Page 17

All right, Jane Bennet, get your shite together. You are aLizzie,damn it. And this man is no fucking Darcy.

“Atta,” he repeated, boredom coating his cold demeanour, “I don’t need a TA.”

Her juvenile infatuation dissolved as her heart sank, anger boiling up to take its place. Before she could say anything, Murdoch went on.

“But Mariana O’Sullivan is an old friend of mine and she tells me you’re quite gifted.”

What was she supposed to say to that? ‘Yeah, I truly am’?

“I also understand that you haven’t taken any of my courses and you are in Botany College.” His eye crinkled with what she took as revulsion, and she fought the urge to baulk and call him a dick.

“That’s correct. But I was reared on autopsy. I’ve worked in a mortuary since I was legally old enough to. Earlier, actually, but, you know, child labour laws and all that—” She trailed off with a nervous laugh, and Murdoch blinked at her, sitting there still as a marble statue of a Greek Tragedy hero.

Atta’s books were becoming a burden to hold along with the effort of not sounding like a babbling idiot, so she set them on the closest desk. “I’m well-trained in postmortem arts. I understand that’s what most of your courses centre around?”

He offered her the barest of disinterested nods.

“Good. I’m certain I can keep up with whatever it is you need. I don’t know a great deal about pathology, per say, save for what I’ve taught myself, but I’m a quick study. I’m sure that I can help grade or make copies.” She pushed her hair back from her face. “Grab your coffee?—”

“You taught yourself pathology?”

“I— Em. Well, yes. Again, not a great deal, but working in a morgue at the height of a rampant Plague no one understands. . . Well, it left me curious.”Christ, someone make her stop rambling.

“Curious?” the professor pressed, but a little thrill went up the back of her neck because he didn’t look quite as bored anymore. Maybe he wouldn’t regret this after all. It shoved a modicum of steel into her spine and she felt more like herself.

“Tick, flick, tick. The clock keeps time with the candlestick until they all get sick,” Atta recited a portion of an old folklore rhyme. “Isn’t that how it goes?”

That pinch of his brows came again, this time he didn’t bother smoothing it out. “I believe it is, yes.”

“Well”—Atta lifted one shoulder, dropped it—“I don’t want to get sick.”

She was nearly ready to squirm beneath the intensity of those eyes of Murdoch’s when a “Yoohoo!” came from the doorway.

“Oh,yoohoo! There are the two of ya’.” Mrs O’Sullivan beamed from the doorway, giving them a wave so big it was as if she were attempting to land a plane. “Lovely, lovely,” she repeated with each step as she descended them rather perilously in her pumps.

By the time she reached the front of the class, Murdoch was already back behind his desk, taking off his jacket.

“Make it quick, Mariana. My class is about to begin.”

An exceptionally punctual student was summoned by his words, sliding into a seat at the back of the lecture hall. Without looking up from the shuffling of his papers, Murdoch said loudly, “I won’t bite again, Miss Murray. You can return to your normal seat.”

“Sonder,” Mrs O’Sullivan censured under her breath. “You can’t say things like that to students. People will get the wrong idea.”

“Peopleare imbeciles. Don’t be churlish, Mariana. The girl gave a stupid answer last week, and now she’s frightened of me. You’re the one who told me to be nicer.”

“Evidently, you don’t know how to do that.”

“I am but a tragic lost cause.”

Atta got the distinct impression they'd both forgotten she was there. Miss Murray, it would seem, was slowly and rather shakily relocating for a desk in the second row.

Atta felt a cold hand wrap around her wrist and she turned away from the poor student, looking instead into Mrs O’Sullivan’s heavily mascaraed eyes.

“Come with me, dear. I have the key to your new student accommodations.” She flicked her attention over her shoulder to Murdoch’s back where he was writing on the chalkboard. “That is if this is all working out?”

The professor didn’t bother turning or answering the question directly. “Be at my next 10 a.m. lecture, Miss Morrow.”

Mrs O’Sullivan pulled Atta along before she could ask when that was or even what course. And what if she already had a class at that time? Oh, this was a mess.