Page 17 of The Rest is History

Charlie

I ’m still vibrating with anger when Elodie swans into Base Court on Saturday morning.

I lounge against the reproduction of Henry’s wine fountain and watch her.

The fountain is decorated, appropriately enough, in red and white, and yes, it can still pour forth wine of both colours when the occasion demands.

I could use a glass of red right now, actually.

She seems to float across the enormous courtyard, deep in conversation with Lauren.

They’ve struck up something of a friendship these past few weeks—they seem to have bonded over some show that sounds like it’s called Shit’s Creek , but I must have the name wrong—and I detect a protective element in Lauren’s demeanour towards her.

Elodie’s ability to assume the character of Anne Boleyn over the past few weeks has amazed and delighted and awed me.

Whatever the physical differences between them close up, she has the same demeanour.

Posture so enviable it must seem haughty to those who envy her.

A willowy build and long, slim fingers so full of expression when she uses them in conversation.

As usual, her dark gown showcases the elegance of the neck that as she takes in today’s visitors. She throws her head back, and laughs, and lays a hand on Lauren’s arm, and I’m transfixed. Mesmerised. Just as Henry must have been whenever he caught a glimpse of Anne.

And yet, the sight of her happy and carefree makes my entire spine tighten.

Because she set the cat among the pigeons in my History class yesterday, and I’ll have to deal with the fallout next week.

Have to remind my students that we’re here to work through a syllabus and gain a firm understanding of the political, social, religious and legal machinations of the Tudor monarchy.

Not to compare the spectacular political coup effecting Anne’s downfall to semi-pornographic romance novels in a manner that’s plain reductionist.

Elodie glides up to me and drops into a theatrical curtsey for the clusters of appreciative visitors staring our way.

’Good morrow, my Lord.’

As she rises, she tilts her face to mine. Her mouth’s already in an insolent smirk, and I could swear there’s triumph shining in those eyes. My jaw clenches, and the hand holding onto the wine fountain tightens its grip.

The things I want to do to her right now.

Pinch her jaw between my thumb and forefinger.

Capture that smirk with my mouth.

Take pleasure in her eyes darkening as their expression shifts from triumph to helpless desire.

I allowed myself the indulgence last night of imagining that I was leaving her to stew till this morning (no matter that it was she who refused to discuss the situation via WhatsApp). But now I see I was wrong. If I’m not mistaken, she’s spoiling for a fight.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ she asks when I don’t return her greeting. I could swear she saves up all the things she’s itching to say to me at school during the week and vomits them all out on a Saturday, when I’m not her superior.

I inhale slowly through my nose. Planning my next move. Biding my time.

Lauren looks from Elodie to me. ‘Trouble in paradise?’

‘Charlie’s not happy with the way I taught Anne’s trial to his A Level class yesterday when he was at home puking his guts up.

’ Elodie puts her hands up to adjust the loose fabric of her hood.

‘The little shits wouldn’t pay me any attention until I wrote the words reverse harem on the board.

That got them in the zone pretty quickly. ’

Lauren lets out a low whistle. ‘What’s your problem, Charlie boy? That’s exactly what they accused her of. Sounds fair to me.’

‘I am not getting into this here,’ I tell them in slow, even words. ‘I will speak to you later, in private, Elodie. ’

‘Fucking hell,’ Lauren says. ‘Sounds like you’re going to get it later, babe.’

There’s something about her tone that brings home the double entendre she didn’t intend. Because this woman has aggravated me enough that I wish I was giving her a hell of a lot more than a tongue-lashing later.

‘I am literally quaking in my boots.’ She turns to Lauren. ‘Come on, Laur. Let’s go talk to some kids. I have no interest in the king when he’s being a grumpy old grouch.’

I stew all day. I take lunch alone, because Elodie is surrounded by the other queens in the break room, and the solitude suits me just fine.

My mood won’t shift. Won’t lift. Won’t give me relief.

I’m disgruntled, pissed off. Worse than that, I’m twitchy. Like my blood is busier than usual, coursing through my veins, and my nerve endings are on high alert.

I’m not used to being undermined. Disobeyed.

I run a tight ship in my department. For all the noise she makes, Zara plays ball, and Amanda was always pleasant.

Accommodating. And now this temptress has muscled her way in, completely disregarding my lesson plan for yesterday and distracting my students by turning a critical coup into a pseudo-romantic farce.

I’m furious with myself for asking her to take the lesson. That’s what it is, really. I should have left them the notes to read and asked them to write an essay laying out the salient points. I should never have let Elodie Peach loose on my class.

Not for the first time, my thoughts turn to Henry.

He had to put up with this shit, too. I’ve always found it fascinating, the hold Anne had over him.

Her attitude towards him would have been unlike any he’d seen before, and on the one hand, it surprises me that he liked it.

This is a guy who’d never been challenged.

Never been told no. Whose existence, once his brother the heir died, was honed to create an aura of God-given majesty.

There’s a but. I can see how utterly refreshing he must have found her.

Fearless. Staggeringly intelligent. Sophisticated.

Well-read. Bold in her ideas. And the nearest thing he’d ever allow himself to have to an equal among the female race.

There’s no doubt that much of the heat between them came from that clash of two strong wills.

We know they fought. Hard. We know she screamed at him. Taunted him. Baited him. We also know those tools formed part of Anne’s arsenal in keeping Henry’s flames fanned for six long years while his men worked on a divorce from Katherine.

