The Writer and the Rake

by Shehanne Moore

  That was when it came to her. Escape. She had to escape. She stubbed an oaken hole with the glowing cigarette in the chair arm and tightened her dressing gown.

  ~ ~ ~

  Christian and Clarence. How Mitchell Killgower detested their very names. How he struggled in ways the world would never understand to treat them with a modicum of civility. Labored with a force that was Herculean to speak to them. Duke and Duchess of Killem—what he wanted to do every time he bloody saw them.

  No children and only a great nephew to inherit. Sad, since the only thing great about their actual nephew, Mitchell, was disappointment.

  Today though Mitchell yanked the coach door open before Dainty could say, ‘that’s their toff-ships come to visit, sir, better get out the repellent.’ Today, seeing as he could wipe them afterwards, he reached inside the musty interior and pressed his lips to the back of Christian’s black gloved hand.

  “Mitchell, is something wrong?”

  “When pleasure is about to be mine, dear aunt, why would you think so?”

  “Because despite you being married to my sister, I wouldn’t know what your pleasures are. She never said. That you gave her any either. ”

  He deliberately pulled her closer so he could smell the mothballs she used to keep more than the moths at bay. The smell that rose from her black dress and cape, the black plaits that ringed her head like a halo, like a creature from the crypt. The smell he loathed but was sweet as roses today.

  “Of course, Christian, you always were starchier than a sheet with all the personality of a biscuit weevil, but your latest trick is low, even for you.”

  “Believe me, the only trick I wish I knew was making you disappear.”

  She yanked her hand free and stepped down onto the mossy flagstones, with two swishes of her fusty black skirt.

  “I’m not going to.” He offered his most ingenious stare. “Certainly not now. Probably not ever. Not with what I’ve got on you.”

  “Simple minds will believe anything.”

  “Well, if anyone should know, you should.” He glanced at his uncle slowly climbing out of the coach, cane in his trembling, sun-spotted hand. His silver cravat pin, bearing the Killgower crest shining in the faint sun, his hair even whiter than the last time Mitchell saw him last week. “Let’s hope Clarence there believes you. Uncle,” he stepped forward, “how are you?”

  “Fine till I saw you. Where’s the boy?”

  “Fleming?”

  When the pleasure was in waiting for Christian to squirm, Mitchell refrained from saying, skulking somewhere, terrified of the fact there’s a woman in his room and I have the key.

  Whether Christian had put that Carter woman up to this, or not— with eyes like a viper’s it was hard to tell—he couldn’t lose. He’d no idea of the state of her marriage. Christian was thirty, two years younger than him, thirty younger than Clarence but there were no children. Mitchell was willing to bet Killaine House on the fact she’d have trouble explaining Carter. If Christian didn’t have trouble, Fleming would.

  How long had Mitchell been waiting for this moment? Long enough to turn to the kind of dust Christian and Clarence exuded. Long enough to take a moment to savor his victory, sweep his gaze over first one, then the other. Today was his day. He lowered his head as if it pained him beyond the core of his being, to reveal what he was about to, but some things must be borne, then he flicked his gaze upwards, parted his lips.

  “I’m here, Great Uncle Clarence. So sorry to keep you and Great Aunt Christian waiting.”

  Mitchell jerked his head round. Fleming ambled towards them, through the early spring sunshine, dressed in Mitchell’s brown breeches and slate-grey jacket. Mitchell’s best shirt too, when he’d put the boy out of his room wearing a sheet. All wasn’t lost though. Unless Fleming had also put his hand in Mitchell’s coat pocket, the key was there. Whatever skin-saving act Fleming affected, Mitchell would break it. Unlike his son, who was doubtless trembling in shoes that were also Mitchell’s, he hadn’t a nervous bone in his body, not one he’d show anyone, anyway. He fixed on his stoniest stare. “I thought I told you to stay indoors, boy. There’s things I need to discuss with your great aunt and uncle here. Now—”

  “I know you do, Father, but I wanted to see Great Uncle Clarence and Aunt Christian. You know how much I love them and long to see them.” Fleming pressed a kiss on Christian’s hand as if she was a princess.

