Persuaded

by Alicia J. Chumney

Shaking his head, Derek pushed back the memory of the time Anne’s ponytail holder had snapped. It had been worn too many times to continue to hold back the thick curls that Anne claimed to plague her. Even as he admired the way the light breeze teased the strands in every direction, showing him a glimpse of the girl he suspected had been buried deep beneath the surface of being a middle sibling. He had always suspected that there was more than just the peacemaker beneath Anne’s surface.

  “You didn’t bring your sister-in-law?” he asked Charles, undecided if he was relieved or disappointed.

  “She volunteered to watch our boys,” Mary answered for her husband. “Mary Elliot Musgraves,” she introduced herself, holding out a hand for him to shake.

  With a flash, he suspected that if he looked her up on Facebook that she would be listed as exactly that, still clinging to her maiden name for some reason that was only known to Mary Elliot Musgraves.

  Taking her offered hand, Derek shook it while stating, “Derek Worth. I’m Charles’ history tutor.”

  “I’m well aware of that,” she smiled, eying him up and down before nodding her head.

  He had a sinking feeling that Mary was deciding just which plan she wanted to put into motion. “I was hoping that we would have a fourth,” he said instead.

  “I invited my friend, Charlie Hayes,” Charles informed him.

  “Ugh. Charlie. Such a common name.”

  “Well, Dear,” Charles said the ‘endearment’ between gritted teeth. “He has been dating Henrietta since the end of the last term and he has extensive sports knowledge, along with other things.” Turning to Derek, he added, “Besides, if Charlie didn’t go by his nickname, we wouldn’t know who was talking to which of us. I can’t help it if my sister, Etta, found somebody with my name.”

  “I wish she would have started dating George Holmes instead,” Mary grumbled as she scanned the room for either a place to sit or at the people around them.

  “Regardless,” Derek interrupted. “I’ll be more than happy to meet your friend. It’ll increase our chances of winning if we have a wide and varied knowledge base between us. What are your trivia strengths, Mary?”

  Mary merely shrugged. “I don’t know what the purpose of this Trivia Night is for. I just wanted to get out of the house.” Turning to smile at the guys, she informed them that she was going to go to the restroom and that she’d find them at their table. “Order me a glass of wine, will you, Dear?”

  “They…” he started to say before she wandered off. “Figures.” Rolling his eyes, Charles explained that he would have preferred to have brought his sister-in-law along, but Mary refused to be left alone at home on a Saturday night and their usual babysitter was already working another job. “Anne knows a little bit about everything, it seems,” Charles added before asking Derek to sign them in and find them a table. “I have to go get Mary’s wine. Do you want something?”

  “I’ll get it in a few,” he assured Charles.

  Letting out a deep breath, Derek went to find them a table and sign them in. He had hoped that he could get the reunion meeting between Anne and himself over and done with so that he could get better used to being around her. That obviously wasn’t in the cards for the night.

  At least he was able to put a face to the name Anne had frequently told him stories about six years ago. After that ill-fated meeting with Walter Elliot, he also knew which parent Mary favored in the looks department.

  Mary chattered endlessly the next day about meeting Derek Worth and how the night went.

  “He’s incredibly brilliant,” she beamed. “He’ll certainly help Charles pass his American History class this year!”

  It only took her three point seven seconds to change her tone. “Although I don’t know why he couldn’t have answered some of the history questions himself. He would have known if Charlie had gotten the answers wrong and he insisted on taking the card up to the front himself without correcting anything.”

  “Mary,” Charles sighed, “we already knew he was testing me on my history knowledge.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He answered all of these literature questions and random trivia questions and sports questions, but he couldn’t have answered a single history question. How do we know he even knows his history?”

  “Because the history department recommended him when I went to them asking about tutors.”

  Mary shut up for a moment. “Why can’t he just take your tests for you? It happens all of the time, I assume.”

  “Where did you hear that from?” Anne asked, not planning on adding anything to the conversation but unable to resist a moment longer.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Charles pointed out.

  “Elizabeth told me,” Mary answered her sister. An eye roll was her response to her husband.

  “Elizabeth told you that you can pay other students to take your tests for you?” Anne repeated.

  “Yes,” Mary shrugged.

  Holding up a hand to keep Charles from saying anything, Anne pointed out, “Elizabeth also attended a much larger college than we are at,” her hand gestured between Charles and herself. “Our class sizes are smaller. A professor would notice if somebody else was taking an exam for another student. Even then, I heard that some of the larger campuses require you to show your student ID, with a photo, before you can take an exam.”

  Rolling her eyes, Mary mumbled something neither of them heard before leaving the room. She hated it when Anne was able to give a reasonable retort to her more than logical suggestions.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The semester started two weeks later without much of a fuss. The remaining amount from her college fund was more than enough to pay for any and all textbooks and school supplies she needed. Anne had also taken on a last-minute English tutoring position for a frantic – possibly overachieving – freshman.

  Truthfully, she embraced the chance to get out of Mary and Charles house. She could only tolerate her sister’s chatter so much.

  Getting out of the house also meant she missed Derek the first time the guys had returned to the house to study. Apparently, the library had been too noisy and they decided to make the short trek to the house.

