The Writer and the Rake

by Shehanne Moore

  “Christian has sent more servants. Now, before you say anything, as is probably your intention, I know it is my fault. Here is what I propose.”

  “Hmm. Servants? So that’s who that man was you were trying to kiss?”

  Despite his fiddling with a brush stroke as if this was God and the universe, she held her poise.

  “I wasn’t trying to kiss him exactly. I just wanted him to do something for me.”

  He hovered the brush over a blue spot. “And you thought that was how to go about it?”

  She shrugged. “I never thought anything.”

  “That’s obvious.”

  She bent her head. The surprise would have been if he hadn’t seen her. Now, she knew he had, she also knew how to deal with this.

  “While it must give you the greatest of pleasures to insult me—small minds and all that.” The pause was as deliberate as was the way she fixed her gaze on him. “Only a fool can see that with this amount of servants about the place, it’s only a question of time before Christian knows we’re not married.”

  “And you somehow think this bothers me?”

  “Oh don’t pretend.” She glided closer. “Pretending is really very unbecoming. Killaine House is—”

  “I’ll tell you what’s unbecoming. You coming in here because you’ve been seen, in all probability by half the house, myself included, and thinking you can somehow sort this out to your satisfaction, that’s unbecoming.”

  “Your lack of understanding is breath-taking.”

  "Not half as much as your effrontery."

  This from a man whose inability to keep it zipped had landed him in this mess? He placed another blob on the canvas.

  “Unless, of course, you were wheedling our way around him, offering your favors? I’m not sending him back to Christian’s if that’s what you’re after.”

  She might be struck by his ability to see right through her. He wouldn’t leave her bleeding. Not if he ripped a thousand veils from her face. Showed her these cuts in ten thousand mirrors. If Mort stayed here, he’d be at her day and night to sign that paper. Then what? Mort must go. Now.

  “You really think so? That’s not what I want at all.”

  “Why not if he’s your lover?”

  She smothered the laugh. “Mort?”

  “So? You know his name?”

  “I’ve come in here perfectly reasonably—”

  “A first.”

  “Says the man who dunked me under a water pump to get what he wanted. I’ve come in here to say to you we need to do something. But, if you don’t want to do something . . .”

  “After your display out there, I’d say you’re the one who needs to do something.”

  “Oh don’t talk rot. I said us.” She’d known he’d be difficult, just not this difficult. As iced as she was too, in ways that might have stung her spine had she allowed them. But he’d have to do better for that. “We need to do something about this tricky, quite perilous, situation.”

  “We will.”

  “Thank God. I’m glad you’re seeing sense.”

  “At least I will do something.”

  “Even better. I knew I could rely on you. So what is it?”

  “Sending you from this house. And you can do something too, whatever you like. Back at Aunt Christian’s where it’s perfectly obvious you’re from. A spy from the beginning.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Christian’s?”

  Brittany stared at him, her brows raised, her mouth open. That she’d finally seen something horrible—himself—was nothing to Mitchell Killgower.

  “Where else?” He set the brush down on the ledge of the easel, sat back. The painting wasn’t one of his best—the colors weren’t what he’d aimed for—he didn’t want to spoil it.

  Seeing her fingering the liveried lapels of that man had already caused a tiny blob, just there where he’d been trying to capture the sky. It wasn’t a bad blob. He just didn’t want another. He supposed skies couldn’t be captured. It was only idiots like him who thought they could.

  Aware her cream skirt brimmed with indignance, he gave his most shuttered stare. “The door is there, Miss Carter, please be so good as to close your mouth and it behind you.”

  “But—”

  Terror flickered in the rock-hard diamonds of her eyes. Christian? Or the fact the lover would be staying here? Noticeably she’d said ‘Christian’s’ a second ago, not ‘spy.’ He should have forged that letter as planned, not let the thought she had a point about Fleming undermine him.

  “What? Don’t want to go there? Could go there . . . but then again? Whatever, is your business. Mine is finding some other way. Minus you and your footman lover.”

  Right now he’d no idea what way. And if he didn’t, distance always lent acceptance. He needed to hold to that.

  “My footman lover?”

  “Your. After all, it’s not as if I didn’t offer to pay you. Now, if you don’t mind.” He picked up the brush. “You’re blocking my light.”

  “But I’m not even in your bloody light.”

  “Maybe not my bloody light.” He peered at the canvas. Another blob needed fixing. He reached for the royal blue. “Certainly my ordinary one.”

  What the hell was that flying past his nose? A splattering pot of water? The jug of hyacinths? Whatever it was she’d minced right up to his masterpiece, grabbed something from the side table. Water spattered into his eye. Dribbles ran like ants down the canvas.

  “There. Now, it doesn’t matter a bloody damn about the light.”

  So? The ice had fire, the tiger showed its claws. He’d wondered when that was going to be. Actually, now he flicked the water from his eye, the painting was a slight improvement. She was waiting for a reaction. It was time the wind rattled her bones.

  “You know, you might be right if I can make some money with this.”

  “Oh don’t be ridiculous, that kind of shit never makes any money.”

  “And you’d know this, would you?”

  “Me?”

