Miss Grimsleys Oxford Career (21 page)

LLEN UNDRESSED IN MISERABLE SILENCE WHILE
Fanny busied herself at her desk. Shivering in her chemise and drawers, Ellen balled up the breeches, shirt, and cloak and threw them in a corner of the dressing room. Her face set, wooden, she pulled on a dress and ran her fingers through her tangled hair. She followed Fanny downstairs to the sitting room, where she bowed her head and waited for the ax to fall.

It did not. Fanny said nothing to the headmistress then. Other than peering at them over the top of her spectacles for being late, Miss Dignam addressed herself to the Psalms and then dismissed the girls to their rooms.

Ellen got slowly to her feet. She glanced back to see Fanny and Miss Dignam in earnest conversation. Her heart plummeted to her shoes and stayed there between her toes, as her stomach began to ache. She pressed her hand against her middle, wondering what would happen next.

As she slowly mounted the steps, she heard Fanny and Miss Dignam laughing. In another moment, Fanny was beside her.

“You look so pale, Ellen,” Fanny observed with a smirk.

“Did … did you tell?”

“Not yet,” Fanny said. “I will just let you stew and fret this week. Let us see if you choose to make any more cutting remarks about my brother. I advise you to hold your tongue, Ellen, if it isn't too much trouble.”

She stopped on the landing and grasped Ellen by the arm. “Do you know, Ellen, I had not thought … When my father gets wind of this, I wonder if he will be so happy to see a connection between our two families.”

“No, Fanny!” Ellen pleaded, her voice low.

It was as though Fanny had not heard. She released Ellen and gave her a little push. “And, Ellen, Edwin always does what Papa asks.”

Ellen held her tongue, silently taking back every spiteful remark she had ever made to Fanny, following Fanny with her eyes. The ache in her stomach did not go away. Soon her head throbbed in sympathy.

Nothing escaped Fanny's sharp eyes during the endless week. She was watching when Ellen, with trembling fingers, opened the package from James Gatewood and took out Chesney's volume of Hakluyt's
Navigations and Voyages
.

“It is for geography,” Ellen lied as she tried to make the book disappear on her cluttered desk.

“Silly me,” Fanny said calmly. “I had thought we were studying Portugal and Spain this week.”

Ellen swallowed her misery in
The Tempest
, working on it by the light of a single candle after Fanny snored in her bed. She could not sleep; the evils of the situation she had placed herself in revolved around and around in her head until sleep was out of the question. She drowned her own uneasiness in the misfortunes of the Duke of Venice, turning his adventures into a travel guide to the New World that was witty, urbane, and written in the middle of her own despair.

Several frantic notes to Gordon, delivered on the sly by Becky or the footman, evoked no response. As she sat, numb, through geography or struggled through embroidery, all she could think was that Gordon, safe in the knowledge that she would do his work for him, had gone to London again.
Wretched brother, more stupid sister
, she thought over and over as she sat at her desk, hand pressed to her forehead, as the words poured from her like nervous perspiration.

She did not know if Fanny had truly made the connection between her writings and Gordon's university triumphs. She shuddered to think of the scandal that would erupt if Gordon were dismissed for cheating. She blamed him for putting her in this delicate situation and blamed herself more for succumbing to her own vanity and writing those clever imaginings that now threatened to choke them both.

Each day dragged past and still Fanny said nothing. Ellen found herself existing in an unfamiliar world of perpetual fright as she waited for Fanny to take Miss Dignam aside and tattle to the headmistress about the student clothes and gown that were still balled up into a corner of the dressing room. She would be sent home, her reputation in tatters. Ellen knew Fanny Bland well enough to know that, once home, Fanny would continue her malicious work, spreading tales about girls who go away to school and turn into fast pieces who dress in trousers so they can follow men about.

Only one note of brightness illuminated the grim picture: Thomas Cornwell would be so disgusted that Ellen need never fear again that he would offer for her.

It was little consolation. As the hounds of her imagination snapped at her heels, Ellen kept them at bay by plunging into the second paper, on
Romeo and Juliet
. While she kept busy writing, she could almost dismiss her own miseries. Late at night, when her stomach ached and her eyes burned with unshed tears, Ellen wove a fanciful comedy about a young couple, miraculously spared, who are too young and gradually find themselves wondering what they saw in each other in the first place. As the candle guttered out early Saturday morning, she penned the last word, blotted it dry, and then rested her face against the warm wood of the desk.

With a sigh, she put the paper in the desk drawer with the one on
The Tempest
that Gordon wanted. She frowned as she closed the drawer. It was Saturday morning, and Gordon had not made an effort to retrieve his paper.

It will serve you right if you miss the reading, Gordon Grimsley
, she thought as she quietly stood up, rubbed the small of her back, and carried her notes and rough drafts of both papers to the fireplace. Fanny stirred as the paper flamed up and crackled, but did not waken. When her scholarship was nothing but ashes, Ellen crawled into bed. Once Gordon's paper was gone from her desk drawer, there was nothing to connect her with the writing of it.

She woke an hour later to the sound of knocking. Fanny opened the door to let in Becky Speed, who carried a brass can of hot water, which she set down at the dressing table.

“It's about time,” Fanny said as Becky poured the water into a ceramic basin.

“Sorry, miss,” Becky said and bobbed a curtsy.

Fanny turned to the washbasin. The maid came closer to Ellen's bed. “Gordon,” she mouthed, so Fanny would not hear, and pointed down toward the lower reaches of the academy.

Ellen rose up on one elbow and looked Becky in the eye. She pointed to the desk and pantomimed opening the drawer. Becky nodded and tiptoed across the floor. Quietly, her eyes on Fanny, the maid opened the drawer and took out its contents.

