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Latin Lessons, page 1
LATIN LESSONS
MAGGIE MCINTYRE
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to the memory of my first Latin teacher, Elizabeth Miles, who introduced me to the joys of grammar and the works of poets like Virgil and always made the subject fun and fascinating.
CONTENTS
Synopsis
Dear readers,
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Afterword
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Other books by Maggie McIntyre
Global Wordsmiths, CIC
Legalese
Latin Lessons by Maggie McIntyre
Even the coldest hearts can thaw in the right hands.
Fenella Carlton has built an empire out of ambition, but her personal life is chaos—three disastrous relationships, two teenage sons, and no time for complications. The last thing she needs in her world is twenty-year-old Susie Webster, a brilliant American classics student.
Susie is fearless, determined, and far too tempting. She also seems to see straight through Fenella’s defences, and when friendship begins to blur into something more, Fenella is torn between the life she’s always known and the pull of a controversial love she can’t ignore.
Is Fenella brave enough to risk her heart again? Or will she let the chance of something extraordinary slip away?
DEAR READERS,
A word of explanation...
Latin Lessons is a special book for me. It’s the sixth and final novel in my series, Isabel and Friends which I started back in 2020, with Isabel’s Healing. It was a year when none of us knew what would happen to the world, as COVID kept us locked down at home, but gave us more time to write and read.
Since then, through four further novels in the same series, I have tried to combine tender love stories between two women, with plots that reflects tough realities of contemporary life. A Girl on the Plane includes an account of sex-trafficking. Into the Rough focusses on the work of Isabel’s fictional aid agency, “Righteous Anger.” Love under Lockdown spotlights the heroic work of NHS staff coupled with a visit to three couples’ lives from the previous books. Then a more light-hearted romance, Olivia’s Pirate, takes Isabel’s publisher friend Olivia to Ireland, where she discovers love for the first time.
Now, in Latin Lessons, Olivia introduces us to Fenella, a literary editor and grammarian who is bowled over by a young American student. Susie bounces in from the States and totally disrupts her life. Fenella and Susie’s story completes “Isabel and Friends,” and I hope you love them as much as I do.
But Latin Lessons is also a crossover book linking the above UK based novels to another series, Behind the Camera, which is based in the USA and Ireland. Susie first appeared as a young teenager in the second of these novels, Wildfire, set in 2019. So meeting up with her again at age twenty, we are invited back to Hollywood to meet the strong and talented women working in television.
I do hope you enjoy this book, and if you do, please leave me a positive short review on both Goodreads and on Amazon. Times are pretty tough right now for all writers, and we can only flourish if people decide to open our books and settle in for a good long read!
A full list of all my Sapphic novels appears at the end of the book. Each one is available on Amazon, in paperback and eBook, and are “free” to read on Kndle Unlimited. You can also follow me on Facebook and through my website, maggiemcintyreauthor.com
With thanks to every precious reader!
Maggie McIntyre.
CHAPTER
ONE
SEPTEMBER 2024
Olivia Massie watched a flock of pigeons swoop past her office window across the London skyline and felt pretty good. This last year had seen her transform from frigid snow queen to flamboyant floozie. It had been a hell of a ride, but she’d loved every moment. In the month since her wedding, she’d changed from tidy to tidal, and her hormones were surging. Outwardly little may have changed, but appearances could be deceptive. She still favoured crisp white shirts, black stockings, tight-fitted suits, and very high heels and still wore her hair sleek and short. She continued to run Barnstorm Books with a firm hand and enjoyed the view from her office on the top floor of their central London premises.
But since her wedding to Niamh, Olivia felt like a new woman. Niamh, who possessed all the talents and spell-casting abilities of a witch, had turned her from a bookish loner into a sensual animal: warm, physical, and sexually rampant. Niamh could bring her to orgasm any time of day or night, simply by giving her “the look” and tossing her head of flying auburn curls. So Olivia approached her fifth decade with as much libido as a twenty-one-year-old and had rediscovered an enormous passion for life. Her energy almost outmatched the five young nieces and nephews who shared their Hampstead home.
This afternoon, though, Olivia stifled a yawn. It was past three p.m., and she’d been awake for over twelve hours, ever since Niamh had accosted her in the middle of her dreams, demanding they make love to celebrate their wedding anniversary. That irresistible invitation had led to two straight hours of sex. In bed, whenever Niamh commanded, Olivia obeyed.
Her friend Bel Bridgford had been right, if somewhat vulgar, when she’d said, “There’s nothing in the world that feels as great as a good shag in the middle of the night!” Olivia had blushed to her ears, but now she owned the truth of it.
