By Jove (14 page)

“Are you awake enough to drive home tonight?” Grant asked her, a frown in his voice.

She dropped her hands and tried to smile. “I’ll be fine. The car knows the way home.” Then, because he was still frowning at her, she straightened in her seat. “And you? What will you be doing?”

“I’ll head up to New Hampshire tomorrow for a little while. Then I’ll be going to Italy. To—to visit some friends.”

“Italy. How nice,” she murmured, and turned back to the window. Which meant over a month without him. She had invited him for a visit over New Years’, hoping that this time he would say yes. But he hadn’t mentioned Italy before. A visit wasn’t looking very likely. The empty garden below looked downright cheerful compared with how she felt.

“I’ll call you. And write. I promise. I—I’ll be working on my Pemberley project. I hope I can have it well underway by the time the semester starts.”

“Will you? That’s good,” she replied tonelessly. She bent to pick up her handbag and fished around in it for a tissue. That darned heating duct was blowing right in her eyes, making them sting and water. Then her hand closed on something square. “Oh,” she said, pulling out a little box. “I forgot.”

“What’s that?” Grant asked, craning his neck.

“A Christmas—sorry, Saturnalia present from Julian. He gave it to me last night at the department party, but I never got a chance to open it.” She undid the wrapping of vivid turquoise silk, just the same color as his eyes. Grant scowled at it as it fluttered to the table.

Under the silk was a plain box. Was it plastic? No; it was warm to her touch, and less shiny—ivory, she suddenly realized. Wow. Wasn’t it protected or something? Where had he found it? Inside was a tiny crystal bottle, shaped like a Greek amphora. She held it up to the light and smiled with delight. “How pretty!”

“There’s something in it,” Grant said, still frowning.

Theo pulled out the small ground-glass stopper. The scent of lilies and hyacinths filled her head as she sniffed it, followed by a familiar tingly sensation.

Grant snatched the vial of perfume from her and sniffed it too, then jumped up out of his chair as if it had bitten him. “What does he think he’s playing at?” he almost shouted. Heads turned to look at them.

“Stop it, Grant. Give me that before you break it.” She rescued the beautiful little bottle from his grip and replaced its stopper.

Grant stood next to their table, breathing hard and staring at the bottle in Theo’s hand. “Give it to me, Theo. You don’t understand. It’s dangerous. I thought I’d noticed it around you. What is he up to?”

“Dangerous? That’s ridiculous. I think it’s a lovely present.” She wrapped the bottle in the square of silk and tucked it with the box back into her handbag.

“Did anyone else but you get one?”

“How should I know? And why should I care? Sit down, Grant. You’re being conspicuous. What’s wrong with you?”

“You won’t be seeing him over the holiday, will you?” He finally sat down but looked in danger of leaping up again at the slightest provocation.

“See Julian? Of course not. Why should I? We’re friends. Just
friends
, okay? He remembered how I loved that scent. Do you know” —she smiled— “Dr. Waterman feeds his fish something that smells like it? And the incense at the symposium was the same. Don’t you like it?”

“I like it perfectly well. But—”

“But Julian gave it to me. If it makes you feel any better I didn’t give him a present. And I certainly didn’t expect to receive one. Which reminds me.”

She had bought a Christmas present for him weeks ago, when their humanities classes had still been going well. Over the last week she’d nearly decided not to give it to him, but that seemed silly and childish. She bent to her book bag and pulled out a wrapped box. “Merry Christmas,” she said, handing it to him.

He swallowed and took it from her. “For me?”

“Octavian doesn’t have hands to open it, so I guess it’s yours,” she said, only slightly bitterly.

He looked at her and tore off the paper, and pulled out the charcoal-gray scarf she’d chosen for him with such care, to bring up the gray of his eyes.

“It’ll keep you warm, up in New Hampshire—” She nearly choked, but steadied her voice. “It’s cashmere. You can touch it sometimes, and try to remember what your senses are for. J-just a little memento of your hu-humanities classes this fall.” She rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, and tried to smile.

“That’s one class I seem to have flunked,” he said bleakly, stroking the wool.

She waved one hand. “Things have changed, I guess. Gotten busy. It’s not important.”

