October brought with it a certain chill to the Anglian capital of Lundein, and it closely followed Nora despite her many layers. The carriage could only drop her off at the edge of the campus and so she had to walk from there. Violet accompanied her while Cyril led the way, a good five minutes passing (even with their brisk pace) before they arrived at a small building. Inside, they climbed the stairs and followed a narrow corridor to an office at the end.
Although the door was open, the man inside took no notice of their approach. Cyril lazily knocked, and he loudly said, “Barnet,” with a wry smile.
The man finally looked up from the sheets in front of him. “Canterbury, to what do I owe the distraction?” he said, his voice a little deep and a touch slow, heavy. As Cyril entered, the man’s gaze slipped to the ladies that had been obscured. “Do introduce your guests,” he added.
Cyril chuckled, turning around. “These are Ladies Nora de Kent and Violet Dover.”
Nora and Violet curtseyed before they entered, but stayed silent. Even though universities were seen as more informal places, they were also not a place for a woman to enter uninvited nor speak freely.
“And he is Lord Oscar Barnet,” Cyril said, gesturing at the man.
Oscar raised his hand in a half-hearted wave. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said, making it sound like a single word.
Again, Nora and Violet merely smiled and bowed their heads in reply.
Cyril walked forward to the edge of the desk, and he leant over to peer at the papers, another chuckle slipping out. “Surely you have work to be doing?”
“These early afternoon hours are my most productive, so I dedicate them to what I view as more important,” Oscar replied. Despite saying that, he shuffled the papers together and pushed them to the side. “Now, if I may repeat myself, to what do I owe the distraction?”
With a certain smugness, Cyril said, “You asked to meet the person who wrote that review of your draft?”
Oscar sighed. “For someone who has only known me a year, you seem to think you know me rather well,” he muttered. After a light shake of his head, he sat up straighter in his chair.
“Well, she is here if have you anything to say,” Cyril said, and he gestured back at the ladies.
Intrigued, Oscar looked over at them. While his gaze first settled on Violet, he noticed a lack of reaction, quickly moving to the slightly startled expression Nora showed. “That would be my lady?” he asked.
“Yes, my lord,” she said.
He stared for a moment longer before lowering his eyes to the desk. From underneath a book, he slid out a sheet of paper, flowery handwriting covering most of it. “To quote: ‘Overall, I find it a promising idea that is poorly executed.’ Those are my lady’s words?”
Nora took a moment to glare at Cyril (who returned a crooked smile) and then answered Oscar. “Yes, my lord.”
A silence sprang up as he reread the letter; he didn’t take long, putting it down when finished. “Have you time?” he asked.
Surprised, she glanced at Cyril to see if he would answer, but he showed no signs of speaking. “Pardon?” she said.
“To talk through your criticisms,” he said, clarifying.
She set her mouth in a line, and again glanced at Cyril to see if he would say anything. When it became obvious she was on her own, she put on a polite smile, bowing her head. “I apologise. I was under the impression that Lord Canterbury had written it and so gave my opinion based on that,” she said.
He tapped the table, his gaze lingering on the letter for a moment before it rose to meet hers. “That is, you would not give me your honest opinion?” he asked.
“Rather, I am familiar with what he wants his writing to accomplish,” she said.
Oscar’s expression hadn’t changed during the conversation, showing a bland look. Yet now a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he muttered, “I see.” Another moment of silence followed, and then he gestured at Cyril and said, “I think a change of scenery. Would our ladies be more comfortable at a café?”
“I dare say they would be more comfortable if you smiled, but I suppose that would be asking too much,” he replied, only to then laugh at his own jab.
There was no reaction from Oscar; he merely stood up, plucking his coat from the stand behind him.
The walk took them outside again, Oscar and Cyril leading the ladies out of the campus and down a road to a place that couldn’t decide if it looked old or dirty. However, the clientele were well-to-do, Nora recognising the quality of the men’s clothing and the poise of the women, and the staff seemed very capable from what she observed in the minute it took them to be seated and offered a menu. While the menu did have prices, she thought they were about right for successful merchants—and for the lower nobility who mingled with them.
