The Headmaster (8 page)

Tonight…she was having dinner with the headmaster tonight. She fully intended to be on her best behavior. No flirting. No teasing. She’d hate for the headmaster to think she was willing to sleep her way into a full-time job at the school. Still when it came time to dress for dinner¸ she put on the prettiest outfit she’d packed—a strapless blue dress with a black cardigan and matching black sandals. The dress came down to her knees but just barely. There was a time and a place for conservative clothes. On a “work” date with the headmaster wasn’t one of them.

With some trepidation she headed out at five before eight. She was certain eyes followed her all the way from her cottage to Hawkwood Hall. Were the boys watching her cross the courtyard in her dress with her hair down and curled? Did they know where she was going? Maybe dinner with the headmaster had been a bad idea. And yet, she couldn’t back out now. She headed up to the fifth floor and raised her hand to knock on his door, equal parts nervous and excited. Here it was again—a new path in front of her. Everything in her told her to go for it. Everything else told her to run back. But back where? Her old life was gone. All that waited for her outside this school was a couch in Chicago. Nothing to lose. Everything to gain.

She knocked.

He opened the door and at first she didn’t recognize him. He wore his usual three-piece suit but without the jacket. But it wasn’t his clothes that confused her. It was his face.

“Where are your glasses?” she asked, seeing his naked face for the first time.

“I don’t need glasses to eat dinner. They’re more for distance vision and reading,” he said, letting her into his private residence again.

“You look so different,” she said, standing in front of him and studying his face with unabashed curiosity.

“Is something the matter with my face?” he asked.

“I thought your eyes were dark blue but they’re more dark green, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never checked.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I don’t believe that for a minute. Everyone knows what color their eyes are.”

“They most certainly do not,” he said as he escorted her to the dining room. Dinner was already laid on fine white china. Two tall taper candles illuminated their table.

“Unless somebody’s blind, they know what color their eyes are,” she said as Headmaster Yorke pulled out her chair. She sat down and tucked her skirt around her knees.

“What color are your eyes?” he asked.

“Blue,” she said. “Boring old blue.”

“My point is proven.” He sat opposite her and laid his napkin across his lap. “You don’t have blue eyes at all.”

She smiled at his accent.
At all
sounded like
a’tall
. She wished she had a phone book so she could make him read from it.

“They are blue. I’ve seen them. More than once.”

“They’re not. They are azure, a common color used in heraldry. Azure is a jewel tone. It also represents Jupiter. It is a noble color carried on the crest by noble French houses. To call your eyes blue would be to call an emerald ‘green’ or a ruby ‘red.’ An emerald is emerald. A ruby is ruby. Your eyes are azure. I’ve seen the crown jewels and they sparkle less than your eyes do. So there,” he said. “You are wrong. I am correct. Now eat your dinner.”

Gwen sat speechless at the table while Headmaster Yorke lifted his wineglass and took a sip. She put her napkin back onto the table and stood up.

“What are you doing, Miss Ashby? I believe I told you to eat your dinner.”

She came to his end of the table and took his wineglass from his hand.

“I will, Edwin,” she said. “I have to do something first.”

“What?” he asked with extreme suspiciousness.

“This.” She bent down and kissed him. As their lips touched she felt a current pass through her, the smallest bolt of lightning. The surface of her skin crackled with excitement. She stood back up.

“That was a foolish thing to do,” Edwin said. Now that she’d kissed him, she could only think of him as Edwin.

“Was it?”

“Yes.”

“So I shouldn’t do it again?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Smiling, Gwen returned to her seat and her dinner.

They ate. They talked. They mostly stayed on subject. Unfortunately. Gwen wanted to know everything about Edwin Yorke, but the one thing she was learning about Edwin Yorke tonight was that Edwin Yorke did not like talking about himself.

Must be a British thing.

“So I get nothing?” she asked after they’d finished their second glass of wine.

“What exactly is it that you want from me, Miss Ashby?” He set his now empty glass aside and studied her from across the table.

“Well…for starters. I want you to call me Gwen.”

