by Alys Murray
“I’m afraid I do have some questions for you if you don’t mind.”
“Shoot.” He returned to the car’s engine, a performative gesture. He figured he wouldn’t make a great impression if he stopped working as soon as the boss came in the room.
“I’ll be honest with you. When we listed this post, we were expecting someone older. Statelier. Frankly, we expected a pensioner who would contract the hard stuff out to a shop. What are you doing here?”
“I like fixing things.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie. Daniel did like fixing things and he always had. But usually his tools of choice were his voice and his guitar. Music had a kind of healing power to it, the ability to stitch hearts back together and transform a group of estranged, singular people into a singular, swaying crowd. Thomas continued his line of questioning.
“And you’re an Oxford man?”
“…I was born and raised here, yeah.”
“But you didn’t attend the university?”
“I didn’t go to university.”
“I see.”
I see. The death knell of his prospects here rang in his quickly reddening ears. This was where most of his job interviews ended. The moment they heard he hadn’t progressed, they dropped him without even bothering to hear about the time he’d spent teaching himself, all the books he’d read, all of the study and devotion to learning he’d brought upon himself without the help of a university tutor. Nervous tingles tickled his tongue into a self-defense.
“But you can depend on me, you know. I’m a dependable guy. I’ve worked since the day I turned sixteen and I read like it’s my job and—”
“No. I don’t doubt you at all. I’m just…”
“Just…?”
Resurfacing from beneath the hood of the car, he watched as Thomas paced a small tract of the garage, his brow furrowed into thick lines of wrinkles. The sudden shift from lighthearted interrogation to reflective distress was strange enough to draw all of Daniel’s attention.
“My sister’s in the house a lot and I worry about her. I just want to make sure whoever we’ve hired is someone I can trust.”
The hairs on the back of his neck rose at the implication, though he didn’t let the offense seep into his voice. “And a university education makes someone trustworthy?”
“No. Actually, in this case, I feel safer knowing you’re not like the sort she usually hangs out with,” he said, more to himself than anything else.
Daniel didn’t quite know what to say to that or even if he was supposed to say anything, but he tucked the remark into the back of his mind for later examination.
“So, you’ve always wanted to be a mechanic, then?”
“No, actually. I’m a musician. Or, at least, I’m trying to be.”
“Ah, a starving artist, eh?”
“Something like that.”
Leave it to a future duke with every privilege and opportunity in the world to put it in such blunt terms. Still, the blunt terms weren’t wrong. Daniel had spent every free hour since he turned sixteen working and scrimping and saving so that he could try to make something of himself as a musician.
Lately, writer’s block was keeping him from writing anything that felt real or true or even halfway close to playable, but one day, he knew all of the hours he’d spent slinging coffees and stocking bookshelves and fixing carburetors would pay off. It had to.
“I play a bit of piano myself. Or I did. Not for a while now, anyway.” Something about the way Thomas said that told Daniel that there was more to that story than he was letting on, but he wasn’t in any position to ask follow-up questions. “Have you written anything I’ve heard of?”
“Not yet. Still looking for my muse, you know?”
“Well, if you play half as well as you seem to fix cars, I’m sure we’ll be looking for a new curator in no time.” Thomas then extended his hand, not even making a hint of fuss when he ended up with a hand covered in car grease. “Daniel, we’re happy to have you on board. If you need anything, submit a request to Mrs. Long and she’ll see that you get whatever it is. I know these cars can be expensive, so consider this a full approval of whatever you’ll need to get them working again.”
“Thank you.”
With that, the younger Dubarry headed for the door, taking the steps two at a time with the grace of someone who lived in this house all of their life. But, just before he left, he turned and asked Daniel for one more favor, a favor that left him with more questions than when this day began.
“And on a personal note, if you do see my sister around, do be gentle with her. She’s a little lost at the moment.”