It took another couple of minutes to organise the order and have it prepared, Cyril and Oscar quietly chatting between themselves in that time. Once the drinks arrived, though, Oscar had a few sips and then turned his attention to Nora.
She felt his stare, a blush threatening to show through her makeup. The earlier discussion had already embarrassed her and she now felt it perhaps hadn’t finished just yet.
As if he could read her mind, he said, “Where were we?”
“The university,” she said.
He snorted, a burst of air escaping his nose, whereas Cyril choked on his drink. Oscar turned to regard Cyril with a subtle frown and said, “Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” Cyril replied, his amusement clear to see.
Oscar sighed, turning back to Nora. “Earlier, you mentioned knowing what Canterbury wants to accomplish with his writing—is that correct?”
“Yes,” she said. “I have read a lot of his work and talked with him a lot about it as well.”
Oscar nodded along. “And when you said my work lacked execution, you spoke in terms of his aspirations?”
Nora resisted the urge to wince. “Yes,” she said quietly.
The conversation paused there as he sipped at his drink some more, and so she drank too. Cyril had no such intentions, though, bringing Violet into a light conversation. Having been listening to those two, Nora was almost startled when Oscar spoke up.
“It seems strange to me that you would give the same words different criticisms depending on who put them to paper,” he said.
She smiled and said, “Is it really that strange? As I know him well, I have expectations of his work, so it is only natural I found your draft unusual.”
“I fail to see how ‘poor execution’ can be so easily swept aside,” he said.
This time, she couldn’t stop herself from wincing, and she thought he really must be mad at her—even if his level tone didn’t convey it. “Well, you obviously have a more philosophical approach to writing than him,” she said.
“A poorly-executed philosophical approach?” he asked.
She almost wished he was speaking angrily at her because then she could smother her embarrassment with anger of her own. Instead, his emotionless replies left her as a fire without air, suffocating in awkwardness. No matter how hard she thought, no good answer came to mind.
“You may be frank with me—I am not the sort who holds grudges,” Oscar said.
At which Cyril let out a bark of laughter before he could control himself. “From what I hear, there is no one better at holding grudges,” he said.
Oscar closed his eyes for a long second. “Let me rephrase that: I am already holding so many grudges due to people like him that I couldn’t possibly hold another, regardless of what you say.”
If she was being honest, Nora found this a lot more convincing than his prior statement. However, it didn’t reassure her, still reluctant to speak her mind to a stranger. “That is… I would not know how to evaluate it. I am merely a reader of books, not an academic,” she said.
Although he didn’t reply, he kept his gaze on her and she struggled not to fidget. There was a feeling of nakedness as he seemed to see through her words—peeked through her eyes at the thoughts she kept to herself. When she couldn’t take it any longer, she picked up her cup, lowering her head as she sipped at the tea.
Oscar finally broke his silence. “In the letter, I found the presentation of ideas succinct and the mistakes noticed in my draft spoke of attention to detail. Although the handwriting was feminine, Canterbury only told me he had sent it to his cousin, so I thought the author may be a literary alumni.”
While he hadn’t included any questions, she nonetheless felt a weight press her for an answer. Yet she could hardly tell him that she had memories from a past life in another world. Smiling awkwardly, she shrugged with her hands. “Thank you for your kind words, but I simply have some experience through discussing these things with Lord Canterbury and my friends.”
He nodded along and, when she finished, he picked up his cup. “Rather than talk in circles, how about this: now you know I wrote that draft, please write another critique of it. In turn, I will never mention the words ‘poor execution’ again.”
She couldn’t catch the note of laughter before it slipped out, quickly covering her mouth and ducking her head. Once she got herself under control, she looked up with a small smile, meeting his gaze over the top of his cup.
“Are you teasing me, Lord Barnet?” she asked, her tone light.
Although she couldn’t see his mouth, she could see the twinkle of mirth in his eyes.
Nothing more was said of the matter. The group finished their drinks, and then the lords lead the ladies back to their carriage on the edge of the campus, sending them off a short wave. As if she’d been holding her breath the whole time, Nora let out a long sigh. At her side, Violet slipped from her neutral expression to a small smile, and she lightly elbowed Nora.
