The Headmaster (6 page)

Headmaster Yorke raised his hand and shook a finger at her.

“You won’t trick me that easily into drinking your tea of concupiscence, Miss Ashby.”

“It was worth a shot.”

“Have a lovely evening. I’ll leave you now so you can work on your lectures for next week.”

“Oh, I’m finished with my lectures. I think I’ll take a long, hot bath instead in that big, gorgeous bathtub,” she said just to annoy him. She hoped he was picturing her wet and naked. She certainly would love to see him wet and naked. Or even just naked. She wasn’t picky.

“You’re a terrible person,” Headmaster Yorke said. “The worst person I’ve ever met.”

“I like you, too, Edwin,” she said.

“You’re fired.”

“You can’t fire me until you hire me.”

“Then I’ll fire you on Friday afternoon.”

“Then I should make the most of this one week I’ll have here. Care to come in for some tea?”

Headmaster Yorke sighed heavily, shook his head and walked away without another word.

“Play hard to get all you want,” she said after he’d disappeared from view. “But you will be drinking tea with me before this week is over.”

She shut the door behind her and locked it. Seemed so silly to lock the door out here in the middle of nowhere. Then again…Headmaster Yorke had said she was the only woman on campus. Perhaps he had a point there. She locked the door as the headmaster had ordered. Better safe than murdered by Jack the Ripper in her bed.

Gwen headed upstairs to the bathroom and ran hot water into the bathtub. She’d been teasing Headmaster Yorke with her bath talk, but once she’d said it, she knew that was exactly how she wanted to spend the rest of the evening.

Alone in her tub, buoyed by the steaming water, she imagined kissing Headmaster Yorke. Edwin, she corrected. Edwin…she wouldn’t call him Headmaster Yorke while they were kissing, would she? Only if he was into that sort of thing. She wondered what sort of kisser he was. Hard and passionate? Slow and gentle? Sexy and sizzling? All of the above? She didn’t know how he kissed. She only knew she wanted to find out.

Laird and Christopher had mentioned that the headmaster was divorced. Interesting. He didn’t seem the divorcing sort. More the “stick it out to the bitter end” sort. A lack of attraction seemed like the least plausible explanation for the divorce. Edwin Yorke was attractive and intelligent and employed—the holy trifecta of good men. What woman in her right mind would kick him out of her life? She could only guess what had happened between husband and wife. Or she could guess until she got Edwin to tell her the whole story. And she would get the story out of him. She wanted to know everything about him—what he liked, what he hated, what his favorite song was, his favorite food, what he dreamed of at night, what he hoped for, longed for, and wanted in and out of bed.

“Edwin…” she said his name out loud. What a wonderfully old English name. She’d love to moan it in his ear while he was deep inside her.

“Gwen, rein it in,” she ordered herself. No more sexual fantasies about her gorgeous boss today. She’d hit her quota. The hot water on her naked body was giving her dangerous thoughts.

She wrapped a plush white towel around her and stepped onto the tile floor. She made sure the window blinds were closed. The last thing she needed was for any of the students to see their new literature teacher naked. Hard to earn the trust and respect of sixty male teenagers when they were mentally undressing her, which one or two of them had probably done already being male and teenagers after all. Still, no need to exacerbate the situation by flashing the whole school.

Once in her bedroom, she dug through her clothes. She had a few silky nightgowns, but decided to sleep in her head-to-toe-flannel pajamas. Seemed the wisest choice for the lone female teacher at a school for all boys.

Gwen pulled the covers down on the bed but paused before getting in.

She smelled something. Her body froze as she inhaled.

Smoke. That was it. She smelled smoke, acrid and caustic with a hint of death in it like roadkill baking on a hot highway.

Gwen rushed to the window and searched the sky for fire.

Nothing. No smoke anywhere. Not from the buildings, not from the forest that surrounded them, not from anywhere. She ran downstairs and peered through the front windows. Nothing was on fire anywhere she looked. And yet her heart wouldn’t stop racing. She checked every room in the cottage. The stove was even cold.

She went back upstairs and stood at her window again. Where on earth was that awful scent coming from? She’d talk to Headmaster Yorke about it tomorrow. Maybe something shady was going on out in the forest? Someone burning garbage or a company illegally dumping chemicals or something even worse? She didn’t want any of the boys getting sick from that smell. It certainly turned her stomach.

