A Love Like Blood by Marcus Sedgwick Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t worry. It’s your mind that’s closed. That’s all.’
    I started to feel a little nettled by these remarks, especially because she was right. It sounded like a load of hokum to me.
    Yet I didn’t want her to go. I tried to think of something that might keep her interested in me.
    But she was already standing.
    ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I’m tired. I better go. And you have to go back to your conference. And then home to Cambridge, I guess?’
    ‘Cambridge awaits me,’ I confirmed, solemnly. ‘After the weekend. And you, you have to go back to your studies. To Saint Eulalia, I suppose?’
    She stopped putting her coat on when I said that.
    It was a lucky guess, something I’d plucked out of the air that I’d once heard Hunter talk about. I knew no more about it than the name and that it was the story of an early Christian martyr.
    ‘Isn’t that the sort of thing you’re studying, the Sequence of Saint Eulalia? That kind of thing?’
    ‘Oh, so you’re not as uneducated as you make yourself out to be?’
    ‘I’ve read a book or two,’ I said, feigning modesty, apparently quite well. I decided to confess. ‘Something my friend Hunter spoke to me about.’
    She suddenly looked more interested.
    ‘In Cambridge . . . ?’
    ‘Yes, why?’
    ‘What’s your friend’s surname?’
    ‘Wilson. Why?’
    ‘You know Hunter Wilson?’ she said, in genuine surprise. ‘ The Hunter Wilson?’
    ‘I don’t know about “ the ”, but he’s one of my best friends. Why?’
    ‘Because he’s the greatest living Dante scholar, that’s why.’
    That surprised me in turn, but I knew I had an advantage to play and I didn’t want to let it show. I knew Hunter had a passing interest in Dante, had written a book or two on him, outside of his work in the Faculty of English. Almost as a hobby.
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He writes on Dante. Why do you ask?’
    ‘Yes, well, I ask because my PhD is on a particular motif in Dante.’
    She looked thoughtful for a while.
    ‘Anyway, I have to do some reading before bed. I’d better go . . .’
    She hesitated, and I stood, smiling.
    ‘Listen, Charles. Maybe you’d like to meet for a drink over the weekend? Yes? It would be nice to chat some more.’
    I smiled, and told her that would be lovely, and though I already knew she only wanted to see what she could find out about Hunter, I didn’t care. We arranged to meet the following day, Friday, outside the museum in Saint-Germain. She had an English lesson to give first.
    ‘You’re more interesting than you look,’ she said, her teasing nature returning, and I didn’t mind at all, because I could see it was good-natured. ‘Are all Englishmen like you?’
    I laughed.
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘More or less.’
    She left, and I sat down again, watching her go.
    ‘More,’ I quietly said to myself, ‘or less.’
    I emptied my glass.

Chapter 9
     
    The weather on that Friday started no more kindly than the day before, and up at Saint-Germain the wind sliced through the town, and me.
    As soon as the conference had finished for the day, I’d headed for Saint-Lazare again, ignoring the invitations to dinner from various delegates. I doubted their sincerity anyway, wondering if I would be the slaughtered calf at some dinner party to further my humiliation, and I didn’t relish the thought of dragging my way through an evening of more of that. Lucien came up to me and tried to persuade me to join him, but I had decided not to be taken in. Just because he was smiling then didn’t mean I was going to be welcomed back into the fold after my disastrous paper.
    Instead, I went up to Saint-Germain early, well ahead of the time Marian and I were supposed to meet. There were things I wanted to look at.
    It was already growing dark as I got to the park, a long, long piece of old estate land that stretched away from the chateau, along the ridge overlooking the river and the city, before spreading out ‘inland’ and becoming the Forêt de