“What do you need, Alice? You’re wasting my time.”
“I’d like your help looking through records from the 1660s. I hadn’t realized I needed to search that far back when I was there in February.”
Another snort laden with contempt reached all the way across the ocean. “Then I suppose you’ll need to get your pampered rear end onto a plane and come over here to do your own research.”
The connection was severed before Alice could even draw a breath.
Alice diverted her frustration into making Jack a magnificent home-cooked Southern dinner. It began with a pecan-crusted goat cheese salad before a main course of blackened catfish, roasted okra, and golden-brown hush puppies. She served everything on her patio overlooking the backyard. The table was set with flickering votive candles and a pitcher of raspberry iced tea. It was a lovely meal, even though her blood pressure rose while relaying her frustrating telephone call with Margo.
“‘Your pampered rear end’?” Jack asked in amazement. “She actually used those words?”
“She did.”
“It sounds personal,” Jack said as he filled his glass with more tea. “What did you do to tick her off?”
“Nothing! She just hates me, and has since day one. Now that I know the Roost dates to 1661, I am completely at her mercy to get at those records. Margo and the British Library are my only hope.”
“Then I guess you’ll need to get your pampered rear end on a plane and go to England.”
Alice threw a hush puppy at him. Jack caught it mid-flight, popped it into his mouth, and they both laughed. Their relationship was still new and fragile—and yet, she had loved every minute of it.
It had been a week since their first kiss, and they’d had dinner together every evening since. She either cooked for him or they went to a local restaurant, but the evening always ended the same way. They returned to the Roost and Saint Helga’s Spring, where they sat on the pier to watch the sunset. Sometimes they kissed. Other times, Jack laid his head in her lap and told her stories about his travels around the world, building golf courses.
“Maybe this Margo woman is simply a bitter person,” Jack said once the laughter faded.
“She’s not,” Alice said. “There was one time Sebastian Bell accompanied me to the library because it was too rainy to film. You should have seen how Margo fawned over him. She was all smiles and friendliness. All it took was a ‘pretty please’ from Sebastian, and she fell over herself to help. That was the day she found a license from the Crown to someone named R. Santos to operate a ferry on the James River.”
Jack made a timeout gesture with his hands. “Hold on. What does a ‘license from the Crown’ mean?”
“During the 1600s, Williamsburg and Jamestown were a royal colony under direct control of the king. Operating a ferry was a plum job, and the king awarded positions like that to whoevercould pay the fee. I’ve always suspected that whoever built the Roost was wealthy. The windows on the first floor probably cost a fortune.”
“And this Margo woman found the license?”
Alice nodded. “That was the first time I’d heard the name R. Santos. He’s probably the husband of the Widow Santos. I went back to the British Library the next day to see if I could find anything more about R. Santos, but Sebastian wasn’t with me, and Margo was back to being surly and mean.”
If Alice was to discover the Roost’s origins, and Helga’s relationship to it, she might indeed need to get her pampered rear end on a plane to England.
And yet . . . at the moment she didn’t really care. She was happy. For the first time since her career began imploding, she was simplyhappy. Jack had taught her to celebrate the gift of what she’d been given rather than enumerate her difficulties. Even if she lost her job and never worked as a historian again, she had so many blessings.
The odds of keeping her job seemed to dwindle with each passing week, but the wait for an answer was almost over. At last, her long-anticipated summons from the head of the History Department had arrived. It would be the first time she’d come face-to-face with Tom Dolan since the awful stalking scandal had tarnished her name.
Tomorrow morning, she would return to campus and learn her fate.
Chapter Sixteen
Alice parked on the far side of campus, hoping the ten-minute walk beneath the leafy oak and maple trees would help her relax before her meeting with Tom Dolan, the chair of the History Department. Soon she would learn if she was going to be teaching classes in the fall or abruptly fired.
The July air was thick and heavy, motionless, as if it was too tired to summon a breeze. The last of the magnolia blossoms still emitted a weak scent, but most of the other blooming flowers and shrubbery were beginning to fade, as though the heat of summer had sapped their strength. A few daylilies and coneflowers still clung to life. Soon the groundskeepers would descend on the flowerbeds to replace them so the campuswould be blooming once again when students and their parents arrived.
She squared her shoulders and drew a sobering breath as she opened the heavy door of James Blair Hall. The clicking of her heels in the vacant hallway ratcheted her tension higher. The departmental secretary wasn’t in, but Professor Dolan’s door was cracked open and the office lights were on.
“Tom?” she called out in the empty foyer. They were always on a first-name basis when students weren’t around.
Tom soon appeared in the doorway and opened it wider. He wore only a white polo shirt and sloppy beige cargo shorts. Why did so many academics treat their appearance this carelessly? He hadn’t even worn a pair of socks with his loafers.
“Alice,” he said with a polite smile, his face noncommittal, “please join us.”
Us?She scanned the office as she entered, her stomach plummeting at the sight of Anita Gebhardt from HR and Brent Bowers, the college’s attorney. They were both dressed like they belonged in a corporate law office. Anita’s bowl-shaped hair was paired with a floppy bow tie and boxy beige suit.
