Miss Grimsleys Oxford Career (16 page)

She went to the door and let herself out while he still sat on the floor. She was at the top of the stairs when he bounded out of the room, grabbed her around the waist, and kissed her.

She didn't struggle to get away, because she didn't want to. She let him kiss her and kissed him back, wishing that her arms were not full of Shakespeare.

He stepped back from her. “That is for luck, Ellen,” he said, his voice unsteady. “Make it a wonderful paper.”

Hands in his pockets, he backed down the hall and into his room again. She heard him whistling before he closed the door.

HE BEGAN
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
IN EARNEST
the following morning. When geography was over, and she had learned all she cared to know about the exports of Portugal, Ellen ignored the summons to luncheon and seated herself at her desk.

Chin in hand, she gazed out the window to the spires of All Souls across the street.
If I were to tell James Gatewood that I had just come from an hour's enlightenment on the kinds and varieties of cork and its implications in the society we live in, I could probably have heard him laughing from here to All Souls
, she thought.
Scholarship is strangely served at Miss Dignam's.

And then she thought no more of James Gatewood, because thinking of him made her blush.

How extremely odd it was that he had kissed her. She could fathom no reason for it, not really. He knew she was the daughter of a squire, and a man of some substance in the shire. Ellen stirred restlessly in her chair and opened the play before her. Wasn't James Gatewood descended from a long line of window dressers and horse traders? Surely he could not think himself in any way eligible. She knew that a certain number of openings in some of the colleges were saved for poor students, but he was not in the same class with her.

She closed the book again, considering the matter. As she had created her own fiction about Lord Chesney, she could do the same for Gatewood. He was probably an only son, whose proud but respectable yeoman family had scrimped and saved for years to afford him this one year at All Souls. She sighed. Perhaps it was a parish effort. She knew that appointments to All Souls were rare, indeed. Perhaps Gatewood's entire parish had banded together to see that he received this chance to make something of himself.

She frowned. It did not fadge. Although he generally looked undeniably rumpled, his clothes were of excellent quality, and there was nothing seedy about him. His personal library was huge, and he was a friend of Lord Chesney.

Ellen brightened again and reopened the book before her. Perhaps James Gatewood was another of Lord Chesney's projects. It would be so like Lord Chesney in his bounteous eccentricity to help a poor but honest son of his retainers.

Lord Chesney. Now there is an unknown quantity, indeed
, she thought.
I know only that he is a peculiar eccentric who loves the plays of Shakespeare. He has taken it upon himself to interest himself in the Grimsley family. Beyond that, I have nothing but idle speculation. I don't even know what he looks like
, she thought, as Lord Chesney crossed the stage of her mind and followed Jim Gatewood into the wings.

The boards were cleared for Shakespeare.

She read rapidly, almost finished the play while the others were at the dining table, and then stretched out for the repairing nap that Miss Dignam considered essential before her minions tackled the intricacies of embroidery.

Fanny Bland had eyed her with vast suspicion as she flounced into the room they shared and laid herself down. Ellen ignored her, beyond a glance and an unvoiced question at Fanny's self-satisfied expression.

It was an expression she remembered from their shared childhood, when the older Fanny had taken such delight in seeing that Ellen was constantly in trouble. Horatia had always been content to follow after the insufferable Edwin and listen to him prose on and on about horses and the proper management of a Cotswold farm. Fanny had made her own fun by tripping up Ellen with her infernal tattling.

The memory rankled, even though they were too old for that sort of childish devilment. Pointedly, Ellen turned her chair slightly to avoid Fanny's smirk.

She was unprepared for embroidery and had to endure Miss Dignam's icy stares and the laughter of the other girls as she struggled to follow the simplest instructions. Her mind was full of the trials of Isabella and her impetuous brother, Claudio, arrested by Angelo, a petty bureaucrat. As her eyes paid attention to Miss Dignam's explanation of feather-stitching, her mind was full of Isabella's awful dilemma and the price Angelo wanted from her for Claudio's life.

I would never surrender my virginity for the safety of my brother
, she thought, red-faced, as she fumbled with the threads and knots in her lap, not daring to raise her eyes to Miss Dignam's barely banked wrath.

Well, not for Gordon, anyway
, she concluded as, tongue between her teeth, she hurried through another lopsided row of daisy chains.

For Ralph? Well, possibly.
The thought made her laugh out loud and brought Miss Dignam over to stand in front of her, staring down.

“You find this abomination of a sampler amusing?” Miss Dignam thundered, as the room grew quiet.

Ellen paled and swallowed. “No, Miss Dignam,” she whispered. “I was merely thinking of something else.”

“Shakespeare,” Fanny offered and then laughed at Ellen's discomfort. “One of those questionable plays, I do not doubt.”

Miss Dignam snatched the sampler from Ellen's nerveless fingers and waved it about the room as the other girls laughed. “Miss Grimsley, it is a continuing mystery to me why Lord Chesney is so interested in your progress here,” she said as she picked out the offending threads and thrust the project back in Ellen's lap.