  “I’ll refrain from saying you must be the only one, Son,” Mitchell muttered. “Now then—”

  “Sorry, Father?” Fleming raised his head. “Were you saying something of importance?”

  “Quite a lot actually, boy. Now—”

  He broke off .The tinkling of porcelain was followed by a screech like a cat being skinned alive and fed to a pack of hounds. Something white flashed past his eyes and crashed into the ghostly gorse bushes, he’d meant to prune last autumn. It wasn’t Christian’s Ming Dynasty vase, because that already lay in shards around the withered bush, and it moved, crawling about on all fours, so it wasn’t dead. A rope made of bed sheets dangled from Fleming’s window where the vase usually sat.

  “My God, Mitchell.” Christian’s buttress of gleaming black hair plaits froze to her head. “Is that a woman?”

  “I— ” With an arse like that? “Well, I don’t think it’s a man. Do you, son?”

  “My God.” Christian grasped her skirts. “Did she just fall from that window there?”

  “What window? Oh, that window?” He glanced upwards as Christian sped into the ghostly wilderness. “That’s the boy’s window. Isn’t it, boy?”

  “Fleming? Are you saying Fleming, not you, had a woman in his room? And now she has fallen from that window?” Christian screeched to a halt. “I do not—I cannot—believe this.”

  Mitchell nodded gravely. If Christian’s jaw dropped lower, he’d be picking that up from the tangled grasses. She was certainly putting on as fine a show of not knowing Carter, as Carter, was of not knowing her. As for him, while the best thing he could do was stand, let the fact the Carter woman had tried to escape him, root his feet to the spot, it wouldn’t pay to let her off, not when he had this. He scrunched forward.

  “It is what I was hoping to talk to you about. Just some little difficulties we have encountered recently. It is of course, something that pains me to have to report.”

  “My God, Mitchell!” Uncle Clarence stood stock still, unable to say more.

  Christian clutched a bony hand to her fluttering throat. “Mitchell, who, what is she?”

  Mitchell tweaked a branch. Brittany Carter may have crawled behind a gorse bush in her bid to hide, she was still quite a sight. The turban flapped and she appeared to be naked apart from the white dressing gown. It would spoil everything if he did not offer his blankest stare, though. “Oh, the boy here will tell you, won’t you, son?”

  “Me?” Fleming squinted.

  “I hope so seeing as I don’t have any other sons I know of. Not here anyway.”

  “But . . .”

  “Well, son?” Mitchell dug his thumbs firmly into his waistcoat pockets. “What’s it to be? Your great aunt and uncle don’t have all day. They’re important people with a lot to do, you know.”

  “I—I will.” Fleming looked right and left, then right again. A cowed dog. A beaten warrior. What was he going to say that would explain this after all? Nothing. Carter, caught fair and square in the bushes, either. He cleared his throat, sidled forward, as uncertain as an unsolved mathematics principle for all he attempted to calmly beam at Christian and Clarence as if he had this in hand. He couldn’t. Finally, Mitchell had this. While not given to joyous outbursts as a rule, he could hardly contain himself. “If…if you say so, Father.”

  “I do. We should all confess to our misdeeds. I’ve had to many a time.�
�

  “I know. You’re so right.”

  “Well, boy?”

  “Great Aunt Christian, there really is no need to be afraid. Come. See for yourself.” Fleming held out his hand. He beamed from one end of his face to the other. The kind of unhurried beam Mitchell loathed but knew was just bravado. “This is Mistress Carter. Mistress Brittany Carter. Or should I say Killgower. And she is Father’s new wife.”

  Chapter 6

  “Wife? Mitchell?”

  As Christian spoke, Brittany strove to look composed, serene. She’d fallen down the rope, somehow broken that vase, nearly broken her neck, except she couldn’t break her neck. She’d already been murdered by Sebastian. These things were bad enough. Had she mentioned that Mitchell Killgower was transfixed with horror?

  “She is not—”

  “But she is very, very nice, Aunt Christian, the mother I never had, so we are all getting along . . .getting along quite famously in fact.”

