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“This is just wrong. I’m the big spoon.”
“Sure, darling. But right now you’re the injured spoon.” Magdalene snuggled closer and snaked her hand along Sam’s abdomen. Sam threaded their fingers together, feeling the band-aids still covering Magdalene’s graceful digits. She raised the hand to her mouth and placed gentle kisses on each wound.
“You’re injured too.”
“Nonsense. Sir Willoughby is far worse than I am, and he’s already back to full speed.” Magdalene’s voice sounded so close to her ear, it was sending little shivers up and down Sam’s spine.
“His full speed isn’t exactly an indicator. He’s not all that quick.”
“How dare you?” Magdalene leaned closer and bit none too gently on Sam’s earlobe. The shivers intensified. “He already got into a fight with some tom who dared come up from town to inspect all the kerfuffle. Our boy staunchly defended his territory. And here you are bad-mouthing him.”
Sam laughed, amused by Magdalene’s rather serious and wholehearted defense of a ‘mangy animal’ she couldn’t stand just a couple of months ago. She wisely chose not to mention it. Instead, she tugged on the grey ragged sleeve.
“I remember this…”
Magdalene scoffed and halfheartedly tried to pull her arm away, but Sam held on.
“I have no idea what you could possibly mean.”
“You thief, this is my hoodie. I thought I lost it in Connecticut or something. And you stole it!” Sam injected a bit more outrage into her tone than she was actually feeling.
“I didn’t steal it. I chose to take it. Call it appropriate distribution of resources. You don’t treat your clothes well anyway. Before it all burned down, half your things couldn’t even be called clothing anymore, maybe a ragged collection of threads.”
Sam tried not to laugh, tried to maintain her injured party role.
“Ah, so you were saving my hoodie from myself?”
And now it was Magdalene who lost her fight with the giggles that had been trying to surface since Sam had mentioned the hoodie, and dissolved into one of those unexpected but completely endearing peels of laughter. Sam joined in, holding herself snugly to her lover, feeling her shaking with mirth, overwhelmed by how much happiness such a simple act could bring.
“Speaking of saving. How do you even have it? We lost almost everything in the fire. I barely got my wallet and laptop out as we evacuated the dorms.”
Magdalene placed her cheek on Sam’s back and Sam could feel her breath through her own, thick cotton shirt.
“It was Willoughby. As we were running around the dormitories, checking that all faculty were implementing the evacuation plan, he must’ve dragged this out of my apartment and was quite comfortably laying on it in the middle of the quad, waiting for me to finish. You know how he detests sleeping on hard surfaces.”
Sam smiled at the thought of the finicky cat and his seemingly selfish act. Maybe she was being fanciful, but she believed it hadn’t been selfish at all—quite the opposite, as he clearly grabbed the one thing his mistress must’ve worn a lot lately. Her tired eyes were drooping, and her mind began to wander. She ruefully thought that perhaps Magdalene not engaging in more than a couple of kisses and some teasing had been a rather good idea. She slept like a baby these days. Through the night and twice during the day. Embarrassing, but Sam guessed her body was just healing. She unsuccessfully tried to mask the yawn, but Magdalene caught her and laced their fingers together between Sam’s breasts.
“At least I got to take the important stuff out of my room,” Sam mumbled.
As she was drifting away, she could swear she heard a softly whispered, “So did Willoughby,” before gentle lips kissed the nape of her neck.
* * *
And that was how her nights went. Asleep in Magdalene’s arms with the whole school knowing about them. Well, what was left of the school. Lying in bed the next day, stroking Willoughby’s soft fur while holding his massive bulk on her chest, Sam had a lot of time to think about what had happened and why. For once, the cat stayed with her instead of following Magdalene around, either because Sam was injured and he was sorry for her, or more likely because the atmosphere outside her door was hectic, and he simply chose to spend his time in peace and relative quiet, enjoying the spoils of his heroism. Tuna was delivered to him, just as Sam had promised during their crawl in the dark and the smoke while on their mission to find Amanda and Lily, but the finicky cat rejected the delicacy and Magdalene had to get him salmon, much to Sam’s amusement. The spoiled, pampered cat who was currently loudly purring under her fingertips made for a good thinking companion though.
And Sam had many things to consider. The school, burnt down and gutted, lay in ruins. There was very little to salvage, and when she’d been brought to the makeshift dormitory a week ago and whisked into her new room, she’d tried to avoid looking around. Tried not to have the image of the destruction embedded in her memory. She knew she’d eventually emerge—probably as soon as in three days, just long enough to escape Magdalene’s scolding that she wasn’t bed-bound for at least ten—and she wouldn’t be able to avoid the havoc much longer.
Alden’s promise and his money were already at work, and all day Sam could hear crews transporting the debris and rubble down the cliffs, where it would be disposed of. They’d clean the site, and then they’d assess what could be salvaged if anything at all. Joanne, during her multiple daily visits, informed her that the architect Alden had hired had some hope that—despite the complete collapse of the roof and the floors—the outside walls, made from centuries-old stone, worked by the hands of old masters, had every chance of being salvaged and form the foundation they could build on. This way the building would look exactly the way Dragons had looked before the fire, and the construction would go faster with the structure already in place.
The talk about Alden and his money and influence, and how he was clearing the way left and right for the construction, obtaining permits, pushing the fire marshals and investigators, made Sam’s focus turn more and more to the man who’d fathered her but wasn’t her father. He had stopped by her room too. He was renting a cottage in town and keeping close, determined to be by her side. And he was, in ways Sam had not expected him to be. When, a couple of days after the fire, Joel and three other trustees had descended on the island and levied accusations of sexual harassment and breach of the School Charter and her contract against Magdalene, Alden, remarkably, had the remaining four trustees’ written statements that they disagreed with any motion to dismiss the Headmistress. And he threatened to hire a lawyer and sue Joel and Orla over peddling a rather intimate picture of Sam and Magdalene in a heated embrace under the sole lightbulb of the attic on the night of the fire.
Which inevitably would lead her to thoughts of Orla. Sam scratched Willoughby’s massive ginger head, and the cat purred louder, standing up for a couple of seconds to make biscuits on her chest before settling down again under her caress.
Orla was a fresh wound, far more painful than the one the stitches on her temple held together. She still had not fully processed her own feelings about Alden’s parentage and his so-called attempts at reconciliation and affection, but everything about Orla, who—in sharp contrast to Alden—had actually been a parental figure to her, just hurt. And nothing made sense.
Raw and blistered and burning, Sam could not identify a single emotion where the former headmistress was concerned that allowed her to calm down and reflect on what had happened. She fidgeted, and Willoughby let out a rusty half meow, half growl at her inability to lay still and continue her ministrations.
Huffing out a breath, Sam tried to mentally arrange the recent events like cards in front of herself, laying them down on an imaginary table, attempting to make sense of what she now knew.
