Page 86 of Cruel Hearts

I squeezed my eyes shut. “A half-assed effort, considering they planted flour in my room. The only thing I might be guilty of is trying to make a cake.”

“What if…” Gideon tapped his chin, his head tilted toward the ceiling. His lips tightened. “That’s preposterous.”

“What?”

He turned his head away. “I don’t want to encourage you with wild speculations.”

“Speculate, speculate!”

“Alright.” He turned his dark eyes to me. “But if I tell you this, you are not to rush out of the room and do anything reckless.”

“I’m not—” The sight of his raised brow made the words die in my throat. Gideon knew about all the crazy shit I’d done while at Templar Academy. I couldn’t fool him into thinking I was sane. Shit, I had Liddell blood running through my veins. “Alright. I’ll sit here and drink my tea like a proper lady.”

After pouring the tea in both cups, I handed him one and settled on the edge of the bed.

“Very well.” Gideon sipped from his teacup and closed his eyes, likely savoring the floral notes of the bergamot in his Earl Grey tea or something equally as fancy.

My lips curled into a smile. He was about to reveal something groundbreaking—I knew it. “What were you going to say?”

An appreciative sigh later, Gideon placed the teacup on the saucer and gave me his full attention. “The raid last term was designed to have you arrested and imprisoned.”

“But—”

Gideon raised an elegant finger. “I haven’t finished.”

I clamped my mouth shut. This was going to be good.

Once he seemed sure I wouldn’t interrupt, he continued. “What if someone delivered Elizabeth a block of cocaine to plant in your room, but she decided to keep it for herself and create a slimming aid to revive her failing diet business?”

Excitement launched itself through my insides, and I shot off the edge of the bed. “Shit! You’re like the black Sherlock Holmes.”

“Which would make you my female Watson,” he drawled.

I paced the room, my fingertips trembling. This was why Elizabeth often went psycho. “Everything makes sense. Everything!”

“Elaborate.”

Whirling around, I said, “The strange behavior partway through the term. She must have started using coke around then.”

Gideon’s brows drew together. “You mean when she threw a box of pins at the Fashion teacher?”

“Right.”

“Could cocaine cause such erratic behavior?”

I snorted. This was one subject where I knew more than Gideon. “It affects people in different ways, also depending on what else they’re using. My mum took coke all the time, but she cut it with paracetamol and drank gin.”

“That mitigates the effects, I presume?”

“With as much gin and tonic as she drank, yes. Some days, she didn’t bother with the tonic.”

Gideon cringed. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

He had told me about his parents, the doctor and the oil executive, but his life in Nigeria seemed a million miles from anything I had experienced in Richley.

While I was growing up, we had a cleaning lady but she was the wife of Billy Hancock’s driver. Gideon had nannies and tutors and an army of servants doing everything for them, not to mention a family mansion in what he called ‘the village.’ He was too modest to say, but I think he was related to Nigerian royalty.

Gideon continued staring at me like I was an injured puppy.