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“Did you really need to bring me along to watch you flirt? Surely your sister would have been more than happy,” Violet said.
Nora clicked her tongue, yet her face showed her in good humour. “I told you before we left, Cyril wouldn’t say a word of why he wanted us to visit. And besides, Clarice is far too busy being married to so much as send me a letter.”
“Should I take note that you did not address the flirting comment?” she asked.
Gently laughing, Nora sunk into the padded seat, and her gaze drifted to the moving scenery of buildings outside. “I think it would be interesting to be his friend.”
“So you were flirting,” Violet said, nodding to herself.
“Are you really one to talk? I know now why Cyril suggested I bring you along,” Nora said, but there was no sting to her sharp words and Violet laughed them off.
“As I have said before: while I may not find him bitter, that hardly means I find him sweet,” Violet said.
Nora softly smiled, brushing aside a bit of her fringe.
That evening, she carefully read over the draft once again. Cyril had fooled her by writing it out himself, yet she felt annoyed that the unfamiliar style hadn’t clued her in to his misdirection, and that feeling intensified with this rereading.
Still, she liked the start of the story that the draft covered. It was a science fiction piece set in the near future after an enchantment that produced food was discovered, resulting in all of Anglia being urbanised, nothing but towering blocks of flats from shore to shore.
And what she didn’t like was how it read more like a philosophical essay. The characters were built around competing ideas, no personality to them, and his descriptions were almost clinical. Despite that, she found those ideas rather compelling. It was a very sci-fi debate: maximising the population versus maintaining a more natural lifestyle. While the draft only covered two chapters, he had explored both sides of that debate in interesting directions, challenging them both as well—this wasn’t simply him putting forward what he thought the future should be like.
That dryness had been what made her critical of it in the first place. She knew that Cyril, above all, wanted to write beautiful stories. Now that she wasn’t thinking of how to make it beautiful, she found herself at a loss. Oscar had said it was strange that she would give a different criticism depending on who had written it, yet she felt now more than earlier that it wasn’t strange at all.
In the end, she wrote down questions instead of constructive criticism. “Is this intended to be an essay for other academics to read, or something available to the public? If the latter, is it intended for a niche audience, or do you want a more general appeal?” Question after question followed, to the point where she had to stop herself and start again, this time more concise. He had seemed intelligent, so she thought he would answer her more subtle questions properly.
With the thrice-daily postal service in the capital, the letter went out at the next morning’s collection and so would be delivered to him at midday. She felt a certain anticipation for the reply.
A stray thought, she couldn’t forget that this was the first time she had sent a letter to a man outside her family. For Evan and Julian, she always wrote to their sisters and included phrases like, “Give my regards to your brother.” In turn, the replies would include similar phrases from Evan and Julian.
Yet it wasn’t the thrill of something illicit that excited her, but that he had treated her as an equal. He didn’t couch his remarks with references to her gender—it wasn’t that her critique was good for a woman, or that he wanted her advice as a woman. Even though her lonely days were a thing of the past, she still wanted to make more friends. She felt hopeful that he may be willing to be such a friend.
To her surprise, she only had to wait until breakfast the next morning for his reply. It was a very straightforward letter which might as well have been a series of bullet points, most of the page taken up with her questions repeated, each one followed by a brief answer.
That triggered her embarrassment, reminding her of how he had parroted her words back at her before, and so she rather blushed while reading the letter.
“Is that a letter from your sister?” her mother asked.
Stuck between a white lie and an uncomfortable truth, Nora cursed herself for her impatience. “No, I am just being reminded of something quite embarrassing,” she said, hoping her calm tone covered for her racing heart.
Her mother gently laughed. “Oh, to be young,” she said, trailing into a sigh.
Nora excused herself before anything else could go wrong and read over the letter again in the safety of her bedroom. Afterwards, her thoughts lingered on the paper in her hands. He had said her handwriting was feminine, and she knew that was true, but it was also true that his handwriting had a masculinity to it. Unlike Cyril’s neat script, Oscar has a carelessness to his handwriting. The letters were irregular and, when he crossed his t’s, the line was always at a slight (and different) inclination. Even his periods differed, and so she guessed he had a habit of leaving the pen on the paper while he thought of his next sentence.
