Page 3 of The Last De Loughrey Dynasty (The Legacy of Aquila Hall #1)

CHAPTER TWO

DOROTHEE

Room seven, Headmaster Shaw had told me. I stood in front of the door for what felt like an eternity, five minutes and forty-four seconds to be exact.

Knocking on a door wasn’t particularly hard for me, nor was it a challenge. It was the thought of this new life that scared me. If I knocked on this door, it would feel like I belonged here. I might meet people with the same haunted minds as mine, but did I really want to be around people like me?

My parents always said I was exhausting. What if they were too exhausting for me, or worse, what if I was too exhausting for them?

“Are you going to knock?” a voice behind me asked, startling me. I spun around, holding my breath. Standing there was a man not much older than Doctor Chadwick. I guessed he was the professor I was supposed to inform that my roommate had been excused for the rest of the lesson.

I glanced down at the watch on my wrist, my mind frantically searching for numbers or structure to calm my racing heart and prevent my stomach from rebelling. Nervousness was the devil on my shoulder. I despised the feeling of not being in control, especially when my body conjured symptoms that were purely the production of my mind.

Thirty-six… thirty-seven… thirty—

“Lesson number one, Miss De Loughrey, the class starts when I get there. If I’m ten or twenty minutes late, then class starts ten minutes after nine, on time,” he informed me. I forced myself to lift my gaze from the watch. He wasn’t speaking to me like a person having a normal conversation. He was scolding me.

I didn’t remember doing anything wrong.

“I apologise, sir—”

“It’s Professor .”

I nodded, because that seemed to be the only thing I could do right, and he continued to stare at me. It took me a moment to realise he was waiting for me to repeat his correction.

“I apologise, Professor.”

“Not that hard, is it?” He walked past me and opened the door to the classroom, where several voices talking at once quieted immediately. I followed him, glancing around. Everyone wore the cobalt-blue school uniform, which bore a patch of the star constellation representing the school’s eagle emblem.

A boy’s eyes met mine, and his laughter died the moment he saw me. He stared as if I were a ghost.

I instinctively reached up to touch my nose, checking for something that might be on my face.

“Morning, class. This is your new classmate…” Professor Kane announced, glancing at a piece of paper on his desk as if he had already forgotten my name, “Miss De Loughrey. Miss Alderidge, you’ve been asked to show her around by Headmaster Shaw. You’re excused for this lesson.”

A girl with short, white-blond hair turned away from the boy, who was still staring at me in terror, and stood up. She looked at me, her face pale. What was going on with them? No one else in the room seemed to react like this. Lucky me, I was apparently going to share a room with her.

“Professor, would it be possible for me to stay for the lesson? There’s a test coming up,” she asked, her voice slightly muffled. I guessed she might have a cold, judging by her reddish nose and cheeks.

Professor Kane glanced over his glasses at her. “There’s nothing here you’ll need for next week. Now go, and stop disrupting the class.”

A pity he wasn’t as nice as the other staff I’d met from the school.

The girl, Mairead, that’s what Headmaster Shaw had called her, grabbed her bag. The boy who had been talking to her grabbed her by the arm.

“Maisie, don’t,” he whispered loudly enough for me to hear. Unfortunately for him, the professor heard too.

“Mister McConnell, would you like to share something with the class?” he asked.

Mairead—Maisie—cut him off with a sweet but biting tone. “He was just asking if I could sneak into his bedroom tonight, Professor.”

The class erupted in laughter, but her friend didn’t join in. He just kept staring at me as I left the room, trailing after Maisie. She kept glancing over her shoulder at me, her expression unreadable.

Suddenly, she stopped and turned to face me.

“I’m Mairead, but everyone calls me Maisie. And you are…?”

“I’m Dorothee,” I replied, awkwardly holding out a hand. Social interaction wasn’t my strong suit, especially after growing up surrounded by nannies and maids rather than children my age.

You are going to showcase your best self. You need this, darling.

“It’s nice to meet you, Maisie,” I added. To my relief, she didn’t seem to mind my awkwardness. She shook my hand warmly.

“Nice to meet you too, Dorothee.”

While she studied me, I took the chance to study her as well. She was striking, though not in the same way my mother was. Maisie and I shared some similarities—soft features, plump lips, and pale complexions.

But that’s where the resemblance ended.

Her eyes were so dark they looked completely black, contrasting with her nearly white hair.

“Can I call you Doe?” she asked suddenly, pulling my focus back to the moment.

“If you’d like,” I said. “People usually just call me by my full name.”

Maisie smiled hesitantly.

“You’ll find out soon enough that almost everyone here was given an old-fashioned name. It’s like we’re all grandmas and grandpas. Modern nicknames are basically mandatory,” she explained, looping her arm through mine and pulling me along the corridor.

“Why is that?” I asked, surprised that her touch didn’t bother me as much as it usually did.

“Rich people like to sound rich. They give their kids old names. Most of my friends even have three or four names because their parents think it’s important to include family names. For example, my full name is Mairead Alessandra Alderidge. Mairead was my grandmother’s name, and Alessandra was my great-aunt. Do you have multiple names?” she asked curiously.

“Dorothee Odette De Loughrey the Second.”

Maisie visibly swallowed, her eyes darting around the corridor nervously.

“The second?”

I blinked. “My great-aunt had the name before me, I think,” I said softly, wondering why she seemed so uneasy.

Maisie nodded quickly. “Alright! Let’s show you the campus, Doe.”