And a willingness to sacrifice what was most important for who was most important.
Hair and bath forgotten, Nora leapt from the bed and tore down the stairs. She found Lucius in his office, prodding the fire with a poker, Martha working on embroidery in a nearby chair.
Nora paused in the doorway and forced herself to pace her breathing. After twenty seconds, her heart stopped crashing against her rib cage, and she thought she might be able to speak without sounding like a madwoman.
She rapped on the door. “Lucius?”
He waved her in but continued to eye the Lilliputian fire. Nora crossed the room and waited for his attention.
“How are you this morning, dear?” Martha asked. She jabbed the needle through the linen with more force than necessary, and the thread tangled.
“Fine.”
Lucius set the poker against the hearth and faced them. “What is it, Nora?”
Martha tugged at her thread, drawing it into a hopeless knot. She grunted and bit it off. “I don’t know why I continue to attempt these pointless triflings.” She set the fabric aside and turned a shining face up toward Nora. “I’m so looking forward to your company. There is a lovely suffragette group in Queens County. Oyster Bay is a wonderful place to live. You’ll have plenty to keep you occupied.”
Nora smiled at her aunt. “It sounds very nice, and I do enjoy your company, Aunt Martha, but I want to stay here and continue my education at Cornell.”
Lucius frowned. “I thought they offered the scholarship to someone else.”
“They did,” Nora said, her voice wavering, “but I’d like the chance to stay in Ithaca and see if I can find work.”
He crossed his arms. “We had a plan. You’ll move in with Martha. I will seek employment elsewhere, and your mother and I will settle somewhere . . . not on Long Island.” He sent Martha a tight smile. “With your help, of course, sister.”
Martha sent Nora a secretive look, then cleared her throat. “I thought you’d like to be a part of the movement, Nora. We could use an intelligent, passionate woman like you. With your help, women could have the vote in the next few years! Just think, we might help the next president be elected.”
Nora dropped her eyes. She hated to disappoint her aunt, who had been encouraging and kind to her, but she didn’t want marches and ribbons and jail. “It’s not what I want to do, Aunt.” She looked back up. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
Martha’s face fell, but she nodded. “What do you want to do?”
“Whatever you want to do,” Lucius said, “do it on Long Island.”
Martha shot him a withering look and smiled at Nora, encouraging her to answer.
Nora inhaled, steadying herself. “I want to get my master’s, publish my findings in a journal, and . . . get married.” She bit down on her lower lip so hard, she winced.
Martha raised her brows. “I would advise against the last bit.”
A soft smile teased Nora’s mouth, blooming when Owen’s face drifted into focus. “The man I want to marry is marvelous. Not at all cruel.”
“Marry him on Long Island,” Lucius muttered.
“I’m not sure why you intend to hold me to our agreement, Lucius. You won’t be here anymore, so why do you care where I live?”
He shot her a withering glare. “I have your best interest at heart.”
She blinked, and a laugh brimming with disbelief bubbled up. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not. Continuing your education will put even more foolhardy ideas into your head, and you will cause your mother no end of grief. As much as I enjoyed living without you, your time in India devastated her. I will try to find a position first in New York City. That way you can visit her when she needs you. Ithaca is too far for her peace of mind.”
“Stop being so dramatic, Lucius,” Martha said. She looked at Nora and picked up her embroidery again. Squinting, she tried to slip the thread through the needle. “I hope you won’t be sacrificing your career for your young man.”
“I’ve realized there’s more than one path to seeing a dream fulfilled.” She’d pinned all her hopes on the scholarship and the journal, but Uncle John had shown her another possibility. And, undistracted by the only thing she’d thought about since before she left for India, she could remember Owen more clearly. Who he was. How he’d encouraged her every step of the way. His support.
He’d been right. The journal had been a weight around her neck, forcing her to ignore the things she really wanted in favor of misplaced obligation. She hated losing it because it felt like she’d lost her father all over again. But she hadn’t. Her father wasn’t that journal, just like her dreams weren’t wrapped up in it.
