Tiffany Reisz - The Headmaster

A fever dream of desires fulfilled.

Nestled in the shadow of the Appalachians is where Gwen Ashby stumbles upon the William Marshall Academy, and she’s given a trial position as a literature teacher. The gothic boarding school seems trapped in time yet it feels like home the moment Gwen arrives.

She’s charmed by the lovely buildings, bewitched by the eager students…and utterly seduced by the headmaster. Edwin Yorke is noble, handsome and infuriatingly proper. But his tweedy exterior and courtly manners conceal a raw sensual power that Gwen longs to unleash.

It’s strangely thrilling to be the only woman on campus—save one other. An eerie white-clad figure roams the grounds by night. She never speaks. She leaves no trace. But this ghostly blight on Gwen’s new dream life is the key to the Marshall Academy’s mysterious allure.

RITA® Award nominated title from international bestselling author Tiffany Reisz.

The Headmaster

Tiffany Reisz

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedicated to beautiful magical North Carolina and the beautiful magical people who live there.

Table of Contents

Cover

Back Cover Copy A fever dream of desires fulfilled. Nestled in the shadow of the Appalachians is where Gwen Ashby stumbles upon the William Marshall Academy, and she’s given a trial position as a literature teacher. The gothic boarding school seems trapped in time yet it feels like home the moment Gwen arrives. She’s charmed by the lovely buildings, bewitched by the eager students…and utterly seduced by the headmaster. Edwin Yorke is noble, handsome and infuriatingly proper. But his tweedy exterior and courtly manners conceal a raw sensual power that Gwen longs to unleash. It’s strangely thrilling to be the only woman on campus—save one other. An eerie white-clad figure roams the grounds by night. She never speaks. She leaves no trace. But this ghostly blight on Gwen’s new dream life is the key to the Marshall Academy’s mysterious allure. RITA® Award nominated title from international bestselling author Tiffany Reisz.

Title Page The Headmaster Tiffany Reisz www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedication Dedicated to beautiful magical North Carolina and the beautiful magical people who live there.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Extract

About the Author

Copyright Page

Chapter One

She’d never make it to Chicago alive.

Not unless she got some coffee. Stat.

Bone-weary from driving, Gwen pulled over and parked in front of a small diner at the edge of tiny Andover. The August air felt heavy with the heat, and when she inhaled she caught the scent of the nearby Appalachian Mountains in her nose. Everything smelled so warm, moist and alive—the rich, dark soil, the beech and maple trees, the leaves taking their last breath of summer… So much life and beauty around her, and yet Gwen wasn’t part of it.

She took her phone out of her messenger bag and snapped a quick picture of the mountains that rose up behind the town. Gwen stepped inside the diner and fifty years into the past. It looked like it had been plucked from 1960—or at least a sanitized version of 1960—with the chrome stools that sat belly-up to a white-and-red bar and the waitresses in their paper hats and white dresses. The Rolling Stones crooned “As Tears Go By” from a gleaming jukebox. She couldn’t hear the song without thinking of her father singing it to her as a lullaby twenty years ago.

Inside the bathroom, Gwen noted the movie posters hanging in the stalls— Bye Bye Birdie and Dr. No. Conrad Birdie versus James Bond—she knew who she’d put her money on. Back out in the diner, she ordered two cups of coffee—one for here and one to go. As she sipped, she mentally calculated how far she’d come and how far she had left to go.

That morning she’d left Savannah, Georgia, at 10:00 a.m. She’d driven four-and-a-half hours—over three hundred miles. She’d probably sleep in Kentucky somewhere tonight, which would leave about four-hundred miles to go to get to her friend Tisha’s in Chicago tomorrow night. And then…what? Try to be the best houseguest ever while she job-hunted for a teaching position. Hopefully she would get one quickly and wouldn’t have to spend the next six months sleeping on Tisha’s couch.

“Miss?” A man who had to be in his mid-sixties sat two stools away from her and summoned the waitress.

“What can I get you, sir?” the waitress asked.

“Directions? Out to old Marshal? It’s been fifty years since I’ve been to the school. Forgot the way.”

The waitress smiled kindly at him. She patted the back of his weather-beaten hand.

“I’ll draw you a map, sir. Easy to get lost out there.” She took a pen from her pocket and doodled a map on the napkin while the older man watched and nodded. “And you’ll turn here. Be careful, because they took the old sign down.”

“Thank you, miss,” the man said and gave her a weak smile. She handed him half a dozen napkins—white with red trim, just like the diner counters.

“You take these with you. You might need them.”

He nodded solemnly and put the red-trimmed napkins in his pocket.

Gwen watched the scene. Maybe the waitress had pegged him for the sentimental type. Curious about the school, Gwen pulled her phone back out and searched for “Marshal School” and “Andover, North Carolina.” Nothing came up.

“Don’t even bother,” the waitress said to her. “We’re in a black hole out here—no 3G, no 4G. You have to drive five miles north just to pick up any internet.”

“It’s okay. I was just trying to look up the Marshal School.”

“The Marshal School’s about ten miles from here, right on the edge of town. Boarding school. Progressive, the school says. I just say it’s weird.”

“Weird?”

“Weird.” The waitress nodded. “Rich parents send their kids off to go to a school where they can’t even use their phones? What’s the point of being rich?”

“I guess the point is being rich enough to pay someone else to raise your kids. You know if they’re hiring?”

“The Marshal School? It’s usually hiring. Goes year-round so teachers get burned out there pretty fast. You a teacher?”

“I am,” Gwen said. “I was a TA at Savannah State. I didn’t get any classes for this fall.”

“You want to go teach some crazy high school students, Marshal’s the place for you.”

“I’ll take any job that’ll have me,” Gwen said.

The waitress tilted her head to the side and gave her a sympathetic look.

“Divorced?” she asked.

Gwen laughed. “No. Just dumped. And even then I can’t blame him. My boyfriend moved to Africa to teach in a village school. Something on his bucket list, he said. I couldn’t afford the apartment by myself and then no classes to teach…”

“Been there,” the waitress said. “Divorced and jobless. Ended up here.” She pointed at the diner. “Nice place. But if they don’t put some modern music on the jukebox soon I’m going to take a golf club to it.”

“I feel like I’m in a time machine,” Gwen said. “James Bond watched me pee.”

“What a perv,” the waitress said, smiling. “And this whole damn town is stuck in 1964, but that’s okay. The present wasn’t all that kind to us. Maybe the past will take better care of us—you and me both.”