By Jove

by Marissa Doyle

  “No one?” His voice was warm and sympathetic.

  “They were afraid of me. They all assumed I was an escapee from a convent because I taught Latin. My best friend was my cat. I do miss her an awful lot,” she added with a sigh.

  “Poor Theodora. So you think you’ll find your true home here with us?”

  “I hope so. You are all so kind and so—” What was it she wanted to say? Beautiful glittering words danced away in her head as she reached for them.

  “Simpatico, as the Romans would put it today?”

  “Yes! That’s it exactly.” Oh, it was so nice to be understood. She smiled into his eyes. Just now they were an even deeper turquoise than usual.

  “And are we all simpatico, or are some of us more so than others?” he asked playfully. But there was a note somewhere in his tone that required an answer. Even in her giddiness she could hear it.

  “Oh, I like all of you. Dr. Waterman has been so kind, and so have Dr. Forge-Smythe and Dr. Herman and Dr. Zeno in the Philosophy Department.”

  “And?”

  “And well, Paul Harriman can be a bit difficult.”

  “I can imagine.” Julian smiled wryly.

  “I’m not sure about Dr. Hunter. I thought she liked me at first, but maybe not so much since she saw me kiss Grant a few weeks ago.”

  She saw the turquoise in his eyes fade to a grayer shade. Was she saying too much? But he wanted to know, and for some reason she wanted to tell him.

  “Grant Proctor,” he said slowly. “You’re teaching with him, I believe. How is that going?”

  Warm happiness flooded her again. “It’s wonderful. He’s wonderful. He’s so—I don’t know. Funny and wise one minute, and strange and vulnerable the next. But he loves to teach. I’ve watched him when we’ve combined our classes for special lectures.”

  Julian gazed at her and tapped a finger on his lips. She stared dreamily at his hands; they were well formed, the fingers long and supple. And his mouth…the lips were chiseled and smooth. She had to clench her hand into a fist to keep from reaching out to touch his beautiful mouth.

  “Well, eme phile Theodora. I’m glad you’re happy here,” he said at last. “We try very hard to find the right people for the department each year. I’m more delighted than you can know that we did so well in finding you.” He smiled and leaned forward. “You didn’t have too much, did you? It was Arthur’s fish food, I assume. Are you feeling quite well?”

  “Hmm?” She tore her attention away from contemplation of his lips and blinked owlishly. “Oh, I’m fine. I feel wonderful.”

  “Good. That’s very good. Not everyone can tolerate it so well. Very interesting, my dear. I think—ah, yes. I’ve remembered.” He rose and pulled out the drawer she had been about to open, and pointed to a seal carved from deep-blue lapis lazuli, flecked with gold.

  Theo picked it up and stared at it raptly. Yes, there was the reclining woman, reaching up to take something—a cup?—from the man standing by her couch. Geologic chance and the carver’s whimsy had made it so that the man’s head was surrounded by a halo of gold flecks. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

  “It is indeed. Thank you for your help, my dear,” he said, taking the seal from her and looking at it with satisfaction. “You don’t know how interesting this has been. Here.” He took the forgotten lump of clay still warming in Theo’s hand, smoothed it with his fingers, and pressed the seal into it. “For you,” he added, handing the impression to her.

  “Ahem.” The polite cough startled Theo, sounding unnaturally loud to her heightened sense of hearing. She turned. June Cadwallader stood in the doorway, arms folded on her chest.

  “Yes, June?” sighed Julian.

  “If you’re going to make it for dinner with the President, you’d better get going now. It’s nearly four-thirty.” Theo’s euphoria receded under the woman’s basilisk stare.

  “Thank you. I’ll be right down. You can go home now,” Julian replied.

  “What about locking up the museum?” June persisted.

  “I am perfectly capable of doing it myself. I am the head of the department. Please remember that.” He nodded coldly at her and turned back to Theo. “Thank you for your help. I enjoyed having a chance to talk—”

  “Dr. Bellow wanted me to lock—”

  “Apeche, gunai! Epilanthanei tina to sou despoten einai?” he shouted. “Aperchome!”

