by Sofia Daniel
My gaze dropped to the section that said, FATHER, NAME AND SURNAME, and I clenched my teeth. Mother never spoke about my birth father and explained that Billy was the only dad she would acknowledge. What the hell could Elizabeth shed on my parentage that I couldn’t find out for myself?
Elizabeth waved a dismissive hand. “Let’s not dwell on Delilah’s illegitimate birth. Instead, cast your eyes on the mother’s details.”
The next slide showed a close-up of the MOTHER, NAME AND SURNAME section. It wasn’t anything unexpected: Abigail Rebecca Hancock. I skimmed over the PLACE OF BIRTH section to OCCUPATION.
Prison Inmate.
My stomach dropped. Mother had never told me about spending time inside. I skipped to the next section, MAIDEN SURNAME.
Burgh.
“No!” howled the same person from before.
In the blink of an eye, the projector displayed a color photo of a girl who looked just like me but with mousy brown hair. She wrapped both arms around a dark-haired man with the same startling, sapphire eyes as Mr. Burgh.
Every ounce of moisture in my throat evaporated, leaving me feeling scorched and desolate. The headmaster and Mother? Seeing younger versions of them together blanked out my mind. Mother had always been beautiful but in a hard-faced sort of way. But I’d never seen her as light and as unencumbered as the girl in the photo.
“Oh my goodness!” shouted the heckler. “Mr. Burgh is Delilah Handjob’s father!”
Gasps filled the air. I shook my head. That couldn’t be right. Even if what Elizabeth had pieced together was true, she wasn’t suggesting that Mother and the headmaster—
“Silence!” Elizabeth stamped her foot. “Mr. Burgh is nothing of the sort, and please don’t slander a respectable man. The headmaster’s daughter, Abigail Burgh, was a student here who fell from grace. At the age of fifteen, she got herself pregnant and stole an heirloom from the castle to pay for an abortion.”
The next slide was a newspaper clipping with the headline:
TEMPLAR ACADEMY SCHOOLGIRL SENTENCED TO SIX MONTHS FOR THEFT.
Tears stung the backs of my eyes. What the hell did Elizabeth have to gain from telling everyone this?
“She tried to…” Elizabeth pressed a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. “She ran to London with the Templar ring and gave it to a man who tried to sell it to an undercover police officer. After pleading guilty to theft, she gave birth to her illegitimate daughter in the prison infirmary.”
“What about the cocaine dealer?” someone shouted.
Elizabeth shrugged. “According to the court transcript, he was the one who set up the sale of the ring. I suppose he married her to make up for his mistake.” She turned to me, eyes shining with malice. “Can you shed light on this?”
I glowered at Elizabeth, pouring every ounce of hatred into my stare. What had I ever done to warrant digging up skeletons I didn’t even know had been buried? My hands shook. The edges of my vision turned black. Right now, I wanted to pound her into the wood grain with my fists.
She stuck her nose in the air. “Never mind. I’m sharing this information with you because Delilah Eden Hancock did not manually stimulate two boys in a storage cupboard on her first day at Templar Academy. I cannot vouch for any lewd conduct she may or may not have conducted since.”
The final slide appeared on the screen.
I’M SORRY FOR LYING
ABOUT THE HANDJOB
Lady Elizabeth Liddell x
Laughter and applause filled the dining room.
“This is an outrage!” Kendrick scraped back his seat and stormed out.
Elizabeth’s look of triumph faltered, but she straightened and plastered on an unconvincing smirk.
The other two knights stared at me with wide eyes.
Gideon wrapped a hand around my arm. “Let’s go.”
I let him pull me up and walk me out of the dining room. In the end, it wasn’t Elizabeth’s lies or her army of petty pranksters that hurt me in the end. What hurt most was the blazing sword of the truth.
Chapter 15
A crowd of people followed Gideon and me out of the dining room. Every instinct screamed at me to turn back, to grab Elizabeth Liddell by the hair and shake the self-satisfaction out of her smug little face. But a frenzied attack was probably part of her plan.
