Moth to the Flame by Maxine Barry

her surprise, thought about that, then slowly nodded his head. ‘Perhaps that’s true. Many men, psychologically, have a certain protection.’
    â€˜But not you,’ Davina thought, then realised, when he started and threw her an astonished look, that she’d actually spoken the impulsive, instinctive thought right out loud.
    Too late to take it back now. She looked at him with steady green eyes. Gareth felt his breath catching. It had been an outrageous thing to say to a man she’d known less than an hour. But she was spot on. He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I suppose living and breathing the Romantic Poets for the majority of my life, has caused my hard shell to be rubbed away.’
    Davina felt like crying. Damn him, he was doing it again. Undermining her. Where was the swaggering bully David’s letters had conjured up so vividly? Where was the bitter twisted man who could drive one of his students to suicide?
    Obviously, he was a far more complex character than she’d ever imagined. A mass of contradictions, human failings, human majesties . . . Just like herself. No! No, she must not keep linking them together like this. He was the enemy!
    She reached for her wine and this time took a hearty gulp. It didn’t seem to help much.
    â€˜So, you have a Flame Moth. A female . . . ?’ he prompted, eager to steer the conversation away from such soul-scraping intimacy. Although he already knew, in his heart of hearts, that they were already destined to become lovers, already set on some predetermined course, it didn’t mean that he had to rush ahead like a blind, stumbling fool.
    â€˜Yes,’ Davina dragged in a wavering breath, forcing her mind to concentrate. ‘A moth who learns that “Love is a flame for gossamer-minded fools . . .” And that’s the only line I’ve written so far!’ She laughed, a bit nervously, showing that she, too, was not quite so comfortable with heart-shattering revelations as she might appear.
    Gareth leaned back, both physically and mentally. Time to come up for air. And did he need it! His heart was thundering so hard in his chest he felt as though he’d just swum a mile under water.
    As if sensing the sudden change in atmosphere, Sin-Jun chose that moment to rise. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of St Bede’s,’ Sin-Jun bellowed, to sudden silence. Fluently he went on to introduce Davina, explaining her Honorary status for the duration of Hilary Term, her commission to edit the anthology, and his hope that the English Literature students would attend the lecture she’d agreed to give on the 22nd of April. There was the expected enthusiastic round of applause.
    Seated at her table beside Jared, Alicia especially felt a rush of heady excitement. Once she told her father that Davina was at St Bede’s, he was bound to come down, hoping to wangle an interview with her. She wrote such powerful, awe-inspiring, sometimes frightening poetry. If only Alicia could get up the nerve to speak to her. But that night, after Dinner had finished, the poetess was quickly surrounded by avid students, so she and Jared left early, she to write up her notes on the play, he to revise for his finals.
    Finally, nearing midnight, Davina managed to escape Hall. It seemed to Gareth that she left an ominous feeling of emptiness in her wake.
    As she walked through the semi-lit darkness of the college, through Becket arch and across the lawns, she paused to stare down at the pond. A light was on in the library—some poor soul burning the midnight oil no doubt—and it cast just enough light on the pond for her to see the ponderous turning of a black-edged fin. Did fish sleep, she wondered? And imagined a poem where she was a fish, never sleeping, turning endlessly in a pond that never grew any bigger . . . Restlessly, she turned the poem off, and walked to her new Rooms, undressing and stripping off with a leaden-limbed weariness that had her