by Sofia Daniel
I folded my arms across my chest. Had Edward Mercia told him to say that, or was everyone in this room a raging xenophobe?
“You may sit with me if you like,” drawled a bleached blonde wearing a velvet headband the same color as her blazer. She sat on her own at the next table down.
“Thanks.” I offered her a smile and slid into the seat next to her.
“Wendy Radcliff.” She stuck out her hand. “How d’you do?”
“Fine, I guess. How are you?”
“Curious.” Her gray eyes gleamed. “News spread really fast about the newbie. I hear your mother married Rudolph Trommel.”
People from nearby tables leaned across, listening out for tidbits of gossip. Bitterness coated my tongue. She’d only invited me to sit with her to gather information. I reached for the jug of water in the middle of the table and poured myself a glass. “That’s true.”
“What’s he like, then?”
“Mom met him while I was in prep school. I barely got to see Rudolph before the wedding.”
She nodded, as though not seeing one’s parents and missing out on major life events was an average occurrence. It probably was with the boarding-school crowd. I nodded my thanks at a server who slipped a plate of grilled chicken and salad onto my setting. Wendy nibbled tiny morsels of shepherd’s pie from her fork, which she explained was a dish of mashed potato atop minced lamb. “Mikkel Jensen is your biological father, isn’t he?”
“How did you find that out?”
Wendy shrugged. “It was on the Mercia-Net.”
“The what?”
“Our online bulletin board where we share all the latest news.”
My pulse pounded in my ears, drowning out the sounds of forks and knives clinking on porcelain. “Who posted news about my dad?”
“Lots of people.” She tapped her smartphone and scrolled down. “Take a look for yourself.”
Several people, most names I didn’t even recognize, had uploaded news reports about Mom. She was a popular model in the late nineties who left the profession when she married an up-and-coming Danish photographer and had me. They’d even posted a bunch of crap about Dad’s drug problems, trips to rehab, and Mom finally leaving him when I was five. He was mostly clean now, with a small family, but people liked to focus on the negative.
I tore my gaze away. “Doesn’t anyone have better things to do around here?”
Wendy mixed the shepherd’s pie into mush and pointed the prongs of her messy fork in my face. “You’re the biggest news we’ve had since the start of term.”
“How nice for me,” I muttered.
“Do tell.” Her gray eyes darkened with malice. “Why would your mother marry a wrinkled, balding billionaire when she could have your handsome-beyond-belief father?”
I set down my silverware and rose out of my seat. “Apparently, you just looked at the pictures and came to your own conclusions.”
Wendy stood and waved me away. “You might as well stay. I’m going to sit with friends.”
She sashayed to the head table, where Edward, Blake, and Henry sat like they were a triumvirate of kings overseeing their court. Blake inclined his head, with an expression that said he acknowledged my interest in him, and if I was lucky, he’d grant me a night of satisfaction. I ground my teeth and scowled. To his right sat Charlotte, who smirked as though she was about to glean whatever I’d shared with Wendy. I forced my lips into a smirk. Too bad the creepy girl had been unsubtle with her line of questioning and didn’t collect anything she hadn’t already found on the Mercia-Net. From now on, I’d be careful answering any personal questions.
“Wait,” I said.
Wendy turned around, gray eyes alight with excitement, and a smirk dancing on her lips. “Yes?”
“Where’s Rita Yelverton?”
Her face split into the widest grin I’d seen outside of a crocodile. “She lacks the social graces to eat with the rest of the house. But I’m sure you’ll find her scurrying about behind the skirting boards, looking for cheese.”
I shook my head. From what I’d gleaned, Rita had been bullied and now stayed away from the rest of the school. The more these snobs dropped nasty hints about her, the more I liked the girl. She seemed to be the only decent person I’d be likely to meet in Elder House.
After lunch was compulsory Latin, taught by Mr. Frost, a red-haired man who didn’t look much older than us. The lesson mostly centered on him focusing his attention on the triumvirate and ignoring the rest of the class, who worked from a textbook. At one stage, Edward whispered something to him that made the teacher’s head snap up.