Owen wouldn’t expect her to sit by the fire and produce mediocre embroidery while he researched and discovered. He’d never once indicated that was what he wanted. She’d been too obstinate, clinging to someone else’s dream, to see that.
Lucius lifted the poker again and shoved it into the cracking, popping flames. “It doesn’t matter what he wants or what you want, Nora. You gave me your word. You’re going to Long Island.”
Nora sat on the end of her bed and stared at the trunk occupying the space where her father’s insect cabinet used to stand. Mother had it removed after Lucius had burned all of the drawers.
Now Lucius had made another decision that changed things. Except Nora couldn’t escape this one. Professor Comstock hadn’t approached her with another Asian research project, and she was to leave for Long Island in a few days. And it would be selfish to grieve her mother. Besides, Nora had agreed to Lucius’s terms.
But that decision felt like it had been made ages ago by a different person.
Nora sighed and stood. She pulled her coat from the armoire, shrugged it on, and grabbed her fur-lined gloves. Maybe life with Martha would be interesting and fulfilling. Maybe she could transfer all of the passion she had for entomology into a new cause—suffrage. She cared about women and the vote—of course she did—but it didn’t thrill her like field research.
Not teaching or writing or illustrating . . . but field research.
She paused in her path to the door and clutched the gloves to her chest. She loved field research. Loved searching and discovering and studying. She didn’t want to be a teacher. Didn’t want to run a journal, though losing it still stung.
What she wanted, what she dreamed of in those moments she allowed her mind to wander, was a shola forest or a jungle. Humidity so heavy it crawled between the layers of her clothing. Food that burned her tongue and people who seared their way into her heart. Sunsets she couldn’t replicate with a thousand pots of paint. Insects the size of her hand and a tent not much larger than a cot.
They had been right. Professor Comstock, who told her she was made for something other than teaching. Owen, who stubbornly clung to his insistence she belonged in the field. Even William, who said she had the heart of an explorer.
A laugh escaped her tight chest, and she absently rubbed the ribbon on her cuff. They’d known her better than she had known herself. They’d seen her and told her. But only losing everything else had shown her the truth of it.
If only she hadn’t lost Owen in the process of finding herself.
The clock in the library struck the third hour. She’d be late. Nora slid her dangling Indian earrings into her piercings, set her hat upon her head, and dashed down the stairs.
“Where are you off to?” Martha called from the parlor.
Nora backtracked and stuck her head into the room. “Owen was asked to give a lecture in honor of receiving the scholarship. I’m going to watch and tell him good-bye.”
She departed on quick feet, eager to leave thoughts of her future in her packed-up room.
Despite recent rain and the risk of mud, she ran through the cemetery, shaving ten minutes from her trip to Library Hall. By the time she arrived, muck spattered the hem of her skirt and her hat had slipped from her head, whacking against the back of her neck wit
h every step. She stopped inside the building to put the hat back where it belonged and catch her breath before sneaking into the crowded auditorium.
“Nora, I’m glad you’ve come.” Owen’s voice traveled over the audience’s heads.
She paused in the aisle, aware that every eye had turned toward her and that her hat had slipped off again and now hung from the bow tied around her neck. She yanked at it until the ribbon came undone, and wiggled her fingers at him in a wave. Then she slammed the hat back onto her head and tied the ribbon into a bow so tight, it wouldn’t come loose save with a pair of scissors.
She’d kill Owen for drawing attention to her like this. Surely she wasn’t the only one late. She crept toward a row, intent on an empty seat.
“I was lucky to work with Nora Shipley in India. While there, she discovered a species that has never been studied before.”
Nora stopped short of sitting and stared at Owen over the heads of a hundred people. A cold sweat broke out along her spine. The Prioneris sita was her discovery. She’d planned to reveal its existence in a submission to a scientific journal. She wanted to be the first to share it with people. Hadn’t Owen received enough? How could he do this to her?