  Brittany struggled to her feet, dug in her pocket, fished out her fags. What a bloody awful thing it was being dead. Even her fag was so bent, getting it between her lips was such a mammoth task, it took three attempts. Five if she counted keeping her hand steady enough to ping her lighter and suck long and hard, wreathing herself in delicious, such needed smoke. She sucked even harder, while she considered her next move. It wasn’t biting her nails, or being pushed into the carriage. She’d a new slant on the carriage. The fag was just what she needed to find her cool and face down whatever these things were. She’d already come to think, ‘ghoul one’ and ‘ghoul two.’ Mitchell made it ‘ghoul three.’

  “Are you sure your new mother is nice, dear, only . . . only she looks . . . Well, I really don’t know what to say.”

  “Believe me, darling, the feeling’s mutual.”

  Mitchell‘s eyes were icy as polar caps. “May I say, for the benefit of those who are hard of hearing, this woman is not—”

  “Your wife?” The uncle’s shining, silver cravat pin nearly pinged from his cravat. He grasped his cane so tightly his knuckles were white as his hair. “I should sincerely hope not. You know our terms and conditions on that. If this is the best you can do, then we should redraw our will now. Unless you’re going to try telling us she’s Fleming’s wife?”

  “Well, Uncle, now that you come to mention it. At sixteen, it is about time. Half the boys in the county, if not the country, are already—”

  “Oh, really? Mitchell . . .” Brittany took a deep breath and pinged her fag beneath the withered hydrangea. The afterlife wasn’t what she’d thought. If this wasn’t heaven, or hell, then it was some sort of place of atonement. Look at all these ghostly shrubs and trees for a start and those stone dragons poking out of the walls.

  Ghosts did wander the face of the earth. These must be the ones with unfinished business who’d managed back. She wouldn’t rest till she’d done whatever it took to do that and make Sebastian’s life hell. Mitchell would know the way. Whatever this was about, put out her hand to the weary traveller and he’d owe her big time. Besides why should she suffer all these stinging cuts to her pride? She was the perfect homemaker. Look at all these rugs and pot plants she’d bought for Sebastian’s. The ones he’d thrown at her when there were rows.

  “All right, you win. So you were right. Your aunt and uncle can’t take a joke, but are you really going to let them talk to me like this? We both know I was locked in that room by . . . by a certain person and that person wasn’t you, my dearest. With hardly any clothes to speak of too? All for a joke? Hmm? Fleming, what do you have to say? Let’s hope it’s interesting?”

  “No, I never. How would I do that?”

  “Very, very easily, darling. Don’t lie to your great-uncle. It’s so unbecoming when he’s such a nice man.”

  “You mean, Fleming, you never had any clothes on either?”

  Fleming flushed scarlet. “Uncle. They took my clothes. They put me out wearing a bed sheet.”

  “But, you just said to your great aunt that your new mother was very nice. Well? Which is it to be? Are you lying to me, boy?”

  “She . . . she is nice, Uncle Clarence. But, I didn’t lock her in my room. How could I?”

  Brittany fought to keep her smile in place. She’d won over Clarence, but a rock couldn’t have been stonier faced than her new husband. When so much depended on him backing her and the last thing she needed was yet another man letting her down after she’d put her neck on the line for him. Well, her next step was to say he was keeping her prisoner and throw her lot in with the aunt and uncle instead. She passed her tongue over her lower lip, fixed on her best smile.

  “Oh, it was hardly rocket science when you and your father were both in cahoo—”

  “How did you lock her in your room, Son?” The speed and vigor of Mitchell’s response said he’d read her mind. Removing his thumbs from his waistcoat pocket, he grabbed Fleming’s coat. “Let’s just see, shall we? Hmm?”

  “Father, don’t. Get off me. Stop it.” Fleming tried squirming free. “I won’t let you touch me like—”

  “The key is in your pocket, son. That’s how you did it. It’s certainly here somewhere. Let’s just try in here, shall we?” He pushed his hand into the other coat pocket. “I’ve always found if you’ve nothing to hide, there’s nothing to fear.”

