The Headmaster. Tiffany Reisz

asked. “Demonic? Dying?”

      “Divorced,” Laird said, his voice strangely grave.

      “Oh.” Gwen shrugged, amused by how shocked the boys were over a divorce. “It happens.”

      “Does it?” Christopher asked. “My parents said they’d rather die than ever get divorced.”

      “I’d rather die than ever get married,” Laird said.

      “You and me both,” Christopher said. They shook hands. “But the headmaster should get married.”

      “He needs a wife,” Laird agreed. “Someone younger than him so she can keep up with him. I caught him reading Shakespeare’s First Folio in the northwest turret last week. He was correcting it.”

      “Younger. Definitely. And pretty. But she has to be smart, too,” Christopher said. “He’d go bonkers unless he had a smart wife. He needs someone to lecture to.”

      “Pontificate at even,” Laird said.

      “Someone who isn’t us,” Christopher said.

      “Boys? Can I ask you a question?” Gwen asked.

      “Anything, Miss Ashby.”

      “Did you cajole Headmaster Yorke into hiring a new literature teacher because you need a new English literature teacher? Or are you all trying to play matchmaker for the headmaster?”

      Christopher looked at Laird. Laird looked at Christopher. They both looked at her. This was becoming a habit of theirs.

      “Yes.”

       Chapter Five

      After Gwen kicked the welcoming committee off her porch, she spent all of Friday evening settling into the cottage. On Saturday she had breakfast in the school dining hall—coffee, eggs and an English muffin. The rest of the day she wrote out her lecture notes on Great Expectations. It wasn’t until she written ten pages of notes that she realized she hadn’t yet checked to see if they had any copies of the book in stock at the school.

      Oops.

      She ran to the library in Hawkwood Hall to see what books they had on hand she could teach, and found it well stocked with all the great classics. All the great classics written before 1900, that is. She’d found Mr. Reynolds, a wizened gentleman with a cane, and asked him where all the Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald books were.

      “Headmaster Yorke doesn’t approve of modern literature,” he’d said. “I hide them in the back.”

      “Modern literature? Hemingway? Modern?” Gwen laughed. “He’s hardly Franzen or Foer.”

      “Who?” Mr. Reynolds asked. He adjusted his eyeglasses. They had thick lenses and black frames. They looked like the sort of glasses her grandfather had worn while in the army. He had a hawk nose and a willowy rasp to his voice. He could have been anywhere between sixty and a hundred years old. Gwen guessed closer to one hundred.

      “What about Great Expectations? I’ll need thirty copies of it.”

      “Of course,” said Mr. Reynolds. “I have them right here.”

      He passed a box to her, the books already inside.

      “You have them? All of them? Boxed up already?” She was torn between suspicion and delight. Mostly delight.

      “We have every book you’ll need,” Mr. Reynolds said with a wink behind his Coke-bottle glasses. “Just ask.”

      “Every book I’ll ever need? Sounds like Heaven,” she said with smile.

      “It’s a library,” he said. “To me it’s the same thing.”

      That was the moment Gwen knew she had to stay at this school the rest of her life. These were her people.

      Gwen signed a slip of paper for her books, and Mr. Reynolds peeled off the carbon copy and gave it to her. Carbon copies? Hilarious. One more bit of antiquity that had survived and thrived at Marshal. This school was weird, but it was a good kind of weird. Her kind of weird.

      Headmaster Yorke seemed determined to give his students a classical education. No modern technology was in sight. Apart from electricity and one ancient-looking telephone on the third floor of the main building, she’d seen no technology at all. No cell phones, no laptops, no Kindles or iPads or anything. Instead students read leather-bound hardcover books and wrote diligently while hunched over in the library study carrels. From the kitchen window in her cottage, she saw some students out on the lawn playing a stripped-down version of baseball. No catcher, just a pitcher and batter and a few boys scattered around the bases. Their laughter and playful insults kept her entertained for an hour.

      That evening she had a quick dinner in the dining hall. She sat with Mr. Price, who told her all about his years at Marshal. He’d been here twenty years, he’d said, and loved every single day here.

      “And Headmaster Yorke,” she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral. “How long has he been here?”

      “Ten years,” Mr. Price said. “We worried that the new headmaster was an English gentleman when he came. Didn’t know if he’d melt in the heat.”

      “Doesn’t look like he did.” Gwen glanced across the room where Headmaster Yorke stood in quiet conversation with another student. The student had a notebook in his hand, and he and Headmaster Yorke appeared to be going over a bit of homework.

      “He surprised us all. Took to this place like a duck to water. Never met a more dedicated headmaster in my life. Good man.”

      “Good man when he’s not threatening to murder the students, right?” she teased.

      Mr. Price chuckled. “My dear, that man would die for these boys and they know it. I can’t tell who’s more loyal to whom—the headmaster to the students, or the students to the headmaster.”

      Loyal? What a strange word to use about high school students and their principal. Had she felt any loyalty to her teachers? Not that she recalled. Affection? Yes. But loyalty? It was a military term almost. Patriots were loyal. Soldiers were loyal. Did the students consider themselves squires, young knights-in-training loyal to King Edwin of Yorke? He certainly had a regal bearing to him. Head high, strong jaw, perfect posture, broad shoulders that belonged on a soldier far more than a teacher. And such penetrating eyes. Every few moments he’d glance her way, and she felt his gaze on her as much as she saw it.

      What was he trying to see when he looked at her? She didn’t know, but she did love the way he looked at her. She wondered if he was lonely here at the school with all this responsibility and no one to share it with. Maybe she could ease his burdens a bit by taking over the literature classes. He fascinated her. What brought a man all the way from England to become headmaster of a boarding school of only sixty students in the middle of nowhere? And was he divorced, or were Laird and Christopher just guessing? If he was divorced, what happened? Did she come with him to America and hate it here? Did he leave her? Did she leave him? Gwen could certainly sympathize with being left behind. They should talk about it, get to know each other. If he was half as good and noble as Mr. Price said Headmaster Yorke was, she could only benefit by befriending him. If he was a king and the students his knights, surely he could use a lady in his court.