Charm and Consequence (Novella) - By Stephanie Wardrop Page 0,13
with me and where Michael has disappeared to. I feel the scratchy nap of Jeremy’s sweater against my cheek and breathe him in for a moment. As he turns his head closer to me, I catch the scent of alcohol on his breath. It isn’t beer. Maybe whiskey? He seems pretty steady on his feet, though, and I can’t tell if this ability to hold his alcohol is impressive or kind of disturbing.
“So is your family here tonight?” I ask.
“No. My parents are in Ireland this week,” he replies and I think he smells the top of my head. I hope it smells good –or at least clean.
“So you just sort of wandered in here?” I laugh.
“Exactly,” he laughs, a rumble deep in his throat. “Sometimes I play cards with some of the guys who work here. I had no idea this big soiree was going on.”
“Hmmmm.” I nod and then he executes an especially energetic twirl that knocks the air out of me for a second.
“So-did Endicott tell you about me getting kicked out of Pemberley?”
“No,” I reply. “We don’t always talk that much.…
He laughs again and this time there’s a sharpness to the sound, like metal striking metal.
“You’re definitely better off that way,” he says.
“He seems pretty harmless,” I say, and Jeremy scoffs and extends his arms to hold me at a distance for a moment so he can gaze at me. I try to look back at him without blushing but focus mainly on his chin. Much safer than those eyes.
“‘Harmless’?” he repeats. “I don’t know about that. But who wants harmless anyway?”
Across the room I can see now that Michael is at a table with his parents—and mine are there, too. They are all watching me. Only my mother is smiling. Michael looks worried for some reason.
“That’s Michael Endicott’s grandmother, over there, giving me the stinkeye,” Jeremy tells me.
I look over to where he’d nodded his head to find a thin, grim figure in black eyeing us with cold hostility. She is tall, like Michael, and elegant, with perfectly straight white hair that swoops across one shoulder and three strands of pearls around her neck. She looks like an angry little phantom.
“Why give us the stinkeye?” I ask.
“It’s for me, believe me.”
“Because you cut in on her grandson?”
“Because she’s one of the big trustees at the Pemberley School and because I was kicked out of there.” He seems mildly amused by this, and keeps his eyes on her, smiling, at her, like a dare.
“But wasn’t her grandson kicked out, too?” I ask as she approaches us, walking surprisingly fast on her spindly legs, like one of those little seabirds darting across the sand.
“Thanks for the dance, Duchess,” he says with a wicked smile and a sweeping bow. “But I gotta bounce.”
I improvise a sort of curtsey and smile at him.
“Thank you good sir,” I say in my most gracious lady-of-the-manor manner.
“Tell Endicott I didn’t mean to offend,” he laughs as he walks off, taking his time, waving to someone at one of the tables and chuckling to himself.
I smile weakly at the old lady and walk over to Michael’s table, where he is sitting alone now, and say, “Thanks for the dance.”
“It’s not something I do often,” he says and traces a finger down the side of his glass of punch when I sit down.
“Yeah, I could tell,” I laugh, and he looks at me, startled, for a second, and I realize that I have insulted him. “I’m just kidding. If I’m on So You Think You Can Dance?, the subtitle is No, honey, you can’t.’”
“Jeremy seems to think he’s Lord of the Dance, though.” He’s smirking as usual, but there’s something wary in his dark eyes now, which seem to be trained on me in a way they haven’t been before, and it’s unnerving. I pick up a stray coffee spoon and ponder it as if the scrollwork on the handle were the most fascinating piece in the history of cutlery.
I ask, “Don’t you mean ‘Wrentham’? Isn’t last-names-only the Pemberley way?”
“Yeah, well, neither of us is at Pemberley now, are we?” He keeps looking at me steadily and something in his bright black eyes makes me swallow hard.
I want to ask him why he had to leave Pemberley, to ask him what happened, and not just because it’s been the buzz of the LHS hallways since he started school back in September. I’ve ignored all of the rumors until now but I realize I really