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“I have no desire to hide out of the way like some kind of…”
“So then go turn yourselves in,” Storm shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Maybe it won’t be that bad. It’s my first time,” Melissa sniffs.
“Yeah. My first time she only…” Storm thinks back. “Oh, yeah. She caned me.”
“She caned you!?”
“Yeah. It was pretty bad. I think she likes to make a strong first impression.”
“She caned me too,” Penners confirms.
“No!” Melissa wails. “I can’t… that cannot happen to me. I won’t have it. I won’t!”
* * *
Meanwhile, Jane has bigger problems. Frau Lotte has called her into her office with news of yet another new arrival at the school. What started as a quiet day is turning into a true disciplinary ordeal.
“It would appear that Kiera has called her boyfriend. Ronald Forsyth is out in the foyer waiting to collect her.” Frau Lotte gives Jane a significant look.
There is an unspoken moment in which the torch of responsibility for Kiera’s fate is once more passed to her.
Jane’s concern peaks at the notion of Kiera being taken anywhere by the man responsible for her current state.
“I will deal with him,” Jane says, steeling herself for what she imagines might well be a difficult interaction.
Sure enough, a man who is probably in his mid-twenties is standing in the foyer of the chateau. He does not immediately look like a reprobate. He has the body of a rower and is wearing a heather brown tidy tweed three-piece suit with a white shirt and deep brown tie. He has an air that Jane immediately recognizes from handling Kiera. Smug, untouchable, above all laws. His hair is blond and brushed to one side, his eyes blue and deceptively simple. He looks the very picture of gentlemanly good manners and responsibility, but Jane knows better. He is clearly a spoiled, selfish, carnally motivated boy, and he is not the first of his kind she has dealt with.
“I’m here to pick up Miss Marlin,” he says upon seeing Jane.
“Kiera is not going anywhere,” Jane replies crisply.
Ronald flashes a broad and probably ordinarily winning smile. It has no effect on Jane whatsoever. There is something faintly predatory about this man, though for the most part he simply seems like someone who has always gotten what he wanted and sees no reason why having a younger girlfriend and plying her with off-label prescription drugs should be a problem.
“You’re too pretty to be a jailer,” he says. “And this is too nice a place to be a prison.”
“Come speak with me,” Jane says, gesturing down the hall to her office.
Ronald hesitates a brief moment before following her.
She leads him into her office and moves to stand by her desk. She sees his eyes roam casually around the room before settling on a series of canes soaking in a stand. A brief but visible shudder passes through him, indicating a certain familiarity. Jane notes this with some satisfaction.
Ronald looks for a chair in which to sit. He finds none. He will stand in front of the desk, like every other badly behaved young person who finds themselves in Jane’s office for discipline.
“You are contributing to delinquency,” she says, opening the discussion in an icy tone as she closes the door and slowly walks back to stand behind her desk.
“I am?” Ronald smiles at that notion. He does not realize he is in trouble as yet. He still has the smooth, slick air of a man who thinks he owns the world. “And how do you imagine I am doing that?”
“Kiera is young, impressionable, and at this point, a ward of this school. Her parents have placed her here to learn.”
“Her parents have placed her here because it dries her out between benders,” Ronald guffaws. “They don’t like her making a scene. Brings the Marlin name into disrepute, don’t you know?”
“And you have come to…”
“To give her what she wants.”
“That includes cars,” Jane says. “And drugs to drive them on.”
