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“I like that idea.”

“Then I’ll make you dinner. I was thinking about making a nice Irish stew,” he says sleepily. “I love you.”

“You can let me up.” The absurdity of the position is dawning on me. I’m naked on top of my table, and now that I’m not concentrating on being fucked, it’s kind of hard and uncomfortable. “Let me help you with the dinner.”

“I don’t want you to. I want you to just be here and let me try to keep impressing you.” He pulls me toward the shower, and suddenly, I feel sad. I’ve never been pretty, and now I don’t have position. But I was hoping that at least I could have been useful.

Chapter forty

Levi

“Professor Cunningham?” I ask, leaning over the picket fence.

The elderly woman kneeling in front of her roses turns and peers at me. “Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want any,” she says in a rich, Gone with the Wind accent. She resumes her deadheading, viciously snipping off one of the dead blossoms in front of a gaudily painted Victorian in the Historic District.

“Delphine sent me,” I say.

She turns and looks at me, putting down the garden shears. Dr. Alison Cunningham, Professor Emerita, is a woman in her seventies at least, with piercing blue eyes and white hair hidden under an oversized gardening hat. There is something birdlike about her, but strong. I have a sense that, if displeased, she could take the gardening equipment spread out around her and eat my liver with it. “And you are?” she asks sharply.

“Levi Knight. I’m—”

“So you’re Saint-Jacques’s new husband,” she says, surveying me. “Well, I suppose you’d better come in. Ruthie!” she calls over her shoulder, without breaking eye contact with me. “We’ve got a visitor!” She struggles to get out of her kneeling position but waves my hand away. “I can do it,” she says, getting on all fours and struggling to get herself back upright. “It’s just my knees don’t quite agree with me.” She makes a few more attempts before finally relenting and taking my outstretched hand. Her grip is surprisingly strong.

“Did I hear you correctly? That we have guests?” I hear from the house before the screen door bangs open to reveal a short, plump Black woman with a cheerful face. “I brought some iced tea. Who is it?”

“Saint-Jacques’s husband,” Dr. Cunningham says, putting her hand to her lower back and leaning back. It pops alarmingly. “The Marine.”

“Army,” I say, but she takes no notice of me.

“Ooh! Well y’all better come onto the porch before you get sunstroke. Alison, where are your sunglasses?”

“I don’t like them. They’re old lady glasses,” she says petulantly.

“And honey, you’re an old lady.” She goes back into the house, grumbling under her breath.

“My lovely wife, Ruth,” Dr. Cunningham informs me as she escorts me onto the enormous wraparound porch. It’s painted dark green with red accents, and it’s at least ten feet deep—big enough to have a full-sized table in the corner, where a jug of iced tea is currently sweating.

Ruthie comes back out again, still grumbling, and hands her wife a pair of glasses that are designed to cover her from three sides, which Dr. Cunningham accepts with suspicion before putting them on. “Your medication makes you photosensitive,” Ruthie says, motioning to me to sit, “and I swear if I don’t watch you do it you don’t take your pills. Down the hatch, girlie.” She spreads out three tablets on a saucer and pours a glass of tea. She watches Cunningham take the pills before turning to me. “Honey, it’s hot. Why don’t you have a glass of tea?”

It’s a formality, because she’s already pouring it, and I’m too Southern to say no. The two women sit across from me and peer at me openly. “Delphine—Dr. Mercier—said that I should come to visit you for tips on how to manage the Gremlin, the Hatchet, and the Bore. She said you would know who I was talking about.”

The women chuckle at this. “Well, if you’re already on first-name terms like that, you ought to be on first-name terms with me, too. Delphine will speak her mind, won’t she?” Alison says in amusement.

This is still new to me. Half the faculty have treated me as a personal friend, taking me aside to ask about “Sébastien,” and several—Molly Baker and Delphine Mercier—have invited us to dinner. The other half treat me with a mixture of contempt and, even worse, pity, as they waver back and forth on who is the real predator in our relationship. Two weeks ago, the professorial staff were politely united in closing ranks around me. Now I’m a faculty spouse, and the equation has changed while I wasn’t looking.

Alison offers me a crafty smile. “Still can’t wrap your head around what a bunch of toads we are, can you?”

I smile ruefully. “I didn’t realize the politics were so intensive,” I admit.

Ruth rolls her eyes. “It’s like high school but with bigger egos.”

“Well, I’m military, so that feels about right.”

“So we heard,” Alison says. “Fairhaven is a small city, but the University is a village, and the faculty is only a hamlet within it. Even retired old biddies like us have people stop by with gossip.”

“Alison!” Ruthie says reproachfully, smacking her lightly on the arm. “I told you that it’s not nice to gossip.”

“It’s not nice to admit to gossiping. Gossip itself is a well-honored survival strategy,” Alison says.