She opened her bedroom window to take in some fresh air. One deep breath and the smoke in her nostrils was gone and clean forest air took its place.

Gwen breathed in and out a few more minutes relishing the clean, cool night air. She could smell the woods around her, the tree bark, the lush leaves, the rich, dark Carolina mountain soil. Peace returned to her heart. She would sleep the sleep of the dead tonight.

When Gwen opened her eyes, her whole body went cold with bright white terror.

Someone walked along the edge of the twelve-foot-high school wall. Walked along it with the ease of a tightrope walker. Headmaster Yorke had said she was the only woman at this school. No female students. No female teachers. But it couldn’t be denied. That person standing on the wall was a woman, a woman in a white dress. The dress flowed to her ankles in a haze of gossamer lace and silk. It looked like a wedding dress with heavy bell sleeves that hung past her hands. The woman had long, dark hair that moved with the breeze. Gwen tried to make out her face, but the woman kept it hidden behind a veil of lace and shadows.

Gwen shoved her feet into her shoes and raced from the bedroom and down the steps. Dammit, why did this school have to be in the middle of a telephone dead zone? She needed to call Edwin, the police, the entire world. The woman could be mentally ill or in some sort of distress. She had no idea who this person was but she knew she had a duty to protect the students from any harm.

She ran out onto the lawn and across the courtyard.

“Hello?” Gwen called out.

No answer.

“Ma’am?” she called out again. “Miss?”

Still no answer.

Gwen stared at the wall in disbelief.

The woman was gone.

Chapter Six

That night Gwen could barely sleep. She couldn’t get the image of the woman on the wall out of her mind. Who on earth could it have been? Where had she gone? What was she doing there? The walls that surrounded the school were ivy- and moss-covered. Who would scramble up those dirty walls while wearing white? She looked for footprints at the base of the wall and found nothing. In the thirty seconds it took for Gwen to put on her shoes and to leave the cottage, the woman had disappeared into thin air.

There had to be a logical explanation for it. Surely there was. Maybe one of the boys had a girlfriend who snuck into the school to visit him. But where would she come from? Gwen hadn’t seen any other cars parked anywhere. Had she climbed from the outside of the wall or the inside? Anyone who wanted to be clandestine would wear dark colors and would stay in the shadows. This girl had worn bright white and paraded up and down the wall.

It made no sense.

As soon as the clock ticked past 8:00 a.m., Gwen got out of bed and dressed for the day. In her tan slacks and white blouse, she was the picture of day-off propriety. She didn’t want the headmaster accusing her of trying into entice him into drinking tea with her by wearing a scandalous outfit. No man in the history of the world had even been seduced by a woman in tan slacks. She wasn’t in the mood for flirting today anyway. She simply wanted answers.

She marched up to the fourth floor of the main building and knocked on his office door. He didn’t answer. She hadn’t really expected him to be in his office at 8 on a Sunday morning, but still, she felt beyond uncomfortable knocking on the door to his private residence. But she had no choice, not where the safety of the boys was concerned.

“You,” Headmaster Yorke said when he opened the door.

“Me?”

“You are tenacious. I thought we already discussed the tea issue—”

“Forget tea. I think I saw a ghost,” she said. “Well, not a ghost. Just a person who was there one second and then wasn’t there the next.”

Headmaster Yorke stared at her a moment. This morning he looked as handsome as ever, but she’d managed to get to him before he had time to put on his jacket. He wore black trousers, a white shirt, a black-and-grey tie and a black-and-grey vest. His midnight-blue eyes wore an inscrutable expression behind his glasses.

“Come in,” he finally said. “I’ve just put the kettle on.”

They sat in his small-but-refined kitchen. It looked like the sort of kitchen one would see on an English soap opera set in the Art Deco area. Hercule Poirot’s kitchen. That was what it was. He poured her a cup of weak black tea—weak by her standards anyway—into a square teacup set on a square saucer. She did love the Art Deco style. But it made for an odd drinking angle.

“Tell me what you saw,” Headmaster Yorke said as he poured a spot of milk into his tea.

“I saw a woman in white.”

“You weren’t reading Wilkie Collins in the bath, were you?”

“No, I was not. And this wasn’t that woman in white. She was…I don’t know. She was weird. But definitely there. Sort of. Until she wasn’t. I promise I’m not crazy. I saw her.”

