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I was a long, long way from Oxford.
“She could have made it in on her own without her parents’ help. She’s a tough kid, sharp as a tack, and she’ll railroad you and take over your class the second you slip up, so be on your toes.”
“Me?” I laughed. “I’m sure I can handle her.” Unease tightened my chest, however. Especially now that Dan was giving me a knowing grin as he shook his head.
“Good, because she’s one of your graduate students this year.”
Great. “Well then, I’m off to a great start already with her.”
Dan smiled and waved his hand in dismissal.
“These old buildings and their narrow hallways... Not your fault. I’ve knocked into a student or two over the last decade and been mowed down by my fair share of them, too.”
The clock on the wall struck ten, and I sighed deeply as I rose. I had my first graduate level lecture in two hours.
“Thanks for meeting with me this morning,” I said as I took my leave, this time slowly opening the door and checking the hallway before stepping out.
“No problem. Good luck, Rhys.”
I shut his office door and checked my watch as I walked toward the lecture hall where I’d be teaching the graduate students in the Sociology and History Departments this year. I also had a few entry level sociology classes to teach, but they all catered to the more modern social sciences. My expertise was in the study of the ancients—the arts, the sciences, and the movements of people lost to time.
I’d graduated from Oxford with my doctorate in archeology five years ago. Before that, I’d pursued dual masters in sociology and history, unable to decide between the two. All I knew during my university days was that I wanted to go into research, so I did, but I’d burned out quicker than I thought after several years in the field.
A single year tenure at an American university sounded like a vacation compared to trekking through the Scottish highlands in the pouring rain or scouring the desert in Egypt while the relentless sun beat down on my back.
I pulled a set of keys out of the pocket of my brown leather jacket and unlocked the door to the lecture hall that would be my home turf until next May.
Like the rest of the buildings on campus, the stones and masonry of the exterior bled into the room. Eight rows of seating lifted above a platform at the base of the room where a table and podium sat—dark wood against rich red and emerald green wallpaper separated by beams and exposed stone. I’d lectured at a few universities in the States. Most of them were modern, shiny, new, and washed with florescent lighting.
Not Gatlington. In fact, I’d heard my fair share of ghost stories from the students and staff I’d talked to over the course of not only the day, but the few weeks I’d been living on campus preparing for this very day.
I’d been given a small cottage on campus, and after spending several nights there, I tended to believe the ghost stories I’d been told. The campus was the definition of dark academia.
Whitney Dahl with her long, dark hair and unbelievable green eyes looked like she fit right in.
I blinked, setting down my laptop and class materials, shaking her from my mind. She wasn’t the first person to think I was a fellow student. Even some of the faculty chided me for walking through faculty housing a few times before they got used to seeing me around.
At only thirty-three, I was one of the youngest professors on campus.
I spent the next hour or so going over my notes and the curriculum I planned to teach this class in particular. Sociology when it overlapped with history meant challenging everything one knew about society as a whole. How did we become what we are in the modern age, and what would we be one hundred, two hundred, even five hundred years from now based on what we were before?
That’s what my students would theorize, and those theories would turn into term papers by the end of semester, and possibly into a thesis if they were masters of sociology students.
My 11:45 a.m. class began to trickle in. I didn’t step down off the platform to say hello or greet them. I wasn’t that kind of professor. I was here to teach, not to have a good time or make friends.
A flash of raven black caught my eye. Whitney Dahl walked by without looking at me, her head bent as she fumbled with her cell phone and slid it back into the worn shoulder bag she carried her books in. I followed her with my eyes, noticing that she liked to sit in the very middle of the stands, right in the center of the room. She started pulling her books out one by one, then set her laptop down in front of her. I waited, and waited, for her to notice me.
When she did, I had to fight to stop myself from smirking at her. Shock played across her startlingly beautiful face and didn’t falter as I left the platform, glanced at my watch, and walked to the door. I locked it and turned to the scattered graduated students in the stands.
“I don’t tolerate tardiness,” I said firmly as I walked back to the platform and grabbed a piece of chalk, weighing it in my hands. I liked that Gatlington hadn’t replaced their old chalkboards for the more popular white boards, at least in the majority of their classrooms.
I wrote my name on the board—Doctor Rhys Ellis. Doctor of Archeology and Sociology. Their new professor.
When I turned around, I made of point of looking at each of them before settling my gaze on Whitney, who sat still and pale, one dark brow raised in surprise.
“Welcome to Societal Theories.”
Chapter 3