  “My master?” June’s voice dripped derision. “Once, maybe. But not now, if you recall. You can’t have it both ways. Not even you. And I’m going, don’t worry.” She gave him one last baleful look and left.

  Julian closed his eyes for a moment. His face was stiff with anger.

  “Uh—” Theo rose from her chair. What had that been about…and what had he just said to June? Did she speak classical Greek too?

  Julian’s anger seemed to evaporate. His eyes were again warm, almost caressing, when he opened them and looked at her. “I’m sorry, Theodora. June is an excellent secretary, but she does try to run my life sometimes. Please pay us no mind.” He took her chair and put it away, then put the lapis seal in an envelope, leaving a note in its place in the drawer. “That will do for up here. Are you all right?”

  “I think so.” A rosy curl of giddiness swirled through her brain and faded. She’d inhaled some of Dr. Waterman’s fish food, hadn’t she? And Julian had been so charming and easy to talk to until—what had they talked about? Something to do with her liking it here, maybe? “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Of course you are.” He locked the cases and motioned her through the museum’s doors, locking them as well before he followed her down the stairs. On the landing outside the second floor he paused. “Well, I’ll see you Monday, Theodora. Have a nice weekend.”

  Theo went back to the Great Room where she had left her book bag, and suddenly remembered the little wad of clay in her hand. She stopped to look at the image impressed in it. Julian had been nice—she hadn’t dreamed that. She could vaguely remember his face as he had handed it to her, intent on hers. But not frightening. As she walked back to her car and thought about going back to Dr. Waterman’s quiet house, she actually found herself wishing that they could have chatted a little longer.

  Chapter Five

  “You’re not going to believe this, I’m afraid,” Dr. Waterman said with a smile, stroking his beard.

  Theo and Grant were sitting in his office. It was the Friday before Halloween, and down in the Great Room the undergraduate classics majors were preparing for their annual Halloween toga party. Sounds of moving furniture and shrill laughter could be heard even up here, but did nothing to dispel the tense atmosphere in the room. Midterms were over, and Grant and Theo had turned their grades in to Dr. Waterman. Now they were waiting to find out who had won the bet Grant made with her in September.

  Theo grimaced as the sound of a couch being dragged across the floor below grated against her ears. If those kids hurt the mosaics—

  Grant leaned over and patted her hand reassuringly. “We’ll go down there and supervise after Arthur tells us I’ve won.”

  “Well, I hate to disappoint you, Grant,” Dr. Waterman began. Theo let out a triumphant hoot and turned to grin at him.

  “Not so fast, Theo,” the professor cautioned.

  “What?” Both Theo and Grant stared at him. Then Grant laughed.

  “It isn’t,” he said, shaking his head. “It can’t be.”

  “It is, my friends. Your students tied one another. I couldn’t quite believe it myself, but I did the math twice. You make a fine teaching team.”

  Theo laughed as well. “And I was looking forward to your taking me to the University Club, too,” she said to Grant.

  “You think I wasn’t looking forward to the same thing?” he demanded.

  “Wait, wait!” Laughing, Dr. Waterman held up one hand. “In view of your excellent work with the first-year Latin students—and to thank you for giving me a year off from them—I would like for both of you
to be my guests at dinner on Saturday at the club. Will honor be satisfied?”

  “Well—” Grant began, looking sideways at her.

  She reached a foot out and stepped lightly on his toes. “We’d be delighted, Dr. Waterman. Thank you very much.”

  In the hallway Grant still chuckled and shook his head. She pulled him toward the end of the hall, her amusement gone. Dr. Waterman’s invitation to dinner was very nice, but she hadn’t really thought until now about how much she had looked forward to an excuse for a potentially romantic evening alone with Grant. Any time alone with him, come to think of it, where the only interruptions would be by impersonal waitstaff.

  Their few quiet moments alone together over the last weeks had always been spoiled by the arrival of someone wanting to chat, generally someone like Dr. Herman or Dr. Forge-Smythe who couldn’t be given a polite brush-off, and it was getting on her nerves. But she didn’t want to invite him to her dreary room in Graves, which was as romantic as a newsstand. And he hadn’t invited her to his apartment off-campus, despite her hopeful hints.

  “C’mon, comedian,” she said, smiling unwillingly at his hilarity.

