Forever In Your Service
Forever In Your Service
Copyright © 2019 Sandra Antonelli
All right reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is coincidental.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Further Reading: Your Sterling Service
Also By Sandra Antonelli
Dedication
For my champion, Susan Garbanzo.
Chapter 1
If anything were to be the death of him, it would be this damned tree.
Dripping wet, Kitt shoved open the front door of his Maresfield Garden flat and dragged the spindly thing inside. A bough sprang up and snagged the chair beneath the coat rack. Tree and chair thumped onto the edge of the Persian carpet and polished wood floor. A puddle formed. He righted the chair and swiped his wet chin with his shoulder.
He’d sent Mae a message in the wee hours of the morning: Breakfast at 7. She had been here for some time, the heat on to counter an unseasonal October cold snap. Breakfast things were set near the big bay window in the sitting room, the table laid with his vintage blue and white Minton. The Jersey butter, the little crystal pots of her homemade orange and ginger marmalade, the spicy scent of Chelsea buns, the splendid aroma of coffee, it was all there, welcoming him home. He ambled into the kitchen, wet and grimy, rainwater dribbling down the back of his neck.
Clad in an atypical butler’s uniform of crisp navy-blue shirt-dress and Doc Martens, her blonde hair in a French braid, reading glasses hanging from a long gold chain, she turned, smoothing her short white apron. If anyone were to be the death of him, it would be this damned woman. Efficient, intelligent, contrary, clever, she was a bloody nuisance.
And he loved her.
“Good morning, Mae,” he said.
“Good morning.” She put on her glasses, peering at him, her hazel eyes surveying the slice on his chin, the raw, red state of his knuckles, the rope-burn on his wrist, the pine needles and black dirt smearing his neck. She knew his job as a Risk Assessment Specialist for Regent’s Park Consortium sometimes sent him to remote and often dangerous parts of the world, places where people tried to kill each other for land, valuable commodities, or different religious beliefs. She was aware Risk Assessment Specialist was a euphemism for Intelligence Officer and Regent’s Park Consortium was Her Majesty’s Government. He’d returned from trips in far worse condition, battered, bruised, lip split, eye black. However, soaking wet and spattered with pine needles was new.
She reached for the coffee carafe and poured a cup. Then she smoothed her apron again and handed him a towel rather than the coffee. “Trouble with your girly sports car?”
“Trouble with a girl in a sports car.” He blotted his face and rubbed his head with the cloth. “Did you miss me, Mae?”
“Not in the least.”
With a laugh, he traded the towel for a cup of her blessed coffee.
She draped terrycloth over her shoulder. “Now then. You have coffee. Do get on with frying my eggs.”
“You did miss me. I’m so pleased.” He had a long, savouring sip of the black brew she’d made, voicing his appreciation with a low sound.
“I’m very hungry and,” she removed her reading glasses, tucking them on the chain around her neck, “you’ve been away for two weeks.”
“Yes, two whole weeks of having to fry your own eggs.”
“You know you could make that sound dirtier.”
“Aren’t I dirty enough?” He peeled a tiny leaf from the side of his neck and spread his arms wide, cup in hand. “Just look at me.”
“I haven’t stopped looking at you since you came into the kitchen.”
He smiled widely, genuinely. “I suppose you’d have kissed me already if I hadn’t been covered in gutter waste and snow.”
“It’s snowing?”
“It was in Geneva.”
“Switzerland. I see. Tell me about the girl in the convertible.”
“Ah. The girl in the convertible. That’s why you haven’t kissed me yet.”
“Oddly, I see it as you haven’t kissed me yet.”
“Why, I’m covered in filth, Mae.”
“It’s the filth I’m curious about.”
“As long as you stay curious.” He set his coffee on the worktop. “I drove all night to come home to you. Shall I bathe or would you prefer my grubby, oil-stinking hands on you first?” Kitt took a step toward her and began to strip, pulling a wet, blue shirt over his head.
“Perhaps I’ll make your breakfast instead of you making mine.” Mae took the dirty shirt from his red fingers, ignoring the scrapes and raw scratches across his abdomen.
“Oh, scrambled eggs, the lady loves me.”
“Yes, and you love my scrambled eggs.”
“The eggs. Mae. The eggs in Switzerland were all boiled. Boiled eggs are so...boiled.” He unbuttoned the waist of his muddied trousers and then toed off his shoes. “I’ll be leaving again this morning, so I hope to make the most of the time we have before Bryce arrives.” He kicked his shoes aside and looked down at his sodden feet. He’d left streaks of grime across the white tiles. “I’ve made a mess on your floor, Mrs Valentine.”
“You live here. It’s your floor.”
“It’s your flat I rent,” Kitt glanced over his shoulder, “and I’ve trailed the mess through your house, my dear landlady.”
“You were that eager to cook my breakfast?”
“I was more eager,” he reached out and took her hand, “to have your coffee.”
She closed her fingers around his.
