Page 42 of Cruel Games

ABOUT THE HANDJOB

Lady Elizabeth Liddell x

Laughter and applause filled the dining room.

“This is an outrage!” Kendrick scraped back his seat and stormed out.

Elizabeth’s look of triumph faltered, but she straightened and plastered on an unconvincing smirk.

The other two knights stared at me with wide eyes.

Gideon wrapped a hand around my arm. “Let’s go.”

I let him pull me up and walk me out of the dining room. In the end, it wasn’t Elizabeth’s lies or her army of petty pranksters that hurt me in the end. What hurt most was the blazing sword of the truth.

Chapter 15

A crowd of people followed Gideon and me out of the dining room. Every instinct screamed at me to turn back, to grab Elizabeth Liddell by the hair and shake the self-satisfaction out of her smug little face. But a frenzied attack was probably part of her plan.

A voice at the doors shouted, “Hand-Cock, where are you going?”

“Ignore that trouble-maker,” said Gideon. “He just wants to provoke you into making a spectacle.”

“That’s not going to happen.” I stared ahead into the wood-paneled hallway, blinking hard. The pictures on both sides of the wall seemed to arch toward as though I’d dropped too much acid and my surroundings were starting to melt.

We continued down the hallway in the opposite direction to the visitors’ tower. I suspected Gideon was taking me to the headmaster’s office, which was exactly where I needed to be.

“How much of what Elizabeth said was fabrication?” Gideon whispered.

“The part where she said she was sorry,” I whispered back. “That photo of my mother and the headmaster looked real enough, and everything else she said fits the gaps in my knowledge.”

“How so?”

“Mother never used to talk about my real father, saying I was better off not knowing. She never introduced me to any relatives, either. And why else would Mr. Burgh come all the way down from London at short notice to recruit me?”

Gideon’s brows furrowed. “He did?”

“Did Mrs. Campbell visit your house?” I asked.

He rubbed his temple. “How many boarding schools do you know besides Hogwarts?”

“None that aren’t fictional,” I said as we rounded the corner.

Our annoying entourage followed from a distance. They kept themselves entertained with speculations on what I would do when I reached the headmaster’s office, and a few hooted with laughter. Fuck them and their perfect home lives.

“Headteachers don’t visit our homes,” Gideon whispered. “Students go to open days, get advice on how best to apply for academies like Templar, and hope our academic achievements, family connections, and interviews are strong enough to win us a place.”

“Right.” I gulped. This was the first time I ever got special treatment for being something other than the stepdaughter of Billy Hancock.

The door at the end of the hallway opened, and members of staff walked toward us.

“Oh, shit,” someone muttered from behind. The rest of the students at our back returned to the dining room, presumably not wanting to explain why such a big crowd needed to loiter around a corner of the school dedicated to staff.

Mrs. Campbell walked past and gave me a warm smile. I wondered how long she had worked at the academy and if she knew anything about my connection with the headmaster.

We reached Mr. Burgh’s office, and my throat convulsed. I forced in a deep, calming breath and tried not to imagine the worst happening.

“Are you ready?” whispered Gideon.