This was all his fault. She had hardly thought about him at all before he had kissed her and given her the winged horse necklace. How could one kiss change her feelings so much? Had her feelings changed or was it just a physical thing?
In her dream they had been flying side by side across the ocean. It hadn’t been physical at all. It had been the pleasure of being together far away from everyone else.
Ok, so she liked him a bit more than she maybe admitted to herself before.
Sighing quietly she decided not to go down early, she would try to act normal in every way. She and Leo could not be friends in public, but every now and then they could slip off secretly together until they got the attraction out of their system.
Several opportunities to be together came up over the rest of the holidays. With the school almost empty they found lots of places to be alone without causing suspicion. Rose began to dread everyone else coming back to school. She would never find time alone with him. She usually spent all her day times at classes with either Alex or with Sophie and Grace. When would she be able to see Leo?
Being with him was becoming the highlight of every day. Not just the kissing, though she couldn’t get enough, but he was also funny and clever, she loved just talking too.
Rose also really started to resent Diana, who seemed to come looking for Leo whenever they disappeared together. What was her problem?
She tried tackling Leo on the subject again. But he refused to talk about it.
“I’m not discussing Diana with you, it’s not my place to tell you anything about her. She wouldn’t want me to. But there is nothing romantic between her and me, there never has been, so you really don’t need to worry.”
That was the most she ever got out of him. She tried very hard not to rubbish Diana to him as he just got cold and his eyes took on a shuttered look. She had to be content with that, they were otherwise getting on too well for her to want to ruin it with an argument.
Her favourite time with him was always last thing at night. When everyone else had gone to bed they would both sneak back down to the West Tower Common Room and snuggle up on a sofa together. This was a luxury that would end when the rest of their schoolhouse returned as there was nearly always someone staying up late studying in the Common Room.
One night she tackled him about the necklace. She hadn’t taken it off, except to sleep, since he’d given it to her. She had started to close her hand around it whenever she felt the need for comfort or reassurance.
Rose lay with her head in Leo’s lap and lifted the necklace up to look at it again. She let the silver horse spin in the dim light. “I’ve been meaning to ask about when you bought this?”
“Tarnation. I was hoping you’d not ask.” He tried to distract her with a tickle, but she playfully slapped his hand away.
“Why not?”
“Well, I didn’t want you to know how long I’ve liked you.”
Rose sat up, very interested. “How long?”
“October.” He rolled his eyes at his own perceived weakness.
“Oh.” Rose said, disappointed. “That’s not so very long.”
“It was still three months of asking myself what in sweet heaven I was thinking.”
“What made you buy it?” She was intrigued to hear more.
“Actually it was Nate Naverly. You were in the pub in the village with your friends and he was all over you. For some reason it really got my back up. I just thought you were too good for him. It never bothered me when you were with Ben, but the idea of Nate getting his hooks into you made me madder than a box of frogs. I don’t trust him.”
“Neither do I.” She laughed, “But he does seem to be making Ellie very happy. They’ve been together two months now and still seem totally into each other. So you hardly have to worry about him going after me.”
“Hmmm.” He didn’t look wholly convinced. “Well, he definitely was after you, and it got me thinking. Thoughts I didn’t want to have, about wanting you for myself. Then, one Saturday visiting day, I was out having lunch with my mother in Bristol and she dragged me into an antiques shop and I saw the necklace. As soon as I saw it I thought of you, you have winged horses drawn all over your art folder and Diana’s mentioned your poster.” He shrugged as if that was all there was to say but she poked him to encourage him to continue.
“Fine, fine.” He grumbled but carried on. “I’d bought it before I’d really thought about it. I suppose that somewhere in my mind I hoped that one day I might be able to give it to you and that you might like me back.”
“I do like you back. A lot.” She kissed him with passion.
The holidays ended all too soon. In some ways it was great when classes started again. She and Leo had all the same classes and spent a lot of time exchanging secret looks and smiles. The occasional squeeze in the corridor and knees touching under the table in the science lab where they had to share a bench. But the real highlight turned out to be the art studio. They both loved art and although their friends were around them during lesson time, no one questioned either Rose or Leo if they said they were off to the art studio for some extra time on their coursework.
After the first art class of the year, Leo stayed back, chatting with the Art Master, and Rose stayed at her bench after telling her friends that she was going to spend lunch finishing the painting she was working on.
Shortly after everyone else had gone, Mr. Grimes, or Grimey as he was obviously called by the students, wrapped up his conversation with Leo. He looked around the room and saw that only Rose remained. Both Rose and Leo were favourite pupils of his.
“Ok you two, I’m going to lunch, but can I trust you to lock up the art studio when you leave?”
“Of course, Sir.” Leo assured him exchanging a quick grin with Rose. She nodded in agreement.
“Great, just make sure the door shuts properly behind you, then no-one can get in until I get back.”
