John inhaled deeply, hoping to make room for courage, and set down his valise and crossed in front of another boy offering to help with trunks. “Take the strap; I’ll have the heavy end.”
“No need, sir—students don’t carry. Leave the portage to the lads,” the porter called, pencil squeaking over his ledger.
Somehow, he felt as though he’d been watched.
“It’s my heavy luggage; he can help to carry it—and I’ll take the other end,” John said without looking up.
The boy blinked, surprised into a grin. “Cheers.”
“This way?” John said, and they heaved together. Two steps, then four, then the landing in front of the dormitory for new students.
“Name?”
“John Spencer, Marquess of Stonefield,” he offered, and didn’t care what the porter thought. The man ran a finger down the ledger and nodded him through. It felt like something opening.
They left the trunk at the door, and John turned back to his parents. Maisie had pushed her face through the open carriage window and waved with the already saturated handkerchief; Felix was sayingsomething to her that made her mouth twitch in an unwilling smile. John savored the sight and then made himself move, because standing still never helped.
The quad spread neat as a bookplate: clipped grass, pale stone, the long shadow of the library tower laid like a ladder across the flags. He stopped before he entered the building—not to gawk, but to mark it. People like my parents couldn’t have stood here as students, not when they were young. Oxford’s doors had been shut to Jews. They’d built lives anyway. I can walk in. I can ask questions out loud. He could use this for good. He would.
“Go on, milord,” the boy said behind him, as if he’d heard the thought.
“I’m going,” John said, and meant it, but he couldn’t shake the sensation that someone was following him. Or why else were the tiny hairs on his neck pricking up?
He turned back once more because he couldn’t help it. Maisie pressed her hand to her heart. Felix tipped the brim of his hat with two fingers, and the carriage moved through the gate and out of sight.
He waved until he was certain they couldn’t see him anymore, but the tight place under his ribs squeezed.
“Is the library open?” he asked the boy, who’d set down the strap.
“Yes, milord. Shall I wait for you here?”
“Please set this aside, I’ll return soon.” John crossed the quad with his hand on his chest and a list of instructions clattering pleasantly in his head: come home often; write first, worry later; eat; sleep; be kind.
The porter’s pen squeaked faintly as he mumbled to another new arrival behind John. Geese argued somewhere beyond the wall. John looked up at the great windows of the library, bright as Maisie’s polished silver candlesticks in the sun—
—and caught a flicker from the inside.
Blond hair, quick as a match-flare. A profile turned half away. A book held close to a blue-clad chest. The slightest tilt of a mouth, as ifa private joke had just landed.
It was a breath, no more. Enough to set the air inside him humming in a most unfamiliar way.
A swift beat rose where the ache had lived. Good, off to the library. Begin the work, he thought, and the tempo evened as he allowed himself to explore a little.
He entered the library and found a staircase open to a dark tower. Perhaps that’s where she is.
He climbed. The old treads answered each boot with a hollow thud that sounded like a secret he needed to uncover. At the landing between two floors, where the windows faced the court, he paused one last time and looked back across the court. Carriages delivered more new students to the new dormitory, but he was already at the library.
John smiled and went up to where he’d seen the blonde girl.
The room he found at the end of the staircase was small and bright. A desk with a nick in one corner. A window overlooking the court. Books in an uneven stack, a blue shawl slung over the chair back, a mug ring on the sill as if someone had been here often and in a hurry. Someone lived in this forgotten corner.
“What are you doing here?” The voice came from the shadow near the shelves—clear, bright, with a faint lilt that felt instantly like home. Like how Maisie and Deena sounded after a long spell of German.
Hm. Curious.
“I didn’t know there were girls in the library,” John said, turning toward the sound. Another ridiculous rule. Why should girls and Jews be barred from rooms built for thought? In his house, both owned half the shelves.
“I saw you arrive, you’re new,” she said.