“‘Not important’ again? Is that what you think?”

“I—” She looked away, still blinking.

“It’s damned important. More important to me than you know. I just haven’t been very good at letting you know how much.” He sighed and got up from the table, then came around and knelt by her, putting his arms around her.

The clock tower outside chimed twice. Theo glanced up, startled, from Grant’s serious face.

“I know. You need to get going. Just listen to me a moment longer. We’ll start again, in January. Maybe I’ll be ready by then, if I try hard enough over break.”

Theo opened her mouth to speak. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers.

“Don’t ask,” he whispered into her mouth. “I don’t have much right to say that to you, but I must. Theo, I love you, even though I’ve been terrible at showing it. Trust me.” Then he kissed her as he hadn’t since before Thanksgiving.

Dizzy, Theo pulled away and stood up. He rose too, and pulled her into his arms for a brief moment. “I’ll call. And write. And…do me a favor?”

She looked at him.

“If you love me, don’t use Julian’s perfume.”

…

Theo was happy to be home with her family, even her three older brothers with their insufferable elder brother airs. And with Dido, who with a flick of her long tail ignored Theo when she stumbled yawning into the house at ten that night but was snuggled purring against her neck by morning.

She rested for a day, then tackled correcting her Latin class’s exams and term papers, and mailed her grades in to the university on Christmas Eve afternoon. All the while Grant’s enigmatic words and behavior replayed in her mind, over and over, while she tried to decipher their meaning.

How should she read him? His brooding silences, his angry outbursts at Julian, his protestations of love—what did they all mean? Did he love her? Or did he just want to keep her from liking Julian any more than she already did? She remembered the expression on his face as she drove away from him that last dreary afternoon—the look of sad longing in his eyes had nearly made her leap out of her car and run back to him. Would he have taken her in his arms if she had, or pushed her away?

At seven on Christmas Eve, just as she was about to leave with her family to go out for dinner, the doorbell rang. Her mother answered the door and came back with a box.

“It’s something for you, dear. Those poor mailmen. It’s Christmas Eve! I asked him if he’d like some eggnog, but he said no.” She handed the box, postmarked “North Errol, New Hampshire” to Theo.

“It’s a good thing he didn’t. One cup of Dad’s eggnog and he’d be arrested for DUI.” She took the scissors she had been using while wrapping presents and unsealed the box.

A cloud of scent rose from it as she lifted the flaps, similar to Julian’s perfume but different: more spicy and musky, with hints of evergreen. Her mother looked startled, and sniffed the air.

“What’s that smell?” her father said, knotting his tie as he came down the stairs. “It reminds me of—” He stopped abruptly and looked at Theo.

The source of the evergreen scent became apparent at once: pinecones and pine needles had been used as protective packing around a small box made of thin sheets of a polished tan-brown material.

“How interesting. That’s horn, isn’t it?” Dad said curiously, peering over her shoulder. “Is your friend in New Hampshire implying a classical reference? There were two gates leading up out of Hypnos’s house in the underworld, through which dreams were sent to men. Don’t you remember that, Theo? The false ones went through a gate of ivory, while the true ones went through a gate of horn.”

“Open it already,” Mom said. “I’m dying to see what it is.”

Theo took out the delicate box and opened it. Inside was a small pouch of rough white linen. She upended the pouch onto her hand and a ring tumbled out. She picked it up, feeling numb, and examined it.

The setting was a rich reddish-gold, shining with the soft patina of age. It held a small smoky-gray oval intaglio. Theo remembered looking at the seals and carved gems with Julian in the museum earlier in the fall, but could not recall seeing any that quite resembled this one. The carved image was simple but beautifully detailed. It depicted a flaming torch, held aloft by a fist. There was no note in the box. There didn’t need to be.

…

After they got back from dinner Theo sat up late, staring into the tiny glittering lights on the Christmas tree in the living room and petting Dido on her lap. Every now and again her hand strayed to Grant’s gift, which fit her ring finger perfectly.

What was she to think? “Guess he’s trying to tell you he’s carrying a torch for you,” her brother Marcus had joked when he saw the ring.

