By Jove (4 page)

Julian frowned. “Behave, Paul.”

“Yeah—behave, Paul,” said Diana. She punched him in the arm.

The gong sounded again, this time from the foot of the table where Ms. Cadwallader was seated. She stared at Diana and Paul until they joined in the general quiet.

Julian rose. “Welcome, my new and returning colleagues, to the start of a new academic year. I am delighted to see all of you here, and ask that you join with me in drinking to our continued prosperity here at the university.”

Theo turned to Grant and held her glass of wine out to him. He smiled and touched his own to hers
. “
To Latin,” he said.

“To Latin,” she echoed. “May your moose improve their mastery of it.” Was there a Latin word for moose?

“I’ll settle for my undergrads mastering it for now,” he said lightly. “But I’ll work on the moose when I get back.”

Theo waited while their salads were served, making a list of small-talk topics in her head that would hopefully draw him out. “You’re teaching this year?”

“Just one class. I enjoy teaching, and it’ll give Dr. Waterman a break from first-year Latin.”

Theo shuddered. “You like teaching first-year Latin? Try it with twelve-year-olds for a while, and I’ll ask you again how you feel. Unless you like being a martyr.”

Several expressions seemed to cross his face: pain, defiance, then a glimpse of self-deprecating humor. He stared at his salad for a moment, then looked up at her. “I suppose you could say that I’m used to it. What about you? Are you running away from twelve-year-olds?”

Theo hesitated. Did he really want to know, or was he just making polite conversation? She took a deep breath.

“Running away from them? No. Well, maybe a little. It’s disheartening when they’re required to take your class and ninety-five percent of them don’t want to be there. I love Latin. I always have, even when
I
was one of those twelve-year-olds. Is there anything more satisfying than reading Vergil or any of the poets and seeing how they used meter and sound to make you
feel
as well as understand their words? To have that connection with them across two millennia? It gives me goosebumps, sometimes, to read them and know that I’m sharing the thoughts of someone so distant from me in so many ways, yet also alike. I love it, and I want my students to love it. I thought maybe—” She looked down at her plate and crumbled a crouton with her fork. “Maybe if I came back for my doctorate, I’d be more able to help them see the wonder of it. If I can make myself better, I’ll make them better too.” She looked up from her plate.

Grant was watching her, his gray eyes intent on her face. She reached for her wine and took a long drink to cover her embarrassment. “I’m sorry. That was a little earnest, wasn’t it?”

“No, it wasn’t. What good is our knowledge, if we don’t share it with others and light their way?” he replied, still looking at her. She could feel his regard like a touch on her face. Her hand moved of its own accord to her cheek.

A loud laugh rolled over them, tearing the fragile web of quiet their words had woven around them. Another rumbled toward them again, so jolly and heartfelt that she had to smile.

Grant chuckled. “It’s just Marlowe,” he said, inclining his head.

A tall, bearded young man, dark of hair and red of face, was teasing the girl seated next to him, waving a cherry tomato impaled on a fork in front of her. She obligingly snapped at it and he roared once more.

“Who?”

“Marlowe Vine. Of all the perpetual students I’ve met over time, he’s the most perpetual. Accumulates fellowships like barnacles. You can guess what his major course of study is.”

Theo watched him drain his wineglass and refill it to overflowing, then wave the be-tomatoed fork in front of the girl once more. “Fluid dynamics?”

“More or less. He’s harmless, though, even when thoroughly in his cups. He spent a year up in New Hampshire with us, in fact. We’re still recovering.” Grant smiled at him once again, and turned back to Theo. “You’ll have to come visit us up there some day. I think you’d fit right in.”

“Thank you,” she said simply, afraid to say more. Some of the other faculty at Sneed—the young, male ones, alas—had been mystified when they found out what she taught. “Are you a nun?” one had blurted at a faculty cocktail last year. Somehow they had equated her with the ancient language she taught, had assumed she too was dusty, dry, and dead. As a result the last three years had been very lonely ones. And now to find this man who
understood…

Dinner arrived, served by the garlanded students. Theo drank and ate but scarcely noticed what was on her plate. All her attention was on Grant: his words, his spare motions, the way his too-long dark hair curled on the back of his neck, the way those dimples appeared when he smiled just so. And the way he listened to her, so focused and intent that she almost felt that she could stop talking and just
think
, and he would hear.

