Chapter Two #3
The room grew stifling hot, and Sidney needed to be anywhere but there, far away from all the shiny people and their bright futures.
He mumbled an excuse about needing a drink and bolted, realizing too late it was the opposite direction of the refreshment table.
Bodies pressed about him, herding him toward the wall, and when at last he saw a door, he pushed toward it.
He exited onto a garden terrace, and the wave of cool air calmed his nerves and flushed skin.
Sidney leaned into the building’s shadow and closed his eyes, rolling his neck to ease the stiffness.
He should have declined Mr. Jarrod’s request and deflected the plumbing job onto someone else.
Only Sidney felt too beholden to Swithun’s bursar; he hadn’t disdained a student asking for work, and he usually sent him on evening tasks because there were fewer people about to nose into Sidney’s business.
It was a bitter reminder of how much Sidney’s world was not the same one as Oxford’s Craddocks and Bishops and Webbs.
As though summoned by his discontent, the door opened, and Ginevra Bishop drifted outside.
She closed the door behind her, shutting off the flood of merriment and noise, and took a few tentative steps onto the terrace.
She stopped in a pool of light cast from a streetlamp beyond the privet hedge, and the light set her hair aglow like dying embers.
The color had distracted Sidney the day they met, had bothered him when Harold dragged him toward her too; he now realized with a pang what memory it conjured: the sun-streaked stained glass of the abandoned chapel where he’d hidden after he was shot in France.
He’d been so drenched in colored light he hadn’t realized how much blood had seeped into his uniform until he tried to leave.
“Braithwaite?” Bishop said. “Is that you?”
Sidney shoved away the memory and pushed off the wall. “Need someone else to fetch your lemonade?”
Bishop’s lips pursed in annoyance. “You need to keep your friend away from the Damocles Club. Mr. Webb seems like a nice boy, and I fear they would eat him up.”
“You think he listens to me?”
“Yes, I think he does respect your opinion. If you really are a friend, you’ll do your part.”
Sidney stepped closer to the pool of light, close enough to see the flintiness in Bishop’s eyes. “To keep him away from yours? Is that what you mean?”
“Don’t presume to know my friends,” she snapped. “At least I care about them enough to intervene if needed.”
“And I didn’t fight with Lord Donald for the pleasure of it,” Sidney retorted.
Bishop’s eyes narrowed. “Didn’t you?”
Her head tilted to one side as though taking the measure of him, and Sidney’s face warmed. He’d had little experience with girls of Bishop’s class, but he should have known such beauty could still hide claws.
A cry from deeper in the garden made them both turn. It was a tiered terrace, each level lined with hedgerows, and the sound had come from someone out of sight below them.
“Did you hear that?” Bishop asked.
Before Sidney could suggest they go for help, she flew down the paving stones. “Maybe don’t run after strange noises in the dark,” he muttered, but he strode after her with only a few silent curses.
Sidney caught up with Bishop on the next level. Privet blocked the streetlamp, and it was unclear where the cry had come from in the dark. A sharp tread echoing on the paving stones made Sidney turn. A black academic gown rippled in the wind as someone progressed deeper into the garden.
“There!” But Bishop was pointing to a shadowy bench where a figure sat doubled over. She darted forward, crunching something underfoot, and sat beside them. “Oh—Mr. Tolliver! Can we help you?”
The librarian wrenched himself up, his face contorted with intense pain. “Miss Bishop—”
Tolliver made a strangled sound and clutched his left shoulder, his eyes squeezing shut. He sank back, moaning, and Bishop grabbed his jacket lapels before he toppled into the hedge.
“Heart attack,” she gasped. “He might have a medication. Help me check his pockets. Mr. Tolliver—” She enunciated his name as though they were a great distance apart. “Do you have medicine? Is there something we can get you?”
Sidney knelt and patted the man’s pockets, but there was nothing inside his trousers or jacket. A sharp poke in the knee, however, made Sidney back up. There were large glass shards on the paving stones; it looked like the remnants of a cup.
Tolliver gave a great shuddering moan, wincing harder, and cold rippled through Sidney. “We need an ambulance.”
“You go for help, I’ll stay—” Tolliver moaned something incoherent, and Bishop leaned closer. She shook her head, fretting at her lower lip. “He’s speaking German, I think—he must be delirious.”
Tolliver slumped against Bishop’s shoulder, pushing her backward.
Sidney tried to pry the librarian off, but he was deadweight against the younger woman.
Bishop’s breath caught in a strangled rasp, and she laid her hand on Sidney’s, stopping his efforts.
The old man’s eyes were too open and too empty.
There was no need to run for help now.