CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Professor, may I have a word to discuss the final assignment?”
Nathaniel’s voice cut through the chatter echoing along the long, marbled corridor between the lecture hall and the staircase leading to the classrooms above.
My eyes snapped toward him within seconds, pausing mid-step as I glanced in between his dark green knitted vest and Professor Haywood’s long brown coat.
“You may,” she answered without glancing his way, “but I’m heading to my next class, so you’ll have to walk with me.”
“Of course,” Nathaniel said, “here, let me help you with those.” He reached for her tall pile of books, securing them in his arms so that her hands were free to hold her laptop and coffee cup without the risk of spillage.
And that’s the man we’re supposed to hate?
“Yes,” I mumbled under my breath, following them at a distance as they ascended the wide, wooden staircase. “He’s a teacher’s pet. I doubt he’s holding her books because he wants to.”
I see. And why, pray tell, are we now following him?
The answer was simple. Nathaniel was discussing our assignment with our professor. Without me. He was up to something and, since I’ve never been fond of surprises, I was determined to find out what he was planning.
“…and I was just wondering if there were any opportunities to earn extra credit?” Nathaniel asked, voice drifting down the staircase where I waited in the shadows, following only when Haywood’s muffled reply was too quiet to hear.
“…field work?” Nathaniel asked.
I needed to get closer. If Nathaniel was asking for extra credit, he may be trying to secure the number one ranking after all. And I couldn’t, under any circumstances, allow that to happen.
“Observation is an effective primary research method you could employ,” Professor Haywood said. “It would certainly validate your hypothesis and research results. In the psychological field, observation is most of the research, so I wouldn’t be opposed to it.”
“And this would…?”
“Yes, Mr Carrington. It would earn you extra credit.” She paused in front of a door, indicating she had reached her next class. “However, given your topic, I would strongly advise against joining a cult for your observation.”
Nathaniel laughed. “Strongly advising against it is not forbidding it, Professor.”
“No,” she agreed, “but you will do well to remember that I advised against it if you do find yourself in…trouble.”
“Of course, Professor.”
“Be careful, Carrington,” she said, tone more firm than it had been previously, “I don’t want you taking unnecessary risks for something as small as a few extra marks.”
“Knowledge cannot be pursued without risk, Professor,” Nathaniel said, “but I will be careful, I promise.”
***
Nathaniel contacted me over the weekend to request that for our next study session, we meet at his house to avoid library imprisonment.
He picked me up from Browning Books, my black trousers speckled with dust and an orange price tag dangling off the sleeve of my black jacket.
“Busy morning?” he asked once I climbed inside the car.
“We were doing stocktake,” I answered.
“Sounds fun,” he mused, reaching over to snatch the price tag off me. “Oh, look, you’re only three pounds!”
I rolled my eyes playfully.
We made small talk to fill the silence, discussing the gloomy weather, upcoming exams, the traffic.
I didn’t apologise for the ending of our last encounter, and he didn’t bring it up. I preferred it that way. Growing up, there were never apologies. There was an argument, silence, and after a few days, everyone returned to normal as though nothing had happened. He seemed to work the same way.
“My parents are at work,” he announced as we passed through an iron gate, its sharp spires the first to feel the light rain drops falling from the grey clouds circling above.
“My brothers are at school. James and Luca are home, though. And Marianne. She’s our nanny.
” His cheeks reddened. “Not my nanny. Luca’s nanny. ”
The gate opened with a mechanical grunt, granting access to a long, curved driveaway with freshly manicured green lawns on either side. A garage door opened to reveal white marble floor and polished black furniture, garden tools and boxes lining the shelves.
“How old is Luca?” I asked curiously.
“Three,” he answered, parking the car to the right of the garage, leaving space for another three cars, if necessary. “He’s the youngest.”
“Wow. That is one hell of an age gap. How old are you?”
“Twenty,” he chuckled. “But there’s only a three year gap between Luca and Rio.”
“I can’t imagine having that many brothers,” I said as we climbed out of the car.
“You just have the one, right?”
“Yeah. Auden.”
“How old is he?”
“Fifteen.”
“Oh nice, so like…four years between you?”
I nodded.
“James and I are two years apart. I don’t even remember life before him.”
“It must have been fun, though,” I said, following him inside through the back door, shoes discarded at the entrance. “Growing up with all those brothers to play with, I mean.”