She couldn’t give him her body, so she gave him the best mental foreplay she had.

I’m thinking begrudgingly about the fine line between irritation and arousal as I climb the stairs behind Elodie at the end of our shift, her dark shape moving ahead of me, her skirts rustling.

About the conundrum of having found her more staggeringly beautiful than ever this morning when she floated over to me, a smirk on her mouth, despite the vibrations of my anger escalating every hour I didn’t have it out with her.

Anger that makes me feel positively violent.

‘In here.’ I jab my finger at the doorway of one of the hundreds of rooms serving little obvious purpose in the endless upper corridors of the palace.

‘Fine.’ She sweeps through the doorframe and I follow, slamming the door behind us with more force than is strictly necessary. The room’s painted burgundy and has little going on apart from a table, some chairs, and a stuffed bookshelf. Probably someone’s office during the week.

I shouldn’t be doing this here. I should wait till Monday and speak to her at school, when we’re in the appropriate context and I have the advantage of being her superior. But I’m too angry to wait. Too riled.

I take a step towards her. ‘I won’t waste anyone’s time. I saw Martha and Tallulah last night, and?—’

Her eyebrows rise. ‘Didn’t realise you had a thing for hanging out with seventeen-year-olds on Friday nights, Charlie. That’s a bit creepy, don’t you think?’

She is so fucking insolent.

‘Martha is my niece,’ I grind out. ‘We were at a family gathering. They told me all about your little stunt.’

The look of surprise on her face gives me the tiniest jolt of satisfaction. I forge ahead.

‘I’m frustrated that you completely disregarded my lesson plan for yesterday and taught the lesson the way you felt like it. You’ve put me behind schedule and you’ve messed with the cadence of my syllabus.’

Her mouth curves slowly into a smile as I’m speaking. ‘Right. Of course that’s why you’re angry.’

‘What do you mean?’

She licks her lips as if she’s considering how to phrase what she says next, and God help me, my gaze fixates on the quick dart of her pink tongue.

‘You’re pissed off because I had a bloody great lesson with your class, Charlie.

They were on fire, and you don’t like it.

Did Tallulah tell you she was practically in tears by the end of the lesson?

You could have heard a pin drop in there.

It was one of those teaching moments you don’t get very often, and I’m still pretty chuffed with it.

But honestly, there’s no need for sour grapes. It’s not cool.’

Of course I’m pissed off that she had a great lesson.

It’s like she broke the teacher code, like she betrayed me, even though I know that’s bollocks.

But everyone knows that when you fill in for another teacher, you stick to their material.

Their style. You do your best, and you leave quietly so they can return and do their job.

You don’t undermine them, show them up, dazzle their students so much they still have hearts in their eyes hours later.

You don’t waltz into someone else’s classroom and make their students fall in love with you.

‘That’s nothing to do with it,’ I lie stiffly. ‘Engagement and education are not mutually exclusive. The fascination with those trials, and the downfall of a faction, lie in examining the facts. The timeline. Not romanticising them and stirring up emotions.’

‘Oh.’ She huffs out a scathing laugh. ‘Of course that’s what I was doing.

Of course the whole class thought Anne and Henry’s story was terribly romantic by the time we’d finished.

They thought he was a spineless fucking monster and she was a martyr who was way ahead of her time.

And of course I should stir up emotions.

How the hell else should we expect them to engage?

Are you telling me you teach this period because you like the facts ?

That you dress up as Henry every Saturday to make sure the visitors have their facts straight?

‘I don’t think so. You teach it because you love it, and I love it, and nothing would make us happier than having our students fall in love with it too, in all its glorious, fucked-up magnificence.’

She leans in, and my stupid dick twitches as my eyes drink in her face greedily. Her eyes are shining. Her mouth is so soft, and pink, and beguiling. And right. There. And the insolence of what’s coming out of it is making me so fucking mad I can’t think straight.

‘We’re on the same team, you obtuse, infuriating idiot,’ she says.

‘And if I had a small win yesterday, and got your class even a little bit more engaged with the period, then I thank you for the opportunity.’ She pauses.

‘And that’s your cue to thank me for finding a way to bring these events to life. ’

I dig in. Take a step towards her, closing the gap between us even further. At this proximity, she has to look up to me, and I’m rewarded by the exposed white curve of her throat.

‘I’m not thanking you, and you’re delusional if you think I am. I gave you a simple assignment, and you let me down. What you did was disrespectful, and that’s not the way I run my department.’

She stares at me in disbelief before her eyes narrow.

‘Seriously? Listen to yourself! This isn’t some medieval tyranny, Charlie.

You are not Richard III. I am an adult, we’re all adults, and we all try our hardest every day to do a tough job with our hands tied behind our back because of the stupid syllabus.

I respect that you’re my boss, Monday to Friday anyway, but don’t fucking well talk to me like I should know my place , because that’s what I call disrespectful. ’

She glares at me, her breath coming quickly, and I can see she’s shaking, and fuck, I’m shaking too.

Because I don’t trust it. I don’t trust the way this conversation is making me feel.

I don’t trust the rush of blood away from my head to my cock, making me feel like time is slowing down and my senses are picking up and all I can think about is her eyes and her mouth and her taste and her smell and that neck.

And the fact that I haven’t felt this alive for months, years, maybe, and that this feels more like Anne and Henry’s form of foreplay than fighting.

I don’t trust it. But I love it.

‘You are so fucking infuriating,’ I hiss, and I make a grab for the back of her head and smash our mouths together.