  “Why, Theo. Don’t you think it’s funny?” They started down the stairs.

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what?”

  “But this.” At the stairwell landing she pulled him into a corner, slipped her arms around him and pulled his face down to hers.

  His hands moved to her waist, and he made a small sound in his throat as their lips met. Ah, finally—

  With a jerk of his head, Grant suddenly broke the kiss and turned his face away.

  She nearly cried out in disappointment. “Grant,” she said in a small voice.

  “I’m sorry, Theo,” he said tonelessly.

  A chill ran down her back. “Didn’t you like it? Don’t you want me to kiss you?”

  His grip tightened. “Yes, I do! I do but—”

  “But what?” She pulled away and looked into his face. All traces of laughter were gone from it. “I’m with you almost every day, and no five minutes of it go by without my wanting to reach out to stroke your hair, or hold your hand, or feel your arms around me.” Her mouth felt dry, and she swallowed.

  “I never thought I would be an object of desire,” he said, avoiding her gaze. “My body—I’m damaged goods, remember.”

  She pulled him back to face her. “You’re not just the object of my desire. Bodies are just tools, another way for me to tell you that I love you.” She stopped and closed her eyes. She hadn’t meant to say that. Not yet.

  “You love me?” he whispered incredulously. “Me?”

  “No, that bust of Octavian over there. I might have a better chance of getting him to kiss me back,” she retorted, disentangling her arms from him and wrapping them around herself. This wasn’t going at all as she’d planned. “Yes, I love you. I wouldn’t be so desperate for a simple kiss if I didn’t. I’ve spent the last months talking and laughing and working with someone more wonderful than I’d ever dreamed of meeting. How could I not fall in love with you?” she said, more to herself than to him.

  “Theo—”

  “I thought you were starting to feel it too. Sometimes I see you look at me, and there’s something in your eyes that makes me think—” She broke off. A memory of intense eyes washed through her then, not gray but turquoise blue. She shook her head to clear it. “Maybe I’ve imagined it. Maybe it’s just been wishful thinking on my part.” She edged away from him. Shrieks of laughter from the Great Room below grated on her ears.

  “I love you too, Theo. I think.”

  That stopped her. “What?”

  Grant stood outlined in light from the high stairwell windows. His hands clenched, but his voice was steady. His eyes were steady, too, as he met hers. “I said, I love you. Maybe I should say it to Octavian. His ears might work better.” A faint dimple appeared in one corner of his mouth, and he put his arms around her again. She leaned her head on his shoulder, feeling like she had inhaled a full teaspoon of Dr. Waterman’s fish flakes.

  “I do feel those things that you describe. If I stare at you, it’s because I have so many things I long to do and say but don’t know how to. Oh, Theo, if you only knew—”

  “Then tell me. You don’t have to be afraid of me.” She reached up to stroke his hair.

  A slight laugh shook him. “Courage is not something I generally have a problem with.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I’m sorry. Maybe I’m not as brilliant as you think I am. I guess I’m not progressing in my humanities studies like I should, even though I have the best teacher I could hope for. I’m trying to be more human, really I am.” His voice reached for flippant but missed.

  “Grant, why haven’t you ever been in love? Why don’t you know how to respond, even though you say that you love me?” She touched his face.

  “I can’t explain it to you yet. Not in terms that I think you’d understand.”

  “Try me. I’m a bright girl.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I don’t think I can explain it because I can’t find the words. Be patient, Theo. I hate to keep asking that of you, but I must. Someday I’ll be able to tell you.” He kissed her hand again, then held her away to look at her with a wry smile. “I must be getting a little better, if I was able to tell you that I love you. But wouldn’t it all be easier if we could be like him over there”—he nodded toward the marble bust— “and just live a life of the mind, and know that we loved each other?”

  She shook her head. “You’re being a Vulcan again. True love is of the mind, yes, when it comes down to it. But we need our bodies and senses as well as our minds to express it. It’s just the way we are.” She pulled him close again, ran her hands up and down his back, then leaned forward and nibbled his earlobe. He shivered and his arms tightened around her.

