He scoffed. “Now you’re being truly ridiculous. This isn’t about politics, not in the slightest. This is about scholarship.”
“And you think scholarship is completely removed from politics?”
To his credit, Preston seemed to genuinely consider this, fixing his gaze on some obscure point on the far wall for a moment. When he looked back at her, he said, “No. But ideally it would be. Scholarship should be the effort to seek out objective truth.”
Effy made a scathing noise in the back of her throat. “I think you’re deluded in even believing there’s such a thing as objective truth.”
“Well.” Preston folded his arms across his chest. “I suppose we fundamentally disagree, then.”
Effy’s rage was starting to subside, leaving her shaky with the ebbing of adrenaline. She stopped to think more calmly.
“Well,” she said, mimicking his smug tone, “I don’t think Ianto would be very happy to learn that the university student he’s hosting is actually trying to tear down his father’s legacy. In fact, I think he would be furious.”
She was glad to see Preston’s face turn pale.
“Listen,” he said again, “you don’t have to do this. I’ve been here for weeks and I’ve hardly found anything of use. I’m going to have to give up the project and leave soon, unless . . .”
Effy arched a brow. “Unless?”
“Unless you can help me,” he said.
At first she thought she had misheard him. If he had meant to fluster her, it had worked. When she recovered herself, Effy asked, incredulously, “Help you? Why would I ever help you?”
And then, without preamble, Preston said, “‘I looked for myself in the tide pools at dusk, but that was another one of the Fairy King’s jests. By the time it was dusk, the sun had cowed herself too much, drawn close to the vanishing horizon, and all that remained in those pools was darkness. Her ebbing light could not reach them.’”
He looked at her expectantly. Even as dazed as she was, Effy remembered the end of the passage. “‘I slapped at that cold, dull water with my hands, as if I could punish it for disobeying me. And in that moment, I realized that without knowing it, the Fairy King had spoken truly: although the tide pools had not shown me my face, I had been revealed. I was a treacherous, wrathful, wanting thing, just like he was. Just as he had always wanted me.’” Effy paused, gulped down a breath, and then added, “And it’s ‘waning light,’ not ‘ebbing.’”
Preston folded his arms across his chest. “No one else in the literature college can do that. Quote Angharad word for word at the drop of a hat. And that poem, ‘The Mariner’s Demise’？ Myrddin isn’t known for his poetry, and that’s a very obscure one.”
“What’s your point?”
“You clearly want to be in the literature college, Effy. And you deserve to be.”
Effy could only stare at him. She had to remember to breathe, to blink. “You can’t be serious. I have a good memory—”
“It’s more than that,” he said. “What do you think the other literature students have that you don’t?”
Now he had to be toying with her. Hot, indignant tears pricked at her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. “Just stop it,” she bit out. “You know the reason. You know women aren’t allowed in the literature college. You don’t need to play some cruel, silly game—”
“It’s an absurd, outdated tradition,” Preston cut in sharply.
Effy was surprised at his vehemence. He could have repeated the same platitudes that all the university professors did, about how women’s minds were too insipid, how they could only write frivolous, feminine things, nothing that would transcend time or place, nothing that would last.
“I didn’t think you’d care so much about a rule that doesn’t affect you at all,” she said.
“You should know by now that I’m not a fan of doing things just because that’s the way they’ve always been done.” Preston set his jaw. “Or preserving things just because they’ve always been preserved.”
Of course. Effy’s cheeks warmed. “So, what? I would get a paragraph in your acknowledgments?”
“No,” he said. “I would make you coauthor.”
That was even more unexpected. Effy’s breath caught, her heart skipping its beats. “I don’t—I’ve never written a literary paper before. I wouldn’t know how.”