The Headmaster (4 page)

Gwen looked down at her clothes. Her blouse was a V-neck. Maybe a bit too much
v
for the headmaster’s liking?

“How should I dress?”

“Conservatively.”

“How conservative? My skirts go to my knees.”

“I would prefer floor-length, but I suppose that’s impractical.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t pack my parka and nun’s habit.”

“This is a school of teenage boys. And a young woman as lovely as yourself might prove to be a distraction.”

Gwen's hands tingled. Third
lovely
in one hour. Maybe the crush was mutual?

“So you
do
think I’m lovely?”

“I’ve seen worse.”

“I appreciate the miserable attempt at a compliment, Headmaster.”

“You’re most welcome, Miss Ashby.”

“I’ll try to find some burlap bags.”

She started down the stairs.

“Miss Ashby?”

“Yes, sir?” She paused on the landing.

“If for whatever you reason you decide not to stay here with us, please allow me to apologize for my ill temper. I was not expecting you. Or anyone. Since Miss Muir left, we’ve had no ladies here. I believe I’ve forgotten how to behave around one.”

“Thank you, Headmaster. I appreciate that. I didn’t take anything you said personally. Except for the part where you said you found me lovely. I promise you won’t regret giving me this chance.”

“I might not regret it. But perhaps you will.”

She thought he was making a joke, but no amusement shown in his eyes or on his face. She smiled at him anyway.

Smiling still, she left the main building and headed for her car. She took another look around. Beautiful…so beautiful was William Marshal Academy that she wanted to take a picture of everything she saw—the turrets, the Tudor cottages, the winding cobblestone paths, the stained glass windows. She could scarcely believe it was real.

She pulled her phone out of her bag and found that she had no bars at all. Not a huge surprise. The waitress had warned her the area was a cell phone dead zone. Gwen walked down the path but picked up no signal at all. She’d try contacting Tisha again tomorrow. She headed back to Hawkwood Hall to retrieve her things from the headmaster’s quarters. In a row of windows on the second floor she saw the faces of thirty teenage boys staring at her—a question in their eyes.

“He’s letting me stay!” she called out to them.

They cheered the news, and Gwen could only shake her head in wonder. In what world were teenage boys excited to get a new English teacher? Was this North Carolina or Heaven? Whatever it was, it was her home now for one week.

One week. And then maybe…just maybe…forever.

Chapter Four

Gwen carried her things from Hawkwood to the cottage Headmaster Yorke had said would be hers for the week. She couldn’t believe she would get to live here permanently if she got the job. With fingers trembling from excitement, she turned the key in the lock and stepped into an elegantly appointed foyer. On her right she saw the parlor with antique patterned sofas and carved wooden chairs. On her left she spied a smaller room with a writing desk. She had her own office here, too? Wonderful. She wouldn’t even have to use the one at the school. Then again…the headmaster had warned her not to get comfortable. Did he have no intention of keeping her on at all after a week? She knew she’d pass a background check, and as long as she had a place to live and three meals a day, she could live on a small salary. All she could do was her best and keep her fingers crossed that the headmaster liked what he saw. She certainly did.

Someone had been in the cottage already and turned on the lights for her. Something about the house seemed so familiar to her. This cottage had the same sort of lighting as her grandparents’ house, the same sort of table lamps and flickering yellow bulbs. A moth danced around the Tiffany-style ceiling light. She let it be. No moth had ever hurt her. She welcomed its small, fluttering company.

So quiet…so peaceful…so serene. She heard no traffic from the highway this far back in the woods. Silence reigned here, an almost unearthly silence. Closing her eyes she could almost hear her own heartbeat, her own breathing.. After living next door to college students for years, Gwen considered the silence a taste of paradise.

The school might be quiet now, but every floorboard in the old cottage creaked as Gwen carried her luggage through the hallway and up the stairs. She counted fourteen steps on her way up. She could walk from one end of her old apartment to the other in fourteen steps. Now she had an entire cottage to herself. Two whole stories. A grand parlor. An office. A kitchen and dining room… She laughed when she opened the door to the bathroom and saw the antique claw-foot bathtub. She would live in that bathtub. It could fit two people in there easily. Two people? Not a terrible idea. She allowed herself a single second to imagine herself and the handsome headmaster in that bathtub.

