Page 5 of Apt to be Suspicious
“Handy, I think. Probably?” Audrey shrugged. “Anyway, he was complaining about his reading party, or something after it? Something’s going odd. It was a mixed group, men and women. Those always get a little— well.”
“Audrey, don’t be a prig,” Pen said.
“I don’t see you—” Audrey caught herself. “Sorry. I mean, we don’t see you with men. Not other than talking about maths.”
“That,” Pen said firmly, “is when they believe I can also talk about maths, and there’s only about three of them who do.” Two of whom had also been at the Park, and at least knew her by sight. They’d put her through a bit of a test to make sure she actually knew what she was talking about. But then they’d sort of half-adopted her, like a little sister. They were both in their final years now, and would be busy with their own exams. “I don’t want to walk out with them.”
“Or anyone?” Audrey pressed, but then something in Pen’s face dissuaded her. “Anyway. You’re right. Mixed parties get odd. People don’t remember what they’re there for. I mean, if you are there for the matchmaking, finding an intelligent spouse, that’s one thing. But it impedes actual study.”
“I do not go to such reading parties. I do not want to end up married and someone’s barely acknowledged typist. All while keeping a house and who knows how many children together on money that runs out well before the end of the month,” Pen said. “That is not at all the sort of maths I want to do. If I’m going to make something out of nothing, let me do it with imaginary numbers properly and theoretically.”
They were not up enough on the maths to really appreciate the joke, but they both understood that it was one, and Pen got some smiles. Audrey went on. “Anyway. Handy was complaining about some things going missing. Nothing big, from how he said it, but he was complaining in the sort of way that made me think he wasn’t saying all of it? Someone asked about it, and he said there was a sort of glowing haze about the whole thing. His studies stuck in his head well enough, or at least that’s what he claimed, but not a lot of the rest of the time. You know, he talked about Coleridge and Kubla Khan.”
Vesta declaimed the first lines amiably. “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.” Then she added, “Personally, given the end of the poem, I’m not sure I’d want to dwell there. Enchantment and enticement are one thing, but the costs are another.”
“There’s not really anything we can do much about, is it?” Audrey shrugged off the problem. They were not invited to that sort of party, and certainly keeping men safe from whatever risks the world held wasn’t their duty. “Did you see Styles coming into hall?”
Cecily Styles— well, her last name was suitable. She was modish, within the limits of clothes rationing, the sort of person who bothered to add little decorative details or tucks to all her clothing. Pen wasn’t actually entirely sure what Styles was reading. It wasn’t as if someone like that would talk to Pen, who dressed— well. Like what she was.
Granddaughter of a country vicar, grown up in that household with her mum and dad when he wasn’t away for work. Looking proper was almost as important as actually behaving properly. Styles didn’t do either, actually. She was rumoured to be fast. Gossip had linked her with three or four different men, and she always seemed to be coming in from some party or outing. Though perhaps clever, because she was still here, and reputed to have good odds of gaining a First in Trinity term. Now Pen shook her head. “Not in particular?”
“She had an entirely new set around her earlier, half a dozen men I’d not seen her pay much attention to before. They were moths drawn to a flame, really, and she could have her choice. All of them well-off, I think, not a shabby one in the pack.”
Audrey could be a bit of a snob that way. Not that she didn’t have reason. Her father did something in banking. Not one of the magical banking families, but coordinating between the London banks and the magical ones. It had certainly taught Audrey how to read some of those mysteries of suit and shirt that Pen still did not properly understand.
From there, the conversation wandered along quietly. They were, Pen thought, all in a mood to sit quietly in company as much as talk. But when Audrey glanced toward her desk for the third time, Pen claimed a cup of what was left in the teapot in her mug and went back upstairs.
Chapter 4
Thursday, November 13th
By the middle of November, Pen was feeling comfortably settled in and just the right amount overwhelmed. There were ways that Oxford was very like Bletchley Park had been. There were heaps of terribly clever people everywhere she looked or listened. The rooms had about the same amount of annoyance. Though she rather particularly missed the lashings of hot water on demand at Schola. Decent plumbing, near at hand, should be one of the wonders of the world.
