Page 39 of Love, Academically
“I think Richard was obviously Henry’s favourite, not Henry the Young King,” he said, lips pinching tight, waiting for whatever Rhys had to say.
“Okay.” Rhys swallowed and tried to keep the disdain off hisface. This was going to be a long seminar. “What makes you say that?”
DeVon launched into a ramble about how Richard was the most like Henry, and how he was a warrior, blah blah blah. Henry was an administrator, not a warrior, and whilst DeVon had obviously done some reading about Henry II and Richard, he had obviously not ventured very far into reading about any of the other sons.
“I see.” Rhys nodded and tried to frame a question that wasn’t a put-down. “What about John? He was an administrator, like his father, Henry II. Or Geoffrey, one of Henry’s illegitimate children. Could they possibly be the ‘favourite’?” Yes, he air-quoted.
DeVon looked at his notes and one of the girls shuffled on the sofa.
“It’s a good conclusion to have drawn, DeVon, and there is certainly some evidence to support that.” Some, not a lot. “I think ‘favourite’ is a difficult word. I see Henry II as acting less as a father to his legitimate sons. He treated them more as rivals. It’s my opinion that Henry’s relationships with his illegitimate sons were less fraught, precisely because they were illegitimate.”
DeVon nodded and scribbled something in his notes. The girl who was always using the wrong font opened her notebook in front of her.
“But we’re talking about Henry II and his son, Henry the Young King in this seminar. What other aspects of their relationship have you found?”
Rhys opened the floor and sat back. The two girls were tentative at first, but he kept asking open questions, giving non-committal answers rather than telling them straight ‘you are wrong’ and pushing their line of thinking in different directions.
He kept an eye on Lila. She was most definitely listening and every time his voice scratched in his throat, the tapping of herkeyboard stuttered, even though she never took her eyes off the screen.
When he (gently) pointed out the gaping holes in his students’ knowledge and suggested they should do some more reading with phrases borrowed from a Google search on ‘how to give constructive feedback’ such as ‘have you considered’, and ‘I take your point, but…’, he was sure that Lila’s mouth curved into a proud smile. A small smile that wasn’t meant for anyone, but one that he caught himself wishing she would use only for him.
Rhys blinked.
This was new.
Lila
Lila learned a couple of things that afternoon.
The first one was that Henry II was not a very good father. The second was that she didn’t concentrate very well when Rhys was in the room.
It probably wasn’t Rhys himself. There were so many other people in the room and it was much easier to listen to them rather than do her finger-numbing, soul-crushing work. It was important that the department had up-to-date records, the students needed access to the intranet and quite frankly, it was completely frustrating that everything was so higgledy-piggledy. If she’d known it was going to be this much work to sort things out into a basic semblance of organisation – and that she’d have to do half of Sue’s work as well – she would have asked for more money. Well, she would have thought about asking.
It wasn’t that she could feel Rhys Aubrey’s hazel eyes flitting across her cheek and down her neck, or the slightly confused look he gave her when he left. No, it was just the fact that her office was the new seminar venue. Nothing to do with who was in her office.
Yep. Definitely not that.
Lila’s phone buzzed on her desk and she checked the notification from her personal email account, opening the marketing email quickly. Susie Dent, Queen of Dictionary Corner, was going on tour? Talking about the surreal origins of everyday words? What an absolute dream of a show to see.
There were dates across the next few months, and she scanned the venues to see which was closest and how much it was. God, who cared how much it was? She’d pay a lot of money to see Susie Dent talk about words.
Surely Jasmeet would come. She’d suffer through a word-based gig with her best friend, especially considering how many shopping trips Lila had gone on for art supplies and how many times she’d been her guinea pig for craft projects for five-year-olds.
She left two tickets in her basket and waited impatiently for Jasmeet to text back. Not that she would for a while, she was teaching. There was no use asking Maddy. If she was having a rare night off, she wouldn’t want it filled with what was the most ‘boring’ (EXCITING!) thing ever, i.e., the origin of words. Besides, they wouldn’t be home early enough, and there would be no leaving before the end to miss the crowds.
“Lila?”
A knock on her open office door interrupted her wondering about how appropriate her ‘origins of swear words’ t-shirt would be for Susie Dent, and she smiled at Rhys’s students.
“Hey guys, come in. Have a cookie.”
Lila reached for the cookie tin on her desk. DeVon took two, shoved one in his mouth and one in his pocket. Kerry nibbled on the smallest one she could find and Ada shook her head.
“We wanted to come by and say thank you for facilitating the seminar,” Ada said. “It was so much better. We feel like we actually learned something rather than stressing over whether we were saying the wrong thing.”
Kerry nodded, hugging her books to her chest.
“Oh guys, I am so glad,” Lila said. “That’s fab.”
