Free The Headmaster by Tiffany Reisz Page A

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