After the War Is Over by Jennifer Robson Read Free Book Online Page B

Broad Street
     and turning onto the Turl to avoid the crowds along Cornmarket, then across the High
     Street and down Magpie Lane to Merton, which she’d always thought the prettiest of
     the Oxford colleges. Not that she’d seen much of it; women weren’t welcome inside
     its hallowed walls, charladies and cooks excepted.
    She presented herself at the porter’s window, just inside the college gate, and waited
     for him to look up from his newspaper.He’d seen her coming, so she resigned herself to waiting until he could be moved to
     acknowledge her presence. It was always this way at the older colleges.
    “Yes, miss?” he asked after she’d silently counted to a hundred. He didn’t even look
     up from his paper.
    “Good afternoon. My name is Charlotte Brown, and I should like to leave this for Mr.
     Ashford.”
    “Lord Ashford to you.”
    “I beg your pardon? The notice he posted gave his name as E. Ashford. I had assumed
     he was a don at the—”
    “Lord Edward Ashford. Undergraduate here.”
    “Ah,” she said, thoroughly flustered. “Well, then, may I leave this letter for Lord
     Ashford?”
    “You may. Good day to you, miss.”
    “Good afternoon.” With that, she turned on her heel and retreated, back through the
     gate, into the late-afternoon sun and away from the surly porter with his red face
     and too-tight collar and silly bowler hat. Away from yet another man who made no effort
     to hide his disapproval of women at his university. Never mind that she wasn’t even
     a true member of the university, having been barred—like all women—from matriculating,
     and wouldn’t receive a degree for the work she had done. Never mind that she sat the
     same examinations as the male students and had worked every bit as hard. Never mind—
    Head down, she rounded the corner onto Oriel Street and promptly collided with a young
     man in cricket flannels. Stumbling badly, she would have fallen but for the steadying
     arm he extended toward her.
    “So sorry—”
    “Beg your pardon—”
    He straightened up, collected his cricket bat from theground, and disappeared around the corner. And Charlotte, her heart racing, continued
     on her way.
    A MESSAGE WAS sitting in her pigeonhole when she returned to Somerville an hour later, having allowed
     herself a restorative browse through Blackwell’s Bookshop. It wasn’t a letter as such—simply
     a sheet of paper, folded in four, with a few scribbled lines within.
                Dear Miss Brown,
                     Sorry to have missed you earlier. Are you free tomorrow morning for a cup of tea at
     Boffin’s? Let me know and I’ll collect you from the Somerville lodge at ten o’clock.
    Regards,
    E. Ashford
    T HE EVENING POST brought no offers of employment, nor did the first post of the following morning.
     There was nothing for it but to meet Lord Ashford and do her best to impress him.
     She wouldn’t have to stay on in the position for terribly long, really only until
     she received a more suitable offer of employment, and in the meantime she would be
     earning her way, living independently of her parents, and possibly even establishing
     some useful connections.
    It wasn’t ideal, but things could always be worse—she could be facing a future with
     nothing more exciting than a fiancé to recommend it.
    Arrayed in her best, just as she’d been the day before, she placed herself outside
     the front gate of Somerville at five minutesbefore the hour. At five minutes past ten o’clock she began to wonder if her reply
     to Lord Ashford had gone astray. At ten minutes past she was certain something was
     amiss.
    At a quarter past ten, she admitted defeat. Likely he had found someone else for the
     position, or perhaps—it hadn’t occurred to her before but it now seemed a likely explanation—it
     was a practical joke at her expense. She wouldn’t be the first female student to be
     so duped.
    She went back inside the college,