Miss Grimsleys Oxford Career (9 page)

She waited for him to speak. Becky plunked a cup of tea on the table and pushed it close to his nose. “I found him out by the back door,” she whispered to Ellen. “I thought he was your brother.”

Ellen gave her a grateful look. “Becky, you're a wonder.”

Becky only smiled. “I … had a brother once, miss.” Ellen pushed the cup closer. In another moment, the odor reached Gordon's nostrils. He sat up and took a sip. “You're as bad as Mama,” he grumbled. “El, tea doesn't cure everything.”

Ellen touched his arm. “It helps, Gordon. Now you have merely to tighten your belt until the next quarter rolls around and …”

Gordon let out a sound between a wail and a moan and turned his face away. “El, you don't know the half of it,” he said. “I needed that money to pay the student who has been writing my essays for me. He won't continue without more blunt, and I lost it all!”

Ellen stared at him as the words sank into her brain. “Good heavens, brother, do you mean …?”

Wearily, Gordon propped his head on his hand. “Every week he writes the essay that I read on Saturday mornings. He wrote the last one on credit, and said he wouldn't write any more until I coughed up the guineas.” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a wrinkled letter. “And what do I find under my door but this note from the warden himself! I missed last Saturday's essay, and if I do not produce an acceptable essay this Saturday, he will write Father.”

The silence stretched between them. Gordon took another sip of tea. “Then Papa will summon me home and I will never be any closer to Spain than I am right now!”

Ellen sat in silence, thinking to herself that it was no time to trot out her childhood scolds and remind him that it was only what he deserved. She touched his hair, matted and dirty from the London gutter. “Can you not write your essay now? It is only Tuesday. Surely …”

He groaned again and drained the rest of the tea. “El, you dolt,” he said. “I am trying to tell you that I have never written an essay in my life!”

As tears filled his eyes, she realized it was also not the time to vent her own anger at his good fortune in an Oxford career.
For he will not see it that way
, she thought.

“You have attended the lectures,” she began. “That ought to be some help in writing an essay.”

“Yes, I attend the lectures,” he said. “I take notes while that dreary don drones on about this or that, and then I turn my notes over to my friend and he writes the essay.”

He eyed his sister, and as she stared back, the look in his face changed and became more thoughtful. He brushed the hair back from his eyes but his glance did not waver from her face.

Ellen had seen that expression before, but not in years. She shook her head. “I don't care what you are thinking, but the answer is no, you provoking brother.”

He did not appear to hear her words. A grim smile played about his lips. “I have just had a brilliant idea, El. It's a real hayburner, and I am astounded that I could think of it, considering how I feel right now.”

She knew better than to say anything but pursed her lips into a thin line.

When she made no comment, he took her by the arm. “Ellen, you're going to attend that lecture in my place and write my essay.”

“I am not!” she declared. “You can go to your lecture and …”

He shook his head. “Not like this, El. It starts in half an hour, and I can't even hold up my head. Can you fathom the trouble I would get into from the warden if he saw me like this? No, Ellen, you'll be as safe as houses.”

“You can't possibly be serious,” she said, her voice soaring into the upper registers.

He winced. “Trust me, El.”

WOULDN'T TRUST YOU IF YOU WERE THE LAST
Grimsley alive,” she declared indignantly, even as Becky Speed put her finger to her lips and Gordon flinched at her bracing tones. “Especially if you were the last Grimsley alive.”

She moved closer to her brother, her face inches from his. “We are not children in the nursery anymore, and I cannot be coerced! You must think I am fearful stupid,” she hissed.

To his credit, Gordon shook his head vigorously, which only caused him to moan and clutch it in both hands, as though he wished to wrench it off. “No, never that,” he gasped. “I ask you to help because I am fearful stupid,” he continued, changing his tack as he watched the suspicion grow in her eyes. “You owe me no favors. And I am certain you can think of countless injustices that would render such sisterly goodwill impossible.”

“I can,” she agreed, with feeling. “If you give me leave of twenty seconds or so, I will name ten or twelve, brother.”

He shook his head more carefully this time and took her by the hand before she could get out of his vicinity. “Ellen, I am desperate,” he said, his voice soft, pleading.

“Well, I suppose you are,” she replied, at a momentary loss over his apparent abandonment of the argument. She regarded him in silence for a long moment.

That they did resemble one another, she would not deny. Her fingers strayed to her own blond hair, cut almost as short as his, and just as curly. She sighed. Even this similarity would fool no one.

“It won't work, Gordon,” she began. No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she knew she would do what he asked.

After a lifetime of careful strategy with his little sister, Gordon knew it too. He sat up, still cradling his head, his eyes alert for the first time.

“Under ordinary circumstances, I would agree with you,” he said, his tone normal as he watched her closely for adverse reactions. “But we are dealing with my don, who is probably more ancient than the Magna Carta, and nearsighted to boot.”

Ellen bit her lip, but she listened, wondering why she was listening even as she did so.
Drat all brothers
, she thought to herself.
They should be buried at birth and dug up at twenty-one
.

“You need merely to swathe yourself in my student's gown,” Gordon said. He took another sip of the refilled teacup that Becky had placed at his elbow, along with a plate of gingersnaps. “Sit away from the window, where the room is lightest, and he will never know.”

“Gordon, when I walk in, he will observe how short I am!” Ellen insisted.

