His mouth twisted harshly, then he sighed and rubbed his eyes. ‘So have neither of you any ideas on how this problem might be dealt with?’ He shot an accusing eye in the principal’s direction. ‘Even if you sit stiff-backed in your chair and accept no responsibility for what’s happened, this can’t be the first time…’
‘Absolutely the first time, Mr Knight. There are no precedents we can follow here.’
‘She’ll need your support,’ Rebecca interjected, and he turned to her with a cynical glint.
‘I must say that’s going to be a trifle difficult to muster up. It’s been impossible enough dealing with her since she came to me two years ago, but this is positively the last damned straw!’
That, Rebecca thought, was not quite the story that Emily had told her. In between her tears, she had bitterly informed her that her father had had zero time for her ever since she had been landed on him thanks to her mother’s death in a skiing accident. She had had little contact with him as it was as a child. With her parents divorced when she was two, her mother had not encouraged father/daughter bonding. In fact, she had expressly forbidden it and had moved to the opposite side of the world in an attempt to avoid any such thing. He hadn’t pursued her then, and ever since she had been returned to him he had chosen to ignore her because she was no more than a stranger who did not fit in with his lifestyle.
‘So what do you intend to do?’ Rebecca asked coolly. ‘I don’t believe homes for fallen women still exist.’
‘That’s a particularly constructive remark, isn’t it, Miss Ryan?’ he told her acidly. ‘Any more where that came from?’
Rebecca blushed, furious with herself for voicing thoughts that were better kept to herself, and ashamed that in the midst of this painful and difficult situation she could find herself distracted by Nicholas Knight. He was someone who was buried so deeply in her past that it surprised her to discover just how easily she could recover the image and the wounded feelings inflicted on her over a decade ago.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said sincerely. ‘There was absolutely no call for that, and you’re right, it wasn’t constructive. What you might find constructive is if I tell you Emily is not the first teenager to find herself in this situation, and she can come out of it. She might leave this school, but there’s no reason why her education has to come to an abrupt end because of it. She can be tutored at home. She’s an incredibly clever child and—who knows?—this might just be the thing that helps her find her way.’
‘How pregnant…is she?’ The distaste in his voice was audible and Rebecca shivered. Poor Emily, however downright stupid she had been, was not going to find her father easily forgiving.
‘Only just.’
‘Meaning?’
‘A week…overdue, apparently. But the pregnancy test, she informed me tearfully, was definitely positive. In fact, she said that she did two, just in case the first was wrong.’
‘Home tutoring,’ he said to himself. He stroked his chin with one finger, frowning, and Rebecca caught herself staring. She pulled herself up short and allowed her eyes to wander away from him. ‘I suppose that’s the only solution, isn’t it?’ he said to them. He looked at Mrs Williams for a while. ‘Could you excuse us for a minute? There’s something I’d like to discuss in private with Miss Ryan.’
‘Well…’ The principal hesitated, taken aback by the request.
‘I’m sure anything that needs to be discussed can be discussed in front of—’
‘We’ll be twenty minutes.’ He gave them both a bland, impenetrable look and Rebecca watched in frustrated silence as Mrs Williams left the room, shutting the door behind her.
CHAPTER TWO
‘HOME tutoring.’ He sat back in his chair, crossed his legs and looked at her. ‘Carry on.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You were giving a little pep talk on all the opportunities still available to a teenager who has been stupid enough to get herself pregnant. You mentioned home tutoring as an option.’
‘Yes.’ He had removed his jacket before entering the room, and now he slowly began to roll the sleeves of his shirt up, exposing strong forearms, black-haired, and lightly bronzed. Although he was English by birth, she remembered him telling her years ago that there was Greek blood in him. Lust had apparently got the better of common sense, and his maternal grandmother had shocked everyone by throwing caution, and her very British fiancé, to the winds and marrying the son of a Greek tycoon. The tale had amused him, had appealed to that element in him that rebelled against convention.
She dragged her eyes away from his wretched arms and fastened them on his face. ‘Home tutoring. I didn’t mention that because I felt any kind of obligation to point out a bright side to this whole sorry business. I mentioned it because it’s a perfectly viable option, and actually I think Emily would do very well on it. She’s incredibly bright. She picks things up very easily. It would more be a matter of steering her towards her exams, making sure that certain levels of work were maintained.
‘I’m not saying that it would be a piece of cake for her, or for her tutor for that matter. She’ll still have to deal with all the ups and downs of the pregnancy, still have to come to terms with it, and she can be difficult.’ Rebecca laughed a little. ‘Possibly one of the bigger understatements of my lifetime. But she should be all right, at least academically, provided you find the right tutor. Someone patient, I think.’
‘You didn’t explain why my daughter chose you for her confidante.’
‘Well…’ Rebecca blushed ‘…as Mrs Williams said, I am one of the younger members of the staff here, and, well, I do pride myself on having a certain rapport with the girls. I do a fair amount of stuff with them after school hours. I run the amateur dramatic society, for example. Actually, that was about the only class that your daughter really seemed to enjoy. I think she liked being able to slip in and out of characters. Perhaps she found it relaxing.’
‘Yes, that would make sense.’ His mouth twisted cynically. ‘Her mother was fond of amateur dramatics herself.’ He laughed shortly. ‘Probably runs in the genes.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that,’ Rebecca said vaguely.
‘No. I don’t suppose you would. You just know Emily as a child who joined your school approximately two years ago and has proved troublesome from day one. Do you ever take an interest in their backgrounds?’
He was looking at her curiously now, and there was something ever so slightly critical about his appraisal.
‘To some extent,’ she said stiffly. ‘But if you imagine that I spend half my leisure time going through their personal records, reading up on what their parents do for a living, then no. I don’t.’
‘So you are unaware of the circumstances surrounding my daughter…’
‘I know that her mother died two years ago…’ Actually, she did have some idea of Emily’s background from what the child had told her, but she had no intention of admitting that. Trust was something that teenagers held very dear, and she was not about to break Emily’s.
‘So you’re not aware that she and I were divorced