“Yeah, of course. I love my brothers. But the fights were crazy.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he grinned, “James once tried to drown me.”
I blinked in alarm. “What?”
Nathaniel laughed at the memory. “Yeah, yeah, we were…what, nine and eleven? We’d been fighting over a pool toy. I dove down to grab it and James stood on my back. Back then, we were nearly the same size, so it wasn’t easy to get him off me.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“It was at the time,” he chuckled. “You never fought like that with Auden?”
I shook my head.
“Oh, well, you’re probably a better big brother than me, then,” he mused.
He led me down a long hall, a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling and photo frames decorating the cream-coloured walls. My eyes fell upon a photo of Nathaniel, no older than fourteen, sitting at a piano with a proud gleam in his eye and a dimpled smile.
“That was taken after I won a music composition contest,” Nathaniel said, elbow brushing mine as he stood beside me.
“You look very pleased,” I observed.
“I was.”
“Do you still play?”
“Not as often as I would like to. Med school takes up most of my time.”
I followed him further down the hall until we reached a laundry room where a middle-aged woman stood folding clothes, a little boy playing with building blocks inside a washing basket.
“Marianne,” Nathaniel greeted. “This is Augustus. We’ll be working on an assignment together in the study. Augustus, this is Marianne and Luca.”
I gave the woman and child a polite nod, hovering in the doorway awkwardly while Nathaniel and Marianne discussed dinner arrangements.
My gaze landed on Luca who shared the same soft brown eyes as Nathaniel, the same black hair.
While Nathaniel’s was straight and combed neatly over his forehead, Luca’s waves were wild and untamed.
He didn’t much care for my presence, playing happily on his own, and I looked away as Nathaniel guided me down another hall and up a large, carpeted staircase.
“How many brothers did you say you have again?” I asked.
“Six,” Nathaniel chuckled. “Luc was my parents’ last attempt for a girl.”
“Ah, so definitely no more?”
“God no.”
I snorted, shaking my head.. “And you said James was here too?”
“Yeah, he’s sick at the moment, so he’ll stay in his room,” Nathaniel said, leading me down another long hallway.
“Is he like you?” I asked.
“Hm?”
“Is he going to study Medicine?”
Nathaniel shook his head. “Oh, no, James wants to go to business school.”
“Oh, cool.”
My gaze locked on a photo of the whole family in front of an altar, a baby who I assumed to be Luca draped in white in his mother’s arms. I found Nathaniel’s tall frame easily. He was standing beside his father, their identical smiles almost unnerving.
“That’s us,” Nathaniel mused, following my gaze.
He pointed to the boy beside him, who he said was James.
Unlike Luca, James did not resemble Nathaniel.
His face was all sharp edges whereas Nathaniel’s was soft.
Beside James was Rio, the second youngest, who shared Luca’s waves and Nathaniel’s dimpled smile.
He was taller than his older brother Avery, which was amusing to Nathaniel since Rio was a year younger.
Then there were the twins—Kaleb and Kian—their identical wavy curls crawling down to their shoulders.
“Must be a loud house,” I commented.
“Oh, yeah, definitely,” Nathaniel grinned as he pushed open a heavy wooden door and invited me inside. “This is the study. Make yourself comfortable.”
The ‘study’ was the size of my bedroom, living room, and bathroom combined. Dark oak bookshelves lined the wall to my left and the wall straight ahead of me. Books of all kinds littered the shelves, most stacked upright, though some had been shoved on top of the others horizontally.
Two large round wooden desks sat in the centre of the room beneath a large golden chandelier and atop a large rustic fur rug.
Each desk had its own lamp in the centre with a power point switch beside it for laptops or phone chargers.
A long, rectangular desk of the same colour was pressed against the wall to my right, seated comfortably below a window overlooking the back garden which housed a large swimming pool.
I should have been used to grandiose homes since living with Aunt Vera, but Nathaniel’s was on another level.
I sat by the closest round desk, the cushioned chair welcoming me with a warmth that one would not usually expect from an inanimate object.
I must have released a satisfied sigh, for Nathaniel glanced my way, lips tugged upright in an amused smile.
“Marianne will bring us some water and some snacks once she’s done with the laundry,” he said, fiddling with the cord to connect his laptop with the projector slowly falling from the ceiling.