Kitt smiled again. He had smiled a lot in the last few months. “I want to show you something,” he said, smiling.
Mae snorted, and as expected, he drew her out of the kitchen, toward his bedroom, along the mucky trail he’d made across the floor, over the tiles and blond polished wood, along the muddy footprints that dotted the green and cream Persian hall runner. When he halted outside the bedroom, she pulled her hand from his. “Is there’s something you want to tell me?” she said.
With a chuckle, he slid an arm around her waist, pulling her near, pressing her warmth to his bare, cool chest. “She was a pretty girl in a classic little Triumph TR3, but she had no proper idea how to change a flat tyre. She neglected to shove a chock behind the rear wheel and the car rolled back and into my Bentley. Despite how I’d lashed it, the damned thing blew off the roof, into a pothole full of mud, and got run over by a lorry. I salvaged what I could. It’s half its original size.”
“You lashed a little sports car to the roof of a Bentley Continental GT?”
“No. I lashed that to the roof of my Bentley.” Kitt turned Mae toward the front door, where the ragged spruce tree lay upon the rug, and pointed.
Laughter sputtered from her nose then burst from her mouth. “Where did you find a Christmas tree in the middle of O
ctober? Wait.” She held up a hand. “Do spies even celebrate Christmas?”
He slipped his hands around her waist, his chin on her head. “This one does now. And I want to have a happy Christmas. Marry me.”
Air rushed from her in a half-laugh, half-gasp, and she twisted about, her bright smile lighting up what passed for his silly dark soul, as she had for the last three years. She laid a hand on his cheek, smiling that brilliant, beautiful smile, laughing, “No.”
“No?” Kitt laughed too. He’d spent hours thinking this through, but, somehow, he’d forgotten Mae wasn’t one for grand gestures or extravagant productions. As a butler, she’d worked in a world often filled with pretention and ostentation, but in her own life she preferred simple. She liked good manners and old-fashioned customs. A spontaneous proposal wasn’t simple, traditional, or even good manners.
“Yes. I understand,” he said, pulling away to kneel, damp trousers pinching.
She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you dare.”
With a faint grin, he straightened. “I may fail at being romantic, but I do have a ring.”
Still squinting, her mouth pursed. “Show me.”
“It was my great-grandmother’s. My sister wanted it. As far as she’s concerned I’d never have use for it, but it was my father’s grandmother’s, not her father’s grandmother’s.”
Mae picked errant pine needles stuck to one of the gilt-framed, hand-painted maps of eighteenth-century Europe on the wall. She snorted, wiping her fingers on the towel over her shoulder. “You once said you had a brother, now there’s a sister. This is what you do, feed me tiny morsels about yourself at the oddest times, and tell me nothing if I ask, so I’m ignoring that bit of historical bait.”
“I’m not accustomed to sharing things about myself. I’m out of practice. I can tell you more when I no longer have secrets to keep. It’s for your own good, for your safety.”
“Let me see the ring.”
Kitt sighed. “She’s my half-sister, but still, she’s the only sister I’ve ever had.”
“There’s no ring, is there?” Mae crossed her arms.
“I have a ring.”
“May I see it?” She pulled the towel from her shoulder and tossed it on the chair by the door.
Kitt rubbed a bit of grime from his throat. “It’s Edwardian. Filigreed platinum and diamond. It’s very different from the ring Caspar gave you.” He grimaced immediately. Why was he being so ham-handed? He’d never been this sure about something in his life, yet his clumsy performance contested his confidence. This particular manner of nervousness was new to him. “Forgive me. I know it’s very poor taste to mention your deceased husband. I’m not quite sure of the etiquette when it comes to proposing to a widow. Etiquette is your domain.”
“And lies and secrecy are yours. I don’t believe you have a brother or sister any more than I believe you have a ring.”
“You wound me. I said I would never lie to you. I have both half-siblings and a ring. Perhaps I ought to take you to bed to continue this discussion.”
“Perhaps it’s best we go on as we are.”
“Meaning?”
“We go on as we are.”
“Meaning me in my rented flat, you living next door as my landlady. Me doing intelligence work, you renovating the flat downstairs? Me frying your eggs, you making my coffee?”
She inhaled, as if she were about to agree, but said nothing, eyes wandering to the leather-bound collection of antique atlases on the bookshelves near the window-seat.
“Yes, yes you would prefer to go on that way. Why?”
She sighed. “How can you speak of marriage when you are already committed to country and Queen?”
“I don’t sleep with her and it’s you I love. Very much.”
A groove appeared between her brows as she looked at him, chin tilted, index finger rubbing over her thumbnail.
“Ah, an expression that says ‘yes, but.’ I hadn’t thought there’d be one of those.”
“Are you surprised?”
“No, I’m curious.”
“As long as you stay curious.”
“And the rest?”
“I haven’t quite come to terms with certain things yet, Kitt.”
“Such as?”
