Miss Grimsleys Oxford Career (13 page)

“I suppose Vicar Snead would tell me that is what comes of spurious scholarship,” she muttered.

As she sat wondering what course to take now, a servant scratched at the door.

Becky Speed opened the door, a parcel in her hands. Her eyes danced with excitement as she held out the package to Ellen.

“Here you are, Miss Grimsley,” she said, her voice breathless as though she had run up three flights of stairs. “You cannot imagine who this is from!”

“Lord Chesney?” Ellen asked.

Becky shook her head. “Oh, I do not think so. He didn't look much like a lord. No, it was that student who brought you the chocolates last week. There I was, beating out the hall rug over the front railing, when he runs across the High, saying something about being late for a tutorial, and tossed me this package.”

Ellen pushed aside her notes. “It must be James Gatewood.” She leaned toward Becky. “He is an original item, Becky, and heavens, I caused him such monstrous trouble yesterday.”

Becky frowned and backed toward the door. “Perhaps it is some sort of incendiary device, ma'am. Perhaps you should not open it.”

Ellen tugged off the brown paper. “Goose! He wasn't that angry!” She paused, the wrapping in her hands. “Goodness knows he could have been. No, he was rather sweet about the whole thing. Heavens knows why. When I think …”

She stopped, embarrassed, and looked at the books that came spilling from the wrapping. “Becky, it is Chesney's
Commentary
!” She opened the slim volume. “And look, it hasn't even been cut yet!”

A note fell from the book. “‘Fair Hermia, if Miss Dignam's Select Female Academy is as disapproving of mice as it is of all forms of scholarship and original thought, you will not be interrupted as you study this work,’ ” she read. “‘The other book should provide further insight.’ ”

“What a kind man,” Ellen said as she opened the other volume in her lap. “Becky, I do not think he can afford to give me books. He does not appear entirely prosperous.”

“There is more writing on the back of that note,” Becky said. Ellen turned it over. “‘I hope you have not discarded your breeches and student gown. The larger volume must be returned to me at All Souls. Behave yourself. Jim.’ ”

Becky sucked in her breath. “Cheeky sort, Miss Grimsley.”

“Not at all,” Ellen protested. “I would say that he is more like a big brother.” She considered Gordon in all his drunken splendor, sprawled across the table in the tavern. “At least, the kind of big brother that does one some good.”

The servant came closer again and looked about the room. “Do you still have …?”

“The breeches and cloak? Oh, my, yes. I hung them in the dressing room far in the back. Fanny will only find them if she pokes her long nose amongst my possessions, and why should she?”

Ellen put the books on the desk and turned back to her notes. She rested her cheek on her hand. “I will return the book, Becky, but then I will be done with this business. It can only get me in trouble of the worst kind. Then I would be dragged home to a purgatory of addressing wedding invitations and listening to Horry moan and groan each time some piddling little detail went awry.”

Becky's face fell. “But don't you love weddings, Miss Grimsley?”

“I daresay I might someday, but Horatia's is rather a trial.” She opened the book, but her mind was far away. It was more than just foolish, brainless Horatia. The trial was also Mama, looking her over so carefully when she thought Ellen was not aware, wondering if there was such an advantageous alliance in her younger daughter's future.

“Bother it,” she muttered as she pulled out her letter opener and slit the pages of Chesney's
Commentary
. In another moment, she was deep in Shakespeare's enchanted Athenian forest, smiling over Lord Chesney's wise remarks and wondering about the man who wrote them. By the end of the day, when Gordon's essay had become a rough reality, she had created in her mind a picture of her benefactor.

He must be a kindly older man, probably someone with children of his own that he had seen through the trials of love
, she thought as she lit the lamp and continued copying her draft onto better paper.
He can only be one of Aunt Shreve's friends. Papa doesn't know anyone this intelligent.

She put down her pen.
James Gatewood says that Lord Chesney is a fellow at All Souls, so how can he be old? It is all too strange
, she decided.

She sat in her room, waiting for Gordon to announce his presence below. James Gatewood had promised he would visit her and read the paper, so she waited for him, too. No Gordon, no Gatewood.

“Men are selfish beasts,” she decided as she tied on her sleeping cap and blew out the candle.

Chesney's
Commentary
lay on the desk beside her bed. Moonglow streaked across it, setting the gold lettering on the spine shimmering. Ellen picked it up, settling the book on her stomach. “But for this excellent bit of insight, I forgive you, Jim Gatewood.”

Gatewood did not darken Miss Grimsley's door the next day. Ellen's mind wandered through her geography teacher's tightlipped description of the French countryside. During the interminable lecture, which dealt more on the evils of Napoleon than on the geography of France, she was tempted to ask why it was necessary to be so censorious about flora and fauna.
Surely one cannot blame flowering shrubs for the rise of That Beast From Corsica
, she thought.

She fared no better in embroidery, tangling her threads until Fanny was forced to desert her own neat sampler and help her. Ellen gritted her teeth, smiled sweetly at Fanny, and edged her chair closer to the window. She could see the spire of All Souls, located as it was just across the street. She was no wiser about the whereabouts of James Gatewood.

His gown rumpled as though he had slept in it, his eyes bulging from the exertion of running, Gordon darkened her door that evening. She met him in the sitting room under the agate eyes and wooden countenance of Miss Dignam. Without a word of greeting, he snatched the manuscript from her lap. He rifled through the pages and then sighed with relief, flinging himself into a chair.

