“A waste of time, darling.”
“That’s what they told me you’d say.”
“They?”
“The Time Mutants. Those who inhabit a dark star and live for hundreds of years because they’re the ones who can’t get it right.”
My God, she should write this down. It was stellar, brilliant. She could make a fortune. She just needed a pen. She tore open her bag. Tried to anyway. She just . . . felt the spin of the room and that her fingers on a sliding scale were dusters. Had he put something in her drink? Or was she just off her face? What was it Mitchell Killgower called it? Inebriated? Whatever it was, the pen was here somewhere. It would help if she put her hand in the bag, not down the outside of it. She’d have forgotten this story by the time she got home. Music blared in her brain, the whole floor rocked.
“Your people, Brittany, living as I do. Place to place, era to era. Travellers with no control of where they go, unless they decide to take the only way out, and even then they can only go where that end will be. It’s all we’re allowed.”
“I’m sorry, you’ve lost me, although it’s very interesting. How are these, my people?”
“They’re your descendants.”
He was one of her descendants? This got better by the second. “But I don’t have any children. Certainly I don’t have any living on a dark star. Not that I know of anyway. Unless I’ve somehow been with an alien and I don’t remember a single thing about it.”
Just like she was starting to find it difficult to remember anything in here. The room was spinning like a carousel. She’d career off it if she didn’t put her head down on the bar top. She leaned down. The descendant bit was too much. That would make him from the future. How could he be from the future? How could he be a Time Mutant? How could any descendant of hers be a mutant, period?
“The only way for those of us who have gone wrong and failed to find what we need to find, is to enslave another. If we want to end it, that is what we do. I chose you, Brittany, and yes, I admit, I should have told you the truth, but I didn’t because I also knew it starts with you.”
Her head felt as if her brain was going to burst out of it. Had it? Something sticky was oozing down her cheek. In Skinny Joe’s too. Her brain had actually burst. She was so drunk. No wait, panic over. She must have knocked her voddie shot over when she’d put her head on the bar top and now it was running down her face.
Her voddie that was, although she wouldn’t have been surprised if her head was running down her face, if the bar top was. As for Mort’s story? She covered her mouth, forced the laughter back down her throat. It was great, this story. What the hell was it again?
“Me?” She focused hard enough to say.
“I know it’s funny, seeing you like this, too drunk to stand, rude, arrogant, yes, to believe that you are going to found a dynasty, but you are.”
“That’s very kind of you to say so, darling.”
“You will get this right. You have to.”
“But of course.”
Not after what he’d just said about her. She should locate the floor before she fell on it. She unhooked her heel from the stool. A close call. Imagine if she’d set off across the floor dragging that on the end of her shoe?
“I have the advantage of knowing you do. You have no idea of the dynasty you forge. And because . . . because we all need to find that one special thing, of how all this fits together.”
“True.”
“There’s your daughter.”
“Daughter? Where?”
She had a daughter and she was in here? That was quick.
“I’m talking about in the past. Your daughter Amoret. She’s not so good with this but she gets there. Carter. Yes, you have another daughter. Carter, well, Carter doesn’t want caught up in this. I don’t say I blame her, although Carter’s a dark horse. Then, there’s Malice, your granddaughter.”
“What kind of a bloody awful name is that? It’s even worse than Carter.”
“The kind her mother, Amoret, gave her so no man would look near her. Do you know she still ends with Vikings? A Viking raider called Sin?”
“Sin? Hmmmm. Vikings? I write about Vikings, you know? What was that name again. It’s a hell of a lot better than Ruaf. Do you know what Mizchel Killglower said about, what was it again . . . Roof? Enough to make me wish I’d called him Chimney.”
“Their daughter, Remain. The tree while it goes forward, goes back. It’s a chicken and egg situation. But for those of us who are doomed to immortality, there is only one escape. That is why I’m not giving up.”
He laid a pen on the bar top. She’d have thought a Time Mutant would have had something ornate, wonderful, jewelled and sparkling, not some twenty for a quid, plastic effort from Discountland. But, he wasn’t a Time Mutant. He was a maniac mutant who had escaped from somewhere for the insane. Probably the criminally insane at that. Fortunately her foot located the floor.
“I know it’s a lot to take in. That’s why I’m asking you to think about it. And to do the right thing with regard to this piece of paper, Brittany.”
“Of course I will, darling.” She squeezed down from the stool, wobbled onto the floor.
“You can count on it.”
It was her choice, after all. That thing he kept banging on about. And the pen was there. So she signed—obviously— and got shot of him. The sweet relief of not having him pop up in public places would be worth it.
But then she’d be taking his place.
Choice. Choice?
Be doomed to whatever he was rabbiting on about if she didn’t get something right. What exactly? He hadn’t said.
Choice? Choice.
Did she want to be doomed? Popping up places in a hundred years’ time?
That was why she was leaving the paper exactly where it was and him to fry.
After all, what was he going to do about it? Send her back to 1765? Hardly.
Chapter 13
“Father . . .”
“Hmm . . .”
“Father . . .”
As Mitchell Killgower felt the cold brush of the starched pillow against his eyelashes, he prayed for one thing. That it wasn’t Fleming’s hand on his shoulder, voice in his ear, him in that white sack he sometimes favored, which only needed the pointed nightcap to reek of old man. “Father . . .”