Although she didn’t believe in anything as superficial as reading personality from handwriting, she felt a certain reflection of Oscar in his letter. She could hear his voice in his answers, and imagine him hunched over that desk as he wrote.
Eventually, she came back around to the content of the letter. While he had answered every question she put to him, she thought that some answers were insufficient and that some others opened up fresh questions, so she once again filled a page with questions for him. This time, though, she left gaps between them so that he could simply fill in the answers there. She was rather pleased with herself for thinking up that.
Thus the cycle repeated, another letter going and another reply coming. Her questions answered, she moved on to actually critiquing the draft and sent her constructive criticism to him. It took longer for a reply this time, the delay making her anxious she had offended him, but a reply did come.
However, it simply read: “I have received your letter.” There wasn’t even a greeting, but he did sign it off as usual.
For a week, she fumed over his terse reply, feeling stupid for wasting all that time getting to know him and all the effort she put into evaluating his work. If not for Cyril’s timely visit, she may well have continued like that for a whole month.
“What has you in such a mood?” he asked, the two of them sat by the pond in the garden.
She clicked her tongue and glared at him. “That friend of yours, he had me write out a critique of his draft and then gave me the cold shoulder.”
After a beat, Cyril burst into laughter, and it became all the more boisterous at her insistence that, “It isn’t funny!”
Once he calmed down, he returned her poisonous stare with a lopsided smile. “My apologies. It is just that I had thought you would send any letters through me, yet I now understand the state he is in.”
Cyril’s words intrigued her enough to offset some of the annoyance she currently felt. “What state is he in exactly?” she asked.
“Well, he is usually someone who responds to teasing with indifference,” Cyril said.
“And so?” she said.
He shook his head, trying and failing to dislodge the grin. “Currently, he huffs about and makes the odd rude gesture. Whatever you wrote to him has gotten right under his skin,” he said.
“Oh,” she muttered, her fierceness replaced by mewling.
After a moment of silence, he asked, “What precisely did you say?”
She tried to shake off the question with a half-hearted gesture, but he persisted. “That is… I may have said his draft is boring and lifeless.”
“Boring and lifeless?” Cyril said, incredulous.
“In kinder terms,” she said quickly.
“Boring and lifeless?” he repeated, and then shook his head. “No wonder he looks ready to murder.”
She winced and brought up her hands to cover her face, the colour draining away. “It would be a disservice to lie,” she said, more to herself than Cyril.
He chuckled, leaning back and looking up at the chilly sky. “I knew introducing the two of you would work out wonderfully. To make a stone bleed, you really are something.”
As much as she wanted to chide him for calling his friend a stone, she thought the issue at hand was more pressing, focusing on that. “What should I do?”
“Send him another letter—I shall even deliver it to him for you and report on his reaction,” he said.
“Cyril,” she said, her tone sharp and eyes cold.
He froze in place for a moment, and then thawed into a sheepish smile. “Only joking. Ah, what if we have another meeting? It is easy for words to come across harsh on paper, so hearing them from your mouth may soften his grudge,” he said.
“You think so?” she asked.
He nodded.
So they organised another visit to that same café. His only stipulation was that she bring along Violet again, and Violet’s only stipulation was that there should be no flirting. Nora thought that wouldn’t be a problem this time.
The few days until the meeting passed painfully slowly for her, every hour spent going over the apology she would say to Oscar. Although she never had aspirations to be a writer herself, she knew how fickle motivation could be and hated the thought that she had been careless with his feelings. For her, the draft was just a small pile of papers, but, to him, it may well have represented an idea he had been fleshing out for years.
When the day came, Nora and Violet travelled through the city in silence. Despite sitting still, Nora’s heart beat quickly in her chest, her mind a tangled mess of anxiety that even Violet’s presence couldn’t tame.
“Lady Kent, Lady Dover,” Cyril said, greeting them as they alighted from the carriage.
Nora kept her inner turmoil inside as she said, “Good day, my lords.” Violet followed up with a similar greeting.
And then all their attention naturally drifted to Oscar. His face looked as blank as it did during their last meeting, yet Nora could pick up on the tension in his expression. Before, it had been an effortless indifference, and now it was somewhat forced.
