The fish moved serenely around the crystalline water, their scales bright and glossy. Plants swayed in the current generated by the aerators.
“I should say so—oh, is that a sea horse?”
“It is. Here, feed them for me while I get organized. I haven’t had a chance yet this morning.” He stepped back to his desk, opened a drawer, and handed her a plastic tub.
Theo pulled the top off. A clean, sweet odor wafted upward from the bowl, subtle yet strong. The sunlight filtering in the east window seemed brighter all of a sudden, and the fish more colorful. A warm tingling sensation spread from her nose down to her toes.
“This is fish food?” she asked, lifting the tub to her nose and sniffing. It smelled of hyacinth and lilies and something else too, something indefinable, elusive, but rich and deep.
“Oh…er, yes. My own blend.” Dr. Waterman hastened over and took it from her. “Here, I’ll show you.” He folded back the cover from the tank and sprinkled some of the silvery flakes onto the surface of the water from a small silver spoon. The fish darted upward, snatching at the food.
“You do the others. Not too much in each.” He held the tub and spoon out to her and watched as she shook flakes onto the water. Fish circled and lunged.
“Oh, good, they like you. Maybe you wouldn’t mind taking care of them occasionally when I’m with—when I’m at conferences.” He whisked the fish food from her hands and slipped it into a desk drawer.
“That would be fun. Do you go to many?” She turned away from him as if to study the fish, and surreptitiously smelled her fingers where a flake or two clung. The tingle surged through her again, and she shivered with pleasure. What was Dr. Waterman feeding his fish? They were darned lucky, whatever it was.
“A fair number.” He gave her a sharp glance as she turned back toward him. “Shall we go?”
The graduate student union was still quiet at this hour. Only a few students stood waiting in line to register, most clutching Starbucks cups and looking dazed. Theo and Dr. Waterman joined the queue.
“Why, good morning,” said a pleasant baritone voice.
Dr. Waterman stiffened. Theo turned.
Julian d’Amboise stood behind them, a cup of coffee in one hand. “What a nice surprise,” he continued, smiling. “You’re here early, Arthur.”
“So are you,” Dr. Waterman growled. The building seemed to tremble around them.
“I’d just stopped in for a bit of breakfast and thought I’d see how registration was going. How nice of you to help Theodora. I’m happy to wait with her if you’d like to run out for your tea.”
“No thank you, Julian.” Dr. Waterman’s bushy gray brows were drawn.
“Next!” said the bored-looking woman at the desk. Theo and Dr. Waterman walked over to her, trailed by a humming Julian.
“Is your form filled out and signed?” The woman eyed Julian’s coffee with such a yearning expression that Theo was tempted to go get her a venti espresso at the kiosk downstairs.
“Yes.” Theo opened her portfolio. She stared. The paper had vanished. She looked up, frowning. “But it was right here this morning when I—”
“Is this what you were looking for?” Julian said, waving a piece of paper at her. “It was on the floor behind you. Must have slipped out.” He held the document out to the woman behind the table, but Dr. Waterman snatched it out of his fingers.
“Nice try, Julian,” he said. Frowning, he read it, shook his head, then blew across the paper and looked at it again. “That’s better.” He handed the form to Theo with a nod of approval.
She took the paper from him with a quick glance at Julian, who wore an expression of pained boredom on his handsome face. This was starting to get more than a little weird. She looked down at the paper. It was her registration form all right, neatly filled out in black ink in her tidy teacher printing. So what had all that been about? She gave the form to the woman, who tapped on her computer keyboard for a moment, then nodded curtly.
“You’re all set. Next!”
Julian nodded to Theo. “Till later, my dear.” Ignoring his colleague, he strolled to the door. Dr. Waterman watched him with the same somber expression he had worn yesterday.
“Dr. Waterman? Is everything all right?” Theo asked. Julian’s posture as he strode from the room all but screamed annoyance. At her, or at Dr. Waterman? “That was…er…a little strange.” Strange didn’t begin to cover it, but how else could she politely word it?