She squinted. “You mean aside from your history with women?”
“Right. Of course.” Kitt clamped his back teeth together. He’d never considered she’d still be thinking about his philandering past. Had he somehow given her recent cause to? “My history concerns you.”
Her squint faded. “Yes.” She looked at him, her expression serious.
He refrained from reaching for her hand, placing a palm on the back of the chair beside the door instead. “All right. I suppose that’s fair. Based on what you would consider my chequered past with women, you might believe I’d stop wasting my time and move on to someone younger than you soon—or look for someone younger than you later. I promise you. You have the lump of stone that is my heart.”
Her brow arched.
“Too trite?”
She gave an airy laugh. “This is not about your playboy past with women, or an anxiety that you’ll run off with another woman half my age. I don’t doubt that you love me, and you should never doubt that I love you.”
“Then marry me.”
“For a man highly-trained to listen, you haven’t listened at all.”
“I’ve listened. You would prefer to go on as we are.” He nodded once. “Here are the important facts.”
“And there’s the you I know. Do go on.”
“I love you. You love me. You’re afraid of that. I admit I find it rather daunting myself, but again the facts. I love you. You love me. However trite it sounds, we can face the fear together. Marry me. Please.”
“Kitt.”
Kitt looked at her for a long moment. “What is it?” he said, softly. “The nightmares?”
“Yes.” She chewed her top lip for a moment, her gaze blunt. “I’ve written about what happened, like you suggested, made a chronicle, and that’s helped. But I still struggle with having killed two men, whereas killing is an everyday reality for you.”
His finger tapped the back of the chair. “I don’t kill people every day.”
Her gaze remained direct, arms unfolding. “My writing it all down or not, what you do for a living isn’t quite yet fathomable, and it’s even less fathomable in terms of marriage.”
“Bryce is married,” he said, as if he were five years-old with a five-year-old’s logic, and ever so casually, so coolly, he shrugged one shoulder. “James Bond was married.”
“James Bond’s wife died.”
“Ah, you’re afraid you’ll die, be killed by villainous henchmen, is that it?”
She scraped bottom teeth over her top lip, brows arching.
“Yes, let’s forget I said that.”
“Bryce is not a field officer, you are not a desk man, and I can’t get beyond how much I liked killing the Sicilian who was trying to kill you. And I did like it. But my nightmares aren’t about that. I did what I had to do. However disturbing, I know that. What I write about now, the nightmares I have, are about you.”
“Me?”
“Three months ago, I knew nothing of what you really did for a living. Now I live in this dichotomous world of loving you and hating what you do—not to mention hating what I did. Three months ago, I expected you’d return home when you finished a job because I didn’t know better. Now I know better. Now I know there’s a chance you might never come home.”
“I’ve always come home to you. I’ll keep coming home to you.”
She looked at him dully. “I am aware you are not...without skill, yet I can’t help but think about the time when men kept Tasering you, or when men tried to drown you with a fish named Shirley Bassey, or when you were handcuffed to a chair and a Sicilian almost strangled the life from you before I killed him.”
“All of those things happened on the same day.”
“Yes, they did, and that day I thought you were dead.”
“What makes you think something like that will happen again?”
Mae burst out laughing. “I know what a terrible spy you are.”
He pursed his mouth briefly. “I’m a very good intelligence officer and I am very good at what I do—unless you’re there.”
She whispered his first name, which meant she was gravely serious. Goody. “I understand,” he said. “This is my last field assignment, Mae. I’ve decided that already.”
“You think you’re getting too old for this work, but you’re far too young to retire.”
“I began working on this before you and I became us. I have to finish what I started and, realistically, it’s time to get out. I have to retire sometime.”
“Thank you for not saying ‘you had to die sometime.’ Time to get out and do what, exactly? You get bored sitting in your office doing paperwork; it makes you feel sluggish, old. Inactivity would make you snap.”
“Paperwork is one of Dante’s lesser-known sub-circles of Hell. I’m five years younger than you and you retired when you were my present age. So I can retire from fieldwork or I can resign.”
“And we’re back to inactivity. I retired and then went back to work. For you. I’d never ask you to retire or resign.” Mae shook her head.
“No, you wouldn’t, and you haven’t. This was my choice to make. Trust me.”
“We both know no one in your profession ever really resigns or retires. The job is, so to speak, yours for life.” She looked away for a moment, heaving a breathy half-laugh. “I do trust you, but I’m not so sure you trust me, or anyone for that matter, and doing what you do, that makes sense. I trust you with my life, yet I don’t trust you with yours.”
“I trust you, Mae, and I assure you I have a very keenly developed sense of self-preservation.”
“I lost Caspar,” Mae shook her head again, “and I can’t...I can’t... Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he said. It had been a very long while since she’d mentioned her deceased polygamist husband and Kitt frowned. “You don’t want spend your life loving dead men in silver-framed photos you keep on the desk in your sitting room.”
Forever in Your Service Page 1