A voice at the doors shouted, “Hand-Cock, where are you going?”
“Ignore that trouble-maker,” said Gideon. “He just wants to provoke you into making a spectacle.”
“That’s not going to happen.” I stared ahead into the wood-paneled hallway, blinking hard. The pictures on both sides of the wall seemed to arch toward as though I’d dropped too much acid and my surroundings were starting to melt.
We continued down the hallway in the opposite direction to the visitors’ tower. I suspected Gideon was taking me to the headmaster’s office, which was exactly where I needed to be.
“How much of what Elizabeth said was fabrication?” Gideon whispered.
“The part where she said she was sorry,” I whispered back. “That photo of my mother and the headmaster looked real enough, and everything else she said fits the gaps in my knowledge.”
“How so?”
“Mother never used to talk about my real father, saying I was better off not knowing. She never introduced me to any relatives, either. And why else would Mr. Burgh come all the way down from London at short notice to recruit me?”
Gideon’s brows furrowed. “He did?”
“Did Mrs. Campbell visit your house?” I asked.
He rubbed his temple. “How many boarding schools do you know besides Hogwarts?”
“None that aren’t fictional,” I said as we rounded the corner.
Our annoying entourage followed from a distance. They kept themselves entertained with speculations on what I would do when I reached the headmaster’s office, and a few hooted with laughter. Fuck them and their perfect home lives.
“Headteachers don’t visit our homes,” Gideon whispered. “Students go to open days, get advice on how best to apply for academies like Templar, and hope our academic achievements, family connections, and interviews are strong enough to win us a place.”
“Right.” I gulped. This was the first time I ever got special treatment for being something other than the stepdaughter of Billy Hancock.
The door at the end of the hallway opened, and members of staff walked toward us.
“Oh, shit,” someone muttered from behind. The rest of the students at our back returned to the dining room, presumably not wanting to explain why such a big crowd needed to loiter around a corner of the school dedicated to staff.
Mrs. Campbell walked past and gave me a warm smile. I wondered how long she had worked at the academy and if she knew anything about my connection with the headmaster.
We reached Mr. Burgh’s office, and my throat convulsed. I forced in a deep, calming breath and tried not to imagine the worst happening.
“Are you ready?” whispered Gideon.
“I’d better be.” It wasn’t like the headmaster was a fire-breathing dragon.
I stepped forward and knocked. My heart clattered in my chest like an out of control firecracker. Did I want him to be my grandfather? There was no family resemblance, either mentally or physically. The man was so suave and upper class, while I was so… My shoulders drooped.
Before I could finish that thought, Mr. Burgh opened the door. His features brightened when our eyes met, which was telling considering our last conversation had ended with me storming out.
“Miss Hancock. To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked, not even noticing Gideon at my side.
I tried to keep the tremble out of my voice. “Elizabeth Liddell just announced to the whole academy that we’re related. Is that true?”
His mouth dropped open. “How did she—”
“Is it?”
Mr. Burgh stepped aside and widened the door. “You had better come in.”
Something washed over me
just then. It was a mix of sadness and relief and a feeling of completion. Maybe it was like how families fretted over a missing person, not knowing what happened to them for years and discovering that the person had died and finally getting closure.
Gideon placed a hand on my arm. “Good luck. I hope you get some answers.”
Warmth filled my chest. I’d never told him anything about Mother or Billy Hancock in case he rejected me for having been brought up by a criminal lowlife. His acceptance and support meant more to me than I could convey in a smile.
“Thanks.”
I stepped into Mr. Burgh’s office on legs so numb I couldn’t feel my feet. After a few steps, my knees gave way, but the headmaster held my arm and guided me to one of the leather seats in front of his desk.
