A Matter of Trust (14 page)

Something even better. Even more dramatic.

‘Really?' she snarled. And thrust herself against him.

Taken by surprise, Lisle took a staggering step backwards. He felt her hands cup his face, and then her eyes were so close to his, the green fire of them wiped out everything else.
He
felt her sweet breath against his tired skin and then . . .

Her lips met his with as much passion as sweetness, forcing his mouth open, her tongue darting into his mouth to assail and tantalise. He could feel the super-softness of the cashmere sweater pressing against the cool cotton of his shirt. And, beneath the wool, the two hard discs of her nipples, grinding against his lower ribs, turning his knees to water.

He could smell her perfume, a delicate, light, floral scent that invaded his nostrils, settling around him, confining him, trapping him, like a fly in a gossamer web.

Her fingers dug in to the vulnerable flesh of his cheeks, but he didn't care. Her touch awoke with a vengeance something that had been long dormant inside him. Something male. Something animal. Something tender, and precious, and worrying and . . . .

Nesta broke the contact and stood back, trembling.

‘Can I get arrested for that too?' she asked, her angry defiant challenge coming out more like a soul-shaken croak.

Lisle smiled grimly. ‘I'm not sure,' he said shakily. ‘But it felt too good to be legal.'

And with that, he decided that it was probably a good time to beat a tactical retreat. He had other things to do and people to see. And to continue questioning Nesta Aldernay whilst they were both in such an agitated state
was
probably
not
a good idea!

*           *           *

Callum walked into the lobby of the city's most famous hotel and glanced around curiously. Like most Fellows who lived in their college, he only ever came to the Randolph to dine. Now he approached the desk and smiled briefly.

‘Is Miss Kendall in, please?'

The desk clerk smiled tightly. Another one for the supermodel. The press and fans never gave any of them any peace. ‘I'm afraid Miss Kendall is not seeing anyone, Sir,' he repeated the words by rote. A young man in his late twenties, he'd been on duty for the last four hours, and felt as if he'd said it a thousand times.

Callum, who knew all about body language and had an acute ear for human emotion, read his irritation easily. ‘Popular is she?' he asked sardonically. No doubt a woman who looked like she did was bound to be popular. She probably had to fight men off with a cricket bat. ‘Would you please just tell her that Dr Callum Fielding, the winner of the Kendall Prize, is downstairs and would just like a quick word?' he asked, and the desk clerk smiled brightly.

‘Of course, Dr Fielding,' he said, reaching for the telephone and giving himself a mental
head-slap.
Now that he thought about it, it was obvious the blond giant wasn't the usual run of the mill Marcheta fan!

He turned aside slightly and quietly repeated Callum's request, then hung up and smiled. ‘Miss Kendall will be right down, Sir. If you'd like to take a seat?'

Callum ignored the proffered seat and was standing staring out of the window and across at the Ashmolean Museum when Markie came down. Her eyes instantly found the tall figure, of course. With the autumn sunlight streaming in through the window, giving his fair hair a silver halo, he was a magnet for every eye in the room.

‘Dr Fielding, how nice,' Markie said. She was, in fact, dying to know what he wanted. All night long she'd been tossing and turning restlessly, and it was mainly the memories of this man which had kept her awake.

She was wearing a pair of deep cream slacks, with fairly high-heeled, calf-high brown leather boots. With it she was wearing a peach coloured top with a metallic sheen, and a matching cream jacket. Her long black hair fell free and cascaded down past her shoulders and down her back in a mass of gentle ebony waves. Her make-up was light, and she was wearing long dangling gold earrings. She looked stunning.

‘I was just going out for a walk in the park, while the sun was shining. Care to join me?'
she
asked brightly.

Callum smiled and politely held the door open for her. They didn't say much as they walked past the crowds at the Martyr's Memorial on St Giles, conversation being difficult. Then they had to dodge the tourists on the pavement as they passed the red-and-white brick monstrosity that was Keble College, but once they were inside the parks on Park Road, and the sound of traffic faded, Callum glanced across at her and decided to waste no more time.

