Forbidden Lessons (18 page)

Mr Rydell worked with her for over an hour, breaking apart her latest essay and showing her how she could have structured it better and what else she could have included.

"I wish you could help transform my Maths like this. Or Physics."

He smiled. "You probably know more calculus than I do. Six weeks after taking my final exam it was wiped from my mind."

As he turned back to the texts, Laura wound her leg through his and leaned against him.

"That’s going to distract me if you do that."

"Maybe I should do this in class?" she said.
 

Laura wanted to make the most of her time with him, homework could wait. She turned more fully towards him, moving over his lap so she was straddling him. She kissed his lips feeling him draw in his breath. But before he could respond and deepen the kiss she moved to his cheek, then down his neck, loving the rasp of his stubble. He was so utterly male.

She unbuttoned his shirt. She never got to do this because he was usually first to tear her clothes off, shedding his own rapidly before she even got a chance. This time he let her. She ran her hands over his chest, feeling his muscles and the heat of his skin as she moved them round to his back.
 

He was so broad she had to be close against him to reach fully around him. His hands were already caressing her own back but he held off from undressing her.

"You can continue the lesson," she said.

Then shifting back slightly so she could access his belt, she undid him and moved his boxers aside, allowing his hardness to spring up. Holding gently with both hands she put her mouth around it, feeling the soft, hot, velvety head.

He swore, suppressing a groan as she swirled her tongue around him.

Laura wasn’t sure how deep she could take him but she wanted him to know how much she desired him. She tried as far as possible but he was so huge.

He didn’t seem to care, just from what she was doing she had felt him grow even harder, hearing his breathing grow ragged.

Now she moved her hands over his thighs and between them, feeling the tautness of him, the fullness, how ready he was to burst.
 

"If you keep touching me there I’ll lose it," he warned.

That made her want to touch him all the more but she also wanted to draw this out. She wanted to make him wait like he so often forced her to wait.

She broke off from what she was doing and raised her head to look up at him.

"Oh god don’t stop," he said.
 

Smiling, she bent her head back down and very slowly moved her lips over him again. He twitched as she did so and she heard him catch his breath in his throat. She loved the feeling of power she had over him, it made her throb between her own legs.

Slowly - infinitesimally slowly - she lowered her head and took him in deeper. She swirled her tongue around and at the same time cupped him, applying gentle pressure just where he had warned her not to.

She could tell from his breathing he was about to lose it so she kept up what she was doing. Then suddenly he gave a jerk and pulled out of her, and it started going everywhere, some against her face. He was gripping her shoulders, his eyes had been closed but he opened them and saw.
 

"Christ…" It seemed to make him come even longer, he closed his eyes again and she thought he would never stop spasming.

"You could have stayed there," she said when he had finally finished and was recovering.

"I didn’t know if you wanted me to. Did you want me to?"

She nodded.

"Next time then." His traces were drying on her skin. "You have no idea how much it turns me on to see you like that."

"Sticky and messy." She smiled seductively at him.

"Marked as mine."

Later they came as near as they ever had done to arguing when she tried to get him to change his mind about looking for another job. The prospect of seeing him barely once a term, if she could even get away at half term, was unbearable.

"Laura if you were ten years older, even five, I would ask you to marry me. But I'm not going to do that to you now, even if we could run off to Gretna Green. It wouldn't be fair on you."

"But what if I wanted it too?" She knew that she never wanted to be without him.

"You might want it now, but who knows if you would feel the same in a few years? You need to be able to live your life, go to university, make your own choices without being tied down," he said.

"You might change your mind too."

"It's easier to know what I want with a few more years of life experience under my belt. This kind of thing... it doesn't come along twice in a lifetime. Not for me anyway. But it might for you."

"So you want to break up with me?"

"I never want to lose you, I never want to stop seeing you. But as selfish as I want to be, I'm not going to stand in your way. If in a few years time you feel the same then we can have a different conversation. But right now we just have us, today. Let's not think about the future for now."

Yet she felt that now was running out of time. She wanted a tomorrow. A forever.

* * *

Teresa Hubert knew what she had seen. Or she thought she did. Her parents had been late picking her up for exeat and she had been waiting in the common room, with its views over the playing fields, when she saw a figure in the distance walking along the path to the groundsman's cottages.

Even though it was dark there was enough illumination from nearby streetlights for Teresa to recognise the coat instantly. It was Charlotte’s. No one else in Michaelmas House had one with such a distinctive hood. But the figure didn’t look tall enough to be Charlotte and besides she was certain she’d seen Charlotte’s father’s car earlier.
 

She watched as the person was let into the cottage but from the angle, the distance and the darkness she couldn’t tell who it was.

It had to be one of the others in Charlotte’s dorm. What were they doing visiting Mr Rydell after dark on a Friday evening?

Whoever had gone there didn’t emerge and Teresa was waiting there for at least half an hour according to her watch.

It must be Susie, Laura or Margery. Margery she ruled out immediately because there was no way she would be visiting a man at night. She just wasn’t the type. Unless it was for some kind of extra German tuition? That would admittedly be more like Margery. It would be easy to rule Margery out, she could call her bluff and Margery would cave immediately.

Teresa considered Susie to the most likely in terms of character. She thought Susie was a slut, partly because she was jealous of her. Susie was extremely pretty and the rumours that she was seeing Darius Iles, one of the elite set of St Duncan’s, had riled Teresa. Who did she think she was coming here and immediately taking up with a boy like that?
 

But Susie didn’t do German so how could she possibly know Mr Rydell well enough to visit him at his home?

That left Laura. Teresa wasn’t particularly observant in class because she was full of her own self importance and liked to fancy that Mr Rydell had a special fondness for her. She certainly couldn’t recall anything that would suggest Laura knew him better than anyone else.

