Page 48 of Hearts of Locke Hill

“You? Not me?”

She laughed, but it was pained. “Oh, Mr. Burke,” she said. “I’m the one fighting to be here, remember?”

As she passed him, he reached out and touched her arm. She looked down as if he’d bit her. He withdrew his hand and shook her reaction away. He had no right to touch her.

“It doesn’t have to be a fight, you know,” he said.

Her burnished lashes remained lowered a moment, then she glanced at her father. “It’s always a fight,” she said. Then she tooka deep breath and strode to the doors. “Except for the music room, and botany and art in the glass conservatory, all indoor classrooms are on the second floor.”

Cy looked to the others. Mr. Whittemore gave him an encouraging nod, and Mrs. Whittemore gestured for him to hurry and follow her daughter out the doors. As he picked up his feet and followed Miss Whittemore, he couldn’t help wondering why he suddenly felt like a child being sent from the room, and what, in all of His Majesty’s kingdom, he had gotten himself into.

Chapter 13

At the top of the stairs, Violet turned right and continued all the way down toward the last room on the left. She felt rather than saw Cyril keep pace with her—the odd frisson of the air between them, his crisp scent. The place on her arm where he’d touched her still testified of his presence. She was not usually left alone with men. At least not indoors. But of all men on this earth, she’d been alone with this one most.

One of the workmen passed them in the tall corridor, carrying a pail of damp rags and trowels, doffing his cap. “All done up here, miss. Mind you stay off the tile until tomorrow. We’ll be workin’ on the staff wing and the cottages if you be needin’ us.”

“Yes, thank you.”

He nodded at them both and continued on. She watched him walk away and descend the back staircase. After months of work on this building, Violet was awash with the sense of being set adrift. This is what she’d waited so long for, and yet she was floundering for her oars. She reached out to run her fingers along the clean, new paint of the walls and the dustless framed portrait of Ada Lovelace, a mathematical visionary who also happened to be the only legitimate child of Lord Byron.

She gently cleared her throat as they entered the large room.“This is the chemistry and physics classroom. Have you decided which classes you’ll be teaching yourself?”

“Likely these two, in this classroom, though I’m still considering.”

She nodded. “You’ll appreciate the lab tables, then. We’ve ordered microscopes, slides, glass tubes, flasks, condensers, and burners, of course. There is a deep double sink in the adjacent lavatory. You’ll have plenty of space to store everything. Here.” She moved to a wall behind a teacher’s desk and unlatched a tall, flat door. With a tug, she pulled the door open, and the rest of the doors along the same wall opened at the same time, revealing cupboards with lab aprons on hooks and shelves for storage above.

She turned to find him agape.

“That is ingenious,” he said.

“Thank you.”

His gaze jolted to hers. “This is your doing?”

She shrugged and closed her door, the others following with a snap. “They’re installed in several of the classrooms where students will need to store specialized equipment. I got the idea from racetrack starting gates. Thought it would save time and ruckus as the girls come and go.”

“Of course.” He stared at her like she was some kind of meteorite fallen from the sky.

To avert his gaze, she pointed to the set of French doors leading out to the balcony. “We thought, with experiments and demonstrations and such, the room would need extra ventilation as well as outdoor access.”

He crossed to the doors and opened them, stepping out onto the balcony. After several moments, she realized he was going to stay out there for a time. She followed after, joining him at thebalcony’s stone-and-iron railing but keeping a body’s distance between them. She sensed a change in awareness from him, as if he’d been taking pleasure in the view and her presence had unnerved him.

“I won’t apologize,” she said.

He exhaled, keeping his gaze on the hill’s horizon. “For what?”

She frowned. “For challenging you. For wanting this position. For believing it was already mine.”

He chuckled, his brow wrinkling. “I can’t blame you. But neither will I apologize for needing this job.”

“Why do you need it?”

He turned to her then, resting his hand on the railing. “I do not wish to be pitied, Miss Whittemore, nor do I wish to minimalize your dreams. But know this, if I could secure another position that would help my family’s situation as much as this one will, I would. Your father has made it impossible to search elsewhere with any hope of finding matched respectability and compensation.”

She watched him, unblinking. “Did he even mention me?”

His lower jaw moved beneath his trimmed beard. “He did not.”