  Sweat beaded Fleming’s brow. “I don’t have anything to fear. Uncle Clarence, that key the one he’s going to find here, is in my door, where he left— Get off of me.”

  “A key can’t be in two places at once, son. You really should check.”

  “Father—”

  “Then, what’s this? Scotch mist?”

  Brittany fought to keep her brows arched, her smile in place. A brass key. Well she never.

  Christian’s eyes darkened as if it was something far worse.

  As for Clarence, his cold eyes lit with incandescent fury. “Good God, Fleming. Is this true? You locked your new mother—”

  “No, Uncle. Please. How can it be? I would never do such a thing, sir. Father, you well know this is your coat.”

  “My coat? Son, what is this? Why have you chosen today of all days to do this?”

  “Your coat. So it follows that is your key to my room because you have keys to my room in all your coats.”

  “And how would you know that unless you rifled my pockets while you were stealing my coats? Well?”

  Mitchell was unflappable as a Russian fur as he slipped the key back into his own pocket. “Not one of your finer moments, boy. But, at least and long last, your great aunt and uncle see some of the things I have to deal with on an hourly basis.”

  “Fleming!” Clarence’s voice cracked like a whip. “Am I to believe, you steal my nephew’s things?”

  “Not that I have many, Uncle. No. But what I have, I like to think of as mine. He does it all the time if you must know. My coats, my boots, my everything. In fact, it’s a wonder he hasn’t stolen my wife. I just haven’t wanted to say. You know, get the boy in trouble.”

  “And what about . . . what about your wife that she has no clothes?” Christian cleared her throat. “Does he steal hers too?”

  Brittany fixed on her most serene smile. “Oh no, darling, they just haven’t arrived yet. I lost my belongings on the overnight trip.”

  “So you are here with no clothes?”

  “Oh, please don’t worry about it, darling. Sooner none than some.”

  She’d rather be stark naked than seen dead in the black beaded crow-feathers Christian was wearing.

  “And I did require rest after my arduous journey. It was what I was doing when Fleming thought he’d have some fun.”

  Christian’s eyes hardened. “Pardon me for saying, but that is not a word in Fleming’s vocabulary.”

  “Really?
Mitchell, have you been lying to me?”

  “Count on it.” Christian sneered. “It is why Fleming is the son we never had, dear Clarence and I. Why we have chosen carefully in the matter of our will. Because Fleming does not know the meaning of the word fun, Mistress . . .?”

  “Call me Brittany. We’re related, after all.”

  “Mitchell knows this. It’s why we refuse to choose him unless he reforms himself by finding a God-fearing wife.”

  “Well, that lets me off the hook then, darling. Cod-fearing maybe, but that’s about it.”

  Had Brittany dropped a clanger? Talking fish, Christian resembled a trout. In fact they all did.

  “My darling,” Mitchell’s eyes held a warning to shut up. “I think you underestimate yourself.”

  “Me?”

  She didn’t. The arm snaking around her waist either. What a forward beast. Disapproval climbed her ribcage, as if it was a set of stairs. Just because he’d stood up for her, it didn’t give him the right to feel her up. But, perhaps he just wanted to shut her up? She was so startled she could barely move.

  “Yes.” His breath brushed her hair. “You, my love. If you are fearing I’m sure it is something we can rectify.”

  “You think?”

  She folded her arms across her waist. It allowed a well-placed dent in his torso. Her gaze froze. The solid, hard bone was real. She sniffed. The not unpleasant smell of herbal soap too. The knowledge of his body against hers sent alarm spinning from her toes to her hair ends, secure in the turban. She’d always thought when you died, your body was nothing. But then, how else would people suffer the torments of hell? Even of this place? She’d obviously sinned with one man too many. It wasn’t just alarm that spun.

  “Should we just go, Clarence, and leave these two love-birds alone?”

  “God, no.” Brittany jerked herself back to the present. Be left alone with Mitchell feeling her up? She’d rather die except she already had. And this spirit world was something she needed to master, to get haunting, remember? She shrugged.