Page 9 of Outcast

Charlotte turned to an unseen spot in the hallway. “Edward, tell the others what you found out.”

Edward Mercia stepped into view. The window at the end of the hallway lit only one side of his face, casting the other side in mostly shadow. It brought out the prominence of his cheekbones, his strong jaw and the arch of his dark eyebrows. I drew in a sharp breath through my nostrils at the sight. As soon as he locked eyes with me, all that beauty morphed into a mask of hatred so fierce, it made my heart wrench.

He strolled forward, out of the spellbinding light. With both sides of his face fully lit, the effect was no less handsome. “Hobson’s mother is a woman who slept with an ugly multi-millionaire to win her place here at the academy.”

Charlotte’s sycophants made loud gasps, acting as if they hadn’t heard this information before and as if it was the most shocking revelation since Darth Vader revealed he was Luke’s father.

My lips tightened. “She got married. It wasn’t some kind of a tawdry transaction.”

Edward held up his smartphone, showing a society picture of Mom looking stunning in a figure-hugging wedding gown standing outside on the steps of Rudolph’s hotel. And there I was standing next to her in a mini-me bridesmaid’s dress wearing the most obvious, pained smile.

His face twisted into a smirk. “Congratulations on the recent nuptials… Trollop.”

Chapter 4

I had to google the word trollop. It was a seventeenth century British word that meant I was a whore. The assholes here probably used obscure insults to make themselves feel sophisticated. It just made them look pathetic and pretentious.

The rest of the morning wasn’t great. All of my classes were with Edward and his friends or with Charlotte and her doppelgängers. I didn’t mind Blake so much. He was a harmless flirt only dangerous to anyone gullible enough to take his interest seriously. Despite the effect he had on my body, I wasn’t deluded enough to believe someone who came on so strongly to a stranger would only have interest in one woman. So far, blond Henry was an enigma, observing me like being an American was a curious puzzle he needed to solve. As long as all he did was look, I would endure his stares.

My electives, the subjects I wanted to take for my Advanced Level exams, were English Literature, Creative Writing, Media Studies, and Spanish. Because the administration of Mercia Academy wanted to keep their students too busy to cause mischief, they’d added on Latin and Classical Greek, as though someone who had never studied ancient languages had a chance to catch up with those who had been taught it since they were eleven.

After English Lit, I followed the rest of the class back to Elder House, where lunch was served in an old-fashioned banqueting hall. Triple-height windows provided most of the illumination, and ten-foot-tall mahogany panels covered the walls. On the far left, a long table stood on a dais, and behind it hung the painting of the armored knight, flanked by a painting of the knights without his armor, and another of a king. Around the rest of the room stood smaller tables, seating four or six diners.

I blew out a breath of relief, glad that they weren’t the long rows I’d seen in movies like Harry Potter.

Most of the tables were occupied, and people I approached whose tables had free seats glared at me until I went away. I found a scrawny boy with thick glasses and acne sitting at the back with a pile of newspapers next to his place setting.

“Excuse me,” I said, “Is this seat taken?”

His gaze swept up and down my body, and with an accent so thick and posh, I could barely understand him, he said, “There are no seats in this dining room for yanks.”

I folded my arms across my chest. Had Edward Mercer 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.”