by Libby Malin
“Leave,” he said with iron force.
“I will not leave,” Tom said. His legs feeling like rubber, he walked forward until he was a foot away from the bride and groom.
The minister cleared his throat. “What, precisely, is your objection and who are you anyway?”
“He’s the bastard who stopped us the first time,” Buck growled. “And he ain’t gonna do it again. Over my dead body.”
Tom looked past him to DeeDee, whose glazed look and ashen face told him she’d probably already guessed she was in over her head.
“He’s not going to leave the altar, DeeDee,” Tom said. “Gretchen dumped him. So he’s back to his Plan A. Marry you and get your dealership in the bargain.”
She looked at Buck, whose eyes stayed fixed on Tom.
“Is that true?” she whispered.
“You mean did I come to this wedding to actually be wed?” Buck asked sarcastically. “What do you think?”
Now Tom addressed the minister.
“I am Dr. Thomas Charlemagne, formerly of Oyster Point, now of Baltimore, soon to be a wandering citizen of the universe. And I object to this wedding because the groom is a cad and a money-grubbing, power-hungry villain who has no affection for this bride, while I myself love her with all my heart and intend to bestow on her the life she richly deserves, if she will see fit to honor my proposal with an affirmative response.” After his declaration, he almost felt like bowing.
“Is this for real?” the minister asked, looking around. “Or reality TV?”
Buck chuckled lowly. He stepped away from DeeDee and smiled lopsidedly. “Aw, that was real purty, Timid Tommy. But unless you plan to take me down, this wedding is moving forward.”
“No, it’s not,” DeeDee said, her voice so soft they almost didn’t hear her. “I don’t love you, Buck. And you don’t love me. Let’s be reasonable…”
But reason wasn’t a word that Buck Bewley was interested in at the moment, Tom observed. The jilted groom's mouth pursed in growing anger, he took a step toward DeeDee as if he intended to do her harm.
Without thinking, Tom grabbed Buck's sleeve, throwing him off balance and making him stumble.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Buck said as he quickly righted himself.
Tom breathed deeply. “I shouldn’t have, eh?”
From somewhere in the crowd, a voice called out. “Dare you to fight him, Tommy.”
Tom didn’t know who it was -- an old classmate, a youngster who’d heard the stories, a troublemaker wanting a show. But he knew in his heart it would come to this. He’d already dared himself to fight the man. Now he needed to see it through.
“Tom, no,” DeeDee said, handing her bouquet to Kelly and moving toward him.
“Stand back!” Buck yelled and threw the first punch, landing it on Tom’s shoulder as he ducked.
“Tom! No! Stop!” DeeDee cried.
“Is this some kind of joke?” the minister asked again. “Should someone call the police?”
Tom hardly heard him. He was too busy dodging Buck’s well-aimed blows. He took one to the gut and another to his eyes, his broken glasses skittering on the floor. He could feel the blood pooling, the bruise beginning. His vision clouded.
Never very athletic, Tom racked his brain for anything he knew about boxing. It took all of one second. He knew nothing.
He heard himself grunt as Buck pummeled his face, whipping it from side to side. He heard DeeDee screaming and other voices saying things like “pull him off, he’s going to kill him!” He felt as if his body had been pelted by hail, welts rising and aching on back and arms, head and shoulders. Sweat stung cuts on his cheeks, and when he breathed, sharp pain stabbed his chest. It was a struggle to fill his lungs.
But still, he fought on. He dug deep and found some extra jolt of energy way in his gut. He stood, spit out blood and a tooth, and plunged forward, punching at anything his fists could land on. He felt soft fat, hard muscle and then aching bone. He thought he heard a crack. He heard another scream. Was that his own voice?
A siren wailed and stopped. The police department was just next door.
Tom kicked at Buck’s scrotum, only to have his leg whipped out from under him and his elbow hit the ground first with a stinging zing up his arm. Buck leaned over and started his pounding. A blur of white seemed to be trying to drag him off. DeeDee.
