[RECAP: The school play was a huge success, and tomorrow it's the holidays!]
Still on a high from the performance and the excitement of getting to go home the next morning, Leonie, Mai and Figgy piled back into the dorm. The found Harry already there. Not part of the cast, she hadn't been able to attend the reception.
"So what did you think?" May asked, bouncing onto her bed. "Wasn't Leonie amazing?"
Harry's face showed a trace of guilt. "I'm really sorry, to all of you, but I had to skip out on it."
"What?!" Mai was horrified and about to be furious with her friend.
But Harry held something up. "This was why."
Leonie, who recognised the item instantly, felt her mouth drop open. "My letter? But where on earth did you get it?"
"That vile little blackmailer's dorm," Harry said. "I figured that this was the one safe chance I would get to retrieve it, with everyone else watching the play." She gave it to Leonie. "I know this might not solve the problem, but at least you've got it back, and she no longer has any actual evidence."
"Where did you find it?" Mai was burning to know.
"In the lining of her trunk. It seemed so obvious that it was actually the last place I looked. I ransacked her drawers, cupboard, under her mattress, everywhere. I even looked in the others' drawers. I knew it had to be there somewhere as she wouldn't risk hiding it anywhere else, or keeping it in her pocket if she had to change for the play," Harry said. "But there it was, finally, in her trunk. Such an obvious hiding place. I'm surprised Matron doesn't routinely check the bottom of every trunk when she makes her inspections. Even in my mother's schooldays they used to hollow out a space and hide cigarettes or even a hip flask of whisky in there."
Leonie was re-reading the letter that she knew by heart. It was so precious to her.
"I didn't read it," Harry assured her. "I did have to unfold it and glance at it, but I didn't see much more than the name."
"It's okay. It's not super explicit or anything," Leonie told her.
Mai was all eagerness to get a look. "Can we read it?"
Leonie guessed so. The others pored over it avidly, with mock swoons at the contents.
"He really is hung up on you, isn't he?" Harry said.
Figgy was thoughtful. "Suki is going to go ballistic when she finds out it's gone. She might go straight to Mother Benedict out of spite."
Harry shrugged. "She might, but she probably would have done so anyway. At least this way Leonie can more easily deny it, and we can back her up. She and Father Gabriel just need to ensure their story is straight. Also Suki won't notice immediately. I folded a blank piece of paper to take its place. She won't think to check it before she goes, it's always such a rush at the end of term, and her trunk was already packed."
"You should have written something on it," Mai said. "I can think of half a dozen things I would have liked to write to that bitch."
"I did consider it," Harry said. "But then I thought it might lend weight to her claim that a letter actually existed. I don't know if she would even shown it to her cronies. I suspect not, because she's always very sly and smug about stuff, and keeps it close to her chest."
"Next time, at least poison her tuck box."
The recovery of the letter was a high point to an already great evening. Leonie was so wound up with everything that had happened and was hopefully about to happen that she feared she would never sleep.
But the energy of performing and the weeks of stress of over Suki had exhausted her more than she released, and she fell into a deep sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
A deep sleep interrupted by wild, wicked dreams of a priest with piercing blue eyes and a body like a god. For some reason Leonie found herself wearing a nun's habit made of transparent black fabric. She couldn't hide her nakedness with it, and Gabriel was looking stern and telling her that she needed to be punished.
"Lie back and be still," he ordered her. "There is only one way you can atone for your wickedness."
"But I've done nothing wrong," Leonie was protesting.
"Then why do you show your nakedness to me? Why do you disgrace your order and your vows?"
Leonie was trying to tell him that she wasn't a nun and she had no idea how she had ended up wearing these robes. She could feel the coldness of the air through the thin fabric, and tried to cover herself but Gabriel pulled her arms away. Then he was lifting up her robes and Leonie was torn between wanting him and struggling against him. "It's wrong, you're a priest," she was telling him.
Just as he was moving closer to her, over her body, his face lowering towards hers, something roused her and she woke. Only to find out that she had kicked her blankets off the bed.
No wonder she had felt so cold in her dream. Shivering, Leonie pulled them back up, and hoped the dream would restart once she fell asleep again. It was only a few hours before she would be with him for real.
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We're getting there... some quality *alone time* for Father Gabriel and Leonie is happening soon...