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“Isn’t much you can do, teach. Maybe settle Fenway down a bit? I mean, she’s so belligerent, I fear she’ll start a war or something with Nox.”
Sam again wondered at how perceptive the kid was, and how she saw things that others were not privy to. But Lily interrupted her thoughts before she could say something idiotic or inappropriate.
“Hey, speaking of Headmistress McHot, wanna see my latest portrait? I think it turned out pretty great, if I do say so myself.”
Lily pulled out her ever-present sketch pad and there—in a completely realistic pencil rendering—sat Magdalene with an enigmatic look on her face.
“Yeah, I was kinda nervous when she stopped by to talk to me some time ago, and she saw the sketchbook and well..., you know my place in the dorm is all taped up with my drawings. So she asked if talking while drawing would be easier for me. This is the result.”
“This is amazing, Lily.”
“We’ve already established that I am rather amazing, Sam. Of course, this would be, too.”
Sam squeezed Lily’s hand and couldn’t help but feel utterly inadequate, both due to the blessing of having this kid in her life and for the woman who looked on at her from the portrait. She bid Lily a good day, promising to return with her lunch, and as she was making her way out of the room, the girl called her back.
“Oh, and teach? If you’re still trying to convince people that you’re not carrying whatever torch for the Headmistress, I’d learn to school my features better. You ain’t got a very good poker face. In fact, you don’t have one to save your life.”
Sam blanched and Lily laughed before sobering up quickly.
“I will never tell anyone, Sam. I swear. Never. I mean, maybe take it easy on the Chucks and flannel? But I don’t think anyone noticed and your secret is safe with me.”
All Sam could do is stare and shake her head in disbelief that this was her life these days.
10
Of Unstoppable Chemistry & Live Wires
The next few weeks passed in a blur of activity. Curriculum revisions were a battle, and Sam, Orla, and Joanne had their work cut out for them. For someone who hadn’t taught in years, Magdalene had been remarkably well-informed and prepared for anything they could throw her way. Pretty much all their arguments about the necessity of this or that subject were steadily rebuffed by her ironclad will, and she’d reason that, while having more was certainly better, their funding was scarce and hiring new teachers, or paying the existing ones more to take up new classes was simply not possible.
Sam wondered how they had managed to expand their curriculum to such luxury items as Russian language courses, and the Role of Film in American History in the past five years. She felt disloyal even thinking this way, but one evening she stayed behind and simply asked Magdalene.
If she thought that the Headmistress would smirk and tease her about her potentially jumping ship, she was dead wrong. Magdalene simply sat her down and walked her through the stark picture last year’s budgetary spreadsheets presented. The school was in dire red. And the additional cost of hiring a Russian teacher, who was part-time, but—due to the nature of the job and the location of the school—required full room, board, transportation costs, and per diem while on the island was sheer madness.
“The idea that the school has to offer every subject in order to be competitive is flawed. We have to provide just enough to make sure we satisfy the existing requirement. What assessments were done to find out if Russian was a real need at Dragons and not something benefiting only a few students?”
Magdalene’s voice was quiet, so it was the scent that made Sam look up from where she was bent over the large spreadsheets, only to find the Headmistress precariously close to her. The wild jasmine that she’d begun to associate with a person rather than a place, wrapped itself around Sam’s senses like a lover. The fragrance was subtle, and could only be noticed if Magdalene stepped decidedly into Sam’s personal space, as she had in that moment. And then it hit her, wild jasmine… The wild jasmine on the Amber Dragon Cliff… The favorite hiding place that Magdalene shared with Sam… Her signature perfume.
Sam rolled her eyes at being so damn slow sometimes. Now that she knew about Magdalene’s six months at Dragons, her attachment to the scent was such a tell, it surprised Sam she had not figured it out before.
And yet, if the Headmistress was out for revenge against the Academy that had discarded her, she had a strange way of showing it, by choosing something so intrinsic to the very core of the school as a fragrance that was so ever-present here. Sam thought that this woman was a puzzle that she’d never tire of putting together.
She looked sideways at the chiseled profile, the sharp cheekbones, and the sensuous full lips that moved with some insightful explanation or other related to the budget, and thought that it would not take very much to fall for her. Not when Magdalene was power and grace and brilliance, easily put on display like this.
She was showing Sam the column for the Russian class expenditures that had three students enrolled in it and required more funding than the Spanish class—which had over fifty students from several grade levels participating, yet cost much less, because Ms. Rodriguez lived on the island and was a full-time employee, also doubling as part-time resident faculty. Lost in her explanation, Magdalene extended a hand and tucked a strand of Sam’s hair that had escaped her braid behind her ear, and the gesture was so sweet and gentle and painfully familiar, despite the fact that Magdalene had only done so once before.
Unbidden came the images of Magdalene’s legs wrapped around Sam’s waist, as Magdalene had sat in her lap, her face a picture of ecstasy, her hips moving with slow precision, riding Sam’s hand wedged between them, her hands on Sam’s face, and then suddenly reaching out and tucking a sweaty flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. That gesture, coupled with the subtle scent, brought back memories of their night together, and Sam was fairly certain it was written all over her features.
Their faces were close, in their positions of leaning over the table, and as their eyes met, the connection that was always just under the surface, sparked to life. Sam licked her lips instinctively, and Magdalene lowered her eyes following the movement of Sam’s tongue. She swallowed loudly and Sam knew that she was thinking about all the wickedly amazing and amazingly wicked things Sam had done to her using that tongue. And she had done so many of them. As many as she could in the space of those hours.
She often thought that one night was a very short period of time when all was said and done. Yet the amount of influence that particular night had had on Sam’s life was hard to comprehend, the sheer enormity of it was overwhelming. If Sam’s existence was a motionless and murky pond, replete with boredom and sameness, that night in Manhattan with Magdalene shattered that calm with a force of a thousand pebbles being thrown across its surface. The reverberations just kept coming. What had once been still water, was now dangerously alive, showing Sam depths of herself, she had never imagined she had.
Did Magdalene know? Could she sense how much Sam had been changed by their one encounter? How their one night pulled and tugged at the very fabric of her being? Perhaps she did, because by all accounts the otherwise aloof and cold woman had never been anything but passionate and approachable with Sam. In fact, she had gone out of her way to seek Sam out again and again.
A gentle hand landed on Sam’s cheek and the thumb caressed her cheekbone once, twice before the hand slid forward and the fingers delved into the short hairs on her nape, holding her head in place.
Movement outside the door and loud shouts jolted them out of their cocoon of intimacy, and they sprung apart as if scalded, Magdalene yanking her hand out of Sam’s hair with a painful tug, a ring getting snagged in it.
She sent Sam a thoroughly distressed and apologetic look just as George banged on the door and opened it at the same moment. Her hands held a bouquet of dead flowers.
