A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [84]
“I’m sorry the evening ended on such a serious note,” he said softly. “I did have a lovely time.”
“Was the dinner really all right?” I asked. We’d talked about the secrets of the universe, but I was more worried about how his stomach was faring.
“It was more than all right,” he assured me.
My face softened at his beautiful, ancient features. How could people walk by him on the street and not gasp? Before I could stop myself, my toes were gripping the old rug and I was stretching up to kiss him quickly on the cheek. His skin felt smooth and cold like satin, and my lips felt unusually warm against his flesh.
Why did you do that? I asked myself, coming down off my toes and gazing at the questionable doorknob to hide my confusion.
It was over in a matter of seconds, but as I knew from using magic to get Notes and Queries off the Bodleian’s shelf, a few seconds was all it took to change your life.
Matthew studied me. When I showed no sign of hysteria or an inclination to make a run for it, he leaned toward me and kissed me slowly once, twice in the French manner. His face skimmed over mine, and he drank in my scent of willow sap and honeysuckle. When he straightened, Matthew’s eyes looked smokier than usual.
“Good night, Diana,” he said with a smile.
Moments later, leaning against the closed door, I spied the blinking number one on my answering machine. Mercifully, the machine’s volume was turned down.
Aunt Sarah wanted to ask the same question I’d asked myself.
I just didn’t want to answer.
Chapter 13
Matthew came to collect me after lunch—the only creature among the human readers in the Selden End. While he walked me under the ornately painted exposed beams, he kept up a steady patter of questions about my work and what I’d been reading.
Oxford had turned resolutely cold and gray, and I pulled my collar up around my neck, shivering in the damp air. Matthew seemed not to mind and wasn’t wearing a coat. The gloomy weather made him look a little less startling, but it wasn’t enough to make him blend in entirely. People turned and stared in the Bodleian’s central courtyard, then shook their heads.
“You’ve been noticed,” I told him.
“I forgot my coat. Besides, they’re looking at you, not me.” He gave me a dazzling smile. A woman’s jaw dropped, and she poked her friend, inclining her head in Matthew’s direction.
I laughed. “You are so wrong.”
We headed toward Keble College and the University Parks, making a right turn at Rhodes House before entering the labyrinth of modern buildings devoted to laboratory and computer space. Built in the shadow of the Museum of Natural History, the enormous redbrick Victorian cathedral to science, these were monuments of unimaginative, functional contemporary architecture.
Matthew pointed to our destination—a nondescript, low-slung building—and fished in his pocket for a plastic identity card. He swiped it through the reader at the door handle and punched in a set of codes in two different sequences. Once the door unlocked, he ushered me to the guard’s station, where he signed me in as a guest and handed me a pass to clip to my sweater.
“That’s a lot of security for a university laboratory,” I commented, fiddling with the badge.
The security only increased as we walked down the miles of corridors that somehow managed to fit behind the modest façade. At the end of one hallway, Matthew took a different card out of his pocket, swiped it, and put his index finger on a glass panel next to a door. The glass panel chimed, and a touch pad appeared on its surface. Matthew’s fingers raced over the numbered keys. The door clicked softly open, and there was a clean, slightly antiseptic smell reminiscent of hospitals and empty professional kitchens. It derived from unbroken expanses of tile, stainless steel, and electronic equipment.
A series of glass-enclosed rooms stretched ahead of us. One held a round table for meetings, a black monolith of a monitor, and several computers. Another held an old wooden desk, a leather chair, an enormous Persian rug that must have been worth