Borrower of the Night - Elizabeth Peters [1]
All my genes come from my father’s Scandinavian ancestors – big blond men with rosy cheeks and blazing blue eyes. They were about as aesthetic-looking as oxen. That’s what I felt like – a big, blond, blue-eyed cow.
The result of this was to make me painfully shy. I suppose that seems funny. Nobody expects a bouncing Brunhild to be self-conscious. But I was. The intelligent, sensitive, poetic boys were terrified of me; and the ones that weren’t terrified didn’t want to talk about poetry or Prescott. They didn’t want to talk at all. Rubbing my bruises, I became a confirmed misandrist. That attitude left me lots of time in which to study. I collected degrees the way some girls collect engagement rings. Then I got a job as a history instructor at a small Mid-western college which, in view of what is to follow, had better be nameless. It was there I met Tony. Tony teaches history too. He’s bright; very bright. He is also six feet five inches tall, and, except for his height, he rather resembles Keats in the later stages of consumption.
I met Tony on the occasion of the first departmental faculty meeting. I was late. Being late was a mistake; I hate walking the gauntlet of all those male eyes. There was one other woman present. She looked the way I wanted to look – thin, dark, and intellectual. I smiled hopefully at her and received a fishy stare in return. Most women take an instant dislike to me. I can’t say I don’t know why.
I spotted Tony amid the crowd because of his height. There were other things worth noticing – big brown eyes, broad shoulders, and black hair that flopped over his forehead and curled around his ears. His face was fine-boned and aesthetic-looking. At that moment, however, it had the same expression that was on all the other male faces, except that of Dr Bronson, the head of the department. He had interviewed me and had hired me in spite of my measurements. I’m not kidding; it is a common delusion, unshaken by résumés and grades, that a woman with my proportions cannot have anything in her head but air.
I sat down with an awkward thump in the nearest chair, and several men gulped audibly. Dear old Dr Bronson smiled his weary smile, brushed his silvery hair back from his intellectual forehead, and started the meeting.
It was the usual sort of meeting, with discussions of schedules and committees and so on. After it was over I headed for the door. Tony was there ahead of me.
I don’t remember how he got me out of the building and into the Campus Coffee Shoppe, but I have never denied he is a fairly smooth talker. I remember some of our conversation. I hadn’t encountered a technique quite like his before.
The first thing he said was, ‘Will you marry me?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘Haven’t you ever heard of love at first sight?’
‘I’ve heard of it. I don’t believe in it. And if I did, love and marriage don’t necessarily go together. Au contraire.’
‘So beautiful and so cynical,’ said Tony sadly. ‘Doesn’t my honourable proposal restore your faith in my sex?’
‘It merely reinforces my impression that you are crazy.’
‘Look at it this way.’ Tony put his elbows on the table. The table wasn’t very clean, but neither were Tony’s elbows; I deduced that this pose was characteristic. ‘All my life I’ve been looking for my ideal woman. I’m pushing thirty, you know; I’ve had time to think about it. Beauty, brains, and a sense of humour, that’s what I want. Now I know you’re intelligent or old Bronson wouldn’t have hired you. He’s above the sins of the flesh, or thinks he is. You are obviously beautiful. Your sense of humour – ’
‘Ha,’ I said. ‘You deduced that from the twinkle in my eye, I suppose.’
Tony cocked his head and considered