She pushed the thought out of her head. No. Bad girl. He might be tall and devilishly handsome when he was talking at her in his posh British accent, but she knew better than to get involved with a coworker, let alone a boss. There were rules against that. Good rules. Smart rules. Sensible rules. She would follow them.

Unless he didn’t want to.

Gwen opened the door to the master bedroom.

“Wow,” she said aloud. She’d never seen a bigger, grander bedroom in her life. The bed itself wasn’t much larger than a double, but it had a blue-and-gold embroidered headboard that arched four feet over the top of the pillows. The bed linens were white and lush and soft. She sat on the edge of the bed and sank deep into the sheets. She wondered why Miss Muir, the previous literature teacher, had left this place. Who could walk away from this sort of beauty? Gwen loved it here already.

On the nightstand sat an oil lamp. A real live oil lamp. Gwen hadn’t seen an actual oil lamp in years. Her grandparents had a couple as backups for when a storm knocked out the electricity. Gwen opened a drawer and found a book of matches. She struck a match and lit the lamp. Firelight danced across the room. She put the matches back and noticed a book tucked far back in the drawer. She pulled it out and saw it was nothing more than a Bible. Not the typical hotel room Bible, however. This one sported a genuine leather cover—black and supple. She flipped open the front page and saw a name written inside it. “This Holy Bible belongs to Rosemary Leigh Muir.”

So this Bible belonged to her predecessor then? Headmaster Yorke had been annoyingly cryptic about what had happened to the woman who’d once held the position of English literature teacher at Marshal. Perhaps she’d quit the job after an argument. Perhaps she and Headmaster Yorke had disagreed over the curriculum. Perhaps she’d grown tired of the year-round schedule? But she was gone now, and Gwen was here instead.

For the first time Gwen considered the reality that she was the one and only woman at William Marshal Academy. Would this cause any sort of problem? Surely not. The boys were all far too young for her to see them as anything but boys. She’d always preferred older men. Cary had been almost thirty when they’d started dating shortly after her twenty-first birthday. Headmaster Yorke appeared about forty—the perfect age in her estimation. Old enough to have achieved maturity and wisdom. Young enough to still be…Gwen paused and searched for the right word.

Virile.
Virile
was the right word. He might be the glasses-wearing headmaster of a boarding school, but his deep voice, broad shoulders and overwhelming presence made him the picture of masculine virility.

Gwen put the Bible back into the drawer before she accidentally happened upon that verse that said something about not lusting after your new boss. She should try to find out what happened to Miss Muir so she could mail her book back to her. Although Gwen wasn’t particularly religious, she respected the beliefs of others. It might be a family heirloom, too. According to the copyright date on the inside, the book had been printed in 1920. A ninety-year-old Bible was certainly worth something to someone if only for sentimental value.

She laid the mystery of Miss Muir aside while she unpacked her bags and settled into the house.

Gwen decided to spend the entire weekend working on a lesson plan. The boys said they were sick of
Ivanhoe.
It must be Headmaster Yorke’s favorite book, but she hadn’t even read it. Sir Walter Scott appeared on none of her college or graduate reading lists. Last semester she’d taken a seminar on the Brontës. Great books, but probably a bit too girl-oriented for a class of nothing but boys. No romances for a while—not until they learned to trust her judgment. She’d ease them into the Brontës and Jane Austen in time. Charles Dickens was always a good bet. Boys loved Dickens.
David Copperfield
might be too long for a one-week trial.
Great Expectations
? Possibly. Young Pip aids a convict, meets a crazy woman, falls in love with cold-hearted Estella and learns valuable life lessons about who is and who is not his friend. Young readers loved crazy Mrs. Havisham in her decaying wedding dress, and the moldy rat-eaten wedding cake. A wonderfully Gothic tale. She’d start there with the boys. Hopefully they hadn’t read it yet.

All Friday night, Gwen mentally composed her lectures. Monday she’d introduce them to the life and works of Charles Dickens and give them an introduction to
Great Expectations.
Tuesday they’d talk about the first three chapters. She had it all planned out. A perfect week. Headmaster Yorke would never want to let her go.