And then, as if an angel whispered it, he heard an older woman’s voice, someone on the near edge of the crowd: “I came to get a dog license and the whole place is shut down…say, isn’t that Buck Bewley, the one with the glass jaw?”
Glass jaw.
Armed with this critical information, Tom sucked in air, struggling against the pain, and dodged Buck’s latest blows. Through eyes swollen to slits, he set his aim on the man’s jutting chin. If he could hit just right, in the right place… Strategy, not brute force, would win the day for him…
DeeDee was sobbing. Someone was yelling at Buck to stop…
And Tom rolled over out of the way just as Buck came in. With superhuman effort, Tom pulled himself to a standing position, every nerve, bone and muscle in his own body screaming at him to bolt. He thought he heard an officer telling people to clear out of his way. But Tom wouldn’t be denied a chance to at last fight back against the bullies of the world.
One eye closed now, the other focused with laser precision on one thing and one thing only -- Buck Bewley advancing, his big face a grimace of hatred.
With ferocious energy, using the last his body had to give, Tom wound his arm back and swung with all his might, landing his fist smack in the sweet spot below the eye near the hinge of jaw and temple.
For a split second, time seemed to stop. Buck stood still, his eyes glazed and surprised, his fists posed like a mannequin fighter in midthrust.
And then with a bellowing grunt, he fell over, a tree cut to the ground, out cold.
Now reality came crashing in, pain cascading through his body in wave after wave. DeeDee held him, sobbing her heart out, telling him she loved him and couldn’t bear to see him hurt.
And damn, but he did hurt. He thought his shoulder might be dislocated. He knew he had two black eyes and a split lip and had lost some teeth. He might even have some broken bones. Certainly cracked ribs. And his belly felt as if a giant had sat on it for a few days.
“I lub you, too, schweetie,” he managed to say before collapsing next to his victim, never happier in his life.
EPILOGUE
TOM NEVER thought he’d leave a big university for a small town college. DeeDee never thought she’d leave Oyster Point for anything.
But after they were married that summer in a small private ceremony at St. Cecilia’s Assisted Living Facility -- so Tom’s father could easily attend -- they both moved to St. Mary’s so that Tom could work as an adjunct in the history department while DeeDee took some courses in a variety of fields, sampling whatever struck her fancy. None of them were business courses.
She sold the dealership to Buck, after all, taking his fair market offer. With that money, she and Tom could live modestly while he waited for a full-time position to open up at the college. Peter Gilbert was sure he could get funding for it within a year. In the meantime, DeeDee set about exploring a question she’d put off for too long: what she wanted to do with her life.
As to Aefle, Peter helped Tom get funding to carbon-date the latest manuscripts. With this and other forensic analysis, there was little doubt Aefle was real and had penned the notes about Gisela, including the cribbed Cambridge Songs. To his delight, Tom found one last missive from the little monk in a flyleaf he'd overlooked:
With great fear and equal faith, Aefle had written, I am stepping out into the wider world to be with my beloved Gisela, journeying beyond the safe home of my scriptorium in hopes of finding the wisdom and love I had unsuccessfully sought within its blessed walls. Farewell, my dear brethren. Pray for me, those of you who find these humble thoughts. I know not what I will find.
>
AUTHOR’S NOTE
During my daughter’s sophomore and junior years of college, she and her roommates occasionally amused themselves by thinking up absurd titles for doctoral dissertations. That skill came in handy as I wrote this book.
I am extremely grateful, therefore, to my daughter, Hannah E. Sternberg, for her help in coming up with titles for Thomas’s research papers and for providing many small details of academic life that she observed while an undergraduate at a prestigious East Coast university.
The committee meeting early in this novel, in fact, was co-written with her, and she provided a list of words that she often heard her professors use.
She was also a superlative editor, convincing me to redo the opening of the novel so that it rested on the true fulcrum of the story -- the dare, with all its implications for Thomas’s struggles with courage and life. Her editing touch, although unseen by the reader, enhanced the story immeasurably.
