Her Royal Highness (Royals #2) - Rachel Hawkins Page 0,48

says, once again shuffling papers. “To protect a friend, I understand, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. Now out, both of you.”

“But—” Flora starts, and Dr. McKee lifts one finger.

“Out, or it’s laundry and bathroom cleaning duty.”

We both scramble out of that office so fast there are probably dust clouds behind us.

Once out in the hallway, Flora and I face each other, but before I can thank her for doing the right thing, she says, “I’ll be late for maths. See you later, Quint.”

She saunters off, and as soon as she’s turned the corner, Saks is rushing up to me, Perry in tow.

“Did they kick you out?” she hisses, and I shake my head.

“Did they kick her out?” Perry asks, and I shake my head again.

“No, no kicking out. Just laundry duty, whatever that means.”

Both Perry and Saks wrinkle their noses. “That’s actually fairly foul,” Perry says. “I got it last year for smoking on the grounds. You learn . . . way too much about your classmates doing their laundry.”

“Great,” I reply. “Really looking forward to that, then.”

The three of us head upstairs, and when Perry peels off for his room, I turn in the hall to face Saks. “She called us friends. Dr. McKee.”

“You and Dr. McKee are friends?” Saks asks, tilting her head so that her heavy dark hair slides over one shoulder, and I roll my eyes, shoving her arm lightly.

“No. Me and Flora.”

“Oh.” Saks’s face brightens. “Well, maybe you can be!”

I’m not sure how I feel about that.

When I come into our room later that evening, after supper and studying, Flora is already in there in her pajamas, sitting cross-legged on her bed, her wet hair combed out over her shoulders.

For once, when I walk in the room, she doesn’t give me a look. She smiles a little, leaning over to towel her hair, and I stand there, looking at her. At our room, which is so clearly split into My Stuff and Flora’s Stuff, complete with a line of tape across the top of the dresser.

“Are we friends now?” I blurt out, and Flora raises her eyebrows at me, letting the towel fall to the bed.

“I suppose so,” she says. “We’ve been through a traumatic experience together. That usually bonds people.”

“And that traumatic experience was completely your fault,” I remind her, and she gives one of those elegant shrugs that I’m beginning to recognize as a Classic Flora Gesture.

“The provenance of the trauma isn’t that important,” she says airily, and I can’t help the giggle that explodes out of my mouth.

“The ‘provenance of the trauma’? Okay, seriously, who talks like that?”

But then I remember that’s kind of a stupid question. Who talks like that? Princesses, of course. Royalty. Which is what Flora is, no matter how . . . normal she looks sitting there in her jammies.

Getting up from the bed, she walks over to the dresser and tugs at that strip of tape separating my rock collection from her fancy candles.

“There,” she says, balling up the tape and tossing it in the bin. “A new start.”

I’m not sure something as simple as getting rid of a piece of tape can be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but I still nod.

“A new start.”

CHAPTER 22

As far as punishments go, it definitely could have been worse. I mean, I’m not sure they could put us in the stocks or anything—me, maybe, but definitely not Flora—but who knows what sort of weird stuff they could come up with here in the Highlands? We could be forced to tend sheep or throw heavy rocks off fields or something. Okay, the rocks thing might not be so bad for me, but still.

So yeah, laundry duty seems a small price to pay for everything that happened during the Challenge.

Flora disagrees.

“This is barbaric,” she says, her perfect nose wrinkling as she hauls an armful of wet sheets out of the washer. “Practically medieval.”

The laundry room is down in what I guess was once the cellar or maybe where they kept uppity women back in the day, the stone floors uneven underfoot, and the light coming through the ancient windows watery and gray. It’s raining. Again.

“History is my second-favorite subject,” I say as I dump a cupful of strong-smelling detergent into the other washer. “And I’m fairly sure I don’t remember any mentions of fancy washing machines from the medieval period, but I guess I could be wrong?”

Flora shoots me a look at that. Her hair is up in a ponytail,