He pulled out the seat next to mine and wrapped one of my clammy hands between his larger hands. “Lilah, I don’t know how Elizabeth Liddell got hold of that information, but it’s true. Abigail is my daughter.”
My head dipped, and I stared at my lap, my senses drowning in a swirl of confusion. I’d always thought we had come from the lowest of the low and dredged ourselves up. Just like Sammy and Billy Hancock.
How could Mother have come from a man like Mr. Burgh?
“Why?” I croaked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“If you’re my grandfather, why was I brought up by an abusive criminal?”
Mr. Burgh’s brows drew together. “He touched you?”
“Not the way you’re thinking.” I sniffed. “When I was little, he would drag me to the kennels at the bottom of the garden, dangle me over his guard dogs, and make them bark. The more I screamed, the more they’d jump and snarl.”
Mr. Burgh’s face turned ashen, and he clapped a hand over his mouth. “Lilah—”
“He would laugh and threaten to feed me to the dogs if I didn’t behave.”
“What about your mother?” he whispered.
I shook my head. “The first times I told her she was too high to care. Even when I got older, she was in and out of rehab, and I barely saw her when she was straight.”
“Sorry. It was hard to get information on you from your stepfather.”
“Why didn’t you bring me up?” I asked in a tiny voice.
“We tried to take custody of you shortly after you were born, but your mother lied to social services and told them I had abused her.” He stared at our joined hands. “She had been furious about our handling of her underage pregnancy.”
A long sigh slid from my lips. Unfortunately, I could picture Mother cutting off a close relative out of anger. “Who is my father?”
“The only reply she gave me was too outlandish to be believed. It was probably one of the boys at the academy, but nobody came forward to take responsibility.”
Mr. Burgh raised his head and ran long fingers through his silver hair.
“Abigail refused to see me while she was incarcerated, and after she was released, Billy Hancock threatened to have me arrested if I kept harassing his wife and new daughter.”
“But he’s been in prison for four years. Why didn’t you come and see me then?”
Mr. Burgh paused and squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to form words. “My wife’s—your grandmother—Parkinson’s disease got worse, and she needed constant care. It was a difficult few years.” The rims of his eyes turned red. “I failed you, and for that, I am truly sorry.”
I didn’t know what to say. If Mother had shut him out of my life from before I was even born, it was unfair to expect Mr. Burgh to keep fighting for me, especially with a sick and dying wife.
Coming here at the age of eleven would have been like getting the Hogwarts letter or Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. An escape from a shitty life.
“I see…” What else could I say?
Unshed tears blurred the black-and-red tartan of my skirt. Right now, I needed to speak to Mother. I had to ask her why she didn’t send me here earlier. Why she had let me fester in foster care until Sammy came to my rescue? And why she had referred to her own father as the headmaster when she called me in the sewing room to warn me that Billy’s friends were on the warpath.
“Lilah, are you alright?” asked Mr. Burg.
“I don’t know.”
“Can I get you a cup of tea?”
Raising my head, I met his warm, sapphire-blue eyes. “How about a shot of Scotch for the shock?”
The corner of his mouth curled into a smile. “Unfortunately, I can’t do that.”
“We’re really related?”
His smile widened. “We are.”
“What do I call you, then?”
“Duncan, in private. Can I call you Delilah?”
I raised my shoulders, thinking that Duncan and Delilah sounded like a great pair. “If you like. Is it alright if I come and see you sometime?”
“It would be my pleasure.”
The words warmed my heart so much, it melted around the edges. It wasn’t like I needed a parent or anything, but it was still nice to have a family. Now that I knew his snooping on my life had been the activities of a concerned grandparent, any resentment I had about our last conversation melted into the ether.
“There’s a few things I need to tell you about Elizabeth.”
His brows rose. “What?”
The entire story spilled out, starting from the stupid nickname to her attempt to get everyone in the academy to bully me. I told him about the dirt she had uncovered about me in public, and Mr. Burgh’s face hardened.