“It is a mystery to me too,” Ellen said and then flinched when Miss Dignam frosted her with a head-to-toe stare.

“I'll thank you not to add impertinence to your numerous and growing list of character deficiencies, Miss Grimsley,” the headmis-tress said.

Ellen raised startled eyes. “I meant no impertinence,” she stammered. “I … I don't understand his interest, either, Miss Dignam. I meant nothing more.”

But Miss Dignam had turned her back on her and was admiring Fanny's beautiful row of daisy chains.

Ellen sighed and vowed to do better. By the time the endless class was over, her back ached and her head was pounding.

In the peace of her room, a quiet contemplation of the armload of books that James Gatewood had loaned her did nothing to restore her confidence. It was as he had said: they raised more questions than they answered. She stared hard at the books, willing them to tell her more about
Measure for Measure
. Her scrutiny yielded nothing except a greater headache, and the gnawing discomfort that she, or Gordon, at any rate, was about to be weighed in the balance and found wanting.

She leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. “What is it that Lord Chesney—bless his quirky heart—expects that Gordon will discover from this play?” she asked out loud.

The answer came to her so fast that she thudded all four chair legs back onto the floor. Her heart pounding, she looked at the books of commentary on the desk in front of her and closed them one by one. She stacked them to one side and took out a piece of paper.
Lord Chesney expects more from Gordon—the wonder scholar—than stale, revisited ideas. And James Gatewood expects more from me
, she thought, opening the play again and dipping her pen in the inkwell.
I will not merely shake my head over this frank and enormously engaging play and declare it a “problem” like other Shakespeare students. I will turn it on its head.

She wrote steadily until the dinner bell chimed in the hall. With a yawn, Ellen got to her feet, stretching her arms over her head and then pressing her hand to the small of her back.
Scholarship is tedious business
, she decided as she went slowly down the stairs, her mind full of
Measure for Measure
.

The small talk at the dinner table flowed all around as she ate thoughtfully, chewing over Isabella's plight and Shakespeare's intentions with the same interest that she awarded the beef roast and kidney pie. She sat impatiently through all the courses, with their accompanying dreary gossip about the royal family and Beau Brummell's latest witticisms, eager to be back at her desk.

After Miss Dignam finally released the diners, Ellen scurried into the library and surveyed again with dismay the pitifully few copies of Shakespeare's plays. “This will never do,” she declared firmly as she hurried upstairs.

In another moment she had composed a hasty scrawl to James Gatewood, fellow, All Souls. It was a plea for a copy of Shakespeare's complete works, if he possessed such a volume, plus the return of his commentaries. “‘I have decided to attempt original scholarship,’ ” she wrote. “‘Should you wish to know more, then don't miss Gordon's Saturday recitation. Regards, El.’ ” She signed her name with a flourish.

She summoned the footman and sent him downstairs with the books, the note, a shilling, and the admonition to jettison the books and swallow the note if Miss Dignam should happen by. The footman merely grinned and bowed.

Ellen expected no reply that evening, but she waited, anyway, hopeful that the footman would find Gatewood in his quarters and possessing just the volume she required.

Her wishes were rewarded an hour later by a tap on the door. Fanny looked up from her contemplation of her face in the mirror but turned away with a sniff when Becky Speed came into the room.

“Miss Grimsley,” she said breathlessly, as Fanny turned to regard her again. “The footman said I was to give this to you.” She handed Ellen a cumbersome folio edition of Shakespeare's complete works.

It was a beautiful work in and of itself, bound in soft morocco leather, with gold leafing. She carried it to her desk and took out the note stuck into it.

Jim had returned her own note and added his own scrawl to her words. “‘I can hardly wait to hear the pearls of wisdom that will drop from Gordon's lips. Yrs., Jim.’ ”

She laughed and followed the arrow at the bottom of the page. “‘P.S.,’ ” she read silently. “‘I suppose I shouldn't have kissed you on the stairs like that, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.’ ”

She blushed and read the postscript again, wondering for the first time if James Gatewood was as wild an eccentric as his friend Lord Chesney. She crumpled the note in her hand, putting it in the back of her desk drawer. She looked over her shoulder to see Fanny regarding her thoughtfully.

“Little secrets?” was Fanny's only comment as she began to dab witch hazel on her face.

Ellen's eyes were as wide and innocent as Fanny's. “Fanny, you know my life is an open book,” she said as she gathered together her papers and arranged them neatly on her desk. “Besides, I have never known a time when you could not find out my business. I have no secrets, Fanny.”

Fanny turned an unhealthy red and set her lips in a firm line.

Ellen prepared for bed, retrieving her flannel nightgown from the chair close to the fire where she had draped it. She climbed into it quickly in the chilly room, grateful for its warmth, not caring that Fanny thought her tacky for leaving her gown on the chair for all to see.