Lessons After Dark Read Online Free PDF

down, emphatic though it may have been. Waite wasn’t even looking at Gareth but past him—
    Oh, no.
    Now he was starting to smile a little. Not triumphant or smug, though. Embarrassed. Almost apologetic.
    Oh, no.
    It could have been Simon or Mrs. Grenville, and Waite might have been squirming because he’d been caught out by more than one authority at a time. If Fate had been kind, it would have been.
    Fate was hardly ever kind.
    Stomach sinking, Gareth turned away from the boys.
    He had to concede that Mrs. Brightmore did a very good blank face herself. A little flushed, obvious above the plain white shirtwaist she wore, but that could have been from the wind. She had clearly been outdoors. Little wisps of hair had escaped their knot and were clinging to the sides of her neck. Other than that, she looked eminently respectable, she was certainly standing within speaking distance, and Gareth had made no effort to keep his voice down.
    He was generally quite good at hearing footsteps. Egypt had taught him that much.
    He had no idea how long she’d been there.
    As Gareth hesitated, Mrs. Brightmore glanced over the small and flustered group of boys, and back at him. Then she smiled. It was very polite, no hint of gloating in it, but he couldn’t read anything else in her face. “Good afternoon,” she said, and she might have been meeting an acquaintance at a garden party. “I seem to have lost my way to the library.”
    â€œOh,” said Fitzpatrick, as apparently none of the others could speak. “Go back to the hall, only right instead of left. Ma’am.”
    â€œThank you,” said Mrs. Brightmore, ignoring the belated title. “I do hope you’re all well.”
    â€œQuite,” Gareth said and hoped it didn’t sound as strangled as he felt. “Thank you. Behind schedule, though, so please excuse us. Fitzpatrick?”
    Not waiting for the boy to respond, he turned on one heel and sought the refuge of his inner office.
    ***
    The “Charlotte” Fitzpatrick had mentioned the previous night turned out to be Miss Charlotte Woodwell, a tall young lady with curly black hair and vivid green eyes, apparently fond of aesthetic clothing and wandering the gardens in her free time. She was by far the oldest of the students, by the look of her, no more than eight or nine years younger than Olivia.
    â€œHardly the model of a schoolgirl, I know,” she said with a wide grin and an easy shrug in response to the question Olivia had carefully not been asking. “But I don’t know nearly enough to teach, and I’ve been dying to learn for years. Packed my trunk and came down as soon as I heard about this place. I’ve got absolutely heaps of questions. So now you’re warned!”
    â€œI’ll do my best to answer them,” Olivia replied, smiling back. It would have been hard not to like the younger woman, and it was a relief to meet anyone remotely adult who was so straightforwardly glad to see her. Violet had been nervously cheerful, the Grenvilles had been kind, but it hadn’t been the same.
    She hadn’t even actually seen Mr. Grenville yet. “Reinforcing wards,” his wife had explained. “You’ll help eventually. Simon says the land’s got to get to know you first, though.”
    The tour she’d been given hadn’t been much help there. If the land was getting to know Olivia, she wasn’t reciprocating. Mrs. Grenville—a tall, thin woman with reddish-blonde hair and a sort of American accent—was friendly enough in a brisk way, and she certainly had been exact. Stables are there. Town is that way. Don’t go in the forest unless one of us is with you or you mark your path with a ball of string. It wasn’t her fault Olivia was used to streets with signs and a two-room flat. Nevertheless, the phrase “whirlwind tour” had never felt quite so accurate.
    She’d eventually managed