Only an hour had passed before Daniel found himself taking Thomas up on his offer. If there was any hope of saving the 1943 Coupe—and he hoped there was because the vehicle was a gorgeous piece of machinery, the kind of car someone like Cab Calloway would have driven on an extravagant night out—they’d need no less than sixteen parts, and those would probably have to be created bespoke. No one was exactly making transistors for these things anymore.
So, he set out for Mrs. Long’s office. He vaguely remembered the path from the day he interviewed. But, upon entering the house, he realized two things: one, he had no idea how to find Mrs. Long’s office, and two, even if he did remember the way, all of his visual post markers wouldn’t have been there anyway, because, apparently, he’d missed a wild party last night.
For the most part, the house was still and quiet, broken only by the sounds of Daniel’s boots crunching over broken glass and discarded plastic cups as he searched through the ancestral halls for the nondescript white door of Mrs. Long’s office. It was amazing, in a way. Here, they had a home older than most of the buildings in Oxford, complete with crystal chandeliers and flowing grand staircases, but it looked like it had been the site of a university rager just after the end of midterms.
As he passed the open doors of a dining room, he let out a long, low whistle. There had to be at least thirty empty wine bottles lined up like bowling pins at the table’s far end.
“I guess my invitation must have gotten lost in the mail,” he muttered to himself.
Leaving the dining room behind, he spotted an open door farther along the hallway. Surely, the housekeeper would leave her door open. He beelined for that door, afraid of being caught and accused of snooping or stealing or whatever it was the duke thought poor people did when they entered his house.
But the open doors didn’t frame a modest office. They framed a small smoking room where six men slept, slung over couches and chairs as they snored or muttered in their sleep.
They weren’t the only ones there, though.
In a chair placed near the far wall, a woman stared lazily out of a window, her face halfway turned from Daniel, the edges and outlines of her features the only thing made visible to him. She was the only one conscious enough to hear the whispering notes of the Beatles’ “Drive My Car” playing from an old record player in the corner of the room.
The song was infectious, but she didn’t tap her toes or hum under her breath. Instead, she just stared out of the window. Waiting for something to happen.
Thomas’s words rang out in his mind. My sister is a little lost at the moment. If that was true, and if this was that sister, Daniel could only agree. She looked very lost indeed. Slowly, he backed away from the room. And no matter how he told himself that he needed to focus, that he needed to do his job and collect his paycheck so he could keep playing his music at night, so that he could one day reach out and grasp his dream, the Beatles’ catchy refrain played on repeat in his mind the rest of the day, distracting him, pulling him back toward the woman with the lost gaze.
Chapter Three
Sam didn’t sleep that night. Every time her eyes grew heavy, she remembered her pictures going up in smoke, and a fresh wave of pain kept her awake. All around her, the men slept, uncomfortably strung across their chairs and chaises lounges, but she kept her hazy eyes focused on the windo
w. In the corner of the smoking salon, her father’s hand-me-down Victrola attempted to spin an original copy of the Beatles’ Rubber Soul album. The tinny music of Paul’s guitar as it strummed the sickening chords of “In My Life” gave the sleepy suite its only sound.
Sam considered getting up and flicking the needle from the sloppily twirling record. It always marked her as a freak, but she didn’t really…like music. She preferred silence or stupid conversation to sappy songs about love and moonlight. People could sing about it as much as they wanted, but she knew what love was. She’d seen what so-called love did to her mother, and when she looked into her father’s eyes, she knew he’d never felt anything like what the love songs said it was. Never mind the six men around her, six men she could never picture having any tenderness toward anyone, much less someone they’d want to hold forever.
Cloudy annoyance urged her to strangle the words in Paul McCartney’s throat and break John Lennon’s guitar over her knee. As it was, her limbs tingled, and the world spun every time she even thought about standing up, so the music remained. The Beatles won their unspoken battle with the sprawled woman in the overstuffed armchair.
“So.” She took advantage of the quiet and the early morning sun bleeding gold through the brocade curtains. Her words were barely audible or comprehensible as human speech, but somehow the assembled parties of half-awake men managed to understand her. “When does it happen?”