‘I rather think we got off on the wrong foot, Miss Kendall,' Callum began somewhat awkwardly. With her high-heeled boots, she was only a few inches or so shorter than himself, and he found he was looking right into her lovely blue eyes.

He felt his loins begin to harden, and he quickly glanced away again, telling himself not to be so juvenile. He was hardly a sex-starved teenager anymore with hormones running amok!

‘I may have given you the impression at the Dinner that . . . Er . . .'

‘You wanted to be rid of me?' Markie asked bluntly, delighted to see a dull flush creep across the fine angular lines of his face. Not many men knew how to blush in this day and age, Markie thought with a tender pang that caught her by surprise.

‘It's all right you know,' she said quickly.
‘I
could see that you wanted to be alone with your friend. He'd had a little bit too much to drink, I think. I hope he's all right now?'

Callum paled. ‘I take it you haven't seen the papers?'

‘No. Why?' Markie asked sharply.

‘Sir Vivian died right after the party. The newspapers are speculating that he was mugged, but as far as I know, the police haven't issued any official statements yet.'

‘Oh no! That's awful. Was he feeling ill, do you think? Perhaps he wasn't tipsy after all.' And now Markie felt acutely guilty. All the time she'd been scoring points off Callum Fielding because she'd felt slighted, and had her ego bruised, that poor old man had been feeling ill. Damn it, she shouldn't have left him on the bench alone like that.

She said as much.

‘I know how you feel,' Callum agreed bleakly. ‘Ever since I heard the news, I've been thinking the same thing. But what worries me most is what Vivian said just before you joined us.'

‘Interrupted you so rudely you mean,' Markie said dryly, then waved a hand vaguely in the air as he made to demur. ‘No, it's OK, that's what it amounted to really. But you seemed to be talking so intently to Dr Ngabe that I was curious. So, what did Sir Vivian say?' she insisted.

‘He told us that somebody at the party
didn't
deserve to be in Oxford,' Callum repeated boldly. ‘He intimated that somebody had somehow cheated, which usually means either on their exams, or via plagiarism. It's one of the worst things that most academics could be accused of, and Sir Vivian wasn't the sort of man to make such an accusation lightly. He loved Oxford with every atom of his being, and something like this, a scandal of this type, would have hurt him very badly.'

Markie stopped walking, and put a hand on his arm. She understood at once the importance of what he was saying. ‘Do you think it was playing on his mind? Could the stress have been too much? You fear he had a heart attack, don't you?'

Callum sighed and shrugged. ‘I don't know. I didn't see him sit down to Dinner, and afterwards I wanted to find him and ask him to explain further. But then I won the award, and everyone wanted to congratulate me, and I never saw him again.' His voice cracked just a little on the final words, and he scowled at his weakness.

‘I'm sorry,' he said gruffly. ‘Sir Vivian was one of my tutors. More than that, I regarded him as my mentor.'

Markie felt his distress and took a step towards him, then groaned aloud as three men with cameras came running up to them.

‘Marcheta, this way!'

‘Give us a smile, Marcheta, you look
gorgeous.'

The youngest one shoved his way between them, and Callum took a few steps backward, looking non-plussed. His body tensed for a moment, as he was clearly wondering if she was being attacked, then, as she went into ‘posing mode' he shot her an astonished look.

‘All right, boys, just a few shots, then you must go and promise not to be a pest. I'm talking with the winner of the Kendall Prize, and we have business to discuss.'

She gave them a few more minutes, then with varying degrees of good-natured reluctance, they left them.

‘Sorry about that, but I've found it's easier in the long run just to give them what they want, then they stop pestering you,' Markie said. Then grinned at him widely. ‘You really do have no idea who I am, do you?'

Callum, his face tight, smiled grimly. ‘Clearly not. I'm sorry, I don't watch much television, so please don't take it the wrong way if I've never seen any of your films. Or, er, music videos or whatever,' he added vaguely. Perfect. He'd come to apologise for his boorish behaviour, now he was insulting her again. What was it about this woman that made him feel so tongue-tied?

Markie laughed. ‘I'm just a model, Dr Fielding. I don't have any acting talent I'm afraid, and I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.'

