Page 68 of Saint Céline
Her eyes lifted with careful reluctance. “I wasn’t aware my face was participating in the discussion.”
A few students smiled, more from nerves than genuine amusement. She always knew exactly how to tilt a room back toward comfort the moment it began to sharpen around her. It was a skill she had perfected long before she ever stepped foot in my lab.
“It has been more useful than Mr. Price’s answer so far,” I replied.
Julian looked wounded enough that Céline’s expression shifted almost immediately. That was the part I found most inconvenient about her. She could be ruthless in theory and perhaps in practice too, but small cruelties bothered her when they happened directly in front of her. She noticed embarrassment. She noticed discomfort. She noticed the exact second someone started feeling too exposed, because she had built her entire life around avoiding that feeling herself.
Julian cleared his throat. “I probably misunderstood the paper.”
“You did,” I said simply.
Céline looked at me then, and there was real irritation in her eyes now, clean and immediate.
I gestured toward the article on the table. “Go on.”
She exhaled through her nose, then finally looked down at the page in front of her. “The issue isn’t the conclusion,” she said, her voice steady but edged with reluctance. “It’s the sample interpretation. The stress markers aren’t reliable because theenvironmental controls weren’t stable, so they can’t prove the adaptation occurred naturally. The data could be showing contamination response instead of genuine repair pathway plasticity.”
The room went quiet.
Julian frowned, reread the section, and then his mouth parted slightly with recognition. “Oh,” he said, much softer this time.
Céline immediately looked uncomfortable with the attention, which interested me more than the answer itself. She enjoyed admiration when it came dressed as affection, when it made people move toward her with warmth, desire and social hunger. But academic attention made her uneasy.
“Exactly,” I said.
Her eyes flickered to mine for barely a second. The approval landed.
Across the room, Christina Bell shifted in her seat, her expression tight with something that looked like academic envy more than simple jealousy. Wendy glanced at Céline and then away too quickly, her notebook suddenly very interesting. Julian, still stinging from the correction, offered Céline a small, awkward nod of thanks, but the discomfort in the air remained thick enough to feel. They had all begun to sense the shift. I had given her direct supervision on proposal refinement while the others received standard group tasks. I had pulled her into discussions with a frequency that bordered on favouritism. And now, in front of everyone, I had invited her to speak when she had not volunteered.
After the seminar, the students gathered their things slowly while rain struck the windows hard enough to make the room feel sealed away from the rest of campus. Julian approached Céline first, laptop half-closed against his chest.
“That was actually helpful,” he said awkwardly.
Her face softened at once. “You weren’t completely wrong.”
“I was very wrong.”
“A little,” she corrected, and somehow he laughed instead of shrinking.
I watched her slide her notebook into her bag, dark hair falling over one shoulder, face lowered just enough to look modest without appearing weak. She was dressed in brown today, soft trousers and a pale blue blouse beneath a fitted cardigan.
Christina remained by my desk after the others began filing out.
“Professor Moreau?”
I looked up. “Yes?”
She hesitated, which meant she had rehearsed this and was now deciding whether courage would be worth the consequences. “She seems to get a lot of one-on-one attention from you.”
The room shifted.
Céline slowed near the door while pretending to check her phone. Wendy glanced up and then away too quickly. Julian suddenly became very interested in zipping his bag.
I looked at Christina for a moment, giving her the full weight of my attention because she had asked for it, whether she understood that or not. “Miss Martin earned her placement here.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“No,” I said calmly. “It isn’t.”