“When does what happen, Piggy?”
“The formal initiation. When am I official?”
Even bogged down by the weight of the night’s escapades, Sam fought to bottle her own enthusiasm. In twenty-four hours, she would be fitted for her blue suit. A real, honest-to-God member of the Society. Victory tasted sweet on her tongue, and even the bitter backwash of liquor and regret couldn’t ruin it. With her eyes on the window, she couldn’t exactly see everyone shift uncomfortably in their seats, but the shaken timber of their quiet hums and the squeaking of their suits against the leather settees and armchairs painted the picture anyway.
“Oh.”
“Uh.”
“Well.”
“This was my Rage,” she confirmed, not trusting herself to move her head in a nod or open her mouth any wider than she had to, for fear she’d get sick all over the Victorian carpet. “I’m in now.”
“Not yet.”
To her surprise, it wasn’t Captain who spoke. It was Graham, not that it mattered who made the declaration. A dangerous streak of injustice blazed behind her cool mask of indifference. Maybe they mean you’re not in today… Maybe they are holding out until tomorrow. She tried to bargain with herself, tried to see the sunny side, tried to partition out the benefit of the doubt. These guys didn’t deal in the sunny side, or in optimism. They dealt in making people jump through fiery hoops only to land in a pit of snakes.
“What?”
“You have one last task.” Captain spoke this time, his posh British accent as smooth as poisoned butter and twice as deadly.
Sam winced. Was this when they finally took advantage of her, like Thomas always promised they would? Was this her inevitable downfall, the price of being a woman in this strange, foreign land of rich men?
“Listen, I’m not going to have sex with you,” she slurred. Was she hungover or still drunk? She couldn’t tell for sure. “I may be wasted, but even wasted me has standards.”
Standards had nothing to do with it. Well, maybe standards were part of her refusal. She wasn’t going to touch any of these guys, but… In another life, when she didn’t know anything about him, she probably would have fallen at Captain’s feet. She was his perfect target: the frumpy, overlooked girl with daddy issues. He had the entire Downton Abbey package: a title, good looks, and charm. Too bad she knew about everything rotting beneath his glistening surface.
“You have to bring someone to the Mud Duck Ball.”
“Fine.” Her hand fluttered in what she hoped was the vague direction of the least offensive member of their party. “PJ, you want to go with me to the Muck Ruck Ball?”
“Mud Duck. We hold one every year. We court one of our servants for a while, make them fall for us, feed their hopes, invite them to a fancy ball, and then we vote on who brought the worst date. Whoever she is gets to be Queen of the Mud Ducks. It’s a tradition. Goes all the way back to 1864. You know, it’s really quite something.”
Vomit burned toward the back of her mouth. It wasn’t from the alcohol poisoning she’d given herself.
“Mud Ducks.” Graham chuckled, as though the archaic slang was something very clever indeed. “They aren’t quite swans and have to cover themselves with makeup to hide their faces. Though… I suppose you can bring a man. Makeup is not a requirement.”
“And if I bring someone… Then I’m in?”
“Oh, no, Piggy. You have to win.”
Under the guise of procuring some kind of breakfast, Sam escaped the suddenly tight air of the smoking salon. First order of business… A shower. She reeked of day-old champagne and cigars. Another sniff of herself and surely her stomach would try to escape from between her teeth.
Once her skin was clean and her hair sweet with the smell of vanilla, she felt incrementally better. At least, she no longer stumbled every time she moved her feet and didn’t have to brace the hallway walls for support.
If only her mind were so easy to clean. Mud Duck Ball. She shuddered. At first, it seemed…unbearably cruel. To convince someone you were in love with them, only to shatter the illusion in such a public way.
But then… There was the other perspective. The perspective of her calcified heart, the person she’d created to survive Animos. Maybe someone who believed in something as stupid as love needed to be hurt. It would teach them a worthwhile lesson in reality. It was like a vaccine, a little bit of controlled heartbreak to make the person stronger in the long run.
