Page 11 of Professor


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“Okay, well, I guess I understand.” She gave me a half-hearted smile before walking into the house and turning the corner to the communal showers on the first floor.

I let out my breath, shaking my head at Nicole’s inability to grasp the situation I was in.

My parents wanted me to marry Christian. His parents wanted him to marry me. So we’d get married eventually. That’s just how things went, I guess.

I could only run from it for so long.

I walked upstairs to my room. I shared the third floor with a few other women, and we had the nicest bathrooms of the whole house—private, quiet, and removed from the hustle and bustle of the goings-on downstairs.

As I showered, I realized with a start I hadn’t been thinking about Christian at all for a long while. Not since I’d returned to campus at least. At one point, I’d loved him. But did I still?

I rinsed the shampoo from my hair, dragging my hands down my face. When I closed my eyes, Christian wasn’t the one I thought about. No, it was the man who’d been sitting quietly on the bench, his nose in a book, just like me.

So much like me.

I blinked, shaking the thought of Professor Ellis free of my mind and stepped out of the shower to get ready for my first class of the day. Two lectures today, of course. My busiest day of the week and Christian demanded my presence in the midst of it. He didn’t care, that was clear.

That little nagging voice in my head asked me why I continued to be with this man. What was driving me to put up with him?

I knew the reason, but it hurt to think about it.

Dating Christian had been the first real thing they parents had been proud about. My grades and extracurriculars meant very little to them.

I chewed my lip as I dressed, shimmying into jeans and a sweater. My hair, naturally thick with unruly waves if I didn’t blow it out, had already started to frizz and curl at the edges. I twisted it into a bun and clipped it away from my face, probably for the first time ever. No hot rollers today, not if I had to meet with my future husband before class.

I opted for Chapstick and a quick brush of mascara over my lashes and gathered my books, my head stuck firmly in the clouds.

And once again, Christian was not the person on my mind.

Now to go see what he wanted to say to me.

Chapter 6

Rhys

MY AFTERNOON LECTURE was hampered by heavy rain. It pounded against the stained glass windows and sent an echoing roar through the enormous lecture hall, which I had dimly lit with only the projector to light the room. A projection of artifacts I’d helped recover during a dig in Northern Scotland two years ago flashed over the screen. Looking up from my laptop as I spoke on the significance of the find, I noticed Whitney in the audience, her eyes narrowed sharply and her face shadowed with a fiery, almost furious expression.

“Carbon dating from the Top O’ Noth discovery suggests the settlement predates the current theories of the Pict settlements in the British isles by at least a thousand years,” I said, keeping my focus on Whitney. Her eyes glittered with hints of tears as the projection flashed to the next set of pictures.

I ran my tongue along my lip as I watched her. Something was obviously wrong.

“Research conducted by the University of Aberdeen suggests roughly four thousand people lived at the hillfort at Top O’ Noth. Eight hundred huts of varying sizes—”

“That’s impossible,” Whitney said sharply, her voice echoing in the room.

I turned from the projector screen and looked up at her. “How so?”

“There is no proof that the Picts ever established settlements of that size.”

I arched my brow at her. She took a breath, steeled her expression, and then tore my presentation to absolute shreds.

She made some good points, of course. Her knowledge of Pictish symbols and mythology shone through her argument, but when it came down to it, she was wrong, and I thought she likely knew that.

Still, for ten minutes Whitney argued her points, all without providing any data to back up her claims that the carbon dating done at the settlement must have been flawed.

She knew better. I’d seen her books the other night. I knew what she’d been researching. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this woman had read all the papers I’d published. She knew, and yet she argued, and her argument had no foundation.

“I suggest you continue reviewing your materials on the movements of the Romans and Viking during this time period. You will find that this discovery predates their movements in the isles by hundreds of years at least. Pleasure review the texts I’ve listed in the syllabus.”

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