He fixed me with a leer, strode to the blackboard and wrote a three letter word in capitals. “Miss Hobson, conjugate the verb sum.”
I raised a shoulder. There was a phrase we’d learned at Park Prep, cogito ergo sum, but I wouldn’t admit that I knew it and give him any ammunition to use against me. It was clear that Edward had told him to catch me out. “We didn’t study Latin in my old school, sir.”
“All right.” He rocked back on his heels, holding the ends of his academic robes, and smirked. “Try an easier verb: amare.”
“The interesting thing about schools that don’t teach Latin is that they don’t. Teach. Latin,” I said, channeling Noelle’s Professor Snape impression.
Muffled laughter bubbled up from around the room.
His face turned red. “That’s five demerits for rudeness!”
I raised a brow. It wasn’t like they could cash in a demerit for a caning. He could give me a hundred, and I wouldn’t care. I glared at Edward, who glared back, eyes blazing with animosity. Did he really think I was pathetic enough to catch the next plane crying because an ass-kissing teacher unfairly called me out in class? He’d have to try a lot harder to make me leave.
The next class was Spanish, where the only person I recognized was Henry, the blond who couldn’t stop staring with those emerald-green eyes. A-level Spanish was more of a literature class than a language class, and the teacher discussed a book, Maria, by Jorge Isaac, in rapid Spanish. Although I struggled with his accent, it was harder to ignore the way Henry continued to gape at me, even when the teacher asked him a question. The way he smiled and didn’t answer made me wonder if he was a dumb jock. He certainly had the physique of one.
I dipped my head, scribbled down notes, and focused on the lesson. Henry might well have the kind of body that made me wish I owned X-ray spectacles and had eight arms to roam over his expanse of taut muscles, but I wouldn’t let him distract me from one of the few subjects I had a chance of passing.
After classes, a group of girls stepped into my path and asked if Mom had really screwed Rudolph Trommel to get me a place at Mercia Academy. I rolled my eyes and told them they were giving their educational institution too much credit. It was more likely someone would screw a multi-millionaire to be sent somewhere else. I stormed through the hallways, making snappy comebacks at whoever called me a trollop or suggested that Mom was a whore for achieving what all these bitchy types were probably sent here to do: marry up.
I reached Elder House, where the insults came thick and fast. By the time the twentieth person hissed the word trollop as I passed, my blood had reached boiling point, and I was ready to snap. I stormed through the first-floor hallway, heart pumping venom and mouth crammed with a barrage of insults I would spew at the next person who dared to call me a name.
I flung the door to my room open, startling a short girl with huge eyes such a deep brown, they appeared black. Her dark brown hair was tied back from her face and formed a luxurious braid that stretched down to her waist. She wore a headband the same shade of burgundy as her blazer, and held a plate of sandwiches covered in saran wrap.
“Who the fuck are you?” I snapped.
The girl shrank into the wall of jazz posters and clutched her plate to her chest. “R-Rita. Rita Yelverton.”
All the anger drained out of me in a rush of guilt. “Oh, gosh. I’m sorry.” Stepping forward
, I held out my hand. “Emilia Hobson. Your new roommate.”
Still pressed against the wall between her picture of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, she stared at my paltry peace offering and nodded. “P-pleased to meet you.”
I stepped back. “You know, you’re the only person who’s said that to me.”
Her arms dropped, and she held the plate at navel level with both hands. “W-what are they saying?”
“‘How do you do’ or something like that. I mean, how’s a person supposed to respond to a question like that?”
Rita’s full lips curved into a shy smile. She peered up from her lashes and said, “You’re supposed to say, ‘How do you do?’ back.”
My eyes bulged. “You’re kidding me!”
She dipped her head into her shoulders. “No, really. That’s the correct response.”
“Then why did you say you were pleased to meet me?”