“It’s nothing to do with you, Theo. I’m sorry you had to see that. Please don’t let our…er, discussions color your impression of us too much. Julian and I have known each other a long time. Sometimes we disagree on things. Put it out of your mind.”
“But what—”
“He has his own ideas about what classes you ought to be taking. He gets excited when promising students arrive. He’ll settle down shortly. He really is an extraordinary teacher. His students worship him.” His mouth quirked.
Something about his evasive tone bothered her, but she couldn’t say why. “Thank you for helping me register, Dr. Waterman.”
“It was nothing, really. I’ll see you this evening at the department dinner.” He nodded and followed Julian out the door.
…
“I’m not sure I did the right thing, coming here.”
“But you were miserable at Sneed, darling,” Mom replied. “Remember?”
“I know. But sometimes the misery you know is less miserable than the one you don’t.”
Theo lay on her bed in her room in Graves Hall, the graduate residence hall, talking to her mother on the phone as she stared at the ceiling. There was a crack spanning it that reminded her absurdly of a map of the Via Appia in the textbook she had used to teach her seventh graders last year. A faint clinking sound on the other end of the phone told her that Mom was probably on her chaise on the porch sipping a gin and tonic, the way they often had together this summer. A sudden homesickness surged through her. “Where are you, Mom?”
“Is the connection bad? I’m on the porch, but I can—”
“No, it’s fine. I’m just picturing you there and missing you. How’s my small furry beast?”
Leaving Dido, her Abyssinian cat, with Mom and Dad when she left for Boston had been the hardest thing she’d had to do, worse than giving up the lease on her adored apartment or leaving her few faculty friends at Sneed. She missed Dido’s sleek golden head butting against her legs when she worked in her kitchen, her seismic purr as they sat together while Theo corrected homework, even her maddening ability to find and lie down on whatever part of the Sunday newspaper Theo happened to be reading.
“Dido’s fine. She’s taken to sitting on your father at every opportunity. He grumbles but won’t move a muscle if she falls asleep on him. Is it that bad, honey? Haven’t you met any nice people?” Mom’s voice was warm and sympathetic.
“Oh, yes. Very nice.” Theo had a memory of deep-set gray eyes.
“What about the faculty? You liked Dr. Waterman.”
She didn’t want to tell Mom about Professor d’Amb—Julian’s—slightly strange behavior. Mom sometimes forgot that she was an adult now. “I still do. They’re fine, too—the ones I’ve met.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“Well, I’ve only met a couple of them—”
“Give it a chance, honey. You know that if you were back at Sneed, you’d be sighing that if only you had your doctorate, you wouldn’t have to deal with those adolescent monsters and could spend your time teaching college students who actually want to learn Latin.”
“I know. You’re right.” Theo flung an arm across her forehead and hissed in pain.
“What was that?” demanded Mom.
Theo stopped cursing under her breath and got up to peer into her mirror. Her glowing red face clashed with her red-gold hair. “It was me being dumb. I stayed up till two thirty last night reading. Then I was up at seven to register, and then this afternoon I decided to li
e out in the sun and get a little healthy color so I didn’t look too much like the Elgin Marbles at the dinner tonight. I fell asleep, of course. I hope they’re not serving lobster, or they might mistake me for the main course.”
“Oh, Theo.” Mom sighed. “You know you have to be careful with the sun. You and your father have such fair skin.”
“It’s not that bad. I just look kind of red, that’s all. It’s embarrassing, but at least no one will be able to see if I blush.”
“They will, too. You’ll turn purple,” said a new voice.
“Lionel!” said her mother. “Get off the extension!”
“Oh, hi, Dad. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Dad chuckled. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m sure you’ll be fine. Send me your reading lists when you get them. I want to be able to quiz you when you come home.”
Theo groaned. “I think I’ll be getting enough quizzing here. I’ll email them when I can. Classes start tomorrow. Be nice to my cat, you hear?”
“Hmmph. She’s a spoiled brat, but I suppose I will. Vale, cara rufula filia.”
“Are you referring to my red skin or hair? Vale, stercoreus senex. Amo te.”
“Ah.” Dad chuckled again. “Good alliteration. Love you, too. Vale.” There was the beep of a phone being switched off.