  “See? Didn’t that feel good? Could Octavian over there feel that love, without having flesh? Could words alone do that? Love is physical as well as in the mind. Listen to yourself. Listen to what your body tells you.” She bent and softly kissed his neck.

  “Flesh is weak,” he persisted though his eyes had closed in enjoyment. “It can betray us. It can lie.”

  “It can also tell the truth. And words can lie and betray as well as flesh can. There are no guarantees. Hoping is human, remember? So is taking chances. There’s no reason to hope if you don’t.” Her lips moved against the skin of his throat as she spoke, and she felt his hands start to move on her.

  A crash from below, followed by more shrieks of laughter, startled them apart.

  “That didn’t sound good,” Grant said. He let go of her and turned toward the stairs. Theo sighed and followed him.

  In the Great Room a swarm of undergrads, some already draped in bedsheet togas, tugged furniture this way and that. Most of the floor space had been emptied for dancing, but a few of the second-year Latin students who had actually been paying attention in class were trying to arrange the room’s couches into something approximating a Roman triclinium, or dining room, for the refreshments. Grant hurried over to them.

  “No, no, couches only on three sides of the table,” he said, motioning them toward him. “You’ll just have to make a couple of these if more people want to join in.”

  Theo shook her head and smiled as she walked away, but her heart was sore. Just when she and Grant had been getting somewhere, they were interrupted once more. Would she ever have more than a few minutes alone—really alone—with him? It was beginning to feel like some vast conspiracy of the gods against her.

  A pair of toga-ed people ran by her, giggling madly, and then another. The second pair, a plump girl with curly brown hair and a man wrapped in a SpongeBob Squarepants bedsheet, nearly collided with her.

  “Whoa!” the man said. He stopped and peered at her uncertainly. “Why, hello there, Theo. Coming to join us tonight?”

  It was Marlowe Vine. He had occasionally joined her and Grant for
drinks in the college pub and had only been asked to leave twice by the manager for excessive rowdiness. But despite his copious drinking Theo couldn’t help liking him; he was unfailingly cheerful and treated her with jovial courtesy. “Nice toga, Marlowe.”

  “Isn’t it? Allie here let me borrow it. It belongs to her little brother, but he manfully gave it up for the weekend. I may need to get my own, though. I think it makes quite a fashion statement.” He swayed and caught himself on the girl’s shoulder. She giggled.

  “You could say that.”

  Marlowe leaned closer. “You don’t look very happy, you know. Where’s Grant?”

  Was she that obvious? But no. It was true she and Grant were frequently together, what with the teaching. She lifted her chin and nodded back toward the couches. “Over there, helping with the banquet room.”

  “Is that what they’re doing? Excellent! A symposium! Something else to look forward to tonight, eh?” He squeezed the girl’s arm and she giggled again.

  “But I thought this was an undergraduate party,” Theo said. “You know, no alcohol?”

  “It is, mostly. And I’m a chaperone, sort of. But we don’t need wine to be joyous, do we? Not much, anyway. Run along and make sure they’re doing it right over there, love.” He gave the girl a gentle push toward Grant and the others, and turned back to Theo.

  “Now, why so sad? I hate seeing sad people around. It’s so—saddening.”

  She smiled in spite of herself. “I’ll be all right. I don’t know how you got the idea I’m down.”

  “Ah, I always know these things. Ask Grant. Life’s not meant for sadness. Tell you what, though. It’s time you and he came to one of the proper symposia. No room for long faces there. I’m sure Julian will be happy to invite you to November’s. In fact, I’m sure he was planning to.”

  “Thanks, Marlowe. That sounds like fun.”

  “Mean that when you say it, sweetheart,” he said in a bad Bogart voice.

  “Mean what?” Grant had come to stand with them.

  “Ho there, friend Grant. I was just telling Theo here that it was time you two made it to a symposium. Get some pink in her cheeks and some starch out of your shirt. I livened things up a little for you up in New Hampshire, didn’t I? And to think you’d never tried cow-tipping.” He shook his head incredulously. “By the way, how’s our beauteous Olivia? Has she forgiven me yet? Now there’s someone who needs a few more symposia under her belt. Far too solemn for such a handsome girl, don’t you think? Then again, she always was too serious. You need to work on her more, Grant.”