Interlude II: A Prologue

The man had an ageless air about him, one that made it difficult to tell if he was in his late twenties or his early fifties. His colouring was drab—mousy hair and dark grey eyes, but his features were fine. Too fine, maybe, to be hidden by a thin scruff and old-fashioned glasses. He dressed in a cosy way, all argyle and tweed, but he sat like a Grecian ruin, elegant and straight and seeming to have endured unblemished for aeons.

Aura’s academic advisor had told her that he was a very approachable man, this Dr. Chantrell. She hadn’t believed her then, and she didn’t believe her now. There weren’t many other choices, however. James Chantrell, PhD, was relatively new to the college, and thus he was the only lecturer with an opening for a seminar leader in his intro to Latin class. Aura was still an undergrad, but she was in her final year and top of her class to boot, and she really, really needed this job.

‘Dr. Chantrell?’ she said, more meekly than she would have preferred. ‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting long.’ She wasn’t late. In fact, she was five minutes early.

Chantrell glanced up from his newspaper, his eyes catching the watery sunlight spilling in from the windows and flashing silver for an instant. Behind the scruff, he was handsome in a distinctly aristocratic sort of way, with a swimmer’s silhouette and a pleasant smile.

‘No, not at all. I asked to meet here because I knew I’d be idling around anyway.’

His accent wasn’t purely English, from the sounds of it—still clipped and posh like his bearing and profession might suggest, just muddled slightly by darker vowels and a bit of rhoticity. It might be a relic of time spent overseas, or he might not be fully English after all, and just took very well to the language as a foreign learner. (Aura remembered someone saying that he’d gotten his doctorate in France, but his accent didn’t sound French at all.)

Aura just smiled back at him, at a loss for how one was supposed to go about this kind of thing. She’d never been to a job interview before, let alone one at a café.

‘You’d be Miss Campbell, then? A pleasure to meet you.’ Chantrell stood up. He was taller than he’d appeared sitting down—his legs went on for miles. Even despite Aura’s generously heeled boots, he was visibly taller than her. When they shook hands, his grip was firm, but his skin was chilled.

Aura returned the pleasantries as they made their way to the queue. She ordered a plain rooibos tea to contrast his latte, then failed to rebuff his offer to pay for her beverage.

‘Really, it’s nothing. I was the one who called you here in the first place,’ he said as they waited for their drinks to be prepared.

Aura’s cheeks were warm, but she didn’t know if it was embarrassment or attraction that had made it happen. Chantrell was very charming—he had this way of looking into her eyes when speaking—and surely he didn’t know Aura’s current financial struggles.

She decided a graceful capitulation would suit the situation. ‘Thank you, then, Doctor.’

‘Oh, no, not at all. And please, we’ll be working together, so I’ll be James to you—if I may call you Aurélie? It’s far too lovely a name not to be used.’ He pronounced it with a distinct French lilt, making it sound far more youthful than anyone else had ever made it sound.

Impossibly, Aura flushed even hotter. ‘I normally go by Aura,’ she admitted.

The server presented their drinks, both of which got carried by Chantrell back to the small table where he’d left his jacket. ‘Aura, then,’ he confirmed as they took their seats.

‘James,’ she returned in kind, refusing to let her shyness get the better of her.

He smiled, took a decadent sip of the milk foam on his coffee, then got straight into the matter: ‘So I’m to understand that you’re still an undergraduate?’