“You never finished telling me about the bears, you know,” she said to him as tiny cups of espresso and plates of baklava were served after dinner.

“Oh, there’s not much to tell. Given a choice of moose, porcupines, or bears wearing gauze veils and silk robes while playing a group of women, which would you pick? Our costume designer put her foot down on that issue, so bears it was. They’re the least pointy.”

Theo giggled. His smile widened as he watched her. “Having a bear play Cassandra was never satisfactory, though. I suppose the bears felt the same way. My only concern is if we give in and let them do comedies, will they be upset if we do
The Wasps
?”

She laughed again. Grant leaned forward and touched her arm. His eyes were filled with a strange yearning. She stared at him in surprise.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just your laugh. I want—I want to keep hearing it. It makes me feel that maybe I—” He broke off and looked down at his plate.

Theo’s skin tingled where he had touched her. “I can’t help it. You make me happy when you talk.”

He stared at her. “I do? Really?” He looked as though she had handed him a gem of great price.

It was the wine. It had to be. The student servers had been silently efficient; their glasses were never empty all through the meal, no matter how often they had drunk from them. And they had drunk from them a great deal. But Theo didn’t care; she was too busy enjoying the way his look and words were making her feel. “Really,” she whispered.

He leaned toward her again and she waited, hardly daring to breathe. A loud
clang
, this time close enough to hurt her ears, made her jump in her seat.

Julian was holding Ms. Cadwallader’s gong and frowning at Grant. When he met Theo’s eyes, the frown vanished. He rose and addressed the seated diners. “If you would care to finish your coffee, Paul Harriman and his colleagues from the Music Department have agreed to entertain us with selections from their upcoming album of ancient Greek instrumental music.”

“I didn’t know they’d found enough transcribed music from that time to fill an album,” Theo said shakily to Julian, who held out a hand to lead her from the table.

“Oh, Paul’s indefatigable when it comes to tracking down his music. Yes, Arthur, what is it now?” he snapped at Dr. Waterman, standing at his elbow.

Under cover of Dr. Waterman’s interruption, Grant escorted Theo to the semicircle of chairs that had been set up at the other end of the hall and found them seats in the back row. Julian glowered again when he had finished with Dr. Waterman and saw her there, and seated himself in the front row. Ms. Cadwallader claimed the empty seat next to him with an air of proprietary self-assurance just as the musicians lifted their instruments.

Theo relaxed in her chair and let the soft, unfamiliar music wash over her. The lack of sleep and all that wine at dinner were starting to catch up with her. If she weren’t careful, she’d doze off right here, start snoring, and insult Dr. Harriman.

She looked down at the floor and realized that the entire room was paved in mosaics, thousands of tiny shards of glass and stone forming elaborate scenes and pictures. Partly covered by the chair in front of her she could see a bird, a vulture or maybe an eagle, picked out in brown and black with a cruel hooked beak and enormous, ragged wings. An iridescent scrap of glass formed the raptor’s eye, giving it a savagely life-like gleam. It was poised in a stoop, beak open in a silent scream of triumph, claws extended to rend and tear.

She moved her foot aside, trying to see what the bird was glaring at with such rapacious glee. Her chair covered most of the rest of the image, but she could just see something long and light beige. She blinked sleepily, and the long beige something resolved itself into the naked torso of a man.

Next to her, Grant began applauding and she looked up, startled. The first piece had ended. She sat up and clapped too, the mosaic forgotten, and did her best to stay awake for the rest of the evening.

She almost succeeded. A little later she felt a touch on her arm.

“I’ve never seen anyone sleep sitting bolt upright with wide-open eyes before,” Grant murmured to her under cover of the final applause.

“You’ve never sat through weekly faculty meetings, then,” she whispered back.

He grinned. “Meet me for coffee in the faculty lounge tomorrow afternoon. A little caffeine might help.”