“Theo, stop calling your father bad names in Latin,” Mom scolded. “Yes, I know you called him a nasty old man.”
“He called me ‘little red child’ first. And anyway, he loves it when I come up with new Latin insults. Mom, I’ve got to go get ready for the dinner.”
“All right, dear. Please wear your hair down and not screwed up in that tight little knob you used to wear it in at Sneed. You’re so pretty when you let yourself be.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, I promise.”
Theo hung up and gathered her toiletries, then headed down the hall to shower in the communal bathroom. It was hard to go back to being a student after three years of paid working life and her own apartment. But she’d dreamed of coming here, dreamed of spending her time discussing the finer points of historical prose and making convoluted Latin puns over glasses of merlot at department gatherings. Most of all, she’d dreamed of being with people who understood her love of the past, who would share her enthusiasm and speak her language, in all senses of the word.
Gray eyes and unexpected dimples flashed across her mind’s eye again. Well, that was true. Not everyone she had met was that bad. Surely Grant Proctor would be at the dinner tonight.
Chapter Two
An hour later Theo stood in the Great Room at Hamilton Hall, clutching a glass of wine and exchanging nervous smiles with the other new grad students. Dozens of candles glowed on the long linen-covered table set in the center of the room. Undergrads in white tunics and garlands of ivy circulated with platters of stuffed mushrooms and smoked salmon canapés. She turned to the student standing next to her. He studied the scene before him with such a lack of surprise that she guessed he was in his second year.
“Are department gatherings always this, er, elaborate?” she ventured.
The young man shrugged. “This is how Julian likes it.” He made a grab at the tray of a passing server. “At least he feeds us well,” he said around a mouthful of stuffed mushroom. “New here, huh?”
“Yes.” Theo self-consciously sipped from her glass.
“You ought to see the real department dinners. The symposia. You’ll get to one if you’re lucky. The faculty has them every month, but they’re by invitation only. I’ve been twice,” he added with smug emphasis. “They’re the real thing. We eat reclining on couches, and drink from silver cups, and tell riddles and play Greek and Latin drinking games.”
“Wow. Really?” Not that it was terribly surprising. She could just picture Julian in a toga, looking autocratic and handsome in snowy white, like a statue of an Olympian god.
A tall woman in a long, gauzy peacock-blue dress walked by. The student next to Theo bobbed his head respectfully. “Hello, Ms. Cadwallader. Nice to see you.”
“Hello, Andrew,” the woman replied. She glanced at Theo with eyes as dark and sharp as flint and kept walking.
“I can’t picture her at one of those dinners,” Theo murmured. Those eyes had given her a chill all the way down to her toes.
“Oh, she’s there. That’s June Cadwallader. Julian’s secretary. More or less runs the department. Don’t get on her bad side. She can make life miserable if she doesn’t like you. You’re probably already screwed, though. She doesn’t like female students.”
“Why not—oh, who’s that?” She nodded toward a couple who had just entered.
The man, dark and bearded, leaned on a pair of crutches. His upper body appeared massive in contrast to his wasted legs. His much younger companion fussed and patted his arm when he paused.
Theo nearly gasped aloud; she had never seen such an exquisitely beautiful woman outside of a fashion magazine. Long blond hair tumbled over her shoulders, framing a face so symmetrical, so perfect, so pink and ivory and gold that Theo felt like one of the gargoyles carved on the building’s entries in comparison.
“Dr. Forge-Smythe! Mrs. Frothington-Forge-Smythe!” breathed Andrew. He shoved his wineglass at Theo and hurried over to them.
“Frothington-Forge-Smythe? That’s a mouthful,” Theo murmured, watching the pair greet the student. Dr. Forge-Smythe’s manner was warm enough as he shifted his crutches to shake Andrew’s hand, but his wife’s smile lit up the space around them like a klieg light. Andrew swayed as if he were going to faint under its impact.
“She never did have a sense of proportion,” murmured someone behind her. Theo turned to see Grant Proctor watching the professor and his wife.