Rita raised a shoulder. “I’m not upper class. Not even lower middle. I wasn’t brought up with people like that and only joined Mercia last year. It’s a bit of a minefield here, but you get used to it eventually.”
I chewed my lip. Eating sandwiches alone in a bedroom didn’t strike me as someone getting used to life at Mercia Academy, but I held my tongue. After a day of mean girls, a triumvirate of excruciatingly handsome wanna-be kings, and the oddity of dozens of people with Downton Abbey accents calling me a trollop, I felt ground-down and ready to snap. I couldn’t imagine surviving a year of this crap.
“Are you really going to eat that?” I gestured at a sandwich covered in saran wrap.
She frowned. “It’s what I get every day.”
“Come with me. We’re going to the dining room and having a real dinner. Together.”
“But no one ever allows me to sit with them.”
I crooked my arm. “There was an empty table at lunchtime. We can sit there together like a pair of outcasts.”
The hope that lit her eyes wrung my heart dry. “What if someone tells us to leave?”
“Then they’d have to carry us both out by our chairs because I’m not going anywhere.”
A hush fell across the dining room as we entered. I couldn’t tell whether it was for the trollop wanting a meal, for Rita’s entrance, or because we’d formed an alliance. I was judging it was a combination of all three from the way everyone gaped. I straightened to my full five feet and ten inches and raised my chin, challenging anyone to tell me a Yank didn’t deserve dinner. Nobody said a word as we walked through the dining room and sat at what I now deemed our table.
A server rushed over and took our order. The older woman beamed at Rita, seemingly delighted that she’d finally come to the dining room to eat. Blake, Edward, and Henry took their seats at the head table. I leaned over and asked in a low voice, “Why don’t teachers sit up there?”
“We only have our housemaster, Mr. Jenkins. His wife’s the matron of Elder House, and they prefer to eat together in private. All the other teachers eat in the staff dining room.”
“That sucks,” I muttered.
“It only works like that in the sixth form houses.” She poured herself a glass of water then raised the jug in silent question. When I nodded, she poured me a glass, too. “I was in Sycamore last year, where the housemaster, his assistant, and the matron all dined with us.” She dipped her head. “They made sure everyone was included.”
“It’s ike a civilized version of Lord of the Flies here. What gives those three the right to sit at the head table?”
The server placed two plates of salmon and steamed vegetables in front of us, while Rita whispered her answers. Edward was the only son of the Duke of Mercia, whose ancestor founded the academy. While the land and the ancient buildings belonged to the family, the academy was technically a charity funded by wealthy patrons, alumni, and parents. They lived off the academy’s payments for the use of his land as well as other kickbacks related to ancient laws passed by long-dead kings.
I gaped. “That’s why he’s sitting on the head table like he owns the place?”
“He will one day.”
I shook my head. No wonder he thought he had the right to dictate who got to stay at Mercia Academy and who got to leave. “What about Blake?”
Rita’s eyes gleamed as she speared a new potato with her fork. “His mother is the second wife to the second in the line to the throne. I’ve heard him say that if his step-uncle dies, his stepfather will become the King of England.”
I leaned forward. “Who, Prince—”
“Yes!” She popped the potato in her mouth.
“No!” My head reeled with the information. Why did people I’d only just met call me a trollop when Mom married rich, just like Blake’s mother? I shook my head. “What about Henry?”
“His family owns the Bournville department store.”
“Is that anything like Harrods?”
“Bigger. And the oldest department store in the world.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “His family also owns a quarter of the freeholds in central London.”
My gaze flickered to the blond, who whispered something into Edward’s ear. “He doesn’t look super-rich.”
“He’s the only one of the three who doesn’t flash his money about. They say he likes to be modest.”
“How do you know all this?”
She gave me a rueful smile. “It’s amazing what you can overhear in the back of the class when you’re quiet.”
