise skirt, she thought wryly. They could not be used to seeing their Master escorting a woman who looked so—well—unbuttoned. Between the slogan in sequins and the willow seeds in her tangled hair, she felt younger and more unserious than she had ever felt in her life before. She quite liked the sensation. But it made her feel uneasy all the same.

  ‘I’m letting you down,’ she muttered, embarrassed.

  He snorted. ‘You have no idea how much you’re boosting my image. Now—the full guided tour.’

  He took her everywhere, ending with a flourish in the main quadrangle, overlooked by late medieval brickwork. ‘Welcome to Queen Margaret’s College,’ he said formally.

  Pepper was silent for a moment. She felt humbled. She had been to some of the most distinguished seats of learning in the world, one way and another, but for sheer beauty she had never seen anything to rival Queen Margaret’s. She felt even more out of place in her tawdry cotton and sequins, but Steven looked as if he’d been born there.

  ‘Very impressive,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ve seen story books with Gothic illustrations like this.’ Her gesture included the whole quad.

  ‘Yes,’ said Steven depressed. ‘It’s pure fairy tale. And the roof leaks.’

  She was startled into a spurt of laughter. ‘What?’

  ‘Gothic building is a lot more picturesque than solid. The upkeep is ruinous.’

  Pepper bent her powerful financial brain to the problem and perceived a flaw. ‘But surely you must have endowments? Benefactors?’

  ‘No, that’s what we need.’ He made a face at an ill-tempered gargoyle just below the roofline. After a brief hesitation, he added casually, ‘Actually, that’s why they wanted me as Master in the first place. I’m not your traditional head of college, by any means.’

  Pepper looked at him. He had removed his jacket and tie, but his shirt had withstood the oily boat and the shedding willow better than her tee shirt. And it was not just a matter of dress. Steven Konig had that indefinable air of contained power, as if he had thought through all the big problems of life and knew where he stood on every one of them. He made the men she had known before, men like Ed Ivanov, look like boys.

  She said tartly, ‘What do they want, Methuselah?’

  He gave a startled laugh. ‘Maybe. If he had a family trust wanting to invest in education.’

  He was laughing, but somehow Pepper knew that this was a sore point.

  ‘Explain.’

  But he shook his head, shrugging. ‘Dull stuff to end a perfect day. Let me take you to the buttery and buy you a beer. Now, that’s something that your average tourist would miss. Very ethnic.’

  Pepper laughed and let him walk her round the quad to the chapel door. But she said, ‘I’d still like to know why a college this old is short of funds.’

  Steven gave a crack of laughter. He opened the heavy oak door for her. ‘Our history: we were set up out of pique by a woman who wanted to prove she cared about learning just as much as her husband did.’

  Their steps echoed on the old flags of the chapel. It was smaller and plainer than was expected. She said so.

  ‘Quite. The college was a five-day wonder with Queen Margaret. She got bored and never got around to paying up the second instalment. Come along. Library next.’

  They went out into the summer evening again.

  ‘But surely, after all these centuries…’

  ‘We’ve never been a grand college,’ said Steven. ‘Small tends to mean poor, you know. All through the eighteenth century, when every other college’s pupils were making their fortune, we turned out dull clerics. No Indian nabobs.’

  Pepper was entertained. ‘And since?’

  He pulled a comical face. ‘Same old story. No Prime Ministers. No pop moguls. Every college in Oxford is on the fund-raising trail these days. Queen Margaret’s starts right at the back of the field. And I’m turning out to be rubbish.’

  He smiled, but she could see that it really bugged him.

  She slid her arm through his. ‘Maybe we should talk about this. I’ve never actually been a fund-raiser, but we covered it in business school. And I got the prize for problem solving.’

  He squeezed her hand. ‘Then we must definitely talk about it.’

  He walked her through the library, a simple eighteenth century room full of beautiful wood and bulging bookshelves. ‘Needs an extension,’ said Steven. ‘And rewiring. We’ll skip the dining hall. They will still be at dinner. But you’ll like the buttery.’

  The buttery turned out to be a vaulted cellar, with a wooden floor and rough tables, full of students and the smell of fast food.

  ‘Hi there, Kong,’ said one who was acting as barman. He gave Steven a high five and called out to a group at the end of the room, ‘Hey, Francis, Geoff—it’s the King.’

  Most people looked up, but nobody got too excited about their Master appearing in their beer cellar, thought Pepper. They accepted her presence without much interest, too. The little knot at the end of the room turned out to have been standing round a dartboard. They challenged Steven to a dart match.