As soon as Grimey left the room, Leo closed the door firmly behind him. It locked shut with a click that could be opened easily from the inside but required a key from the outside.
Rose jumped up to put her arms around Leo but instead he took her hand and led her to the stairs to the second floor.
“I’ve got something to show you.”
The art studio was housed in a tall Victorian building built in the grounds of the school as the Dower House to Compass Court from the days when it was a stately home. The basement was now given over to pottery and housed a large kiln. On the ground floor, where the ceiling was particularly high and the windows were tall and let in a lot of light, the school had created a proper art studio. The second floor was given over to textiles, reams of material and sewing machines filled the three rooms.
Rose assumed Leo was heading for the second floor but as they reached the top of the stairs he stopped at a wall covered in wooden panelling. Rose watched as he took a tiny key from his pocket and inserted it into a keyhole she had never noticed before. A door swung open in the wood and revealed a narrow staircase. Rose gasped with surprise and looked at Leo for an explanation.
“It goes up to the attic. Grimey sent me up here in my second year to dig out some extra supplies. He keeps the key in his desk and I lifted it earlier today in the hope I could show it to you. I think hardly anyone knows it’s here.”
“Wow.” Rose was excited with anticipation to see what was up there. “Then lead on, Macduff!”
She followed him up stopping when they were suddenly standing at the top of the stairs in complete darkness.
“Hang on a sec.” She heard Leo moving around and then striking a match. He lit an old oil lamp that stood on a side table, next to a huge overstuffed red velvet sofa.
Rose gazed in wonder around the attic room now that it was dimly lit. It was built right into the eaves with wooden joists crossing above them. There were trunks full of clothes, baskets of plastic fruit that must have once been used for still life painting and a folding changing screen with a Jap
anese design that she supposed still life models must have used for undressing.
“This is amazing!” She sat down on the sofa, and was enveloped in a cloud of dust as she sank into it. Coughing and laughing, she struck a reclining pose.
“Planning to paint me nude were you?” She joked.
“You can laugh,” he said with a grin, “but you haven’t seen what I found when I explored a bit!” He walked over to the farthest wall that was still in near darkness and began to flick through a bunch of old oil paintings that were stacked in the corner.
“Here we are, brace yourself.” He held out a small canvas.
She took it curiously. “Oh my! Is that who I think it is?” She grimaced at the painting, which showed a young woman in old-fashioned underwear posing just as Rose had on the very same sofa.
“Yup, our scary headmistress in her heyday.”
“No way! Do you think Grimey painted this? I wonder if they were involved? She must be crazy to have left it lying where anyone could find it.”
“I suppose they forgot it was here, it must be years old, and also no-one else seems to know about this place, maybe it was their secret love nest.” He said.
“And now it can be ours.” Rose held her arms out to him and he went into them pushing her back on the sofa.
Chapter Eight
In the middle of January the whole of Year Six got together to discuss the end of term play. It was a tradition that their year put on a play on the last day of term. This was then followed by the Upper School Dance, which was attended by Years Five, Six and Seven, plus any dates they wanted to bring.
After much shouting, joking around and stupid suggestions, some serious debate took place and the majority of the year eventually agreed that the play would be Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As one girl put it: “Vampires are totally hot right now.”
Lots of people put their names down, not just for acting parts, but also for directing, producing, costumes, lighting and other technical roles, and all sorts of other areas of the production.
Rose and Leo exchanged looks across the room, and both signed up to do set design, knowing it would give them an excuse to spend even more time in the art room, and perhaps in the attic room above it too.
The first role to be handed out was that of Director. It was bedlam as people shouted suggestions, and the drama teacher sat down to wait until the chaos subsided. In the end it was Grace who sorted it. She handed everyone a slip of paper, told them all to write down who they thought it should be and within minutes the hall had gone quiet as everyone thought. She then had Sophie and Rose collect up all the slips and was completely bowled over to find that most people had put that it should be Grace herself to direct the play.
From that moment on, she was considered in charge of the whole operation. She collected a list of people interested in assisting her and said she would speak to each of them individually, then together with those that were selected she would begin to sort out who else would be doing what. It was custom that everyone in the whole year should have some role and it would be a large daunting task, but one that Grace, with her method and organizational skills, was well equipped to handle.
Grace approached Rose a few days later.
“I’m really sorry and this might be awkward for you but the only people with any real talent who signed up for set design are you and Leo Flanagan.”
“Oh dear.” Rose tried to look concerned.
“I thought maybe you could be assigned totally different sets to do, and each of you could be in charge of a few people separately, but unfortunately it will mean both of you being in the art studio quite a bit. Are you going to be ok with that?” Grace looked very apologetic.
“It’s fine, Grace. Leo and I are often the only people in the art room anyway, it’s never been a problem.” She didn’t mention that in the last few days it had been a pleasure.