She clenched her jaw and decided to leave. She couldn’t be here while he stole her last chance at redeeming herself.
His voice stopped her. “Nora, will you please join me onstage?”
Whispers filled the room as everyone wondered what Owen meant to do. She shook her head and opened her mouth, but there were no words. Only disjointed questions and the realization that everyone was staring at her, waiting for her to do something. Owen watched her as well, a boyish smile and outstretched arm beckoning her to the stage.
She didn’t know his intention, but she wouldn’t give in to it. She stepped back into the aisle and turned toward the exit. It would be a public insult, ignoring his invitation, one the student body would talk about long after she left Cornell and Ithaca.
She glanced at Owen once more, taking a moment to store up his image in her mind. He beckoned again and even took a step toward the edge of the stage.
Everything they’d shared filled the blank spaces in her mind, and the words came. So many words. Words she couldn’t say because they would reveal her feelings for him in a very indecent, public way. And she wanted to be publicly humiliated even less than she wanted to humiliate him.
She took a deep breath, straightened her posture, and walked up the aisle. After she climbed the short set of stairs to the stage, Owen took her elbow and motioned toward her, eliciting polite applause from the crowd. Nora saw President White sitting in the front row between Professor Comstock, who grinned at her, and the men on the scholarship committee, who looked perplexed.
Owen pushed her forward. “I’d like to give Nora the opportunity to share with you her discovery of an interesting and previously unstudied butterfly.”
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
Owen gave her ribbon a solid yank and plucked the hat from her head, setting it on the dais. “Giving you a chance, Phenomenon.”
She swiveled to look at him, her earrings swaying. “A chance to publicly fail?”
He put his hand on her shoulder and bent so that his words were only for her. “Fail? You? Unlikely.” Then he motioned her to the lectern, winked, and jogged down the steps.
Nora swallowed and slowly crossed the stage. Atop the lectern, she spied a pile of paper. When she lifted the first sheet, in Owen’s even, broad print, she saw everything they’d discussed about the Prioneris sita while sweating beneath the glaring sun and sipping from metal cups of spiced tea.
His notes had been written from memory—they demonstrated none of the linear, organized approach of her own. But enough information was there to help her with an impromptu speech.
She pressed her lips together, but that didn’t stop the slow spread of her smile, and she looked at Owen, who now sat in the front row, grinning back at her the way she loved best.
With a short nod, she riffled through the papers and settled on the focus of her presentation. “The more you’re exposed to a thing, the more you accept it. And because of that, we sometimes miss the little details that could reveal something bigger than our expectations allow.”
Like Owen, whom she’d always thought to be obnoxious and shallow. She’d missed the depth of his heart. The beauty in his character.
“The Delias eucharis is common in India. It’s a butterfly known to every entomologist, well-studied and understood. We saw them everywhere and never paid them a moment’s attention. Because of that, we almost missed out on what might be the greatest discovery of my career. The Common Jezebel isn’t alone with its stained-glass-window wings. It has a mimic, one that has never been noticed by researchers because its differences are so subtle, it takes close inspection to recognize them.”
Her heart eased its pace as she pressed into the subject. She chanced a glance at Owen, who sat on the edge of his seat, elbows on his knees and hands loosely folded together. Her breath caught at the expression on his face, and her eyes watered. He was celebrating this moment. Proud of her and what she’d accomplished. Thrilled by her success.
“But when you realize what you’ve found, you know everything has changed. And that’s what happened when I discovered a butterfly with orange spots on its hind wing shaped like squares instead of arrows. When I first saw the differences between the Common Jezebel and my own Prioneris sita.”
Chapter
Thirty-One
Nora snuggled deeper into the settee’s cushions the next day and tried to focus on the book in her lap.