Readers should know that the feeble attempts at medieval poetry (supposedly penned by Aefle) in this book are pure fabrications with no relation at all to the Cambridge Songs. The “medieval English” is similarly a fiction (apologies to medievalists everywhere who will probably be justifiably horrified by my liberties!).
Although Aefle and Gisela is a romantic comedy, it is also a satire, poking fun at the bullying power of conformity. A college campus, which should be a bastion of open-minded liberal thinking, seemed the perfect setting.
To be fair, I should point out that, in the course of their college educations, my children encountered many fine professors who were more akin to the affable Dr. Peter Gilbert than the supercilious Q.T. Beewater. But they also came into contact with their fair share of Beewaters, Whitstones and Farleys. And, anyone who follows the news might recognize some of those character types from recent stories about various academics.
Because this book lampoons leaders of higher learning, readers might mistakenly believe I think higher education is not worth the time. That isn’t true. I hope I conveyed, through Thomas’s interactions with DeeDee, that a populist kind of folk wisdom can only carry you -- or, as Thomas might say, “one” -- so far. Experience can be a painful teacher, while education provides a gentler gateway to wisdom.
While no character in this book is real, nor based on any real people, I admit to encountering many “Dr. Farley” types when I was a school reform activist in Vermont. The arguments Dr. Farley uses against rote learning and standardized testing are ones I heard many times in debates and discussions. And the counterarguments Thomas employs were, not surprisingly, the ones I offered, including references to my own working-class father’s school background.
Whatever your sentiments on these issues, I hope you enjoyed this story of love and hard-won courage.
Libby Malin Sternberg
About the Author
Libby Malin is the author of four romantic comedies -- Loves Me, Loves Me Not; Fire Me; My Own Personal Soap Opera; andAefle and Gisela.
Writing as Libby Sternberg, she is the author of young adult (YA) mystery and adult historical fiction. The first of her YA mysteries, Uncovering Sadie’s Secrets, was an Edgar finalist and a Young Adult Top 40 Fiction Pick by the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association. Her YAs have been called “taut, vivid and stirring” (Library Journal), “simply a delight to read” (Romantic Times Book Club), “lively and captivating” (VOYA) and “an entertaining original” (Romance Reviews Today).
Although writing was always her first love, Libby earned both bachelor's and master's degrees from the Peabody Conservatory of Music and also attended the summer American School of Music in Fontainebleau, France.
After graduating from Peabody, she worked as a Spanish gypsy, a Russian courtier, a Middle-Eastern slave, a Japanese Geisha, a Chinese peasant, and a French courtesan—that is, she sang as a union chorister in both Baltimore and Washington Operas, where she regularly had the thrill of walking through the stage doors of the Kennedy Center Opera House before being costumed and wigged for performance. She also sang with small opera and choral companies in the region.
She eventually turned to writing full-time, finding work in a public relations office and then as a freelancer for various trade organizations and small newspapers.
For many years, she and her family lived in Vermont, where she worked as an education reform advocate, contributed occasional commentaries to Vermont Public Radio and was a member of the Vermont Commission on Women.
A native of Baltimore, Maryland, she now lives in Pennsylvania. She is married and has three children. Her website is at www.LibbyMalin.com.
LIBBY’S BOOKS
(Boldfaced titles are available digitally, asterisked titles offered through Istoria Books)
Uncovering Sadie’s Secrets by Libby Sternberg (YA mystery, Edgar nominee)
Finding the Forger by Libby Sternberg (YA mystery)
Recovering Dad by Libby Sternberg (YA mystery)
The Case Against My Brother by Libby Sternberg (YA historical mystery)
Loves Me, Loves Me Not by Libby Malin (humorous women’s fiction)
Fire Me by Libby Malin (humorous women’s fiction)
My Own Personal Soap Opera by Libby Malin (humorous women’s fiction)
*Death Is the Cool Night by Libby Sternberg (adult mystery)
*Lost to the World by Libby Sternberg (adult mystery)
*Kit Austen’s Journey by Libby Sternberg (inspirational romance)
*Sloane Hall by Libby Sternberg (historical/literary fiction)
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Epilogue
Author’s Note
About the Author
About Istoria Books