Dark Blue: Study in Seduction, Book 1 by Natasha Bond Read Free Book Online

because, deep down, she recognised that arguing her case was the whole point of the exercise. Even so it had been like wrestling with an intellectual Colossus.
    “I think his political satires have been overlooked by the general critical community,” she’d told him.
    “Really? Hmm. You may have a point to a degree, but this is meant to be an essay on the forbidden nature of his work, so I’m going to recommend some additional reading. Now, let’s examine your assertions in more detail…”
    And so he’d gone on, examining and discussing her bloody assertions until she longed to be zapped by lightning. She stabbed the last blackcurrant with her fork and swallowed it.
    “I needn’t guess who you’re thinking about,” said Emma.
    Carla rolled her eyes, then pasted on a smile. “I was, but I’m not anymore. I’m most definitely ready to move on.”
    “Come on, then.” Emma raised her voice a little. “And screw Le Prof!”
    Before going clubbing, they headed out on an obligatory pub crawl that began with the Blue Boar, an ancient inn next door to Christ Church College. As they approached the pub, everyone did the usual fumble for their IDs, knowing they wouldn’t get past the bar staff or bouncers without them. Carla and Michael, a medical research postdoc who supplemented his lab salary with a little tutoring, were the only ones not searching their wallets. As they squeezed around a table inside the tiny bar, the chimes of Great Tom, the bell on top of Christ Church, started their nightly toll.
    Michael looked at his watch. “Ah, five past nine,” he said.
    “Time to hang your knickers on the line.” The words just slipped out of her mouth, and she winced.
    Michael threw her a quizzical look. “What?”
    “Nothing. Just something silly Stephen used to say. It was an in-joke between us. I guess it must sound crazy when taken out of context.”
    “Stephen?” His face fell, and Carla wasn’t sure whether he was disappointed that she might have a partner or had simply decided she was a bit crazy.
    “Stephen was my husband. He’s dead, I’m afraid.” It was a blunt way of breaking the news to such a sweet young bloke, but Carla had learned from experience that it was far better to get the information over quickly and clearly. She’d found that it was the best tactic so that people didn’t go down that whole route of asking her what Stephen did and had they got any children, and so on. That was a conversation she didn’t want to even start. In fact, the familiar little flutter in the stomach had stirred even at the prospect.
    Michael rubbed the bridge of his nose as if he wanted to wipe away his faux pas. “I’m so sorry. For what I said and for…for your loss.” He closed his eyes. “And what I just said was even worse.”
    She shook her head. “Please don’t beat yourself up. It’s been four years now.”
    “Oh, that’s okay, then!” he said before holding up his hands in horror. “Oh shit, Carla, I didn’t mean that. I just… Oh fuck, I don’t know what I meant. I’m digging a hole the size of Wales, aren’t I?”
    She smiled and resisted the urge to pat his arm. “Oh, much bigger than Wales. I’d say it’s a Grand Canyon of a hole, at the very least. Really, it is okay. It’s been a long time.”
    Michael gulped his pint and changed the subject. “Listen to that bloody bell. Only in Oxford could anybody be pompous enough to think a bell should chime one hundred and one times a night.”
    Ignoring the urge to laugh at the beer froth on his upper lip, Carla nodded in agreement. “Nothing surprises me in Oxford anymore. It has more traditions and rituals than a Gypsy wedding and a bar mitzvah combined, but why do they ring the bell so many times?”
    “I think it has something to do with the number of original scholars of the college. Some say it used to be the signal for the colleges to lock their gates. It rings at five past nine because it’s still on Oxford time, and