But there were also ways everything was different from the Park. For one thing, her day no longer started with the need to bicycle three miles in all weather. And while the dons had standards for behaviour— especially in the women’s colleges— they were far less strict than her landlady had been at her billet. Certainly, she was much less lonely. She’d been in a house with only two other women, both working in entirely different huts and often on opposite schedules.
More importantly, she had far more control over her own time. No more shifts rotating around the clock. There was far more variety of things to do with the time she had, between her tutorials, preparations for them, and the lectures she wanted to attend that week.
One of the other women had been trying to convince her to join a choir. Pen had resisted, but she had taken up going and listening to them more often. She might not be exactly religious, but Grandfather had instilled in her a proper respect and appreciation for the rituals of evensong. Pen had found herself slipping into one or the other of the college chapels more frequently on the nights it was sung for a few minutes of time with something beautiful.
Today, though, she’d come down to the Academy a little early for one of the regular Thursday lectures. And to check on two books she was interested in at the library. They hadn’t been returned yet, but the librarian had promised to send her a note and hold them for a day or two when the books came back. Pen had brought the newspaper with her, because she’d not yet had time for the crossword, and that was a lovely way to stretch her mind.
The Junior Common Room was fairly quiet. It often was, this time of day. People with workrooms here would go up to them if they wanted to read or study. Or to the library. The common room only got those people who were at least open to the idea of conversation.
She’d got through several of the clues properly, and she had been rather proud of herself for getting ‘demisemiquavers’ out of a clue of “shaky quarters”. It had helped that 1 Across involved “a soft way to cook an egg”. That was obviously ‘coddle’, and that had given her the first letter. And there were only so many words quite that long, especially if she took the clue as suggesting music.
Pen filled out several more and then sat there staring at the puzzle, chewing slightly on the end of her pencil. She was concentrating so fiercely she didn’t notice that anyone had come in, until whoever it was coughed rather closer than she expected. Pen flinched, bother. Immediately a pleasant voice offered, “Beg pardon, didn’t mean to— oh, is that the crossword?” The voice was decidedly posh as well as pleasant. Pen looked up to find Edmund Carillon looking at her. She couldn’t tell from the first words whether he was a tenor or baritone, but the second half made her more sure he was the former.
She knew who he was, of course. For one thing, anyone at the Academy this year and last knew that. But also, she’d known him on sight since they were at Schola. Even though she’d been a fourth year when he started, people had talked about him. Heir to his father, Lord Carillon, of course. Edmund Carillon had a shimmer to him that wasn’t just his magic, as if he were always standing in a prism of light.
More than that, he’d had a serene confidence with adults— nearly all the professors— that Pen had utterly envied. Oh, she’d been on good terms with them as well, especially Professor Acharya for maths and Professor Morwen as her Head of House. But the bits of those conversations she’d seen from a distance had seemed easygoing on both sides. Not like Carillon had been trying to impress and going a bit too hard at it. He had that sort of ease that one expected from that sort of family, all full of Fox charm and the sort of smoothness that was impossible to get a solid grip on.
Now, she blinked up at him. Pen was wearing her glasses, of course, so he was a little fuzzy where he was standing, maybe six feet away. They were a help, especially staring at the newsprint. “The Times, not the Moon.”
“Ah. Well, I shan’t lean over your shoulder. Terribly rude.” He waved the letter in his hand. “Besides, I’ve got other puzzles to keep me occupied.” That was a cryptic statement. Then he added, bafflingly, “You’re Miss Sterling, aren’t you? Maths, I believe.”
There was absolutely no particular reason he ought to know her or remember her, and it made her a tad uneasy to feel so noticed. But it would be rude to ignore him, and he was actually not being difficult in all the ways men sometimes could be. “Pen Sterling, and yes, maths.”
“A pleasure.” He offered his hand. “Edmund Carillon, Greats.” Of course, saying he was reading Greats covered a tremendous amount of ground. Greek and Latin, of course, both translation and the literature in general, but also everything from the relevant history to art and architecture to archaeology. What other universities except for Cambridge referred to as Classics, but Oxford had her own ways.
