A marksman-sharp gaze pinned her over the rim of metal-framed glasses, and Annabelle felt a ripple of both guilt and alarm. With his patched tweed jacket, high forehead, and impatient frown, Professor Jenkins looked every inch the brilliant academic he was. Barely forty, he was already a titan in the field of ancient Greek warfare, so if there had ever been a need to pay attention, it was during his morning tutorial.
She looked up at her father’s former correspondent with contrition. “My apologies, Professor.”
He leaned forward over the desk. “It’s the bloody knitting, isn’t it?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The knitting,” he repeated, eyeing Mrs. Forsyth balefully. “The click-click-click . . . it is maddening, like a furiously leaking tap.”
The clicking behind Annabelle stopped abruptly, and Mrs. Forsyth’s consternation filled the room. Annabelle cringed. The woman was rightfully offended—after all, Annabelle paid her sixpence an hour to sit right there, because Gilbert, confound him, had been right about one thing: she did need a chaperone. One who was approved by the warden of her college, no less. Female students were not allowed to enter the town center unescorted, nor could they be alone with a professor. Mrs. Forsyth, widowed, elderly, and smartly dressed, certainly looked the part of a respectable guardian.
But if Jenkins was vexed by the sound of knitting, she had to find another solution. He was the titan, after all. His lessons turned crumbling old pages into meaningful windows to the past; his outstanding intellect lit her own mind on fire. And in order to teach her, he took the trouble to come to the classroom the university had given to the female students: a chamber with mismatched furniture above the bakery in Little Clarendon Street.
A bakery. That was the crux of the situation. It was not the knitting that was distracting; it was the warm, yeasty scent of freshly baked bread that wafted through the cracks in the door . . .
A cart rumbled past noisily on the street below.
The professor slammed his copy of Thucydides shut with an annoyed thud.
“That is it for today,” he said. “I have no doubt you will come up with an original take on this chapter by tomorrow.”
Tomorrow? The warm glow following his praise faded quickly—tomorrow would mean another night shift at her desk. They were piling up fast here, faster than in Chorleywood.
She watched Jenkins furtively as she slid her pen and notebook back into her satchel. She’d been surprised how youthful the professor looked when, after years of dry scientific correspondence, she had finally met him in person. He was lanky, his face unlined thanks to a life spent in dimly lit archives. He was also mercurial, lost in thought one moment, sharp as a whip the next. Managing him could pose a challenge.
Downstairs in the bakery, someone began banging metal pots with great enthusiasm.
Jenkins pinched the bridge of his nose. “Come to my office in St. John’s the next time,” he said.
St. John’s. One of the oldest, wealthiest colleges at Oxford. They said its wine collection alone could pay for the crown jewels.
“But no needles, no yarn,” Jenkins said, “understood?”
* * *
Annabelle hurried down St. Giles with a still disgruntled Mrs. Forsyth in tow. She would have liked to meander and soak up the sight of the enchanting sandstone walls framing the street, but they were running late for the suffragist meeting. She could still feel the withered stones of the old structures, emanating centuries-old knowledge and an air of mystery. She had peeked through one of the medieval doors in the wall the other day, catching a glimpse of one of the beautiful gardens of the men’s colleges that lay beyond, a little island of exotic trees and late-blooming flowers and hidden nooks, locked away like a gem in a jewelry box. Someday, she might find a way to sneak inside.
This week, the suffragists gathered at the Randolph. Hattie and her chaperoning great-aunt rented apartments in the plush hotel for the term and had kindly offered to host them all. The common room of her college, Lady Margaret Hall, would have sufficed for their small chapter, but their warden, Miss Wordsworth, didn’t allow political activism on university grounds. I shall tolerate the nature of your stipend, she had told Annabelle during their first meeting, but use the university’s trust in you wisely. An interesting woman, Miss Wordsworth—paying for the tutors from her own pocket to give women an education, but seeing no need whatsoever in helping women