Amidst this storm of feelings, she arrived in her brother’s suite, a grand set of rooms that appeared straight from a Jane Austen illustration. Stiff and sturdy, composed of harsh lines and limited ornamentation done up in blue and white, it was as British as they came. Not a speck of dust or stray sock littered the glistening surfaces. Even though he sat with his full weight on the bed, he didn’t disturb the perfectly tightened sheets or their hospital corners. It could have been a museum, and not a bedroom used by a real, human man for all a stranger knew.
After being around him for two years, she’d never known him to drink more than a glass of wine or wear his bow ties crooked. He even went to church every Sunday, rain or shine. A six-mile run commenced every morning at the manor gates at five fifteen on the stroke. He was scheduled, predictable. How the man went from an Animos regent to this, she would never understand.
When she entered, he drew his gaze from his computer screen. With the reflection of the screen playing on his glasses, she couldn’t get a read on him. Was he still as disappointed in her as he was yesterday?
“You’re alive. Having fun?”
“You didn’t tell me about this Mud Duck Ball bullshit.” She sank into the two-hundred-year-old blue-and-gold bergère armchair situated beside the unlit fireplace, folding her arms with all the dignity of a pouting child.
“The ball is where you cross the line?”
Ah. So, disappointment it is, then.
“Don’t,” she warned her brother in dark tones. The rumbling danger in her one syllable made her sound more like Captain than herself.
Off came Thomas’s glasses, and there it was. That look again, the one she’d not been able to escape since she announced her intentions of following in her family’s footsteps. She shut out the cold, broken-egg sensation of his focused accusation. If she was going to survive this, if she was going to see glinting approval in her father’s eyes, soak in the glow of having a family again… If she was ever going to belong, she couldn’t let anything affect her. Not her brother. Not some mystery Mud Duck she’d have to destroy. Not even her own feelings. They didn’t have a
ny place in the Animos Society, and they didn’t have any place in her heart.
“Hard to grow morals halfway through hell, isn’t it?”
“I’m not a bad person.”
Her arms were no longer folded because she was pouting. Her arms were folded because it was her only way of defending herself. Thomas was not in the mood to coddle her, and he was slinging arrows faster than Robin Hood.
“No, you are.” His computer snapped shut, a violent, jerking reaction that made Sam jump in her seat. “You’re in Animos. They’re all bad people. That’s the basic criteria for joining.”
“You were in it.”
“I never said I was a good person, Samantha,” he growled, loud enough for her to hear but low enough to shake her to her very core.
There. If this had been a movie, the young woman would have frozen time and pulled the camera in closer, so the audience could see it. For so long, she had wondered how her straitlaced brother had ever been like the men waiting for her downstairs. But with one dark snap in his eyes, as if a menacing storm had suddenly broken through a haze of green trees, she saw it. Cruelty.
The only difference between him and Captain was that when Thomas unleashed it, he had the decency to look guilty immediately afterward. Straightening up, he tugged on the ends of his jacket, replacing his glasses on the bridge of his nose. His lips twitched into a smile, and in a flash, he became the happy-go-lucky brother she’d known for the last two years. With long strides, he crossed the room and perched on the arm of her chair, knocking into her shoulder conspiratorially.
“There’s no reason you have to keep it up. Kick them out, come to London with me.” He raised his eyebrows at her, a sure sign he was already planning whatever kind of mischief he could get them into in London. Ever since he found her in his father’s records and brought her to Oxford, he’d been trying to make up for lost time. Apparently, he’d always wanted a sister, and now that he had one, he was trying to create a lifetime’s worth of missing memories. Game nights. Pub crawls. Afternoon B-movie marathons. They’d even been to Disney World. Twice. As profound as the gestures were, her brother’s devotion wasn’t exactly helping in her quest to become the most cold-hearted bitch the Animos Society had ever seen. In fact, it was only making things harder. The temptation to abandon her father and just settle with having a brother was constant. “We’ll have a proper family vacation.”
