Steelhands - Jaida Jones [123]
“I believe everyone feels that way when it comes time for exams,” I told her, placing my things on the lone empty chair while I cleared off the desk proper.
Despite my hopes, the papers strewn about were not our class notes. Rather, they were scraps of parchment covered in what appeared to be little drawings, a few of them charming illustrations in the style I’d come to expect from Laure—men with tall hats and women with triangular dresses, the better to distinguish them as the fairer sex. There were some, however, that looked much stranger than anything I’d ever seen her draw before—enormous black beasts with hooked claws and cruel snouts. I stared at one for a moment, attempting to make sense of it, until all the pieces came together in my head.
“Laure, have you been drawing dragons?” I asked her.
“Give me those,” Laure said, in a tone of voice that I knew meant I should acquiesce at once to avoid the trouble of being beaten soundly. “I was just having a bit of fun.”
“Perhaps you could turn these in to Professor Adamo as extra credit,” I said, with a touch of slyness. Laure really would hit me if I implied anything outright, but I’d heard them talking the day she’d gone to apologize.
Even if my suspicions about her feelings were wrong, it was evident he liked her better than any of the other students.
“Perhaps I could put my boot up your ass,” Laure said, pulling the papers out of my hands and folding them up—not, I noted, crumpling them. “Be sort of poetic justice, don’t you think, since you gave them to me?”
“Now, Laure, be reasonable,” I said. “You know as well as I that there are several different schools of etiquette when it comes to returning a gift, and not one of them would recommend that.”
“Just stay out of my things,” Laure huffed, shoving the drawings inside one of the boots in question. I hadn’t meant to embarrass her, but her face was curiously red. I wanted to put my palm against her brow to check for warmth, but now didn’t seem to be the time. “You don’t always have to be cleaning up behind a person in their own room. You came here to study, and that’s all we should do.”
“If I’ve offended you again …” I began, then trailed off, not sure of where to finish. The floor was still littered with skirts and stockings, but I was doing my best not to pay attention to them. “Should I come back some other time?”
Laure stared at me for a moment. The light from the window reflected off her eyes, making her irises appear far paler than usual.
“I’m sorry,” Laure said, turning away. “I didn’t mean to be a beast. It’s just this physician’s appointment’s got me feeling all out of sorts lately. Like I told you, I decided to dodge it, but they sent another reminder, and I don’t want ’em to mail Da or anything and tell him his little girl’s gone rogue in the city. Knowing him, he’ll want to pull me straight out of the program for not following orders.”
“We certainly can’t have that,” I said as mildly as I could manage. “You know as well as I do the only reason my father allowed me to come was because I’d have you to chaperone me in the city.”
“I know,” Laure said, twisting her hair back and off her neck, making a transient bun held up only by her fingers, which she dropped a moment later, waves of orange hair tumbling around her face. “I’ll think of something better eventually. I mean it. And I’m probably just making too much of things anyway. We don’t know that those appointments had anything to do with what happened to Gaeth, do we? Lots of people’ve gone and come back and haven’t had anything wrong with them.”
“Except for that awful fever,” I said.
“It was only a couple of days,” Laure pointed out, looking perturbed. “Not even bad, by a fever’s standards. I can handle a lot worse than that, now can’t I? I have and I will.”
There