Theo thought fleetingly of coffee right now, but feared she’d fall face-first into her cup and drown. “That sounds nice,” she agreed as they joined the group congratulating the musicians.

“G’night, Theo.” He looked at her for a moment, his gray eyes soft and thoughtful, and then he was gone.

Theo made her way to the door of the Great Room. As she waited with the exiting crowd she glanced in the large gilded mirror beside the door. Her reflection looked back at her, her hair curling flamboyantly around her face in the evening’s warm, humid air. She pushed it back from her forehead then stopped and stared in confusion into the mirror at the pale oval of her face. The angry red sunburn that Renee had smirked at was gone. Theo remembered the tingling sensation of Julian’s fingertips on her skin and, despite the heat, shivered.

Chapter Three

Breathe, stroke, stroke, stroke. Breathe, stroke, stroke, stroke. C’mon, girl, keep the rhythm. Don’t let those legs lag—

Theo was swimming laps in the pool at the university gym. She’d been amused to see that most of the people there for early morning swims were all older, university faculty and staff. Including Dr. Waterman, who was over in the far left lane, swimming as if his life depended on it. It seemed that undergrads didn’t have the discipline to get up at six thirty to swim. Then again, she almost hadn’t.

But entry-level teachers at Sneed hadn’t been paid enough to afford memberships at expensive gyms with pools. She was going to take advantage of the university’s facilities and maybe get rid of a little of the softness around her hips and thighs.

She’d expected to feel far worse today after all the wine she’d drunk the night before. But to her surprise, she’d been fine: no old-gym-socks-in-the-mouth or Cuisinart-in-the-stomach sensations when she woke up. In fact, she’d felt downright perky once she was vertical, which was unusual. She was
never
perky in the morning.

Her goggles were fogging up again. She finished the lap and clung to the tiled side of the pool to pull them off. As she disentangled her hair from the strap she saw a pair of bare feet come to a halt next to her. She found herself looking up at Grant Proctor.

“I thought it was you,” he said, squatting beside her and reaching down to help free her goggles. “If I’d known you were a swimmer we could have met.” He handed them to her.

“Thanks. I didn’t expect to feel up to it, after last night. But I felt great this morning. No, er, adverse symptoms.” Theo pulled herself up out of the water onto the edge of the pool, wishing she’d worn her green bathing suit and that her thighs were thinner.

“I think you’ll find that’s the case with all department parties here,” he said, looking out at the pool. “How’s the water?”

“A little cool but fine once you get moving. I—I hope I didn’t say anything embarrassing last night,” she blurted.

He shook his head. “Not a thing. I had as much or more to drink than you anyway. I should be apologizing to you because I’m much more used to it.”

“Apologize for what?”

“We’re even, then.” He hesitated. “Julian has unusual tastes in wine. It’s powerful but has little residual effect, fortunately.”

“Fortunately,” she echoed. “You seem to know him well.”

“We were colleagues many years ago.”

“Colleagues? But you must be almost half his age.” Though his face was somewhat lined, his hair was untouched by gray and his body young and strong. In fact she’d been acutely aware of it for the last few minutes as she sat dripping next to him, stealing looks at his broad shoulders and smoothly muscled chest.

“I’m older than you might think,” he said, then smiled. “But I’m not getting any younger sitting here.” He rose and flipped his towel off his shoulder and onto the starting block above them. “Share the lane?”

“Well, I should—oh!” Theo stared up at his side. A long, jagged scar twisted across the lower right side of his torso, along the edge of his ribcage.

Grant jerked as if he had been burned and slid into the water. “It’s nothing.”

She impulsively reached down and touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. Was it an accident?”

“Sort of,” he said shortly, and ducked under the surface.

Theo felt like slipping back into the pool and not coming up. How could she have been so tactless and unthinking? But the scar writhing across his smooth skin like an agonized snake looked painful even now, though the wound that created it was obviously old and well healed. She had almost felt a pain in her own vitals, just looking at it.

And now he would not meet her eyes, which was even worse. Why couldn’t she just tell him straight-out that the scar, horrible as it was, didn’t matter?