“I believe you.”

“You do?”

“Of course I do,” Headmaster Yorke said. “You’re the sort of woman who is far too busy talking to think up lies.”

She pursed her lips at him.

“I don’t talk that much.”

“No, you don’t. But when you do it makes quite the impact.”

“There’s a woman wandering around the school at night,” she said, her voice solemn and serious. “We should find out who she is. She might try to hurt one of the boys. I mean, walking on a wall at night doesn’t seem like the sanest sort of behavior.”

“You needn’t worry about the boys. The woman in white hasn’t harmed anyone yet, and I’m quite certain she doesn’t mean to harm anyone—now or ever.”

Gwen gaped at him.

“So you know about her?”

“I do.”

“Well, who is she? What’s she doing there?”

“I can’t say who she is. She’s seen on campus at night sometimes. That’s all. No need to fret.”

“Oh, I’m fretting. I’m definitely fretting. How long has she been doing this?”

“Quite a while now,” he said. “The boys call her The Bride since it appears she’s wearing a wedding dress.”

“Yes, I got that connection. We need to work on their creative-naming skills.”

“Perhaps. But they’ve lost interest in her. They’ve even given up trying to catch her. And so should you.”

“From what I could tell she looked young. Does she live near here?”

“No one has ever spoken to her. The boys think she’s simply a ghost.”

“A ghost? Really?” Gwen asked, disappointed that such an outlandish explanation was his only explanation. “I don’t believe in ghosts. That’s ridiculous.”

“The boys believe in ghosts. Then again, boys enjoy believing in ghosts. It’s something safe to be afraid of, something safe to say you aren’t afraid of.”

An astute assessment. She recalled her elementary school days. A few abandoned shacks had sat at the corner of the school lot. Students would dare each other to run up and touch the house. Supposedly a dozen people were murdered in one of the shacks and the madman buried the bodies in the basement. All lies and nonsense, of course. Children loved to scare each other. She could easily believe the boys wanted the woman in white to be a ghost even though she clearly wasn’t.

“You don’t believe it’s a ghost, do you?” she asked the headmaster.

“No, of course not. But I don’t tell that to the students. They enjoy coming up with theories on her identity.”

“What’s the reigning theory?”

“Once there was a fire in this area that killed several people. She might have died in the fire, and now she walks at night.”

“Fire in the woods? That would explain the smoke I keep smelling.”

“You smell smoke?” Headmaster Yorke asked as he refilled his teacup. “I don’t recall any of the boys saying they smell smoke.”

“I thought maybe someone was burning trash nearby.”

“The school is the only residence in the woods for miles around. But the wind carries scents for miles. I think I’ve even smelled the ocean a time or two when the air is clear.”

Gwen picked up her tea and drank a sip. “So the boys think she’s a ghost. You don’t think she’s a ghost. Who is she then? Or what is she?”

“She’s nothing to concern yourself with, Miss Ashby. Take me at my word.”

“Do I have to?” she asked.

“If you don’t, I’ll take your tea away.”

“Fine. I believe you.” She sighed as Headmaster Yorke escorted her to the door. “Can we have tea again soon?” she asked at the door.

“No. Never.”

“How about wine?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Water? Would you share a thimble of water with me?” she teased.

“Are we in a desert and it’s the last thimble of water on Earth?” he asked.

“Yes, we are, and yes, it is.”

He paused as if giving the question serious consideration.

“No.”

He shut the door behind her and Gwen stared at the closed door. She couldn’t figure Edwin Yorke out to save her life. He’d called her lovely but wouldn’t call her Gwen. He refused to have tea with her but then invited her in for tea. What a mystery. What a puzzle. She had to solve him. A challenge, yes, but one she relished. Cary had never been a challenge. He’d been easy, simple. They were friends for a year before they went out on their first date. Falling in love had been gradual and lazy. She’d loved him once, because he made it easy to love him. She couldn’t think of any reason not to love him. So she’d loved him because loving a good man who was hardworking and kind was the sensible thing to do. There had never been much passion in the relationship. They were friends who shared a bed. When he left her, she missed him but not enough to think for one second that she should have followed him to Africa. But all those feelings about Cary belonged to a past life now. A life she’d already started to forget. Then there was the headmaster…