Apparently, he had never seen this side of Elizabeth and had been blinded by her status as the daughter of the archbishop.
“I will keep an eye on that girl,” he said. “If she restarts that nonsense, her father will be the first to know.”
“Thank you,” I gave him a smile. Now that the entire school knew about my influential grandfather, I dared anyone to call me Hand-Cock, handjob, or treat me like the academy’s whipping girl.
My arms twitched to reach out for him, but I didn’t want to scare him away. Instead, I stood and said, “Thanks for the chat. I’d better go and find my friend.”
Mr. Burgh’s smile dimmed, and he also stood. “Of course. Mr. Adewale is an impressive young man and a wonderful influence.”
“He’s taught me a lot.” Especially how to flirt with a guy and make him crazy keen.
To avoid any awkward goodbyes, I hurried to the door.
“Lilah,” he said.
I spun around. Mr. Burgh stood at the side of his desk, his shoulders hunched, arms drawn in, looking more nervous than I’d ever seen anyone.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Would you like to visit me in my private quarters for dinner on Sunday?”
Joy burst through my chest like a New Year’s Eve fireworks display at Richley Common, and a happy laugh bubbled through my chest. “I’d love to.”
His features relaxed. “I’ll meet you here at seven.”
I opened the door and stepped out to find Kendrick standing in the hallway, his face grave.
“Lilah,” he said. “We need to talk.”
Chapter 16
I stepped into the hallway, letting the headmaster’s door click shut. Kendrick kept a distance, his gray eyes fixed to mine.
Unlike his twin, Kendrick’s features were even, never twisting into smirks or smug expressions. I’d heard a saying that twins shared a soul, but it didn’t ring true with the Deloraine boys. They were complete opposites with identical bodies — two Ken dolls: the formal one and the bad-boy.
“What do you want?”
“When I asked Elizabeth to make amends, this wasn’t what I’d planned.”
Without acknowledging his words, I walked down the hallway and headed toward my room. Orlando and Maxwell had already proven themselves liars. The same may as well apply to their quieter counterpart.
“Lilah.”
I continued walking.
He wrapped his hand around my arm. “Lilah, please listen to me.
”
“Why?” I whirled on him, flashing my eyes.
“What?”
“You’ve barely spoken to me this whole term, then when you do, it’s to make a deal that backfired.”
“And you were supposed to have destroyed—”
“I did!”
“Yet Maxwell and Orlando have been suspended for lewd conduct.”
My jaw dropped. “What?”
“Mr. Burgh suspended them before their staff meeting. Apparently, you uploaded footage to a Dropbox account using the school’s network.”
“But I deleted it.”
He tilted his head to the side, giving me an are-you-as-stupid-as-you-look expression. “Our head of IT monitors all videos and image files uploaded and downloaded through the academy network. It’s to safeguard us from accessing pornography. If you’d used your personal data plan, none of this would have happened.”
My shoulders sagged. There was no way I could use my phone. If Sammy wasn’t in prison, he’d be calling it daily or using his dodgy contacts to get a lock on my location. “I wasn’t double-crossing—”
“You uploaded the file on Sunday morning, hours before we came to an agreement.” He released my arm. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“What’s going to happen to Orlando and Maxwell?”
“Fortunately, Mr. Burgh won’t divulge the nature of the videos, so nobody will be disowned. A car is on its way to pick them up.”
We walked side-by-side down the hallway. I wanted to apologize, but they had started it by recording me in the first place. If the original footage ever got out, it would be a scandal both for me and Mr. Burgh.
“Why are you here?” I asked Kendrick.
“To let you know I’m no longer associating with Elizabeth Liddell, regardless of my parents’ wishes. She publicly humiliated you and besmirched the good name of a gentleman who has guided and educated thousands of students.”
I kept my gaze on the end of the hallway, not believing a single word. For all I knew, this could be the second part of a plan to get me expelled — good cop’s attempt to slither under my skin and uncover the rest of my secrets.