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“He kissed Charlotte!”
“Only a good-bye kiss. On her cheek!” Xemerius shouted right into my ear. “If I have to tell you that once again, I’m going to explode. I’m off. All this girly stuff is more than I can take.” He flapped his wings a few times, flew up to the school roof, and made himself comfortable there.
“I don’t want to hear another word about it,” said Lesley. “Right now it’s much more important for you to remember everything you heard yesterday. And I mean things that really count. Matters of life and death!”
“I’ve told you everything I know,” I assured her, rubbing my forehead. My headache had gone, thanks to three aspirins, but it left a dull sensation behind my temples.
“Hm.” Lesley was poring over her notes. “Why didn’t you ask Gideon how he’d met up with this Lord Alastair eleven years ago and what fencing match they were talking about?”
“There’s a whole lot more I didn’t ask him, believe you me!”
Lesley sighed again. “I’ll make you a list. Then you can ask a casual question now and then, when there’s a good strategic moment and your hormones let you.” She put her notepad away and looked at the school entrance. “Come on, we must go up or we’ll be late. And I don’t want to miss it when Raphael Bertelin walks into our classroom for the first time. Poor boy—he probably feels the school uniform is like a convict’s outfit.”
We made a brief detour past James’s niche. In all the pushing and shoving of morning school, no one noticed if I spoke to him, particularly when Lesley acted as if I might be talking to her.
James raised his perfumed handkerchief to his nose and looked around cautiously. “Ah, I see you didn’t bring that badly behaved cat today.”
“Guess what, James, I was at Lady Brompton’s soirée last night,” I said. “And I curtseyed just the way you taught me.”
“Lady Brompton, hm,” said James. “She does not necessarily have the reputation of moving in the highest circles. They say her parties can be very free and easy.”
“If that’s what they say, they’re right. I hoped that was normal in eighteenth-century polite society.”
“Thank God, no!” James pursed his lips, looking offended.
“Well, anyway, I think I’ve been invited to a ball given by your parents, Lord and Lady Pympoole-Bothame.”
“I find that hard to imagine,” said James. “My mother sets great store by the impeccable social standing of her guests.”
“Well, thank you very much,” I said, turning to go. “What a snob you are!”
“I didn’t mean it as an insult,” James called after me. “And what’s a snob?”
Raphael was already leaning in the doorway when we reached our classroom. He looked so gloomy that we stopped dead.
“Hi. I’m Lesley Hay, and this is my friend Gwyneth Shepherd,” said Lesley. “We met on Friday outside the principal’s office, remember?”
A faint grin lit up his face. “Well, I’m glad you recognize me, anyway. I had problems with that when I saw myself in the mirror just now.”
“Yup,” said Lesley. “You look like a steward on a cruise ship. Never mind. You’ll get used to it.”
Raphael’s grin widened.
“You just have to take care the school tie doesn’t dip into your soup,” I said. “Happens to me all the time.”
Lesley nodded.
“And by the way, school lunches usually taste frightful. Apart from that, it’s not so bad here. I’m sure you’ll soon feel at home.”
“Never been in the south of France, have you?” asked Raphael, with a touch of bitterness.
“No,” said Lesley.
“I can tell. I’ll never feel at home in a country where it rains for twenty-four hours on end.”
“We Brits don’t really like it when people talk about our weather like that,” said Lesley. “Oh, look, here comes Mrs. Counter. You’re in luck—she’s a Francophile, and if you mix a few French words into your essays by mistake, she’ll love you.”
“Tu es mignonne,” said Raphael.