He sighed heavily. So heavily she had to laugh.

“Gwen,” he said once and only once.

“Now that didn’t hurt, did it?”

“I wouldn’t say it hurt.”

“Good.”

“It might have chafed, however.”

“Edwin.”

He glared at her.

“You called me Gwen. That’s tacit permission for me to call you Edwin.”

“Very well. But only until this wine wears off.”

“While the wine is wearing on…tell me about yourself. Please?” She added the please at the end so it would sound more like a humble request and less like an order. She didn’t want to push her luck here.

“What is it, precisely, that you want to know about me?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I live here, Gwen.”

“You know what I mean. What’s a man from England doing living in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains?”

“Working.”

“You’re not going to give up anything to me here, are you?”

“This was supposed to be a work dinner. You should limit the scope of your questions to matters school-related.”

“Tell me about the school’s headmaster then.”

“You’re insubordinate.”

“It’s one of my better qualities.”

Edwin narrowed his eyes at her across the table. Four feet of table lay between them and it was four feet too many.

“Fine. Fine. Fine,” she said, raising her hands in surrender. “Tell me this then. Why did you say there are sixty students here? I only counted thirty. Are they on some kind of break?”

Edwin looked to the side. It was the first time she’d seen him refusing to make eye contact with her.

“Edwin?” Gwen prompted. “What happened to the other students?” His unwillingness to answer made the question all that much more important.

“I did something last year that caused a few parents and guardians to remove their children from the school. It’s been difficult to accept their loss.”

“You did something? What on earth could you have done to scare off thirty students?”

“I assure you the students wanted to stay. To say there was wailing and gnashing of teeth when they were taken away would be only minor exaggeration.”

“Then what did you do to make the families pull their kids out of the school?”

“I integrated Marshal.”

Gwen only boggled at him for what must have been a full thirty seconds.

“Samuel,” she said.

Edwin nodded.

“Thirty students left the school because you let in Samuel? What the fuck?”

“Gwendolyn!”

“Sorry. No,” she said, slapping her hand on the table. “I’m not sorry. That’s worthy of an f-bomb.”

“Thank God the children aren’t here.”

“They aren’t children. They’re teenagers. I’m sure they’ve heard and said worse. Now tell me you’re joking.”

“I wouldn’t joke about such a thing. Ever. But I wish I could say I was. Samuel wrote the school last year asking if he’d be welcome here. His IQ is off the charts and he was having trouble at his high school in Alabama. Not enough stimulation. Too much tormenting. I sent him an entrance exam. He passed with the highest scored in the history of the school. I offered him a full scholarship. He arrived and…”

“I can’t believe this. I know North Carolina isn’t a mecca of liberalism, but I didn’t think it was stuck in the 1950s.”

“Samuel offered to leave. I told him I would shut the school down before I would allow that. He stayed. Thirty students left. In the end, perhaps it was for the best…”

His voice trailed off and he glanced away once more.

Gwen sat in silence and let the reality of what Edwin had done sink in. Half the student body gone in one stroke. And he was right, he’d made the only choice he could especially for a man with his inherent sense of fairness and integrity. He’d done the only thing he could do. And now she would do the only thing she could do in response.

Gwen stood up, walked around the table, bent over and kissed him quick on the mouth.

Again.

She stood up straight and waited for a response.

“That was a shameful display,” Edwin said, throwing his napkin down on the table.

“Was it?” she asked, suddenly nervous.

“Worst kiss in the history of kisses.”

“What? You think you can do better?”

“With my eyes closed.”

“Isn’t that how everybody—”

Edwin rose, cupped the back of her neck, and kissed her right into the history books.

It was a deep kiss, a hard kiss, a strong kiss that made her weak. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her breasts to his chest, a move that sent a soft moan escaping his lips. Or hers. She couldn’t tell and certainly didn’t care. How could she care now that Edwin was pushing her back against the wall. A man so reserved, so buttoned-up and aloof, had to have a breaking point. Thank God she’d finally found it.