“Ten pages! Thank the Almighty!” he exclaimed. “I had forgotten to tell you that the paper had to be between eight and ten pages.” He counted the pages again, smiled, and stuffed them in his pocket.

Ellen started forward in her chair, mindful of Miss Dignam's eyes on her. “But don't you wish to read what I have written, Gordon?”

“Heavens no,” he said and shook his bead. “I am sure I could not understand one word, anyway. All that matters is that it is ten pages long.” He leaned forward then and tugged at the short curls framing her face, curls she had spent all afternoon taming, in the hopes that someone would arrive to appreciate them. “Someday, I will do you a great favor, sister,” he said and then laughed. “I'll start by telling you that your curls make you look like a poodle! Really, El.”

She stuck out her tongue at him, and he laughed and leaped out of his chair in pretend fear. He dashed to the door, ignoring the quelling look Miss Dignam cast in his direction as she smacked down her playing cards.

Ellen hurried to his side. “At least let me know how it goes when you read the paper, you beast! You owe me that.”

He tweaked another curl. “I will report promptly. El, did you do all those curls for me, or do you have a beau already? Someone stuffy and studious?”

“Of course not,” she denied, her face rosy. “I did them for … for Lord Chesney!” She laughed at the look on his face and pushed him. “I am beginning to wonder if my benefactor really exists. Well, go on, if you must.”

He left, after a kiss in the air by her cheek and a wave in her general direction. Ellen walked slowly back to her room.
I will never compose another page for so ungrateful a brother
, she thought, as she ran her hand along the stair railing.
I wonder how many other select females have felt so full of the dismals.

She would never attempt the Bodleian again, as much as it beckoned. She sat at her desk, chin in hand, and gazed across the street to the spires of Oxford.

It might as well be on the moon
, she thought,
for all the good it does me
.

LLEN STEELED HERSELF FOR ANOTHER DREADFUL
weekend. She lay in bed and watched Fanny primping in front of the mirror, raving on about the treat in store for her. “Really, Ellen, if you had paid more attention to your embroidery this week, I am sure that Miss Dignam would have permitted you a stroll down the High Street with an unexceptionable beau.”

She paused and turned around, her smile arch. “Provided you could find an unexceptionable beau, Ellen. I have my doubts.”

She turned back to the mirror and Ellen stuck her tongue out. “I am not sure that it is to my taste to be shepherded about in the company of a beau and a servant, not to mention the other couples in attendance,” Ellen replied, keeping her voice light.

Fanny refused to be ruffled. She shook her head and clucked her tongue at her reflection. “Ellen, you are a faster little piece than I ever thought. Countenance, Ellen, countenance.”

With a wave of her gloved hand, she was gone. Ellen threw her pillow at Fanny as the door closed and then pulled the covers over her head. She thought about home and even about Thomas Cornwell. At least if she were home, they could stroll about the gardens or play cards in the library without the ubiquitous presence of a maid or footman. And if he was poor company, well, at least he was company, and she knew his faults.

She could ride when she chose and walk to the village with Ralph, talking about Great Ideas. Here there was nothing but the prospect of another day spent at the embroidery hoop.

She was almost asleep again when Becky Speed knocked and stuck her head inside the room. “Miss Grimsley, come quick! You have a visitor.”

“Go away,” Ellen said, her voice muffled under the bed clothes.

“It is Mr. James Gatewood, and he has never looked so good,” Becky said. She ran into the room and pulled the covers off Ellen, who sat up in surprise.

“You mean his hair is combed?” she asked and then laughed. “Well, I suppose such a momentous event calls for my presence, if for no other reason than to verify it.”

She dressed quickly, running a comb through her tousled curls, grateful for once for naturally curly hair. She patted on her lavender cologne while Becky buttoned her up the back. “He said he didn't have much time,” the servant said.

Ellen hurried down the stairs and threw herself into the sitting room.

James Gatewood whirled around from his contemplation of the view out the front window and put up a hand to stop her. “Whoa, fair Hermia! Where is the fire?”

Ellen twinkled her eyes at him. “Becky said you did not have much time, and I wanted to see how you looked with your hair combed.”

He threw back his head and laughed until Ellen blushed. He turned around slowly, for her benefit. “Every hair in place, my dear. Note that the gown is pressed and I have on a starched collar.” He put his hand over his heart. “I promised my mother that I would go to such exertions occasionally. It was one of the terms of the agreement.”

“Agreement?” she asked.

It was Gatewood's turn to blush. “I did not really mean to mention that, but here it is: I promised Mama a year only at All Souls, and then I would go into the …” He paused and frowned, as if searching for the right words. He brightened. “… into the family business.”

Ellen sat down and patted the seat beside her. Gatewood joined her, and she noticed that he smelled quite pleasantly of French cologne. “And what, sir, is the family business?”

“Horse trading,” he replied, not batting an eye. “And window dressing,” he added.

“Such odd occupations,” she said.

“Someone must do them,” he replied. “It is my lot in life to be a horse trader and a window dresser.”

He regarded her for a moment, and she was aware how patchedup was her own hurried appearance. “I slept late,” she said in self-defense.

But there was nothing in his eyes of complaint. It was a warm expression he fixed on her, one that made her stomach jump a little.