  Anne had heard all about it when she returned after her own tutoring session in the Student Center.

  Once again Mary was chattering a mile a minute about Derek Worth and how Anne had just missed meeting him.

  Anne had a feeling that her luck wouldn’t last much longer.

  Two more weeks later, Derek had no idea what he had gotten himself into by agreeing, once again, to tutor Charles Musgraves at his house.

  Charles and Mary, and Anne, he bitterly thought, lived within a reasonable walk from campus, so he left his car parked in the lot.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to drive over?” Charles asked several times as they made the five-minute trek from the Humanities building to Charles’ house.

  Derek estimated it would take him only ten minutes to walk back to his car after their session was over. “The exercise is actually good for my knee,” he explained. The walk both ways would be a particularly good way to loosen up his joints after sitting down in class all day as well as the next hour or so.

  “It must be strange having your sister-in-law living with you,” Derek commented after a few moments of silence.

  “Oh, Anne,” Charles blushed slightly. “She’s great. She can handle Mary better than anybody else, but that’s to be expected.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “While their mother was sick, during our Senior year, Anne was helping take care of Mary. It was her Sophomore year, but even then Mary enjoyed being the center of attention. I think it gave Anne something to focus on other than their mother dying.”

  “I thought Anne had planned on going to an art school somewhere,” he carefully asked, hoping Charles didn’t realize that Derek shouldn’t have known that piece of information.

  “She did. School of the Art Institute in Chicago, altho
ugh she always said ‘of’ instead of ‘in’. She tried to explain that ‘of Chicago’ was the actual school’s name. Even pulled it up and showed it to me, but,” Charles shrugged as he mused over the past, “that never did make much sense to me.” Then something occurred to him. Stopping in his tracks, he turned to look at Derek before asking, “How did you know that?”

  “We rented Kellynch Place fully furnished,” he started to explain while biding for time to think up a logical explanation, “but I still brought in my own bed sheets. I found a brochure under the mattress when I was making my bed.”

  Charles seemed to believe him, but Derek was known to have an excellent poker face.

  A minute later he asked, “Do you mind if we go the long way around the dorms? If my sisters see me, they are likely to tag along. Mary doesn’t get along with them and the feeling is mutual on Etta’s side. Isa just ignores her.”

  “Then why would they tag along?”

  “Sometimes the dorms are boring.” Charles rolled his eyes. “I told them that they didn’t have to live in the dorms, but Isa wanted the college experience and Etta didn’t want to have to wake up early enough for the fifteen-minute commute and the parking lot drama.”

  Chuckling, Derek recalled a driver yelling at one of the campus student ticket writers because she had dared put a ticket on his car. He had stood back and watched, just in case she needed some help, as the guy continued to yell at her even as she radioed for assistance. Every time the worker had attempted to walk away, the driver would follow behind her shouting obscenities and threatening to get her fired. The poor girl managed to escape when the campus police showed up.

  “Yeah, it can be pretty dramatic.”

  “Yeah,” Charles agreed. “She would rather roll out of bed and go to her eight am class in her pajamas.”

  “You see a lot of that,” Derek replied, uncertain what he should say.

  However, Charles’ plan to avoid his sisters was in vain. Just coming around a corner, the giggling duo – a sophomore and a freshman – spotted their brother and his dashing friend instantly.

  “Charles!” Etta called out. “Wait up!”

  “Are you heading home?” Isa asked. “We’ll come with you.”

  “Who is your friend?”

  Charles took the brief pause – his sisters did need to breathe in order to talk so much – to say, “Derek, these are my sisters that I was just telling you about. Sisters, this is my history tutor, Derek Worth.”

  “I’m Louisa, but my friends call me Isa,” the younger sister smiled coyly at him. “And this is Henrietta.”

  “Oh, I hate my name,” Henrietta pouted as she boldly took Derek’s arm. “My father named me after himself. After naming Charles after his father, and our other brother after our mother’s father, he decided to name his next child after himself, only I turned out to be a girl!” Etta rambled, ignoring the eye roll that Mary was giving her. “Everybody, except Mom, Dad, and Mary, calls me Etta.”

  Derek resisted the urge to comment on her rambling. If he told her his real name, he’d never get her to stop talking. Only a few people knew his legal name.

  “Isa hates her name too,” Etta interrupted his silence, “even though she was named after a book. Or maybe it was an author…” she trailed off. “I don’t read much.”

  The sisters battled back and forth for the Senior’s attention as they made the now three-minute walk to Charles’ house. In that three minutes they were able to pull Derek’s age – twenty-four -, that he was honorably discharged from the Navy at twenty-one because of a knee injury that happened on base when he was stationed in Italy, and that he had taken a good number of his classes online while in the Navy.

  “Are you a History major?” Isa asked, causing him to look over at her.

  “I was when I was enlisted, but I’m studying accounting now. My brother owns a real estate company and I’m planning on joining him after graduation.”

  “Ohhh,” Etta sounded. “It sounds interesting.”

  “Not really,” he answered her.

