Read Online Scandalous by Tilly Bagshawe - Free Book Online

was one supposed to remember not to forget things; that was the question?
I’ll do it as soon as I’ve iced the cake.
    Biting her lip, eyes narrowed in concentration, she began tracing a perfect italic
T
in icing sugar across the gooey chocolate.
Like snow on a ploughed field.
Jenny and Jean Paul had gone out to Grantchester to make snowmen with the kids. Sensing Theresa’s loneliness, Jenny had asked her to join them, but Theresa didn’t feel like being the odd man out. Besides, Theo might be back anyminute. Whatever was troubling him, he wouldn’t want to come home and find a dark, empty house.
    She finished the cake, then disappeared to hunt for kindling so she could light a nice, welcoming fire.
    She’d completely forgotten about the robin.

    In St. Michael’s wine cellar, curled up naked on the sofa under a big pile of blankets, Sasha Miller lay in Professor Theo Dexter’s arms in blissful shock.
    Will Temple’s Casanova reputation would never recover.
    “What are you thinking?” Theo softly stroked her hair.
    I’m thinking about what my wedding dress will look like. I’m thinking about waking up with you every morning for the rest of my life. I’m thinking about spending long, heavenly days in a laboratory with you by my side, unraveling the mysteries of the universe together. I’m thinking that maybe I
do
like sex after all…
    “Nothing. Only that I’m happy.”
    He smiled and kissed the top of her head. “So am I, Sasha. You do realize we’re going to have to be discreet about this?
We
know we’re not doing anything wrong. But the university authorities might not be so understanding. And Theresa…”
    Sasha put a finger to his lips. “I completely understand.”
    I’m a mature woman now. I’m in love with an important, brilliant, troubled man. I must handle this like an adult and show Theo that he can trust me.
    The truth was, she didn’t want to tell anybody anyway. Some nameless, inner voice told her that Georgia and the rest of her undergraduate friends might not understand. Keeping it a secret somehow made it all the more precious. As for Theo’s wife, well, life was complicated. They’d have to cross that bridge when they came to it.

CHAPTER FIVE

    B Y THE END of her first year at Cambridge, Sasha Miller was already being spoken of among the physics faculty as a rising star. Not only did she gain the top score in the university in her first-year exams—her independent research project on astrophysical plasmas was easily PhD standard—but she consistently showed an instinctive flair for experimental physics that was rare in one so young. Especially a woman. Girls at Cambridge tended to play it safe, dutifully learning and regurgitating the prevailing academic wisdom of their elders and betters. But Sasha Miller took risks. She was an original thinker, a scientist not just of the mind but of the soul. If she fulfilled just half of her early promise, she might well have great things ahead of her. As long, that is, as she didn’t blow it by doing something reckless.
    There was no such thing as a secret at Cambridge. Like all universities it was a hotbed of gossip and intrigue. Within a month of their first tryst in the St. Michael’s wine cellar, news of Professor Dexter’s love affair with his star pupil began to spread. Rumors in the Senior Common Room became whispers at high table. Soon every science fellow in the university knew—or thought they knew—about Dexter’s latest extramarital escapade. Among Sasha’s friends, however, the affair was still a deadly secret. As instructed by Theo, Sasha had told nobody, not evenGeorgia. The Chinese wall between fellows and undergraduates meant that the gossip was effectively contained. Theo got to bask in the envy of his peers, safe in the knowledge that nothing could be proved against him, while Sasha found herself becoming more and more isolated from her friends, unable to confide in them or share what was rapidly becoming the most