L'Amour Academie

Chapter VII

~*~

“Places everyone! Places please! This will be our last before we proceed to singing and poetry!” Madame Noemi said and clapped as the students bustled to their places.

  It has been a week of dancing and nursing bodily aches for Constance and her friends, and it has been a week of dreaming sapphire eyes, dancing fair maidens and being teased for tripping for Albert.  

“Oi Deauville! Are going to trip again? We’ve prepared a mattress for you!” Hermann Vankel, a boy of French-German descent, shouted across the hall as Albert was walking back to his place. Boys and girls alike snickered at this.

 Albert stopped in his tracks, and everything happened as fast as lightning. Albert had spent the last days of teasing by completely ignoring them, but he had heard enough taunts and he’d half a mind to have a word with Vankel, then the other half to punch him hard. He walked fast to Vankel, who was smirking at him as he walked faster towards him, his fist curled up in balls at his sides and his face red with fury.

Then somebody held him by the upper arm and dragged him back, a difficult feat for he is made of muscle.

The person who dragged him back released him, and he had a mind to unleash his fury. But instead of a man like Rene, he heard a lady’s voice scolding him.

“How dare-“  

“Jesus Christ! What were you thinking? You acted like a child! You should not have let Vankel’s words go to you like that!” Albert took a look at who was reprimanding him as though she were his mother, and it turned out to be Mademoiselle Constance.

“Who are you to reprimand me as if you are my mother?” Albert answered back.  

“Oh so does that mean I have no right to reprimand you just because you think I act like your mother?” Constance told him frostily. Unlike other girls, she didn’t stomp her little feet and created a loud scene, but instead dragged him to a corner and reprimanded him for his actions.  

“It’s not because I think you act like my mother. It’s because you basically have no right and that’s it. You and I are perfect strangers, called by last name.” Albert told her.  

“If it is because I am a woman then I am disgusted by you. If only I can change partners I would, but I thank God this is the last day then we can go back to our normal lives and sing and be poets in peace.” Constance sighed and went back to their places, standing still until they are given instructions. Albert sighed exasperated, and stood next to Constance as a partner should be.  

Music started playing from the gorgeous mahogany piano and from violins and cellos and the students lost themselves in the world of dance, most especially Constance who stood out from the slight tripping and stumbling on the hem of their dresses.  

They were wearing standard dress for class, varying in frilliness and flamboyance. Constance’s was in ivory and off-shouldered, made of soft velvet. The some parts of the skirt were gathered, and there were huge fabric flowers constructed delicately placed at numerous places.

To Albert’s eyes it was gorgeous because even though her hair can barely be told apart from the colour, it brought light to her dark eyes previously going darker because of anger, and it was beautiful.   The pianist, violinists and cellists played the musical piece’s last notes, and the dancers took their final bow and the gents latched their arms on the lady’s.  

“Magnifique!” Madame Noemi said, looking as though she will be on tears. Teaching for weeks on end certainly paid off. The other teachers were clapping proudly, smiling widely and proud of their students.