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“I wanted to revise thembeforehand,” I tell him through gritted teeth.
“Why? So you can pretend you did something to deserve your next ‘D’?” The corners of his lips rise. “‘D’ for dunce.”
I turn on my heel, but not before I see Finlay glaring at him. It lifts my heart for a moment, especially since Rory’s gremlins begin to chant, “‘D’ for dunce! ‘D’ for dunce!” as I stalk down the hall.
“Miss Weir?” As I slip into my seat across from Danny, I raise my gaze at the figure dressed all in black.
Oh, look, it’s Arabella’s aunt, my mind supplies scathingly.I wonder what fun things she has to say to me.
“I’ve warned you before not to cause a commotion in here.” She claps her hands twice and an eager silence falls in the hall. “Will serving detention for the remainder of term remind you how to behave?”
“Probably not.” It falls from my lips, clipped and clean. I actually hear gasps. Danny’s eyebrows fly up into his hair, his eyes saucer-wide.
Talking back to teachers isn’t something that happens in Lochkelvin. It happened all the time in Greenvale — I came from a school with rowdy kids who took pride in answering back. I was never one of them. I was a good student.
But I… I’ve had enough.
You can take the girl out of Greenvale but you can’t take Greenvale out of the girl.
Headmistress Baxter’s lips purse. “Detention, Miss Weir,” she snaps.
I mouth it along with her. Her eyes narrow into a severe glare.
“Is punishment a mockery for you? Because I can extend that detention into next year, if you’d prefer.”
“Why don’t you?” I mutter. “You’re going to do it anyway.”
“Maybe you won’tbehere next year.”
There’s a smattering of cheers in the hall. I feel sick. I get the feeling Baxter wants nothing more to do with me, that she’d happily eject me from this school and replace me with sweet, kind Freya instead. I calculate it in my head. What benefit am I to Arabella? None. At this point, she’s basically my enemy. Freya was her best friend, and I’ve fucked that up by having the kind of innocent face people believe lies from.
“Leave her alone.”
I turn my head in surprise and see Finlay rising to his feet, determination blazing across his face. He looksfiercestanding there in his kilt, the only one upright in a sea of seated pupils.
Rory presses his hand against his head like this is far too embarrassing, and Luke’s eyebrows are raised as though this is way beyond him.
“Mr. Fraser?”
“You heard me. Leave her alone.” His mouth quirks to the side. “If anyone’s gonnae humiliate the sassenach, it’ll beus. No’ you.” He steps forward. “As you well know,werun this school.Wecontrol the social order here. And if we warn ye tae back off, then ye’d best believe that.”
“Are you threatening me, Mr. Fraser? Perhaps you too would like detention? What would your mother say aboutthat?”
Rory’s massaging his temples, as though this is not how he expected his morning to go. “Headmistress,” he says in his most polite tone. “I implore you to follow Finlay’s recommendation. Give the Yank detention. In the grand scheme of things, she’s only a scholarship girl. She’s unimportant. But threatening one ofus? Now that just won’t do.”
There’s danger in Rory’s voice. It’s careful and calculated, the exact same tone I’ve heard Oscar Munro using in Parliament whenever he’s been on the radio. But it works, because Headmistress Baxter backs down and says in a rousing voice, “There are only a few weeks until the end of term. I’ll have no funny business fromanyone.” She turns to me, a severe glare on her face as she stares down her nose at me. “Especially you, Miss Weir.”
She floats past us in a flutter of black robes. I breathe when she leaves, quite amazed not to have been hit with a barrage of further detentions.
I glance over at Finlay, who meets my eyes with a tentative half-smile. I mouth to him,Thank you, and his smile blooms brightly across his face.
* * *
Politics is more silent than I’ve heard it before. The only noise is the turning of pages, of paper sliding against paper, and the furious rustle of books.
I have no paper to turn. I have nothing to read. My stomach is quaking and I think I might puke from nerves alone.
“Here you are, by the way,” Arabella says off-handedly, giving me her presentation.