  He was sorry he couldn’t help it but he couldn’t. “‘You will scream your pleasure and pain and worship me every day of your wretched life, oh wretched maiden,’ Roof,’ please do tell me how to pronounce that by the way, I wasn’t entirely sure and Ruaf sounded like a dog would. ‘Roof glared into the face of the woman who had given him this trouble—’”

  Her eyes stood out like sparkling granite. “Where did you get that?”

  “Where you keep these things you busy yourself on and what I see of them in passing is not important.” He pushed the chair back, crossed to the empty hearth. “I’m done with this.”

  “Why are you grasping the bell pull?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “You’ve often told me I don’t.”

  “Then let me put you out of your misery.” The tug he gave was satisfying. “To summon your lover, Miss Carter, since you seem incapable of leaving of your own accord.”

  “I’d sooner you didn’t.”

  “And why is that? Because he doesn’t know what you’re up to?”

  No what? You can’t. But she did leap across the floor as if she’d fireworks attached to her feet. The hand she placed on his arm was soft and cool. “Who says I’m up to anything? Mitchell, please, you must listen.”

  He fisted the bell pull tighter.

  “Let’s just see.”

  Her perilous breath hung on his lips as she grabbed at the pull. “No.”

  There was a time when he would have died rather than have an undignified scrimmage over a bell pull. As the bell jangled somewhere in the house, that time was dust. Flesh, bone and lips were against him. Desperate. Hungry. Eyes, hair, scent. Hands clutched his face, cravat, hot, bold, questin
g. His breath, skin, body tightened. Fingers in her hair. Fingers in his. Not stopping at a kiss. How the hell else did he have her against the fireplace wall, cravat on the floor?

  He clasped satin thighs, kissed her bare neck, shoulders, lips, nothing, everything what he’d imagined, needed, longed for. Fast, so bloody fast, a burning, sweaty, throbbing, breathless, blur. Her legs around his hips, breasts against his chest, arms around his neck, braced, poised, reckless, dark. He was too hungry to stop. He had to have her. He tore at his breeches, her skirt. Maybe she tore? Maybe he just needed to thrust inside warm flesh? Between the bare thighs, his hands clasped tightly. Hear his breath moan in his throat? Tear in hers. Strands of rose-scented chestnut hair over his mouth, his nose.

  Was he going to please her, the things she’d said about lovers? Everything, nothing between them but the most basic need. He thrust, keeping her up against the wall, while she held to the wall, her legs wrapped round him. Thrust harder while she clutched him closer, panted. Did anything matter when this was hot, hungry, animalistic, wild, different. He groaned, unable to breath for what ripped him.

  The worst thing about sex? It didn’t last.

  His breath came back to him in the tangle of limbs and the wall hard against her back, her face inches from his, her breath on his lips, her eyes like pointed stars. Now what? Apart from the basic obvious. The untangling of limbs. The recovering of shredded normality. Christ Almighty, what the hell was he thinking, losing control like this?

  As for her?

  She unhooked her legs, stepped away, adjusted her robe. Her lover was downstairs. In fact when Mitchell had tugged that bell it was a wonder, someone hadn’t answered it. Did Mitchell flatter himself to think that beneath the faint smile she wore like a mask, she raked for composure? That she was as shocked as he was by the brutal satisfying of needs?

  It was difficult when he could hardly breathe but he found his voice.

  “Miss Carter . . .” Bloody hell and called her that? But even he drew the line at having both her and her lover, under his roof. The one he wanted and failed to pretend he’d somehow gotten ahead of. He pressed his forehead against the panelling. “Brittany—”

  “Yes.”

  “About . . . about what’s just—”

  “Mitchell, I’m sure you have your thoughts as I do.”

  “You might say.”

  Even her voice was calmer than a frozen millpond. He didn’t need to look round to know she was too.

  “But the thing is . . . that is, the thing underneath all this, what’s happened, what just happened there just now, you, me, is . . .”

  “What?”

  “I just need one very simple thing.”

  He raised his head, flicked his gaze over the ceiling. He liked to look heavenwards when he’d been had. For the first time by a woman who treated sex as a bargaining tool.

  “And what is that?”

  “Darling, it’s so obvious, I thought you’d have guessed.”

  He had? It didn’t mean he could grant it.

  “I just need you to trust me.”

  Chapter 12

  Trust her? When her nerves had been stretched on strings? Stretched as the long pale staircase before her. Bullshit was plainly the word on the tip of his tongue. When it was the least little thing she could ask for. Unless he’d somehow thought she was going to ask for something else?

  She let out a breath, glanced at her reflection in the mirror above the marble half-moon table at the top of the stairs, took another breath. Trust? An empty vessel, a thing smashed on stones, lying trodden on rocks in shards. When it came to trust, he trusted her as much as he would a cobra.

  But, that was all right. The woman who peered through broken cracks at the world could go back behind them. He hadn’t said he didn’t trust her. She wouldn’t like to think she’d shagged him for nothing. Certainly not when she’d never meant to shag him at all.

