The Weight of Words (The WORDS Series)

Cover

Title Page

The Weight of Words

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Georgina Guthrie

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Omnific Publishing

Los Angeles

Copyright Information

The Weight of Words, Copyright © 2013 by Georgina Guthrie

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

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Omnific Publishing

1901 Avenue of the Stars, 2nd Floor

Los Angeles, California 90067

www.omnificpublishing.com

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First Omnific eBook edition, November 2013

First Omnific trade paperback edition, November 2013

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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Guthrie, Georgina.

The Weight of Words / Georgina Guthrie – 1st ed

ISBN: 978-1-623420-73-4

1. Contemporary Romance—Fiction. 2. University—Fiction. 3. Shakespeare—Fiction. 4. Forbidden Romance—Fiction. I. Title

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Cover Design by Micha Stone and Amy Brokaw
Interior Book Design by Coreen Montagna

Venus and Adonis

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) (Italian, about 1487 – 1576)

Venus and Adonis
, about 1555 – 1560, Oil on canvas

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Aubrey

Chapter 1

The Wise Man’s Son

Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.
(
Twelfth Night
, Act II, Scene 3)

S
OME
P
EOPLE
T
HRIVE
O
N
C
ONFLICT
, but I’ve never been a fan of it. Years of listening to my parents arguing in their bedroom taught me to flee at the first sign of any verbal altercation. So when the sound of a heated conversation drifted out from behind my boss’s door one morning, I cringed. Unaccustomed to hearing the dean of Victoria College shouting, I distanced myself from the argument, crossing to the far side of the outer office where I started plucking dead leaves from a hanging plant. It was a wasted effort. The voices only got louder.

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Dad!” I heard from inside the office. “Do we really have to go over this again? Enough already!”

Dad?

I froze, a dried leaf crumbling in my hand. Dean Grant was arguing with his son? I considered escaping to the washroom down the hall, but before I could bolt I heard Dean Grant angrily directing his son to stop shouting. Both men dropped their voices until all I could hear were harsh murmurs.

I tiptoed back to my desk, prepared to dash out if things escalated again, but there were no more eruptions. The dean’s door swung open a few moments later, and his son strode out, averting his face as he walked past my desk. I shuffled a few papers around, pretending to look busy, but I couldn’t help taking a quick peek as he made his way to the door.

I’d never met this son—or any of Dean Grant’s family members for that matter—but from what little I could see, this young man’s appearance clashed entirely with that of his perpetually well-tailored, carefully-groomed father.

“Different as chalk and cheese,” my mother would say.
A recipe for disaster
.

As Dean Grant’s son crashed out of the office, his leather laptop bag banged against the door frame. Stray papers threatened to spill from the top flap, and he muttered, “Fucking damn it,” while jamming them deeper into the bag and kicking the door closed with his foot.

I blushed, not because I was offended by colorful language—far from it—but because I was certain Dean Grant, a consummate gentleman in every way, was standing right behind me. Sure enough, when I turned around, he was in his office doorway, grimacing in the direction of his son’s retreating figure.

“Sorry, Aubrey, I’m sure that was unpleasant for you,” he said. “That’s my son, Daniel. He’s having a bad time of it at the moment, but there’s no excuse for crass behavior. I apologize on his behalf.” He handed me several manila folders. “Can you please file these?” he added before returning to his office and closing the door.

I wasn’t sure if I was more embarrassed for myself or him. In the five months I’d worked in the office part-time, I’d never once seen the dean lose his shit or overreact, even though his position required him to deal with all manner of crappy student issues. Then again, it’s the people we love most who have a knack for pushing our buttons. Hearing him lose his temper with his son didn’t make me respect him any less. It simply allowed me to see a human side I hadn’t been privy to before.

I glanced at the clock. Eleven twenty. Ten minutes left in my shift. I rounded my desk, filed the folders, and organized some other papers and documents. Then I knocked on Dean Grant’s door.

“Yes?” he called.

I poked my head into his office. “I’m on my way, sir. I’ve left Gisele some notes for this afternoon so she knows what I didn’t get around to finishing. I hope your day gets better.”

“Thank you, Aubrey. I hope so, too. See you on Wednesday morning. Don’t work too hard, now.” He wagged his finger at me, and I smiled as I left.

We both knew I wasn’t about to ease up simply because the end was in sight. I was eager to maintain my excellent GPA
and
my place on the dean’s list, an honor which meant so much more given the admiration I had for the man who conferred it.

Belongings in hand, I locked up for the lunch hour. Outside, the wind buffeted me across the snow-covered quad and over to Jackman Hall. All was quiet inside the residence apartment, my roommates nowhere to be seen. I tripped over the boots and coat Matt had left in the middle of the hallway the night before. His door was closed. I tried to move quietly, imagining him inside and sleeping off a brutal frat party hangover. Joanna’s bedroom door was wide open, but I didn’t look for her. She had a full morning of classes.

In my own room, I changed out of my nicer work clothes and put on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. I surveyed my face in the mirror. The February
blahs
had set in and, along with them, a pallid complexion that positively screamed for some sun. Some girls could carry off the pale skin associated with long Canadian winters, their eyes leaping out of the creamy landscapes of their faces. I was not one of those girls.

I grimaced at my reflection and rooted around for an elastic hair tie, noting as I combed my hair back that my warm streaks were looking less like honey and more like molasses. Yet another victim of this year’s long winter. I needed some vitamin D in the worst way. I also needed to hurry the hell up and quit mooning at myself if I wanted to get across campus in time for my class at noon.

Dragging my coat on, I dashed out of the apartment and hiked across campus. The stinging wind urged me along the paths through Queen’s Park and bit my ears. Why hadn’t I worn a hat? And where the hell were my gloves? I picked up my pace, setting my sights on the other side of the park, all but jogging by the time I reached University College, the imposing gothic building where I’d attended countless English lectures and tutorials over the past four years. A wall of warm air greeted me as I vaulted inside. Sweet relief.

I made my way up to the second floor, full of anticipation for my new class. This wasn’t any old course. I was on the brink of the final semester of my U of T undergraduate career. My four full-time classes had reached the mid-term point, but I was starting my second half-course of the year—Studies in Shakespeare—a full three months studying my favorite writer. To say I was excited was putting things mildly.