  ‘And your guest, too, of course.’

  ‘Ms Calhoun,’ Steven said, introducing her meticulously, and to Pepper, ‘Do you play darts?’

  ‘I had a bow and arrow when I was child,’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘That’ll do. Two against two, Geoff, okay? The usual stakes.’

  By the end of the match she was hitting the dartboard with sixty per cent of her throws.

  ‘They like you, don’t they?’ she murmured, as he sat down after throwing three darts rather badly.

  Steven was unmoved. ‘That’s because I always lose.’ His eyes glinted. ‘Even when you aren’t here to support me.’

  She put her nose in the air. ‘That’s cheating.’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s a way of buying a round without anyone feeling patronised.’

  Pepper was puzzled.

  ‘I was a student here. I remember when it was a choice between a pint or a paperback,’ he said with feeling. ‘And I like it in here. Makes a really nice change from the senior common room.’

  ‘What have you got against the senior common room?’ she teased.

  Steven looked irritated. ‘Ask rather what they’ve got against me. Some of them don’t like it when I accept television invitations like the Indigo thing. It’s supposed to be part of my job to keep the college in the public eye. But the Dean and his party think it makes me a media junkie. Which is just another thing to put on the charge sheet. Along with setting off fireworks on the tower when I was nineteen and not being a proper academic.’

  Before she could answer he was called back to the dartboard. He went.

  She studied him. He took his time to measure the distance. Then threw. Clearly he brought the same concentration to the bar room game as he did to everything else.

  Care and precision, thought Pepper. That was what Steven Konig applied to everything. Darts. Entrepreneurship. Kissing girls in punts.

  Making love?

  She gave a little shiver of pure lust at the thought.

  He threw a score which was high enough to be respectable, low enough to get him beaten. Just as he’d said he would.

  ‘You’re good, aren’t you?’ she said as he resumed his seat beside her.

  He looked straight into her eyes and said with total innocence, ‘My co-ordination has always been much admired.’

  Pepper did not blink. ‘You’re trying to make me blush and you’re not going to,’ she told him calmly. ‘Tell me why you’re not a proper academic.’

  Steven shrugged. ‘I’m not a brilliant original scientist. Kplant isn’t at the cutting edge of research.
What I do brilliantly is put together isolated bits of research and see what the implications are.’

  Pepper thought about it. ‘But don’t lots of people do that sort of thing?’

  ‘No. Scientists are awful snobs. And so narrow. No decent research scientist will stray outside his own field. And simple businessmen won’t understand the basic science. So I’ve pretty much got the field to myself.’ He pulled a face. ‘That’s how I got my short-lived Professor’s Chair. And why I do about twenty jobs at any one time.’

  She said slowly, ‘I thought you were an entrepreneur.’

  ‘So I was, for a bit. Now I’m just non-executive Chair of my own company. Or at least I am until I’ve finished my tour of duty here. But originally I was a chemist.’ He pulled a face. ‘Sorry! Boring or what?’

  ‘No,’ said Pepper. She wanted to touch him so much that she thought she must look as if she were on fire. And he thought he was boring?

  He grinned. ‘There’s no need to be kind. I’m under no illusion. I always was pretty boring. And when I first started to find a way to synthesise nutrients with texture, I was a real social liability.’ His eyes lit with reminiscent amusement. ‘Courtney once told me that I talked through two courses in formal hall without drawing breath or noticing that I hadn’t eaten anything. She was not pleased at the time.’

  For a moment Pepper flinched. Who was Courtney?

  She longed to ask. She didn’t dare to ask. She had no right to ask.

  She said instead, ‘Is that what you always wanted to do?’

  ‘Make synthetic food?’ Steven looked at her as if she were crazy. ‘I don’t think any adolescent boy dreams of stuff like that. I wanted to go to the moon. Or save the world, maybe.’

  ‘So how did you fall into synthetic food?’

  ‘I was good at chemistry.’ He leaned back in the oak settle, looking round the cheerful bar, smiling reminiscently. ‘I made terrific explosions. It was a great social asset.’

  ‘What?’

  He put his hands behind his head. ‘I was a bit of a refugee when it came to schoolwork. I loved it. But I came from a high-rise, where every other boy my age was into football violence and hanging round the town centre. The nearest they got to an interest in science was stealing spare parts from cars. Only child, too. I was a real outsider.’