“That old tart? Too busy hunting for her second husband. She packed up his things, sent him over to us, and that was that.”
He was silent for a moment. “I think my dad likes him best.”
There was a note in Jasper’s voice that made him sound very lost, and very young.
“You know Rich, he—he dresses right. He and my dad like so much of the same stuff. I feel like, I have to try so much harder for him not to get at me, you know?” Jasper’s mouth had set. “I’m going to show him, though. Be the perfect president, and for once he’ll have to admit I didn’t mess up.”
“Well, if you’re in charge now, you could just throw all of the old boys out of the club,” Emma pointed out, with a mischievous glint. “Declare a new dress code. T-shirts only.”
Jasper let out a roar of laughter and flung back his curls. “Oh, I feel so much better when I talk to you. Wish I could take you along in my pocket to this dinner.”
Emma held her breath. It was happening. He was going to ask her. She pictured herself sweeping into dinner on Jasper’s arm, the hot joy of his mouth on hers. The way their friends’ eyes would linger.They make a beautiful couple,someone would whisper. And later, in his rooms, he would make her his, tongue tracing unhurried spirals on her skin. It all began with his next words.
But as Jasper leaned in, his foot knocked the camera bag. It slid down the roof, gathering pace. Emma flung out an arm. Too late, she realized she was leaning too far. The world tilted. She heard Jasper shout. Then the slates bit into her cheek. She was rolling, faster and faster. The crenellated wall loomed, the last thin strip of matter between her and flight into the sky. The cathedral was ten stories high. She clawed at the tiles. Rattling filling her ears.
Then her back hit something solid, and the sky stopped moving. She drew in a shaky breath. She was lying in the shadow of the wallaround the roof, the camera bag wedged into the small of her back. It hadn’t been clear from above, but the roof evened out into a flat space here. She lay still a moment in silent gratitude.
Thunderous rattling announced Jasper’s arrival. His face appeared above her, glowing with enthusiasm. “That was amazing. The way you threw yourself after the bag. So reckless. You’re properly adventurous, aren’t you?”
“Mmmph,” croaked Emma, feeling rather battered. “Yes. So adventurous. Could you—?”
A strong hand scooped Emma’s head and helped her sit up.
“There. Any better?”
His arm was around her back, his legs tangled with hers. Her skin thrilled. There, where his breath brushed her cheek. Where his hand rested at the secret curve of her hip.
As though someone else moved her, Emma saw her fingers curl around Jasper’s neck. Heard a sound burst from her lungs when their lips touched. Felt the wondrous sharp heat on her scalp as Jasper buried his hand in her hair, and pulled. Her body melted where they touched, until she was supine and almost keening in his grip. Jasper drew back. A slow smile wreathed his face.
With delicious deliberation, he lifted the camera bag and placed it behind them. There, in the narrow strip of stone between roof and sky, he began undoing her buttons. Behind his head, glory-tinged clouds soared in an endless sky. His fingers, roughened by ropes and salt air, traced her smile. She was warm and liquid, atoms of sunlight held together by longing alone.
She pulled him to her.
She was going to implode if she couldn’t tell someone, right away. And there was one person she knew would want to hear. Who would know exactly what she was feeling, and gasp in all of the right places.
Julia’s room was in East Court, a little jewel box of a courtyard covered in drifting vines. Julia answered the door in a pink bathrobe, her hair twisted in twin buns.
“I slept with Jasper.”
Julia pulled Emma inside the room with something perilously close to a screech. “Tell. Me. Everything.”
Within minutes, Emma had been tied into a spare robe, and a parade of Korean face masks and snacks laid out on the coffee table.
“Right.” Julia cozied herself next to Emma. “Full story, please.”
It took an hour to go through the details to Julia’s satisfaction. By the time they were done, the muscles in Emma’s stomach hurt from laughing so much.
“What about you?” asked Emma, smoothing a sheet mask over her face.
“Me what?” said Julia, from the depths of her own mask. Only the slits at her eyes and mouth moved. It gave her a wonderfully ghoulish look.
“I’ve nothing as exciting as you. On a roof, no less? Although. Richard Wellesley-Jones. I’ve always—and I never thought he—but lately, I wondered…”
Emma had never imagined the poised Julia Colefax-Lee speaking anything less than a full sentence. Let alone twisting her fingers in her lap like a schoolgirl. It was impossible to see a blush through the mask, but Emma would have bet her month’s student allowance that one was there.
“Julia.”
“Right. Well. He hasn’t exactly said anything. But Rich isn’t obvious like that. He just looks, you know? I’ve not told anyone else. Just you.”
