The Writer and the Rake

by Shehanne Moore

  “I mean that I–being God-fearing—would hate that.”

  “Really?” Christian smirked. “So what’s that thing on your head. A mask? To titivate Mitchell with?”

  Not in a month of Sundays. That could be very dangerous. She fixed on her sweetest smile.

  “Oh that, darling? No. Fleming, Mitchell and I were just having a little game of Blind Man’s Buff. It’s all part of that other game I am perfectly sure you must have heard of. Happy Families.”

  “This is preposterous. Clarence, are you going to stand there and let this . . . this . . .”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Christian, must you always damn well complain about everything on the face of this earth?” Spittle peppered Clarence’s maroon cravat.

  “Yes. But—”

  “I have done my absolute best with regard to the damnable mess my brother left me with. You know he always said if Mitchell could come good, if he married a respectable woman and refrained from seeing the Killgowers in the dust, he would inherit what is rightfully his. Not mine. Not yours. Not ours.”

  “But that’s not happened as I see it, dearest.”

  “And who are you to see it? A Killgower by marriage only. It’s not exactly as if you’ve produced an heir. Your damned sister at least produced Fleming, even if it’s all she damn well did.”

  “I’m sure it’s not for want of trying, Uncle, although we all know these things are in the laps of gods. Still, rest assured my marriage does remove a certain pressure.”

  If Brittany didn’t have so much on her mind, like Mitchell’s hand splayed over her backside, she’d leap five feet into the gorse bushes. Why the hell was he coming on to her like this? She tightened her arm across her waist, did her best to ignore the prickling heat that was using her spine as a running track.

  “Darling, I really blush that you can talk of such things before your dear aunt and uncle.”

  “It was you who mentioned happy families. What I can’t wait for is us adding to the brood. A brother for Fleming. A sister even.”

  “Father, you don’t have to—”

  “But I do, my boy. You’ve waited long enough to be blessed with a sibling.”

  Brittany nearly fell on the ground. Christ, she wasn’t sleeping with him. Unless this was a joke? Was this why he was in limbo? He couldn’t refrain from feeling women’s backsides.

  “Well, we shall all see, won’t we?” Christian rallied. “If you have sorted yourself out, Mitchell, no-one would be happier than I. And to make your wife’s proper acquaintance too. Believe me, I shall be watching this very closely. Now, if you don’t mind, Clarence and I will be getting on our way.”

  “Indeed, time waits for no man, for woman either. Let me get the coach door for you.”

  If it meant Mitchell Killgower removing his hand from her backside, Brittany would do it herself but he stepped forward. She smothered the sigh of relief and raked in her pocket. Her hands trembled. What was this? Three fags? Only three fags left? How was she meant to survive on three fags? Unless she picked up the half smoked one out of the gorse? That would make it three and a half. Her mind reeled, don’t think about it, don’t think, but she managed, just, to cup her hand and shelter the fag tip from the faint breeze stirring the plants, to fiddle with her lighter. She should wait till the harridan departed but that might take till next week. The drag was pure heaven. Even the sound of the horses’ whinnies retreated to a distant place. She sucked harder, a great mouthful of smoke into her lungs.

  “On second thoughts, maybe you should get in the coach yourself, Christian? And leave me here with my lovely, God-fearing, wife. Now I’ve got her, I can hardly bear to let her out of my sight.”

  Brittany nearly spluttered the fag onto the ground.

  “Darling.” As his arm snaked back around her waist, sending more alarming ripples through her, she set her face in its calmest, most enigmatic lines, the lines she’d once imagined greeting her legions of fans, with, managed her nicest tone. She did need his help, after all. “You must learn to be more seemly. More—”

  “That’s what I think too, Mitchell.” Christian fiddled with her gloves, pushing her fingers right to the tips. “Well, we’ll be on our way, leave you two lovers alone.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to rush, darling,” Brittany insisted.

  Until a second ago that was true. Brittany had her wish to stay here and she looked forward to putting Mitchell on the spot. She just didn’t want her work cut out about doing it. She could tell by the hand splayed over her backside that she was going to.

  “Of course they do, don’t you, Christian? You and Clarence always have places to visit.”

  Christian ignored him and turned her attention on Brittany whose throat had dried— absurd when it never did.

  “But perhaps you don’t want to be alone with him? Hmm?”

  “Well . . . I—”

  “Of course she does.” Another squeeze that almost made her jump out of her skin. “Don’t you my darling?”

  Christian’s chin took on an uncompromising line. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

  “Really?”

  “My sister had that honor. Well, come along, Clarence.” Christian turned on her heel. “We do have other calls to make. The cemetery and other places.”

  It wasn’t ideal but Brittany didn’t want to say, the dead can wait. Even if she did she could see this pair had no desire to. They’d climbed in, snapped the carriage door shut and given instructions to their driver, a somber man in black, before Brittany raised her hand to wave. The moss muffled the clatter as the wheels slowly trundled towards an ancient stone bridge where a river sparkled.