However, too much sex could make one feel lazy the following day. She turned away from the window and looked down at her on-screen diary to see what appointments her assistant had added since lunch. There was only one name: Fenella Carlton.
That should be fun. She and Fenella had been friends for twenty-five years. They had missed each other at Oxford by a college generation, as Fenella was about three years her junior, but when they’d met as young editors at the same publishers, they’d hit it off and stayed on good terms ever since.
Now Fenella edited Perceptions, one of the UK’s most respected literary journals, and was one of few people left in London who shared Olivia’s devotion to fine grammar. She fought a one-woman war against Americanisms taking over British English and pursued Zs, as in memorize or subsidize, with as much fury as she might have chased cockroaches crawling across her immaculate office carpets.
Fenella’s office was a penthouse, an idea she’d blatantly copied from Olivia, but of course, Fenella’s was the size of a loft conversion. She was one of those women who always expected the best, and as a result, usually got it. She was one scary woman, and even Olivia, who was no wimp, knew not to contradict her unless she was very sure of her ground.
Fenella was also a known man-eater who had already munched her way through two husbands, with a potential third only managing to escape before they tied the knot. Crueller friends nicknamed Fenella “the Mantis.” Fenella might be a pedant on paper, but in relationships, she was reckless, or she had been in the past.
Olivia hadn’t met up with Fenella for a whole year, since before her wedding to Niamh, which Fenella couldn’t attend due to her children being ill. Professionally, they lived parallel lives, as Olivia sometimes sought reviews for her authors’ latest books in the lofty columns of Fenella’s journal, but she hadn’t asked her for one recently.
She wondered what Fenella would make of her new way of life and didn’t want to be teased or berated about it. But it would be fun to catch up with her, whatever she wanted. A get-together where she could introduce her to Niamh was long overdue. But why had Fenella made the appointment to see her today? She pressed the intercom into Selena’s office. “When Fenella arrives, could we have some tea, please? And a good half hour free from interruption.”
“She’s here already,” said Selena. “I’ll send her up now.”
Olivia quickly looked in the mirror, smoothed down her fringe from its annoying habit of bouncing up like a lapwing’s feather, and sat behind her desk. She tried to think about publishing deadlines instead of the delicious curve of her wife’s bottom, but the little smile that played across her face gave her away. A sharp tap on her door stopped her daydreaming. “Come on in, Fenella. What a nice surprise!” Olivia’s normally impeccable manners deserted her when Fenella strode into the room. “My God, Nellie, what the hell’s happened to you? You look dreadful.”
Fenella flung down her bag and crashed onto Olivia’s black leather sofa. She kicked off her heels and closed her eyes. Then she pushed her fingers through her mop of dark auburn curls and shuddered. “Thanks. That’s made me feel much better! But you’re right. I haven’t slept properly in more than a week, and I can’t concentrate on anything. I feel like lions are crawling up my
“But why? Are you having a breakdown? Overwork? Bankruptcy looming?”
“No.” Fenella sighed. “And don’t call me Nellie. You know I hate it.”
“Okay. So why are you here, Fen?”
“That makes me sound like some Cambridgeshire bog. I’m here because this is all your fault, and you have to get me out of it.”
Fenella looked so fierce that, for a moment, Olivia felt almost guilty, though she knew she’d done nothing wrong. “My fault? What have I done?”
“Because you had the nerve to come out at forty-eight, run off with someone half your age, and then marry her and flaunt your happiness all over London.”
“So?” Olivia wasn’t going to apologise for being happy.
“Well, you give me hope where there shouldn’t be any. And hope is a horrible thing. It won’t let me rest.”
“I still don’t see—”
“Don’t be so dense, Olivia. Can’t you tell? I’ve fallen for someone. But the object of my affection is totally impossible. A twenty-year-old female and, if you can believe it, an American to boot! And because of you, I made the foolish mistake of confessing to her some of what I felt. It was horrible, humiliating, and the worst idea in the world.”
“Oh, dear Lord, and she rejected you? You poor thing.” Olivia thought she now understood, and prepared to provide sympathy along with the tea, but Fenella shook her head.
“Rejected? No, such a thing would have been far too easy. The young idiot says she’s lusted after me from the first moment we met. She wants us to start a relationship for God’s sake, only of course she puts it more vulgarly. She’s incapable of understatement, or any restraint.”
“Wow. So why isn’t that good news then? If you like her, then follow it up. Let her in.”
“Oh, don’t be so stupid!”
“But wouldn’t that be the logical next step? Why don’t you start by simply asking her out for a coffee?”
