A Duke in the Night(29)
This was met by giggles, and Clara could feel some of the uncertainty break.
“Your brother is a duke,” Lydia whispered, looking just a little scandalized.
“And he still puts his trousers on one leg at a time.” Anne twirled a piece of grass between her fingers, looking unimpressed.
Clara gestured to the student sitting next to Anne, not wishing to get into a conversation that had her imagining Holloway putting on or taking off any item of clothing. “Go ahead,” she encouraged.
“My name is Phoebe,” said a pretty girl with hair the color of chestnuts and eyes to match. Her eyes slid to Anne. “I grew up in Boston, and my parents think I should marry one. A duke, that is.”
“Excellent,” said Anne crisply. “I have one you can have, so long as you promise to take him back to Boston with you.”
Phoebe snorted. “I never said I wanted one.”
“That’s too bad. Is there room for negotiation? Everything in life is a negotiation, really. Perhaps I can throw in a good horse or two to sway you?”
“Ladies,” Clara warned, though she was smiling. She wondered if Anne had any idea how much she sounded like her brother just then. “Let’s continue.”
One by one they went around the circle until everyone had introduced herself. By the time the last student had finished, the tension had dissipated. Missing from any of the questions and reactions had been the snobbery that she saw in so many of her students who attended her programs throughout the year. Missing were the class divide, the preconceptions, and the prejudices. This was not a surprise. She had chosen these girls for exactly this reason.
“Thank you, ladies,” she said. “Next activity. Lie back in the grass.”
Lydia sent her a skeptical look, though the shy Amelia was grinning. With a couple of scattered giggles, the girls reclined so that they were gazing up at the sky.
This part, Clara knew from experience, was easier when each girl did not have the eyes of all the others on her. When each student felt as though she might be alone in the world, alone with her dreams on a cliff high above the sea with only the gulls and the breeze for company.
Clara gazed around her, the girls almost invisible among the waving grass. “Think back to when each of you came to my office and I interviewed you. Now think about the application I gave you to fill out while you were there.” She paused. “You all filled out the same application. Do you all remember what the last question was?”
Heads nodded in the grass.
“Good.” Clara snapped a pretty horseshoe vetch bloom from beside her and looked out over the ocean. “I want you to tell everyone what your answer was. Whenever you’re ready.”
There was a long pause. She could almost hear the thoughts swirling around her. Was this a trick? Was this a trap? Was there going to be some sort of consequence for disclosing publicly what had been written in private? No one wished to say what she had probably never shared with anyone out loud before. Clara snapped another bright-yellow flower and added it to the one already in her hand. A third joined her small bouquet.
“Hotelier.” It was Anne who finally spoke up, the word clear and steady as she gazed up at the drifting clouds.
“Barrister,” Lydia said almost immediately after, and there was a note of wonder in her declaration.
“Physician.” Phoebe added her voice.
“Landscape gardener,” Amelia whispered.
And so it went. This year she had an ambitious hotelier, two students who were fascinated with the intricacies of law, three aspiring physicians, a landscape gardener, an artist, and an architect. The last student spoke, and Clara let a new silence fall.
“You can sit up now.”
The girls pushed themselves upright, each looking around with comprehension dawning in her eyes.
“Thank you for your honesty,” Clara said. “For your courage and willingness to share.” She added a final flower to her collection. “The places and people you spent yesterday with outside Avondale—you will continue as you did yesterday two or three days of each week. You will be expected to contribute as well as learn, and I suggest you take notes and ask a lot of questions of each of your mentors.”
Progressive, generous, and discreet mentors who had been part of her program for years, starting with her brother, who was as good at teaching medicine as he was at administering it. Mentors who valued clever, intelligent minds over everything else.
A buzz of excitement rippled through the group as each realized that her ambitions and desires were suddenly no longer things to be hidden, but things to be embraced. That an opportunity that she might never get again was right in front of her to seize.
“I would think it’s only fair that I answer the same question I asked you all.” Clara’s voice carried over the whispers and murmurs, and she waited for them to fade. She smiled at each of her students. “Professor. Cambridge, or Oxford, though I’m rather partial to the classics, so it might have to be Oxford.” She passed her newly assembled bouquet to Anne, who was watching her with wide eyes. “That’s what I would be if I were a man.”
*
August still hadn’t managed to find Harland Hayward.
He’d cleaned his gelding’s wound again that morning, pleased with how it looked, and seen the animal turned out comfortably, once again horrifying the stable boys by his refusal to hand the animal over to their care. He didn’t bother explaining that his horse was like everything else he owned—his responsibility and therefore deserving of his complete attention when required. August had, however, offered a cursory explanation of how the wound had come about, leaving out the part that involved a small child and letting his displeasure at rash and reckless soldiers be known. There had been a few knowing nods and a few glances exchanged, leaving August with the distinct impression that this sort of behavior was not surprising.