  She put out her hand to steady herself. Men were obviously as basic in 1765 as they were in the present day. Did shock usually rake her scalp afterwards though? Generally she couldn’t remember. When had it happened that her mind was blank? After Atholl certainly. Was that when she first disappeared behind the cracks of the wall she’d never set out to construct, stone by stone because she’d been tired of giving her heart to men who didn’t want it?

  She couldn’t remember that either. Why should she?

  She was going down the stairs to send Mort packing. Maybe Mitchell hadn’t said so in so many words, words weren’t necessary. Men would agree to going to the moon on a bike when sex was on the go. Or she’d be on her way to Christian’s instead of savoring this flickering relief. The call had been close but not impossible. The next time? There wouldn’t be one. Of course she’d instruct the servants from now on.

  She put out her other hand. Legs should bend, not almost send her cartwheeling forward. But her legs were like the Tin Man’s. What if he was afflicted with some horrible Georgian disease and now she was too? And that was why the wall spun like flying horses about her? She closed her eyes against the blackness rising. She must reach the foot of the stairs. She must show Mitchell Killgower she could do this. Must. Must. Must.

  The word beat like a brass gong in her head. She tried opening her eyes. All she could hear was the gong. Dong. Dong. Dong. A shudder shot through her legs. Her ankle went through her heel. Her legs broke into smithereens. Yet she took an agonizing step forward, hit her knee against something hard, had to stop herself nearly pitching headfirst. Her gorge rose.

  “Brit?”

  The voice swam into her darkness, unrecognizable, yet somehow familiar.

  Unrecognizable, because on a sliding scale of one to five, with five being shocked, it was a clanging alarm.

  “Brit? Christ on a bike.”

  Rab? My God. Rab was here. Here in Killaine House. Her stomach clenched. She tried taking a step forward. Couldn’t. She bent forward.

  “This is not real. Brit, is that you?”

  “Of course it is. Who the hell else can it be? My doppelganger? Please, please, I’m going to be sick. I just need to sit—”

  She couldn’t stand upright, but she forced her eyes open.

  “Christ, Brit, where the hell have you sprung from? Where have you been? What happened to you?”

  “Been?”

  Her eyes nearly popped out of head. The hideous bronze statue of Bonnie Prince Charlie in his kilt? The overflowing ashtray? The boxes and metal bound tea chests and—my God—her sofa, kitchen barstools, her bed-frame. That smell? Fag ends. She gulped. These things had come with Rab to Killaine House? Mitchell Killgower would kill her. Yet Rab had said, ‘been.’ This wasn’t Killaine House. This was Sebastian’s house. Her house.

  “For well over a week now. Oh, all right, nearly four. People are out looking for you.”

  She snagged a breath. “Me, darling?”

  She was back. She was in her time. Really. Truly. This was Rab. Who else would wear an orgasm donor t-shirt? He squeezed past the upended bed frame, squashed her to his chest so she couldn’t breathe. “Right at this moment. I don’t believe it, ye Sassenach jelly piece.”

  “Second generation Norwegian.” That she managed to speak through the nausea sweeping up her gullet was a miracle. If she didn’t lie down she’d faint. If she stood up, she’d happy dance.

  “You know what I mean. Where have you . . . No wait. Wait.” He let her go, held up his forefinger. “First thing’s first, I need to . . . We need to let the polis know.”

  “The police? What? Why?”

  “Aye. We need to tell them you’re here.”

  “But, of course I’m here.”

  “Before they start digging up the garden.”

  “Digging up the garden? Darling, I know Sebastian isn’t exac
tly going to win any gardener of the year awards, but it’s not that bad.”

  “Jesus, Brit, you just have no idea.”

  He grabbed the television remote. She hadn’t exactly noticed that it was on with the sound down, partly because of the petrified forest of furniture crowding the room and the nausea churning her stomach. He tweaked the sound up. Her author publicity shot of her hair swishing her face and her eyes doing their best to seem darkly enigmatic, stared from the sixty-five inch screen.

  Surprise clutched her throat.

  “Heavens, darling, that can’t be. Is that me?”

  Not only was it her, a thirty-something man had been arrested in connection with her disappearance.

  ~ ~ ~

  As she tore into the bedroom Brittany knew one thing—two actually—who that thirty-something man was and what she must do about it. Get dressed and then find what she’d stuffed into one of these bin bags still lying on the floor. Not quite as she’d left them but then she was back. Back. Back. All that counted. No more stays. No more starvation. No more shoes she couldn’t bloody walk in. A thought so glorious she kicked them off her feet. Rab lumbered like a bear behind her.

  “Brit . . . Brit . . . What are you doing?”

  She fought not to glare. It was so simple, it was obvious.

  “You cannae be in there . . . well you can, but—”

  She thrust her leg into her jeans. “I don’t see why not. These are my things.”

  “Yes. I know they’re your things. But the polis—”

  “What about them?”

  She flicked a long strand of hair out of her eyes, dragged the zip up on the jeans. No trouble getting them to fasten after weeks of starvation rations. One benefit of 1765. She bent down, grabbed a bin bag.

  Duty called and she must do it. Sebastian was being held on suspicion of what? Murder? She couldn’t allow it. Not for a second.