She had almost reached the door when Fanny, her face soapy, turned around to watch her progress. Fanny's head came up and her eyes narrowed as she stared at the papers in the maid's hand. She looked at Ellen and then back at Becky, a smile spreading slowly across her damp face.

“Wait right there,” she commanded.

Becky froze where she was, the papers tight in her hand. Ellen lay back and closed her eyes as she felt the blood drain from her face. Once she saw the title, there was no way Fanny could mistake the connection between Gordon and the papers.

Fanny held out her hand for the papers as Becky backed up against the door. As Ellen held her breath, Fanny began to rub her eyes.

“Drat!” she exclaimed and turned around for a towel to wipe the soap from her face.

In the moment she turned, Becky threw open the door and ran down the stairs. Fanny, clad only in her chemise and petticoat, could only stare out the door and watch.

Ellen sighed and thanked the Lord who watches out for miserable sinners that Fanny Bland was too much of a lady to go charging half-naked after the maid.

“That was for Gordon, wasn't it?” Fanny exclaimed, whirling on Ellen. “And don't try to weasel out of it, Ellen Grimsley. You've been doing something for your brother, haven't you?”

Ellen made no reply, other than to get out of bed and tug down her nightgown, her mind made up. She ignored Fanny's questions as she crossed to the dressing room and calmly removed the scholar's gown. Deliberately she shook it out and laid it across her bed.

With a smile on her pale face, she touched its folds one last time. Moving fast to take advantage of Fanny's amazement at her brazen behavior after a week of miserable cowardice, Ellen pulled on the frilled shirt and breeches.

“Do you know, Fanny,” she commented as she smoothed out the dark hose she had hidden in her bureau drawer, “these garments are so comfortable. I think that men have been keeping such a secret from us. If we knew how wondrously liberating trousers were, we would have worn them years ago. It's such fun to sit with your legs wide apart, or propped up on a desk.”

Fanny sputtered and wiped the soap from her face. Ellen scuffed her feet into the shoes, touching them up with the corner of the bedspread. “Of course, I don't doubt, Fanny, that when you marry, you'll wear the pants. If you marry.”

“You … you …” was all Fanny could say as Ellen swirled the student's gown around her with a flourish.

“Brilliant repartee,” Ellen said as she bowed elaborately to her roommate and closed the door behind her.

She wasted no time in the hall but darted down the back stairs, running past several other students, who shrieked and leaped out of the way. Her face set, her mind working a million miles an hour, she ran to the front door and out into the High.

As she raced across the street, the gown flapping in the stiff breeze, she looked back at her second-floor window where Fanny stood, beating on the frame. She sighed and thanked the Lord again. In another moment she would be protected by Oxford's warren of alleys and safe from immediate discovery.

Once out of sight of Miss Dignam's Select Female Academy, she slowed to a fast walk, breathing hard. To her knowledge, Fanny had no idea which college Gordon attended. University was only one of many colleges that required Saturday papers of its first-year students. With any luck at all, Fanny and Miss Dignam would take some time finding her.

“And I will hear my paper read,” she said out loud, unmindful of the students who stared at her when she spoke so emphatically and grinned at each other.

She knew they would find her. It was only a matter of contacting the Vice Chancellor and searching the student enrollments for each college. Perhaps by then, if Gordon were toward the first readers, she would have heard her paper delivered. There would be the humiliation of discovery and then Papa would be summoned. She would go home in disgrace.

“But I
will
hear my paper first,” she whispered as she paused on the steps of University College's lecture hall. It would be something to remember through the dreary winter months at home, and all the months of her life to come, when she was tending Thomas Cornwell's children and running his manor, subordinating all her wishes and dreams to others’ needs.

The hall was still empty. Quietly she sat down in one of the side pews, toward the back. Her stomach pained her. She winced at the pain and shoved her elbow against her middle, looking about at the serenity of the hall, with its stained glass windows and fine-grained wood. The peace of it filled her, and she forgot her own misery.

Her chin went up as she looked about.
I am sitting in the lecture hall at University College
, she thought.
I will hear my paper read.

Time passed. Even the slightest noise from outside the massive doors made her start in surprise. The unheated hall was frigid and she could see her breath. She shivered and tucked her hands up under her armpits. The familiar ache began in her forehead.

Soon the students began to file in, laughing and chatting with one another. Some of them carried papers, and others, the ones who looked at ease, carried nothing more than gloves. The sound of their good humor filled the hall and echoed around it.

Tears started in Ellen's eyes.
They don't even know what they have here
, she thought as she dashed the tears away and made herself small in her corner pew.

She saw Gordon in the circle of his friends, his back straight, his eyes triumphant, as he clutched her paper. She peered closer. Just as she had thought. Becky had taken both essays from the drawer, and thank goodness for that. There was nothing left in her room to connect her with the papers. Whatever else there was had gone up the chimney hours before when she burned her notes. With any luck at all, she could get the
Romeo and Juliet
paper back from Gordon and tuck it away, to be hauled out and looked at in years to come.

Not that I will ever need a reminder of this day
, she thought, with a slight smile. To her relief, Gordon sat far up front. Her smile broadened. In all her memory, Gordon Grimsley had never sat up front for any event requiring his attention.

The students all rose as the warden, dean, and fellows entered the hall in stately fashion and settled themselves behind the rostrum. Ellen nearly laughed out loud. His hair combed, and his shirt points reasonably starched, James Gatewood sat with them. He crossed his legs in that careless way that she so envied and looked out across the audience.

She wondered why he was there. Sitting next to him was a distinguished gentleman, with deep creases etched in his face like sculpted marble. As she watched, the two men put their heads together and exchanged a pleasantry that set them both laughing.