  “It’s all right. You can stop that now,” Mitchell’s deep voice resonated at the base of her spine.

  “And you can take your hand off my backside.”

  “When you’ve stopped waving.”

  “Not until they’ve gone, darling. I mean, I think you’ve got them on the turn. You want to bleed the advantage.”

  “You really think I’ve got that, do you?”

  “Well I think you’ve got something. I mean you’ve seen them off. Now, if you don’t mind . . .”

  The time had come to demand his help to deal with Sebastian, the sole—or was it soul?—reason she didn’t complain bitterly about the liberties he was taking with her backside. She tried to step away but his voice grazed her ear. His seductive, male, breath too.

  “I do mind. I mind very much. That is why I don’t want you to think about anything but coming with me, Miss Carter.”

  Chapter 7

  Brittany perched on the edge of a battered leather sofa, trying to look anywhere but at the trail of bloody footprints. She hadn’t thought the dead bled, particularly across the library floor, but she was new to this game and she must have stood on a shard of porcelain vase after she’d fallen down that rope. Dead, or alive, blood was probably to be expected. It didn’t hurt.

  Going with Mitchell Killgower wasn’t how she’d seen this panning out. Now, they’d come in to this quiet haven, a little sparse on the books and with a proliferation of cobwebs festooning the tall narrow windows, so bloody freezing, shivers ran up her legs, she’d state her case, though. Do this without any further deliberation. Sebastian would not get away with this for a moment longer.

  “A drink, Miss Carter?”

  “Yes. Thank you so very much.”

  “I thought so.”

  As if she was that readable. Even if she was he was a fine one to speak. Drinking was all he seemed to do. She curled her lips into a smile, listened to the satisfying glug as the dark liquid filled the crystal glass. Vodka was her preferred tipple but brandy would just have to do. At least they’d something here. He padded across the rug towards her. “Here.”

  “Cheers.”<
br />
  She slugged a mouthful. Port? On a sliding scale of one to ten, it was ten, cat’s piss. Sour. Lemony. She just didn’t want to spit it on the rug. She’d have to swallow it. His liquid gaze roamed her face.

  “Now what, Miss Carter?”

  She wiped her hand across her mouth. “There’s no need to sound quite so exasperated when we’ve business to discuss. You’re not the only one who’s desperate here. You don’t have any vodka, do you?”

  He knitted his brows. “Vodka?”

  “Yes. Am I speaking a foreign language? Look, never mind, even if I am gasping. Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?”

  “I’m glad you said that, Miss Carter. Your performance out there—”

  She ignored the hint of hostility towards her as he returned to the decanter. “Oh, hark at that. My performance? After you couldn’t take your hand off my backside?”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “I don’t just think so, darling. I know so.” She uncrossed her legs, a prelude to leaving. “In fact I can still feel the imprint of your hand, your tasteless hand, which you were plainly unable to keep to yourself, on my backside.”

  “You’re mistaken. I felt for you, that’s all.”

  “You certainly did. My backside especially. Is that, by any chance, the reason you are living this stupid charade?”

  His mouth quirked as he raised his glass.

  “So you know about that, do you?”

  “Well, obviously.” Point made. She sat back. “If you still haven’t learned your lesson about women’s backsides, then it certainly does explain why you’re sitting here like this after all those years.”

  “I’m honestly glad you know so, Miss Carter, it saves me the tiresome trouble explaining myself. The terms of my father Killaine Killgower’s will, after he had sort of disinherited me that is, were that the Killgower estate, of which Killaine House here is but a part, should pass to his brother, Clarence, as you just saw.”

  “I really don’t give too much of a hoot who the estate passes to. All I want to know is how . . .” She fixed on her most-winning smile. “You know?”

  He kept his beautifully chiselled face straighter than a poker as he eased down into the upholstered chair opposite. “Are you propositioning me?”

  “Excuse me? Just because I’m dead it doesn’t mean I’m desperate. In fact you might even say that being dead frees me from all such things. Longing. Passion. Degeneracy. Lunacy. Fainting because some man finally takes my part, or feels my backside. Even falling on the floor when I’m insulted.”

  His glass clinked on the side table.

  “Dead?”

  “Oh come on, darling, let’s not pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “Well, here’s the secret.” A muscle twitched in his poker straight jaw. “I don’t.”

  “Well, maybe you don’t know because you don’t know you’re dead. But the thing is—and I’m really sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings—you are. We both are.”

  “Both are what?”

  “Dead. In your case for a good few hundred years since you still think this is 1765. Although I suppose, seeing as you don’t know you’re dead, you might not have the foggiest where the portal is because you haven’t earned the right to pass through it.”

  “Portal?”

  The blank look was the last thing she needed.

  “The pathway to and from this limbo-land. Don’t tell me there isn’t one. How the hell am I meant to haunt Sebastian otherwise? Can I say just say two things here? If you’re playing dumb because you think you can feel my backside some more, you can’t. I’ve sworn off men. So, don’t even think about it. If you want to feel some woman’s backside why don’t you try Christian’s? She’s gagging for it and it would solve this nonsense about the will, which is just stupid if you ask me, but then nobody is.”

