“At least we have the locket,” Ottersock continued, huffing through his bushy whiskers. “I’ll send it over to the museum just as soon as I…”
His voice drifted off, and his eyes grew so dreamy it was obvious he was enjoying a vision in which he placed strands of their hair inside the locket and threw the whole thing into the Thames River. Then another piece of mail floated up from the desk, fluttering imperatively, and he snatched it.
“Huh, it’s from you, Tarrant. Postmarked ‘Staveley.’ ” He looked questioningly at Amelia, even as Caleb did the same, but she continued to stare into the middle distance. Her face had turned white—and yet in every other respect she retained thatcold, inhuman calm. For the first time in all the years he’d known her, Caleb finally understood that it was not a defense but a prison. It kept her from being herself in a way that might incur the disapproval of her parents and teachers.
“I thought I had destroyed that letter,” she said impassively. “I must have burned another by accident.”
“What does it say?” Caleb and Ottersock asked together, although with different tones of wariness.
“By all means, open it,” Amelia told them.
Caleb watched with a growing sense of dread as Ottersock tore the envelope and withdrew its contents. No doubt Amelia had merely sent a dutiful report about their work’s progress at Ravenscroft Manor…
But his instincts knew that she had not.
Ottersock’s eyebrows lowered in a preemptive frown as he unfolded the letter, then suddenly shot up like a pair of electrified sheep. “You resign?!” he shouted.
“You resign?!” Caleb echoed, staring at Amelia in astonishment.
“I do,” she replied tranquilly.
Caleb opened his mouth…then closed it again. He was beyond words. He could not even see words on the farthest horizon. Amelia resigning did not in itself surprise him; she’d talked about it before, after all, and had a job offer from a German university, should she wish to take it. The timing was also understandable, since she’d written that letter sometime during the past week, on an assignment that would have made even the steadiest person want to quit—obviously, considering the most steady person in England had just done so. What he failed to comprehend was that she’d written it without telling him.
“Why?” Ottersock demanded, shaking the letter at Amelia. She did not flinch, but she did blink rather heavily, and it was all Caleb could do not to grab Ottersock’s hand to stop him. “Why? Why would you do this?”
Amelia smiled. But it was a faint, poignant smile, and Caleb’s heart plunged into the very pit of his being, a darkness wherein he’d buried memories of his father’s death, and hungry nights, and the day he was almost expelled from school because a teacher caught him reading her volume of Charles Baudelaire’s erotic poetry. He recognized a pivotal moment when he saw one.
“I’m resigning,” Amelia said, “because I love—”
“Stop,” Caleb said, clutching her arm before he knew what he was doing. It was hardly the action of a man who supposedly hated her, and yet he found himself unable to let her go, even as Ottersock looked on with a rapidly darkening glower.
Amelia turned her smile to him. She was beautiful, beautiful; she was everything to him. Just the sight of her transformed a world with slums and rotting stables into an absolute paradise. Caleb wondered dimly, rather desperately, if he should go down on his knees to her right then and there—the same thing he wondered every single time he looked into those midnight eyes, that face like moonlight. But Amelia took his hand gently and eased it away from her arm.
“I’m resigning,” she said, “because I love me.”
Then just like that, she turned and walked away.
—
Amelia went home.Two students and a fellow professor attempted to waylay her, each of them in possession of someurgent problem only she could solve, but Amelia just smiled, shook her head, and kept going.
In her cozy, book-lined flat on Norham Road, she dropped her suitcase without another glance at it and, shedding clothes as she walked through the lounge into the tiny bathroom, she drew herself a bath. Sinking into its warm, rose-perfumed water, sighing wearily, she closed her eyes. The darkness behind them felt dusty, cloying, with a ghostlike memory of Ravenscroft Manor. Only after it finally cleared into fresh, unstained peace did she emerge from the water. Drying herself, she dressed in her favorite lace negligee, then made a cup of tea.
Dark, fragrant tea in her best mug, with no one watching her drink it. And a biscuit on the side just to complete the experience of heaven.
Leaning against the kitchen bench, she watched sunlight venture over her books, listened to dim sounds from the city, and tried to ignore two students arguing on the street outside. Slowly, warily, her mind began to emerge from the haze that had been ensconcing it ever since she left Ottersock’s office.
I just quit being a professor!The memory hit her like a punch to the stomach.
Yes, I really did,she answered herself, smiling into her tea.
No more nasty gossip from male colleagues.
No more scorn from her faculty head.
She might even consider wearing a pretty floral dress, now that she didn’t need to present a scrupulously professional front at all times in an effort to deter gossip and scorn. Granted, she probably wouldn’t be able to afford such a dress, considering she’d just relinquished her income. Indeed, she’d have to leave this dear little flat…leave Oxford entirely…perhaps evenreturn home to her parents…get a job as a receptionist…and learn by necessity how to giggle just to survive…
She was on the verge of a marriage of convenience and significant hyperventilation when the doorbell rang. She literally ran to answer it. Caleb stood on the doorstep, of course, all smiles and the merest hint of a swagger. He smelled of fine cologne, and his suit must have cost an entire year’s salary—although the tie was crooked, like an invitation. Amelia’s nerves began to hum excitedly.