Fenella turned pink beneath her makeup, and Olivia was tempted to laugh, but she managed to keep a straight face. She did sympathise. Falling in love was a shock at any age, and Niamh’s enthusiasm had certainly taken some getting used to. But if Fenella’s advances had already been accepted, Olivia still didn’t see what the problem was.
Fenella put her right. “Darling, I’m forty-five, going on sixty, especially the way I feel right now. She’s twenty, only four years older than Nathan. My body is a creased, saggy old thing, and my face, well…”
“Fen, shut up. Your face is lovely. Don’t pretend.”
There was a tap on the door, and Selena entered with a tray of tea and biscuits, set it on the coffee table between them and discreetly disappeared. The arrival of tea broke the tension and Olivia moved to sit closer to Fenella on the sofa.
“Shall I be mother? You’ll no doubt be pleased to see how we still do things properly here.”
She was shocked to see tears appear in those glamorously made-up eyes as Fenella gripped her fingers, clutching her hand like someone about to drown.
“You don’t understand, Liv. For her, this is a simple, crazy crush on an older woman, a temporary fixation from which she’ll recover tout de suite. The first time she sees my body, I shouldn’t wonder! But for me, it’s more like a terminal illness. The most obsessive love of my life. A ludicrous passion, and one I can’t shake off.”
Olivia stirred the pot, poured the tea through a strainer, and passed Fenella a bone china cup and saucer, a vintage ritual she retained from her childhood in the previous century.
“Here, drink this and do try to calm down. Tell me all about this young woman and why you’re so smitten.”
Fenella took the tea, her hand trembling as she did so before taking a deep breath. “When we first met, I was horrified. She was appalling, with a terrible accent, non-existent dress-sense. Just totally annoying.”
“So, tell me about it.”
As she continued to tell her story, Olivia began to understand the depth of Fenella’s problem. Her friend hadn’t exaggerated. She was irrevocably smitten. No doubt about it, Fenella had fallen in love.
CHAPTER
TWO
ONE WEEK EARLIER
For Fenella, the first day of her problem had started much like any other. On arrival at her London office, she’d hung up her coat, changed from sensible flats into the pair of killer heels she kept under her desk, and opened her large retro desk diary, a blue cluttered hardbound affair, full of colour-coded deadlines.
It reminded her she had a lunch appointment with two women from her journal’s new design company, so she added in a half-hour slot to make an online grocery order. Then her sons would have something to eat when they opened the fridge. She’d spend the rest of the day working on the next edition, and, if the trains ran on time, might get home to Oxford by seven to receive the food delivery and reach for her first G&T. She must remember to add another bottle of gin to her shopping list. Since Maurice, the man she’d expected to become her third husband, had abruptly departed back in the spring, her evening snifter had become more than a casual habit, and her drinks were getting stronger. She’d add a few more tonic water bottles to her grocery order to balance things out.
Fenella pressed the intercom to call in unflappable, capable Greta, who did more of her grunt work than either of them let on to the outside world. “Greta? Come on through, please.”
“Right you are. In a minute,” Greta said, her voice hoarse.
“Are you quite well?”
“Oh, yes.”
But when Greta did enter, not one, but a full five minutes later, it was obvious she wasn’t well at all. Her eyes were almost closed, and her nose was red. Clutching a paper tissue, she sneezed explosively.
Fenella gestured her to move backwards against the doorway. “Why are you here in that state? You should’ve stayed home.”
“Not the best idea. The women from Farlane are coming today. I’ve finished prepping the brief for them, and I’ve booked us all in for lunch at Carluccio’s.”
“I’ll go alone. I think I can cope with two teenagers over a bowl of linguine.”
“Not teenagers. Madeleine Farlane’s in her mid-thirties, and she’s bringing her top graphics person with her.”
Greta always put in the necessary preparation for any meeting. Fenella relied on her for all the support work so she could function as the journal’s editor. She smiled a silent thank you. But she didn’t want them to share the same room for a moment longer. “Good work. But now I want you to turn around, leave the premises, and stay home until you’re free of whatever you’ve been incubating.”
“It’s only a cold.”
“Probably, but what if it’s not? And even if it is, I can’t afford to catch it. I’m giving a talk at the Weston Library on Friday, and I need to be in good voice.” Living in Oxford, and so commuting by train three days a week, Fenella reckoned she already had enough health hazards to deal with. Her chest wasn’t strong after COVID, and she couldn’t risk another infection. She glared at her older assistant, but Greta could be an immovable object if she chose and normally ignored hard stares.
“Oh, okay. But text me if you need to know anything more. I think I’m losing my voice.”
She must be feeling grim to give in so quickly. Fenella felt sorry for her.