Teaching…walking…talking with students…reading…meetings with the headmaster…long meetings…dinner meetings…breakfast meetings…

And then a bang sent Gwen jumping a foot in the air. She’d been so lost in the quiet of the cottage she’d almost started to believe everyone had gone to bed. She dashed down the stairs to the front door and opened it. Two boys stood outside on her porch.

“Boys…hello there,” she said. “Christopher was it? And Laird?”

“That’s us,” Laird said. “We came to say hello and see if you needed anything.”

“We’re the welcoming committee,” Christopher said. “So…welcome.”

“A committee of only two?” she teased.

“More boys wanted to join the welcoming committee,” Christopher explained. “But they weren’t welcome.”

Gwen laughed and the boys smirked and nodded at one another.

“Well then, I’m glad you two took the time out of your not welcoming people onto the welcoming committee to welcome me to Marshal. This is a beautiful school.”

“Thank you,” Laird said with a bow. “I built it all by myself.”

“You did a spectacular job. Can I have a tour?”

“You can, but that’s not our area. We’ll have to send you the touring committee for that.”

“Who’s on the touring committee?”

“Everyone who’s not welcome on the welcoming committee,” Christopher said with only the slightest trace of his stammer.

“So what does the welcoming committee do since they don’t give tours?” she asked, crossing her arms and leaning on the door frame. The boys looked at each other again.

“I don’t know.” Christopher ran his fingers through his hair. Cute kid. He had a young John Lennon look about him with his shaggy haircut, suit and skinny tie. “We formed the committee about five minutes before we knocked on your door.”

“We should have planned this better,” Laird said. “Sorry, we haven’t welcomed anyone before.”

“You didn’t welcome Miss Muir when she got here?”

“She was here before us,” Christopher said. “And she wasn’t all that welcome.”

“You didn’t like her?” Gwen asked, curious about her predecessor.

“She didn’t like us very much,” Laird said and shrugged. “Her loss. And our gain. We have you, and you like us.”

“Very much,” she said. “And I like the school, too. So far.”

“Tell her the thing.” Christopher prodded Laird in the arm.

“The thing?” Laird asked. “Oh, the school thing. Sure. I can do that.”

Laird paused and cleared his throat. Christopher hit him in the chest.

“The William Marshal Academy,” Laird began his speech, sounding like a well-rehearsed tour guide, “was founded in 1893 by General John Foley, gentleman hero of the Union Army.”

“The school,” Christopher continued, “was established to take the best young men of America and train them in the ways of academic scholarship and ethical learning.”

“The school motto is
Fortius quam fraternitas nullum est vinculum
,
”
Laird said.

“There is no stronger bond than brotherhood,” Christopher translated for her.

“That’s very impressive,” Gwen said applauding.

“You should also know that Thursday night is roast beef night, so try to have something to do on Thursday night,” Laird said.

“Not good?” she asked.

Christopher mimed slicing his hand across his throat.

“Good advice,” she said. “I’ll be sure to take it. Anything else I need to know about the school?”

“Headmaster Yorke isn’t married,” Christopher said.

Gwen pursed her lips at him.

“What?” he asked. “I thought that was important information.”

“The headmaster’s personal life is none of my concern,” Gwen said. “Has he ever been married?”

Laird raised his eyebrow at her.

“I said it’s not my concern,” Gwen said. “I didn’t say I didn’t want to know.”

“She has a point,” Christopher said.

“So?” Gwen asked.

“He
was
married,” Laird said, nodding. He leaned in closer. “I heard he’s…you know.”

“What?” she whispered.

Christopher looked around as if checking for spies.

“The D word,” Christopher said in an even lower whisper.

“Deranged?” Gwen asked. “Demonic? Dying?”

“Divorced,” Laird said, his voice strangely grave.

“Oh.” Gwen shrugged, amused by how shocked the boys were over a divorce. “It happens.”

“Does it?” Christopher asked. “My parents said they’d rather die than ever get divorced.”

“I’d rather die than ever get married,” Laird said.

“You and me both,” Christopher said. They shook hands. “But the headmaster should get married.”