“Edwin,” she whispered against his mouth, feeling a jolt of pleasure into her stomach at merely saying his name. He said nothing in response. Nothing would distract his lips from hers. She raised her head to give him better access to her neck. He took it, dropping a line of kisses that left her shivering from her jaw to her ear. He nipped at her neck and she gasped from the pleasure of his teeth against her skin. “More,” she begged.

He pulled away a few inches and grasped her waist with both of his large hands. She arched her back and he kissed her across her chest under her collarbone. She wanted him to strip her naked, put her on the table, send the dishes flying and bury himself inside her. How desperately she wanted him inside her…but Edwin held back and merely teased her with his hands over her dress and not under it where she wanted them.

She gasped as he pulled her sweater down her left arm and kissed her bare shoulder. But it wasn’t enough to let him kiss her. She dug her fingers into the knot of his tie and loosened it. If she didn’t get to his neck soon she would die. With a fierce pull his tie was off his neck and on the floor where it belonged. She unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt and buried her lips in the hollow of his throat. Her pulse beat hard and fast. She felt his incredible hardness pressing against the center of her stomach as she kissed his neck and chest. Gwen pushed her hips into his and Edwin grunted softly in her ear. She’d never heard a more erotic sound than that tiny, uncontrolled release of pleasure. His finger tightened with bruising force on her back. How could mere kissing feel this good, this powerful? She would come apart in his arms any moment now.

“Make love to me, Edwin,” she whispered in his ear.

And just like that, the spell was broken. The kiss ended so quickly she nearly fell to her knees when she lost the support of his arms. She grasped the wall for support. Edwin took another step back.

“What?” Gwen asked, panting. “What is it?”

“I apologize for my behavior,” he said, and buttoned up his shirt.

“Apologize for kissing me?” she asked, still too shocked to think clearly.

“I think it would be best if you leave, Miss Ashby.”

She stared at him, utterly flabbergasted and deeply wounded.

“My name is Gwen,” she said.

“I think you should leave, Miss Ashby,” he said again. “I am the headmaster of this school. You are a teacher here. At least for this week. We should behave accordingly.”

Gwen adjusted her sweater to cover herself up again and took a deep steadying breath.

“I was joking before when I said I didn’t like you. I’m not joking now. You won’t even talk to me about this?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“You had your tongue in my mouth thirty seconds ago and now you’re telling me to leave.”

“I apologize for that.”

“This…this was ungentlemanly of you,” she said and knew from the look in his eyes that her insult has struck deep.

She turned her back on him and walked out. On the third floor she was mentally listing all the reasons she hated him. On the second floor she started berating herself for kissing him first. On the first floor she had to stop in the bathroom to wipe the tears off her face.

For a miserable half hour she lingered in the bathroom until she’d achieved an approximation of composure again. She had a feeling several of the boys had seen her walking to the headmaster’s. If they saw her leaving with her lips swollen and tears on her face, they might assume he did something untoward to her. As angry as she was at him, she didn’t want anyone thinking he’d harmed her. No harm at all. He’d only crushed her pride with his sudden coldness. She asked him to make love to her, and he’d pushed her away as if she’d confessed to a murder. He’d even apologized for kissing her, which was the cruelest blow of all. A man only apologized when he thought he’d done something wrong, something he regretted. It had been the most passionate, sensuous and carnal kiss of her life and he’d apologized for doing it.

Once she was entirely certain that she could pass for calm and rational, Gwen left the bathroom and walked back to her cottage. She brewed a pot of tea and sat at the kitchen table pondering what had gone wrong. Edwin was divorced and over forty years old, so she knew he’d been with at least one woman in his life. As obsessed as he was with gentlemanly conduct and propriety she might have guessed he was a virgin had she not know about his previous marriage. Before this evening she’d found his old-fashioned manners charming and eccentric. Now they hurt and infuriated her.

Gwen did her best to focus on her work that night. She read, she made notes, she thought of interesting topics of discussion for class the next day. That night she barely slept and she had no mysterious bride to blame.