Teresa didn’t like Laura but she didn’t hate her as much as she hated Charlotte. But they came as a set, those four, and despite what Teresa thought of as her kindnesses to Margery she still didn’t feel that she had made any progress with her affection.

She brooded about it all weekend. By Sunday night she had decided to report what she had seen. It would be interesting to stir the pot, and hopefully one of them would be in for it. But first she would see if she could get anything out of Margery. She must know something, they were all as thick as thieves.

Margery was in the common room doing some extra study. She couldn’t think of much else to do these days. Since the midnight feast the others had been closer than ever. She didn’t regret not going but she regretted the growing distance between her and the others. Even throwing herself into her studies didn’t really fill the gap.

It was here that Teresa Hubert found her sitting by the long windows that overlooked the playing fields. The same place that Teresa had seen what she had seen.

"Catching up on homework? All work and no play," she said.

This stung. Margery might have been fertile soil for Teresa’s scheming, but the idle remark triggered Margery’s bristles. Someone else had jokingly called Margery a swot that week and it had made her sensitive about her studies versus her social life.

"She’s an interesting girl, Susie Clarke, isn’t she?" Teresa began.

Given Teresa had frequently referred to Susie as a slag and a tart, Margery knew something nasty was up.

"Of course I realise she’s from a different background to us, but I’m not sure that her parents would like her going visiting men late at night, do you?"

Margery said nothing. Had Teresa found out about the midnight feast? Had she spotted Susie with Darius somewhere?

"That’s if it was Susie. I know it was one of you, because who else would borrow Charlotte’s coat. Perhaps it was you, Margie?"

"What are you talking about?" Margery finally rose to the bait.
 
She was genuinely in the dark about what Teresa was digging at.

"Whichever of you visited the groundsman's cottages late on Friday night before the exeat, for an interestingly long time."

Margery was silent. All her life she would remember this moment: the stillness, the smell of the room and the books and the floorboards covered with a worn rug, the scent of the threat.

"It wasn’t Charlotte, because I saw her leave. So it must have been Susie, you or Laura. But you’re not that kind of girl are you are Margie? We’re not cheap like that, are we?" Teresa tried a final lunge to get Margery on side.

"I have no idea what you’re going on about," Margery said.

"Well then it must have been one of the other two. Perhaps Gi-Gi will be able to work out whom. I’ll have to tell her of course, because it’s not right is it? Pupils fraternising with teachers. I’m sure your father would agree."
 

Margery thought that she had never loathed anyone quite so much as she loathed Teresa Hubert at that moment. Or feared, perhaps. But she had enough sense and courage not to react.
 

Teresa left with one of her unpleasant smiles.

* * *

There wasn’t much time to lose. Margery knew that Grace Grant wasn’t currently in Michaelmas House which might at least buy them some time. Teresa likely wouldn’t go straight to her anyway. She would probably wait a little while to see if Margery would crack, or approach the others. After all Teresa clearly didn’t yet know the full extent of what she wanted to know.

Charlotte was currently at hockey practice. Laura was somewhere over in the main school rehearsing for Miss Wingrove’s recital. Margery raced to the dorm where she was gladder to find Susie than she would have ever thought possible. It was only four flights of stairs but she was completely out of breath.

"Teresa. Knows."

"What’s wrong?" asked Susie, alarmed.

"It’s Teresa. Saw. Going to tell."

Susie managed to get Margery to sit down and get her breath back. Gradually Margery calmed down and Susie managed to unravel the story.

Susie had the kind of mind that worked like lightning under pressure. She immediately recognised that the game would be up and the fallout catastrophic if the truth came out.

"You wait here, Margie. I’ll deal with this. You just continue to know nothing. It’ll all be ok."

Margery was crying. "It will ruin Laura’s life! I knew this was a mistake, I told you all so. She’ll be expelled and her future will be ruined!"

"Get a grip. Just stay up here, out of Teresa Hubert’s way. Read a book or something. You did really well not to let her pump you. I promise you I’ll fix this. There is always a way."

She already knew what the way was going to be, but coordinating the others would be the biggest challenge. Let alone convincing them.

* * *

Susie had staked out Grace Grant’s study for the past hour. Fortunately there was no sign of Teresa Hubert. Susie hoped she hadn’t gone to try and confront Laura, whom she didn’t trust not to cave.

Finally the housemistress arrived, and Susie took her chance.

"I need to see you urgently Miss Grant." They always called her Miss Grant to her face even though she was a widow.

"Come in then, Susie."

Grace Grant’s study was a tranquil room on the side of the House. The windows looked onto a small garden backed by bushes outside, rather than the wide expanse of the hockey pitches. The garden was dull and flowerless at this time of year but there was still plenty of foliage.

Susie began. "I’ve done something really stupid. I’ve been feeling bad about it for days but I was too embarrassed to say anything."

"If you’re here in one piece it can’t be the end of the world," the housemistress said.

"It’s very bad and I expect I’ll have to be expelled," Susie said. She was hedging her bets that her story wouldn’t merit expulsion and that to follow this with an anticlimax would soften it further.

"Go on."

Susie had been wondering how to play this. A lot depended on Grace Grant’s perception of her. Would she be more convinced if Susie was contrite but a little brazen, or contrite and collapsing in sobs? She decided the former. The housemistress wasn’t that stupid, though Susie anticipated that tears might be needed further along.

"I had this thing in my head about an older man, you know. So I sort of had this crush. And I know it’s really foolish and inappropriate but I got carried away. So I went and sort of flung myself at him."

"Was this something that happened at half-term, Susie?" Grace Grant asked.

"No, it was here in school." She saw the housemistress’s eyebrows raised. "And it was a huge mistake and I really regret it but one of the other girls has been having a go at me about it so I thought I should come clean."

"What exactly happened?"