I asked Rita about her life. She lived with her Mom in the English equivalent of the projects. Her dad was a Portuguese guitarist who died when she was five, and she was studying A Level Music, History of Art, Music Technology, and Portuguese. When I asked her about how she liked Mercia Academy, she clammed up. I dropped the subject, deciding to wait until we knew each other better before asking again.
Rita accepted two servings of apple crumble, something that reminded me of peach cobbler but looked a lot more grainy. I stirred my bowl of custard, soaking in the history of this room. At some point, King Henry V would have sat here as the honored guest of the Duke of Mercia, and now, I got the chance to dine here. It was a pity so many of the people I’d met had been dicks.
Rita whimpered and shrank into herself. I turned to see what had made her so distressed. Blake, Edward, and Henry stepped down from their dais and strolled across the room, eyes fixed on our table. My heart accelerated, and all the moisture in my mouth vanished. I swallowed, willing myself to forget everything Rita had said about them. They were just people. Even if they were handsome, rich, and well-connected, I wouldn’t act the fool and kiss their feet like Charlotte and her doppelgängers.
Edward took the lead. “You’re keeping odd company, trollop.”
“I enjoy hanging out with people who remember my name.” I shook my head at his nerve. Did he expect me to beg for a set at his feet?
“Here.” He threw a book in my dessert bowl, making custard splash on my blazer. “This should teach you how to address your betters.”
Nervous chuckles came from other tables, along with hushed and scandalized whispers. I stared down at the mess, nostrils flaring, anger searing through my veins. That was the kind of prank people stopped doing at elementary school. I picked up the book by its clean corner and stood. Edward straightened, his cold, blue eyes challenging me to make my next move. Blake grinned, and Henry stared at me as though I was a fascinating new species he hadn’t yet categorized.
I glanced at the cover. “Debrett's Guide to Etiquette and Modern Manners?”
Someone a few tables away choked with laughter, and one corner of Edward’s mouth lifted into a smile. “Memorize it from cover to cover on the plane back to America.”
I shoved the book, custard-first, into his chest. “It seems like you need its lessons more than me.”
A hush fell across the dining room. Edward dropped the book onto the floor and glowered down at his smeared blazer. “Very well,” he said, voice shaking with restrained anger. “I accept your declaratio
n of war.”
Chapter 5
That night, I couldn’t help thinking about Edward and his dumb declaration. I lay in bed, eyes squeezed shut, haunted by those ocean-deep eyes looking through me and laying me bare. What did war mean, exactly? That they’d find a more hurtful thing to call me than trollop? Or would they post links to more trashy articles on the Mercia-Net?
I turned, pulling my comforter over my ears. I couldn’t see them resorting to sticks and stones, but what could be so bad that they hadn’t already said or dug up?
A sliver of moonlight flickered across my closed lids, and I snapped my eyes open and grabbed my smartphone. Four in the morning. Eleven at night in New York. Eight in the evening in California. Noelle had sent me a barrage of messages, demanding to know why I hadn’t given her a minute-by-minute accounting of my first day of school. I sent her a quick reply, explaining that the schedule had been heavy and that most of the people I had met had been assholes.
Mom hadn’t replied to my text, which was typical of her during the honeymoon phase of her marriages. Eventually, she would come back to earth and realize she had a daughter.
Dad had sent an email with pictures of his twins, Tamara and Tony. I tapped out a message, telling him the school grounds were unbelievably grand, and that I felt I was living in a fairytale. There was no need to specify that most of the original tales involved persecuted heroines. It would only worry him and set back his recovery.
When I eventually shut my eyes, the memory of Edward’s glare still lingered. Except in my dream, he was declaring something else instead of war.
The bell broke me out of my sleep. I opened bleary eyes and shuddered at the erotic nightmare I’d had of Edward’s eyes, Blake’s roving hands, and Henry’s body. What kind of sicko dreamed of the boys who were trying to make her life hell?
Rita was already dressed with her satchel of books over her shoulder. “Have a good day.” She twisted the doorknob and paused. “That’s strange.”