“I love you,” Grant had said again as she drove away from school that last afternoon. Theo turned the ring on her finger. Which was more real? His silences? Or this? She scooped up Dido and buried her face in the purring cat’s soft fur. Cats were as transparent as glass, compared with some people.

“Theo?”

She turned. Her father stood in the doorway in his bathrobe and pajamas. “Mind if I come in?”

She patted the sofa cushion to her right. He sat, and she saw his nostrils flare as he settled next to her. She had worn some of Julian’s perfume for going out tonight, hadn’t she? And felt guilty for wearing Grant’s ring at the same time.

“Happy to be home for a minute?” Dad asked. He picked up her hand with the ring on it and turned it this way and that in the pale light from the tree.

“Yes. Things were getting a little intense at the end. It’s nice to be able to relax and not think for a little while.”

“Intense academically, or personally?”

“A bit of both.”

He nodded, and then said abruptly, “What is that scent I keeping getting whiffs of around you?”

“It was a holiday gift from the head of the department. Some perfume. He’s become a good friend over the last few months—no, not like that. Just a friend. Why?”

“Oh.” Her father gave a small cough of embarrassment. “It—er, brought back some memories, that’s all. Do you happen to know what it’s called?”

“No, I don’t. The bottle wasn’t marked. What sort of memories, Dad?” she asked, starting to grin. To her glee, she saw him redden as he cleared his throat again.

“Nothing important, really.” He looked up then, and met her eyes. “All right. Maybe that’s not quite true. But it happened a long time ago, before your mother and I even met.”

“
That
kind of memory?”

“Quiet,
insolens filia
,” he said with mock sternness, and stared broodingly into the tree. Theo waited.

“It was when I went to Italy and Greece, the first time,” he said at last. “I was still an undergraduate, had almost no money, and carried everything I owned in a backpack for two months of wandering around, mostly on foot. It’s probably the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.”

“I’ll bet it was.” Theo smiled at his wistful tone.

“I was in Thessaly for a few days after going to have a look at Mount Olympus, and was following a stream down to the next village. It was still a fairly unpopulated part of Greece, and I was enjoying the peace and nature for a few days before I hitchhiked down to tackle Athens. The afternoon was very hot, and I decided to nap for a bit in the shade of a tree. I took off my pack and my shirt, splashed some water from the stream over myself, lay down, and fell asleep almost at once. I woke up just a short while later, to judge by the sun’s position, and found that I wasn’t alone.” He took off his glasses and polished them on his bathrobe.

“Yes?” she prompted. “Go on.”

“I’d been joined by a very attractive girl who looked to be about my age. She was blond and blue-eyed, which wasn’t all that uncommon a thing in that part of Greece, and was wearing a simple shift. At first.” He coughed again.

Theo’s grin returned.

“Stop that. I can
hear
you smiling,
muliercula
. Anyway, I don’t think I need to go into further details. When I woke again she’d vanished. I rather feared for my pitiful belongings, but nothing was missing. And the only thing she’d left behind was the ghost of her scent. Exactly like what you are wearing. I could almost have thought myself back beside that stream when I came downstairs and smelled your perfume.”

“Did you ever find out who she was?”

“I backtracked to the last village I’d been in, pretending to have lost something, to ask around after her. No one of her description lived there, so I ran like hell all the way to the next, only to hear the same story. Only one or two old men in the tavernas had any hints for me. ‘You’ll never see her again,’ one cackled. ‘She comes out when she’s hungry, and leaves when she’s sated.’ ‘Ask the river what her name is,’ said another. ‘He’s her father, after all. Count yourself lucky she didn’t decide to bring you home to meet her sisters or you might never have gotten away.’”

“Daddy,” Theo said softly, wonderingly.

“I’ve never told anyone else that story. It’s not something you tell anyone else, because no one would believe it. I guess there aren’t enough lonely shepherd boys left in the hills of Greece to keep the nymphs happy anymore. I must have looked like manna from heaven, if you’ll pardon the semi-mixed metaphor.” He sighed. “You’re sure you don’t know where he got that perfume?”

“No.”

“Pity. Well, good night. Better get to bed before we scare Santa away.” He got up and turned off the tree, but Theo sat in the dark for a little while longer, stroking Dido and thinking.