Keeping the relationship secret from Grace, Sophie and Alex had turned out to be a lot easier than Rose had thought. None of them even considered that anything was going on. Only Alex commented, saying it was good that she was ok about doing the set design with Leo.
Sophie and Grace still occasionally sighed over him. Speculating on why he didn’t have a girlfriend when he could choose almost anyone. Rose only got tense when they talked about him and Diana.
Meeting at night time was becoming much harder, and they gave up trying to stay up late enough to do so on a school night, otherwise they were both yawning through classes the following day, but Rose spent all week looking forward to Friday night when they had agreed that he would wait in the Common Room until it was empty and then send her a text so that she could join him for some uninterrupted time alone.
It was just after midnight when he finally texted her and Rose could tell by the breathing of the other three girls that they were finally all asleep. Sophie had a bad habit of reading very late on her Kindle, but none of them stirred as she slid out of bed, put on her dressing gown and slippers and snuck down the stairs to meet Leo.
He was waiting in his favourite chair. Her heart melted at the sight of him. Sat reading in the soft glow cast by a small lamp, the light danced in his black hair. She wound her arms round his neck from behind and he turned, his face lit up by his warm smile.
“Couldn’t sleep, huh?” She teased.
“Not with you on my mind.” He teased back.
She curled herself into his lap. He slid his hands inside her dressing gown and round her waist. They sat there and smiled at each other for long seconds, all time together was precious and so it went too fast.
He finally bent his head, and kissed her slowly, with great tenderness. She sighed against him in happiness, her fingers pushing through the soft hair on the back of his head.
She noticed nothing, felt nothing but him, floated in his arms until quite suddenly…
“Oh! OH! How could you!”
Rose jumped up. Diana was standing in the doorway. Tears were streaming down her face, her hands pressed over her mouth and her eyes wide with horror and hurt…
Chapter Nine
Diana fled through the door, not towards their room but instead out to the stairs going from the Common Room down to the rest of the school.
Rose put her hands on her hips and turned to Leo. “How could I? Who does she think she is? It isn’t up to her what I do. How bloody melodramatic was that!”
Leo sighed running his hands through his hair. “Not how could you, Rose. How could I. She was talking to me.”
“What the hell is going on with her, Leo?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, Rose. It’s none of your business.”
“None of my business?” she felt her voice rise to a screech.
He just shook his head again. “I’d better go after her.”
Rose glared at him “Don’t you dare! You owe me an explanation before her!”
He just looked at her. She thought she might thump him if he shook his head again, but he just looked kind of sad.
Her shoulders slumped. “I see.” Well, she knew where his priorities were now. “I guess that’s that then. You’d better go and pander to the princess. But don’t expect me to still be here when you get back!”
She spun on her heel and stormed up to her room.
She cried quietly under the covers. She hoped he would tell Diana it was none of her business. But she had already seen in his eyes that Diana came first. It took Rose several hours to fall asleep. By the time she did, Diana still hadn’t come back.
***
Leo knew where Diana would be. He hurried straight to the first floor. Once there, he went round the corridor until he got to a large bay window covered with a heavy velvet curtain. Behind the curtain was a window seat covered in cushions. Diana was curled up in a ball on the cushions.
Leo climbed onto the seat next to her.
“I’m sorry.” He reached out and hugged her.
“Why her Leo? Anyone but her!”
“I under
stand. But it’s not her fault, Di. Don’t give her a hard time, she hasn’t done anything.”
Diana sniffed. “I know. I’m being completely unreasonable. I can’t help it. I just hate her! She has everything and now she wants you too… It’s not serious between you is it? Please promise me you won’t get together with her, Leo, please. Is it so much to ask?”
Leo looked down at her tear-streaked face and felt the heavy weight of responsibility.
“Of course it isn’t. I won’t go near her except when I have to, ok? But you have to promise me to cheer up. I know Christmas was awful for you but you’ve got to be stronger.”
Diana nodded and cuddled deeper into the cushions. “Can we stay here for a while?”
Leo put his arm around her. She still looked so young and childlike to him. He wished she were more confident. Like Rose Falcon. He pushed images of Rose back out of his mind. Oh well, it had been great while it lasted. But until Diana was over her trauma, he would stay away from Rose. He wondered if that was likely to happen any time in the next year and a half. Would he have to watch as Rose got together with someone else? Maybe he would find someone else himself. After all, he never meant to get involved with Rose. Sure, she was pretty, and funny, and intelligent, and she had fantastic legs and a fantastic laugh. Oh bugger! He couldn’t envision wanting anyone else like he wanted her. He loved just being with her, even just talking. Much better to go back to how they were before any of this happened. Stay well away from temptation.
***
It rained on Tuesday. Rose arrived at the art studio dripping wet, having tramped over from the main school building. She wondered if she’d ever felt so low. She was wet and cold and she and Leo hadn’t spoken for three days.
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