  Entering the house, Anne let out a call telling Mary that she was ‘home.’ All she really wanted to do was escape to her room and get some studying done. While she wished she was back at the art school studying things like graphic design and illustrations, she knew she was settling for the next best thing.

  Her dream, revealed only to the two people – and one of them was dead – that she trusted, was to illustrate children’s books. Teaching was her back-up plan.

  “We’re in here!” Mary called from the dual kitchen and eating area.

  Sighing deeply, she dropped her bag at the foot of the stairs – out of the way of course – and trudged into the kitchen. “I have my first test in two days and I’m behind in my…” She abruptly stopped talking, her eyes widening and all of the blood drained from her face.

  Suddenly, she felt lightheaded.

  “Anne, this is Charles’ tutor, Derek,” Mary grinned, her eyes dancing with mirth. “Derek, this is my older sister, Anne.”

  Curtly nodding his head, Derek barely greeted her before looking back down at the book in front of him.

  “We’ve met before,” Anne barely managed to mumble around her shock.

  Derek Worth sitting next to Charles at their dining room table was the last thing Anne ever expected to see. He should have been in Italy or Japan or Greece or somewhere with a US Navy base. Not sitting in her sister’s kitchen with history notes scattered around him.

  “We had a class together three years ago,” he stated without looking up. “It was a biology class my first semester here, but I don’t think we had the same lab,” Derek added, looking up at Anne.

  Charles chuckled, “Hey, Anne, wasn’t that the class you had to drop when we found out Mary was pregnant with Little Charles?”

  “I… I…think so,” she answered, stumbling over her words.

  She could recall once or twice thinking that she had seen him at the back of that lecture hall when she came in the room but dismissed it as impossible. He should have been on a Navy base overseas.

  “And I call him Walter so that it isn’t confusing when Henrietta is over,” Mary added, drawing Anne out of her thoughts.

  “She doesn’t like her full name,” Charles argued with his wife.

  “She should be proud of her name,” Mary added. “I wish I had a name like Henrietta. Instead, I’m stuck with Mary.” Sighing, she asked Anne, “Why couldn’t Mama and Father called me Mariah instead?”

  “Because you were named after Father’s mother,” Anne answered her absently. Instead, she was watching Derek sitting calmly at her usual spot at the table. She hoped that he would look up at her, but all her wishing was for naught as he steadfastly flipped through Charles’ history notebook.

  “You wrote this date down wrong,” he corrected, interrupting the ‘discussion’ taking place between the married couple.

  Maybe if he ignored it, and Anne, this nightmare would go away. He had never expected when he had taken the tutoring job that Charles Musgraves was connected in any way with Anne Elliot.

  It was bad enough he was sleeping in her bedroom.

  “Did I?” Charles asked, peering back down at the notes. “The professor flipped through his slides so quickly I had trouble remembering if it was seventy-eight or eighty-seven.”

  “It was 1775 to 1783,” Derek dryly answered him as Anne seized the opportunity to attempt an escape to her room.

  Although, he mused to himself, it would be better to sleep in Anne’s room than Elizabeth or Mary’s rooms. That could explain why the exercise room’s walls were painted a pale pink as well.

  Only by looking at Mary’s pink button-up sweater, the pink magnets on the refrigerator, and the other various pink accents scattered around the house, he reasoned that the exercise room must have formerly been Mary’s room.

  “Hey, Derek,” Mary interrupted them as Anne made it to the base of the stairs. “What room are you sleeping in?”
>
  “What do you mean?”

  “At Kellynch Place,” she clarified.

  He could see Anne frozen with her hand on the railing, struggling to not look at his direction. “I’m in the green room. It seemed more comfortable than the other rooms.”

  “That makes sense,” Mary nodded her head. “Father turned my room into an exercise room as soon as I was married and Elizabeth does like to stuff her room with furniture. It’s a small wonder she is capable of getting to her bed.” Turning to look through the doorway at Anne, she called out, “Did you hear that? Derek’s sleeping in your bed.”

  In the process of taking a drink of water, Derek began choking on the small gulp he had made.

  “Are you okay?” Charles asked.

  “Do something, Charles!” Mary started to panic. “We can’t have him dying in the middle of our kitchen!” Wringing her hands, “Your parents will spoil the kids and I’m too sick to go to jail!”

  “I’m fine,” Derek managed to get out, his voice still strangled as he coughed.

  “Here,” Anne started to direct him, quickly returning back to the kitchen. “Lean forward. “No, Charles! Don’t hit him on his back! He’s breathing! That’ll make it worse!” Focusing back on Derek, she instructed him to lean forward with his head down and his elbows on his knees.

  After a few more moments of coughing, Derek raised up and thanked Anne for the help. After a long minute of eye contact, Anne nervously looked away before Mary interrupted. “Anne is good in emergencies.”

  “I’d hardly call this an emergency, Mary,” Anne retorted. “Derek was breathing. He was going to be fine.”

  “Still,” he grumbled, his voice a tad husky from his experience, “Thank you.”

  “Anne always did have a steady head on her shoulders,” Charles grinned.

  “It wasn’t a big… You’re welcome,” she nodded at him. “I have a test I need to study for.” And with that parting shot, Anne grabbed her bag and darted up the stairs.