Miss Grimsleys Oxford Career by Carla Kelly

Author:Carla Kelly
Language: nl
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-08-20T22:00:00+00:00

Church was a quiet business. Many of the older parishioners from Oxford's center had stayed indoors, kept there by the bracing cold that brought a bloom to Ellen's cheeks. She sniffed the air appreciatively as they walked from church in decorous ranks of two. The fragrance of wood smoke, captured and held in the bowl-shaped valley by the cold, competed with musty smells off the River Isis and cooking odors from every hearth. Ellen knew it was her imagination, but she thought she could smell the delicious aroma of leather bindings on old books.

Ellen thought twice, and then three times, about sneaking out of Miss Dignam's after the noon meal. I can have no business out of this building with James Gatewood, she told herself as she picked up her embroidery basket and gazed at it in dismay. How was it that those threads seemed to knot and tangle of their own accord? I declare it is perverse, she thought, a conspiracy to remind me of my failings.

She tried not to think about the scholar's gown hanging in the back of the dressing room, hidden from prying eyes. Ellen looked out the window then, and her resolve weakened. The sky was so blue, a dramatic backdrop for the honey-colored stones, mellow with age, that made up many of Oxford's colleges. Resolutely, Ellen turned away from the window and took her embroidery basket onto her lap.

After a futile half hour spent trying to follow each errant thread to its source, she dropped the basket at her feet and kicked it under the desk. She looked in the direction of the dressing room and got slowly to her feet.

No one was about as she crept down the backstairs, the scholar's gown draped over her arm, shirt and breeches underneath her dress.

Becky was the only servant in sight, the rest having taken themselves off for the afternoon, away from Miss Dignam's crotchets. The maid scrubbed the pans in the scullery, looking up with a smile when Ellen stepped out of her dress and fluffed her wilted shirt points.

Becky dried her hands and hurried to shake out Ellen's dress and hide it in the broom closet. “Where are you going today?” she asked as Ellen pulled on the scholar's gown.

“James Gatewood has some harebrained scheme about punting on the River Isis,” Ellen said. “I think he is crazy.”

“No, Miss Grimsley, he is wonderful,” Becky said, her eyes shining.

Ellen stared at her. “Whatever do you mean?”

Becky dabbed at her eyes with her apron. “This morning, the beadle from the parish came tapping on our door. Behind him was a coal wagon. He backed that wagon up to the cellar window and shoveled in a mound of coal that still has the neighbors wondering.”

“My word,” said Ellen, her voice soft. “And you think it was James Gatewood?”

“Who else?” Becky asked. “When I woke up, Mama was crying and piling coal on the grate until I thought she had taken leave of her senses.”

Ellen sat down at the table.

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