Gordon was calm now, in control. “No, he won't, sister. You will be seated long before he arrives. I swear he forgets every week where our assigned meeting place is. All you have to do is take notes now and then, say ‘hmmm’ and ‘ahh,’ in all the right places, and remain seated until he leaves. Nothing could be simpler.”

“The gown will not be sufficient,” she grumbled, casting about for argument. “You know very well I will be found out the moment I attempt to cross the quadrangle in my dress and your gown.”

“I already considered that,” he replied and nodded gingerly toward a bundle near the back door. Becky hurried to fetch it. Gordon opened the bundle and pulled out a pair of trousers and a frilled shirt.

Ellen shook her head. “I couldn't possibly,” she said. “Besides, Gordon, I will not fit into your clothes!”

He eyed her patiently, fondly. “These belong to the chap I share my quarters with, El. He's a little taller than you, but not by much. And here are his shoes and stockings. Come on, El, what do you say?”

She snatched the clothes from him and held them to her. “I should leave you to your fate, brother,” she began. “You brought this all upon yourself, you know.”

“I know,” he agreed, his voice contrite. He got down on one knee and looked up at her.

Tears started in her eyes, and she touched the top of his head.

Why should I “wink at your discords,”
she thought.
And here I am, quoting the Bard like Ralph. Why should I be an instrument to hurry you ultimately to Spain?
She straightened her shoulders and turned to Becky.

“Becky, can you get this bundle to my room? I must beg off from embroidery with Miss Dignam.”

Becky nodded and dashed away with the bundle. Gordon rose, resting his hands on the table. “Just this once, Ellen,” he said. “Then perhaps you can show me how to write a scholarly essay.”

“Perhaps I can. Wait for me here.”

She met Miss Dignam in the hall and made no effort to disguise her agitation. Her heart in her shoes, she hoped her face looked as pale as it felt. She put her hand to her forehead, gratified that her fingers shook.

“Miss Dignam, I must beg your excuse from embroidery,” she said. It was an easy matter for tears to stand out on her long lashes. It was an art she had learned from Horatia. Her chin quivered and Miss Dignam succumbed.

“My dear! You must go lie down!” the headmistress exclaimed. “Are you well?”

Ellen shook her head. She looked about to make sure that no one lingered to listen and stood on her tiptoes. “It is a female matter, Miss Dignam.”

The headmistress colored and patted Ellen's arm. “Go lie down, my dear,” she repeated. “Shall Becky create a tisane for you?”

“If she will bring me a warming pan for my feet, that will suffice,” Ellen said, her voice faltering as she considered the enormity of her deception.
And dare I drag Becky into this mess?
she thought as she walked slowly up the stairs.

With Becky's help, she dressed quickly in the shirt and trousers. The shoes were too large, but Becky stuffed them with tissue paper.

While Ellen fiddled with her hair, biting her lips and scarcely daring to look herself in the eye, Becky arranged her pillows and extra blankets into a facsimile of a person and puffed the comforter up high. She went to the window.

“Thank the Lord it is raining,” Becky said. “You will have the hood up over your face.” She sniffed the air. “If only you did not smell of lavender, Miss Grimsley.”

Ellen turned away from the mirror. “That is the least of our worries.” She strode up and down the room. “Oh, Becky, I cannot begin to walk like a man.”

“Turn your toes out more,” suggested the maid. “Let your arms swing.”

“I look like Jack Tar!” Ellen protested after several more trips up and down the small chamber.

Becky shrugged. “Better that than a schoolroom miss. Now throw out your chest. No, no, you had better not do that, Miss Grimsley!”

“I will clutch Gordon's gown tight about me, I assure you,” she said, and then sighed and pulled on a dress over the shirt and trousers. She swung an engulfing shawl of Norwich silk about her shoulders. “Lead on, Becky Speed,” she said, her eyes straight ahead.

The students had all taken themselves to the classrooms on the main floor. With Becky in the lead, Ellen hurried down the back stairs.

In the servants’ hall, Gordon sat up when he saw her. He watched in appreciative silence as she removed the shawl and dress and held out her hand for his student's robe. He draped it around her slim shoulders. “One could wish you had broader shoulders,” he began but shut up when she glared at him. “It was only a wish.” He sniffed at her hair. “Perhaps Old Ancient of Days has no more sense of smell than of sight,” he said, more to himself than to her. “He will think me Queer Nabs indeed.”

Ellen opened her mouth for a retort but thought better of it. She waited a moment until she had command over her voice. “Tell me what it is we are studying today, Gordon, if you can think that far.”

The wounded look he fixed upon her was small recompense for the murder in her heart. “It is to be Shakespeare, of course.”

“Could you not narrow it down at least to the comedies, tragedies, or histories?” she snapped, grabbing the tablet and pencil he held out to her and stuffing them in one of the deep pockets of the gown.

“It is the one about fairies and donkeys’ heads and a chap named Puck. I suspect it is a comedy,” he said, opening the back door for her. “Of course, come to think of it, that sounds like government, and so it could be a history.”

“How wise of you, dear brother,” she said.

He returned her frown with the smile that had always caused Mama to indulge him. Ellen laughed in spite of herself. Filled with more charity, she followed him into the street and took his arm.

He stopped and removed her hand from his arm. “Really, my dear, how does this look?” he asked. “That sort of thing will never do in public.”