Callum blinked and found his mouth was
hanging
open, and closed his jaw with a snap. This bewildering woman was like nobody he'd ever met before. One moment she was a vamp, and the latest love interest of the College Casanova. Then she was the all-important Kendall family representative who was awarding him the Kendall Prize, no less. Then she was a supermodel, surrounded by adoring paparazzi. And now she was a down-to-earth girl-next-door who could laugh at herself and knew how to call a spade a spade.

Which one was she?

She smiled across at him, the breeze blowing a strand of hair across her eyes. Raising a hand to brush it away, Markie moved a step closer to him. ‘I'm really sorry about your friend,' she said softly. For all of his height and the solid build of him, there was something touchingly vulnerable about this man.

It made her want to comfort him, and at the same time, throw herself into his arms and demand he take her somewhere private, where she could . . . .

‘Dr Fielding?'

Callum turned abruptly, his eyes piercing the man who'd come up beside him. He didn't know what Markie Kendall had been about to say next, but he knew that he'd very much wanted to hear it, and to have some stranger barge in was enough to make his eyes darken ominously.

Lisle Jarvis stood stock still and tensed.
‘You
are Dr Callum Fielding?' he asked bluntly. He'd been told by the St Bede's porter that Dr Fielding had been asking after a Miss Kendall, who was registered at the Randolph. And at the hotel, the desk clerk, after some persuasion, had told him that he'd overheard Miss Kendall and her visitor say they were going to walk in the park. Now, having had to spend a good half an hour tracking down his quarry, Lisle was in no mood to be given the run around.

The porter at St Bede's had given a very accurate description of Dr Fielding. Very tall, very well built, and very fair. He'd failed to mention that Dr Fielding also had eyes that could stop a charging bull in its paces.

He wondered what had made the man look such daggers at him. And wondered, even more, if Dr Fielding usually had such a temper.

‘Yes, I'm Callum Fielding,' Callum said calmly. The moment of anger had quickly passed, and he was already telling himself that he should be glad of the interruption. He'd probably been just about to make a monumental fool of himself with Markie Kendall anyway.

Although he'd had his fair share of female company since hitting his late teens, he was hardly anyone's idea of a ladies man. He'd spent all of his adult life at Oxford, both living in college, and remaining unmarried.
If
anyone had asked him, he would have said that he would probably just fall into perpetual bachelorhood and become one of those old men that never seemed to leave the city.

A woman like Markie Kendall was way out of his league.

‘I'm DI Jarvis sir,' Lisle said, showing the academic his ID and relaxing slightly as he sensed the tension in the big man subsiding. ‘I have a few questions for you about the murder of Sir Vivian Dalrymple.'

Callum felt a cold hard knot clench his insides. He went pale. For a moment, he felt and heard a roaring in his ears, and the world seemed to recede then suddenly flow back. He blinked.

Lisle watched these signs of shock with interest.

‘Murder?' Callum repeated bleakly. ‘Someone murdered him?'

Beside him, he heard Markie gasp.

‘Yes, Sir. I need to talk to you about the Dinner you attended. I need to know when you last saw Sir Vivian alive, and what you talked about. I think it would be easier if you would follow me back to St Aldates Police Station, Sir. We'll be more comfortable in an interview room, I think,' he added firmly.

‘Just a minute, are you arresting him?' Markie demanded, and Lisle looked at her curiously. He recognised her at once, of course, but until then he hadn't made
the
connection. So Miss Kendall was also ‘Marcheta' was she?

He also instantly picked up on the aggression in her voice, and smiled bleakly. She was expensively dressed and looked just the sort to know all about her rights, and have hot-and-cold running solicitors on tap.

‘No, Miss Kendall, is it? I'm not arresting Dr Fielding. But I am questioning all of Sir Vivian's associates and the people who attended the Dinner the night Sir Vivian's body was found.'

‘In that case, you'll be wanting to talk to me then as well,' Markie said. And smiling brightly, she moved closer to Callum and looped her hand firmly under his elbow. ‘We'll come in together. We both talked to Sir Vivian at the same time, so you can get both our stories at once.'