She didn’t think her speech could have gone any better had she prepared for it. Afterward, while everyone stood and applauded, she had raced down the steps of the stage, having every intention of making a spectacle of herself and Owen, but she’d been thronged by undergrads and professors wanting to know more about this new butterfly. She hadn’t been able to resist them, and the discussions swallowed the whole of her attention. When she found herself alone again, Owen had gone, and she was left to walk home by herself, wondering when she’d see him again. Hoping he knew how much she needed to talk to him.
“Nora,” her mother said, gliding into the parlor, “I’m hosting an impromptu dinner, a going-away party, if you will, tomorrow evening, and—”
“Oh, Mother, please don’t. Have you forgotten what happened at the last one?” Nora’s chest caved in at the thought of sitting through another of those awful affairs.
“I’m sure you won’t allow that to happen again.” Lydia tapped the end of a pen against her teeth. “I wondered if you might like to invite some friends, since you’re leaving the day after.”
Nora groaned. “Fine. Just Bitsy and Rose. And the Comstocks.”
A knock sounded at the door, and they heard Alice cross the house to answer it.
Nora’s mother sat beside her. “Now, let’s discuss the menu.”
Nora closed her book—a fascinating look into spider webs around the world—and set it on the table beside her. Her mother wouldn’t leave her alone until they’d organized all the details. Menus and seating plans trumped everything. At least in her mother’s world.
“Ma’am,” Alice said with a light rap on the parlor door.
Nora’s mother rose from the settee. “President White. Gentlemen.”
Nora jumped to her feet, not nearly as gracefully as her mother. But then, she rarely accomplished that. She dipped her head in acknowledgment.
The men cleared their throats and looked at each other before Professor Comstock stepped forward. “Nora, Owen has decided not to accept the scholarship after all.”
Her mouth dropped, and her mother pinched the back of her arm. Nora snapped her lips closed and fiddled with the cicada brooch pinned to her collar. “I had no idea.”
“He told us yesterday after the lecture.” Professor Comstock gave her a warm smile, so in contrast to the other men’s sober expressions.
Nora’s mother stepped closer to her and subtly squeezed her elbow. Nora released the brooch, dropped her arm to her side, and forced her lips into a smile. Behind the folds of their bustled skirts, though, her mother clasped her hand, and Nora’s heart pounded against her chest.
“Why would he give it up?” Nora asked. He’d have to return to New York City—which would actually make him closer, since she’d be living on Long Island. But his father might send him to law school. Were there any law schools in New York City?
Professor Comstock shook his head. “He didn’t say. He only told me that he’d discovered something he wanted more than the scholarship.”
President White cleared his throat. “We were impressed with your presentation yesterday, even more so when Owen told us he hadn’t informed you in advance that he was going to call upon you. You were succinct yet thorough in your delivery of the subject, and you demonstrated an admirable understanding of the butterfly’s habits. Everyone was enthralled.”
Another man stepped past President White and grabbed his lapels as though about to make a decree. Nora recognized him as a member of the school board and the scholarship director. “We believe we may have been too hasty in dismissing you from competing for the scholarship, and after your outstanding work yesterday, we’d like to offer it to you, Nora. We’d be delighted, actually, to have such a scientist continue her education at Cornell.”
Nora’s hand grew slick in her mother’s grip. They both knew what this meant. Nora wouldn’t have to leave Ithaca, after all. She could stay and finish her degree. It was too late to save the journal, but her career was another matter altogether.
A week after Nora received news of the scholarship, she sat on her bed, organizing watercolor pots, paper, and brushes. Lifting up a beautifully illustrated book of upstate New York’s insects, flora, and fauna, she flipped through the pages. Sita would enjoy it, and it would give her a glimpse into Nora’s world. The purple-stemmed asters and bluebirds would seem as exotic to Sita as the birds and flowers of India had been to Nora. She wrapped the book in a handkerchief she had talked her mother into embroidering—a little stained-glass-window butterfly in the corner—and tucked everything into the small crate.
A Mosaic of Wings Page 32