“She doesn’t have to, looking like that.” Theo shook her head in admiration, then turned to him. Yup, just as good-looking as he’d been this morning. “I was hoping you’d be here. I want to hear more about your erudite moose.” She handed her and Andrew’s wineglasses to a wandering toga-ed server.
He nodded. “They’re good, but they’re nothing compared to the porcupines. We’ve trained them to do the choruses in Aeschylus and Euripides. Their diction is better than the moose’s, but they do tend to overact shamelessly.”
She giggled, and he smiled with her. “I’d love to see them.”
“It’s very funny, especially when their quills get entangled. I’d like to switch them to comedies, but they’re too in love with doing the Oresteia every fall before they hibernate.” He shrugged.
“You might read Aristophanes to them in their sleep over the winter. Subliminal suggestion might work,” she said, matching his serious tone.
“That’s a very good idea. I’ll have to try it. Though I think they’re a little too touchy to deal with satire well. The moose have a much better innate grasp of comedy.” He leaned a little closer to her. “Mind you, we might get the bears back if we did comedies. They marched out last year and swore they wouldn’t come back until we promised not to make them do Trojan Women in drag again.”
She laughed out loud. The sound attracted the attention of the trio standing nearby. Mrs. Frothington-Forge-Smythe looked at them in surprise. When she saw Grant, her eyes widened. She walked over to them, followed by Dr. Forge-Smythe and Andrew.
“Hello, Renee,” Grant said as the woman glided up, her megawatt smile trained on him.
Theo felt even more awkward. Renee Frothington-Forge-Smythe was inches shorter than she, but so well proportioned that Theo amended her comparison: now she felt like a gargoyle on a ladder.
“Hello,” the woman purred back at him. “Do my eyes deceive me? Is it—?”
“Grant Proctor.” He nodded to her.
Theo watched him from the corners of her eyes and held her breath, waiting to see if he would be transformed into a fawning puddle like Andrew. But his expression of polite interest didn’t change.
“Pro—ah, yes, of course. Ho
w lovely to see you after all these years. What brings you here?” The woman’s violet-blue eyes raked over him, a speculative gleam lurking in their depths. She leaned toward him with a sinuous movement, and Theo saw Andrew swallow hard.
“A visiting fellowship. I’m looking forward to working with my new colleagues.” He smiled at Theo. She felt her heart beat faster. Did he—could it be that he—that he liked her better than this elegant beauty?
Renee caught the smile and frowned. She moved closer to her husband and took his arm. “Dear Henry. Do you remember, uh, Mr. Proctor?”
Dr. Forge-Smythe peered at him uncertainly. “Hmm? No, can’t say I do. Pleased to meet you, though. And you are?” he continued, turning to Theo.
“Theodora Fairchild. I’m pleased to meet you, Dr. Forge-Smythe.”
“Ah, yes. You’re in my pre-Roman class. Arthur’s spoken to me of you. Renee, dear, this is one of my new students.”
Renee turned to Theo. Her glance was dismissive. “How nice to meet you. Dear me, child, is that a sunburn? Is it as painful as it looks?”
Theo felt herself flush at Renee’s tone, silky and edged all at once. She’d forgotten her blazing cheeks and nose during Grant’s cheerful conversation. Now she remembered her father’s dire prediction. Another correction, she thought: bright purplish-red gargoyle on a rickety crimson ladder.
A sudden movement at her side caught her attention. “I’m sure it’s uncomfortable, Renee, but certainly not as bad as you make it out to be.” Julian had materialized next to her, his voice chilly as he surveyed them. He’d changed into another crisp button-down, white this time, and looked even more tanned and suave.
Theo felt her blushes redouble. Why hadn’t she just stayed in her room and hidden under the bed?
“Evening, Julian,” Dr. Forge-Smythe said. “Nice party.”
“Thank you, Henry. Hello, Mr. Proctor. Welcome back, Andrew. My dear Theodora.” Julian smiled at each of them, pointedly passing over Renee. Theo saw her pout but hold her tongue. Odd. Why wasn’t she turning her feminine magnetism from “stun” to “kill”? Surely Julian, handsome as he was, would be a prime candidate in her eyes?
By Jove Page 2