  He rose, padded noiselessly to the sideboard, removed the top from the decanter. More drink sloshed, down his deadpan gullet. “Do you know something, Miss Carter?”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Fine.” She set the half-drunk glass down on the sadly scuffed side table. “Don’t help me then. I’m perfectly capable of helping myself.”

  “Well, certainly you were capable last night of helping yourself to my son.”

  “What?”

  He raised the glass to his lips. “What I say. Of course I’d have preferred it if that got out so then I could look forward to inheriting something—finally. But, he undercut me. So really it doesn’t give me much choice, now you’ve opened your big mouth.”

  “I? Opened my mouth? I’m sorry but you need to speak to your sneak of a son about that. What I was doing, in case you hadn’t noticed, was helping you get what’s coming to you. That will be a smack in the face if you don’t watch your step, when I’m not the least violent as a rule.”

  “Well, unless you are willing to oblige me by continuing the pretence of being my wife, I don’t think so. That you slap me, or that you were helping me get what’s mine.”

  “Perhaps that’s because you’ve no brains?”

  “Oh, I’ve brains all right. Brains enough to pay you well. It would only be for short periods of time. Hardly a trial if you have another life to get back to.”

  She narrowed her gaze. Why did she feel the trial would be for him and he didn’t want to pay her anything? He fiddled with the decanter top.

  “In fact, I suppose there’s no reason why you can’t still live that life. Of course you understand, I live on charity here, Christian holds the purse strings in every way, but I’d have an allowance for a wife. You can have it, plus my hospitality.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “The choice is yours.”

  Choice? The word stuck like a dagger in her head? Mort had said that to her last night, in that space of time when he’d got her to sign that strange wad of paper.

  Well, her choice was to go. Find Sebastian. Haunt him. She drew her feet together.

  “How very kind.”

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Why do you think I’m going anywhere?”

  “Because you haven’t finished your drink.”

  “Fine.” She picked it up, downed it in one, cat’s pee, or not, rose to her feet. “Now, if you don’t mind. I’m going where the dead go to haunt those who killed them.”

  He stared expressively for him. Her ability to down a drink in one? She was stark raving bonkers? Whichever it was, she’d wasted enough time. Maybe it didn’t trouble him, but the last thing she wanted was to be sitting here in another three hundred years’ time, welcoming some new arrival to the fold and showing off her loopy relatives because she hadn’t got her act together. She was going to find that portal and she was going now. Anything less was letting Sebastian away with murder.

  “All right.” Mitchell exhaled sharply. “Was it the fall? Is that it?”

  “I’m sorry?” She hesitated. Was that the word for the plunge from her world to this one? Wasn’t she quite right in the head, or something, because of it? Obviously it would suit him to pretend she wasn’t. Even if he wasn’t pretending, she’d hardly call a man who hadn’t come rushing to her aid when she’d nearly broken her neck falling down that rope, concerned. It was probably another thing he needed to atone for. Unless he was concerned now?

  “Yes.” His stare didn’t waver. “The fall from the window that’s left you talking such drivel? I mean I’m trying to understand but I’m not having much success. But perhaps it’s all deliberate and you are working for Christian? Do you see my dilemma?”

  “Excuse me. You are the one talking drivel.”

  In six strides she r
eached the door. So did he. It didn’t faze her. Not the fact he’d got there first. Not the fact his hand was on the panelling. His quite nice hand. Although she did wonder how the hell he’d managed across the floor before her? Because he was dead, that was how. She grasped the handle, tugged. He pushed the door shut.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Mitchell, I told you I’m going. Will you stop behaving like a giant prick and get your hand off the door? I mean it. I’m going.”

  “Tell me something, Miss Carter.”

  “I just did. But if you want me to tell you again, then I will.”

  Forget this, was it so wise to be too ballsy when she needed him to tell her what he knew, the kind of stuff her heroines thought all the time. Tugging the door handle too. She’d get what he knew from him anyway. It was the sole reason she didn’t just turn round, she stuck out her breasts.

  “You are a full-on, letching, giant—”

  He lowered his mesmerizing eyes to her face. “And you are out of whatever mind you have. But, that’s not to say this can’t work.”

  “Of course you’ll say that.”

  “Maybe you’d prefer me to say you’re deranged?”

  “If it makes you happy.”

  “Can you feel this?”

  That his unfastened waistcoat brushed her breasts, which she shouldn’t have stuck out? Hopefully not. That her breasts were sort of marginally aware of his proximity. Absolutely. That in her defense it was her breasts’ behaviour, not hers. Oh yes. Her throat may have dried, she wasn’t about to repeat past mistakes. End up stuck here with him? No way. She raised her chin, sipped a paper-thin breath from the air, fixed him with her most enigmatic stare.

  “I’m so sorry, darling. Did I miss something?”