“Good day,” he said, and his flat tone sent a shiver down her spine that she barely suppressed.
Cyril gestured at the door. “Shall we?” he asked.
So they filed inside and were seated at a table near the back. A different table from last time, Nora observed the room from this position, but quickly stopped when her wandering gaze met Oscar’s.
The tense atmosphere continued as they ordered their drinks and waited for them to be served. Cyril and Violet said a few sentences between themselves, but Oscar said nothing and Nora didn’t dare speak. When their teas arrived, she hastily picked it up, almost spilling some, and had a sip.
“To your liking?” Cyril asked.
She put on a smile and nodded. “Nice and sweet,” she said.
While they all slowly drank, a thick silence settled, smothering any sense of calm she tried to build. Every time Oscar moved, she held her breath, and he seemed to make a point of not looking her way, his gaze usually on the small plant beside the table.
Eventually, Cyril had had enough. “Are you two quite done being children?” he asked.
Violet let out a titter, but kept herself from tittering, and Nora had the good grace to bow her head in mild shame. Yet Oscar raised his chin, still making no attempt to speak.
“Come now, Barnet, I have debated her many times and often disagreed with her, but rarely have I thought her words were without merit. And what good are those friends of yours if they simply pat your back and stroke your ego?”
Cyril’s words reached Oscar this time, his haughtiness cracking. Slowly, he brought his gaze to Nora, and in his eyes she saw beautiful bands of icy blue. It had surprisingly slipped her notice the last time, yet now she couldn’t look away.
“I admit that my actions… leave something to be desired,” he said.
Too focused on his eyes, she didn’t watch her words. “They do.”
There was a long second of silence, and then Cyril and Violet both broke into laughter, him chuckling and her giggling behind her hand. That finally broke Nora free, and her words quickly caught up with her, bringing on a blush beneath her makeup.
“That is, mine do too,” she said, putting on a brave face.
Oscar waited for the other two to settle down before he continued. “If you wouldn’t mind, may we discuss your criticisms?” he asked.
Nora gave an awkward smile, her sense of emotional balance still swaying back and forth. “Of course.”
He cleared his throat, and then leaned forwards, his forearms resting on the table with his hands together. “If I understand the main criticism correctly, you are calling my story dull—is that right?”
She wished for nothing more than the earth to open up and swallow Cyril for setting all this in motion. “I prefer to think of it as having room to improve with regards to ease of reading and general appeal.”
“A ‘yes’ would have sufficed,” he said.
Rather than acknowledge that, she smiled and asked, “And so?”
“I fail to see the meaning behind the criticism. Are you suggesting I dumb down my writing? That I dilute the meaning as a nanny sweetens a child’s medicine?” he asked.
Despite the content of his speech, his tone was as calm as always. Yet she clearly felt the sharpness. She took a deep breath to settle herself and she put together a reply in her head, working it into something succinct.
“Your own simile undoes your point,” she said, gesturing as she spoke. “A sweetened medicine still works while being more easily swallowed. In the case of your story, it is not that I think you need to simplify the concepts, but that having characters the reader can more easily relate to allows them to more easily understand your concepts. How can we possibly know what it is like to live in that concrete jungle if you do not describe it to us? How can we know what food made by enchantments tastes like? Yet if we don’t know those things, why would we feel one way or the other about living such a life?”
Her pace had picked up the more she spoke, leaving her a touch breathless.
On the other side of the table, Oscar simply stared at her; however, he still showed no emotion. She wondered if he found any sense in what she had said. It took nearly a minute for her to get an answer to that thought.
“A concrete jungle,” he muttered.
Her brain hiccuped, realising that, while a common phrase in her previous life, it had yet to be used in this world. She quickly recovered, hardly the first time she had “invented” such phrases.
Coming out of his thoughts, he said, “I still disagree,” and carried on to explain why.
Unlike the last time, this meeting dragged on to a third cup of tea, and would have gone on longer still if not for the effect that drinking three cups of tea had on a lady.
While not exactly a heated discussion, it had rather little agreement and rather a lot of gesturing on Nora’s part. Little did either of them know that such conversations would become a staple for the rest of their lives.