His prayers were never answered though. He’d know that voice, that insistent pecking at his sleep-befuddled brain, like a crow, anywhere. This better be good. It was a waste of a damned candle otherwise, the one burning into his senses, dripping melting tallow wax on the sheet.
Why was it that Christian and Clarence had never blessed Mitchell by refusing to allow Fleming to remove himself from Eton after two terms? Fleming might have learned some finesse on the subject of holding the candle upright if they hadn’t caved in and allowed the boy to leave school.
“Son.” He refused to sit up. If he lay here long enough, even Fleming would take the hint. It was comfortable, despite the smell of burning wax, burning holes in the bedclothes. He should have played dead instead of grunting. “What is it?” He spoke through his teeth.
“I wouldn’t trouble you.”
“Neither would I. But, you’ve been doing it all your days. Why change the habits of a lifetime?”
“Only . . .”
“Only nothing. Go away.”
“Father . . . It’s important. Listen.”
“What?”
More servants arrived at dead of night, or whatever ungodly hour this was? Not that Mitchell cared now. The bird had flown. Been gone for weeks. It was only a question of time before someone discovered the empty coop he’d been trying to disguise. And then? If he was fortunate he might see Killaine House in his dreams. He was never fortunate though.
He hugged the pillow tighter, dreaming it was Fleming’s throat.
“She’s back, Father.”
“Who?”
“Brittany.”
Had he dreamed the pillow was Fleming’s throat? Her throat was more satisfying to dream of. Brittany? Was Fleming delirious?
“And what do you want me to do? Sound a twenty-one gun salute?”
“Father, aren’t you listening? She’s back and she’s in my bed.”
“Good luck to you. It’s perfectly obvious she prefers it.”
“Father! Please. You don’t understand.”
“I understand that you have come in here uninvited, shining a candle in my face while I am trying to sleep. I understand that your mother was always fanciful and you’ve inherited the trait.”
“I need your help.”
Mitchell threw the covers aside and reached for his dressing gown.
“Moan, moan, moan. You don’t know a good thing when you see one.”
“She’s not a good thing.”
“You can say that again. Do you have any idea of the lies I’ve had to tell to cover up the fact she cleared off?”
“Yes I do, actually. I helped you concoct them.”
“There you go then.”
He rose to his feet. The candle sputtered, the shadow dancing on the floor, as he grasped Fleming’s arm. It wasn’t that she’d cleared off. It was what it was after. Every woman in London longed for him, except the ones he was either married to, or meant to be married to. Why was that? Fleming tried pulling free.
“Please, Father, what are you doing?”
“Putting you out, so I can have some sleep, or a drink, or both.”
“I helped you because we both had to say something when Aunt Christian sent that ball invitation.”
“Oh that.”
“I could have lied. I didn’t. But, now Brittany’s back, which is precisely what you were hoping for—”
“It was one possibility. We’ll deal with it in the morning. In the meantime, I’m not running after that hussy.”
Not if paintbrushes were shoved beneath his eyelids. She was back. If it was quietly, with no fuss and could be explained to the servants so nothing reached Christian’s elephant-sized ears, he might consider it.
Of course he should never have had sex with her, so now he was having to put the dent to his ego aside. If he hadn’t, would she have left? Would that be worse, or better, for his ego?
She hadn’t exactly struck him as the kind to run a mile because of that shock encounter. Then again, what the hell did he know of her? Apart from the fact she’d gone to instruct the servants and vanished for three weeks. He grasped the door handle. Burning candle wax splashed on the floor as Fleming pulled back.
“Father, no. You have to deal with it now, deal with her. It won’t keep till morning.”
“Of course it will.”
“Not the state she’s in. You have to come now.”
He could imagine the state. Initially when she’d vanished he’d thought someone had kidnapped her—briefly. Anyone kidnapping her would return her post-haste, after all. Still he’d gone to the caves. It was quite something to be there after all these years, especially trying to pick up the trail of a woman who hadn’t left one.
He’d even visited Francis Dashwood as in the man who owned the caves. He didn’t want it commonly known that his wives preferred frolicking with other men. So he’d made it a sort of courtesy call, along the lines of, once a hell-raiser, always a hell-raiser and it was time to get the little old wife to drop all this devotional nonsense.
It had been screamingly clear from the randy old goat’s expression he hadn’t the foggiest idea Mitchell had a wife, let alone that she’d buggered off and left him. It left one possibility. If he’d been able to kick his own backside all the way back here, it would have been red raw. How the hell could he have so conspicuously failed to remember her jug-headed friend? The one with eyes like a hawk who’d professed to know nothing. Now also conveniently missing.
“Son.” Mitchell pulled the dressing gown cord tight around his waist, took a breath. “If she’s breathing and alone, that’s as much as I need to know about. Now, will you kindly get out before I throw you out?”
“You can throw me out all you like, I’m not going. Not when she’s . . . well, she’s . . .”
“Drunk, or sick. Let me fill in the blanks for you, seeing as you’re having such trouble with the words. Which is it?”
“Well, yes, she may be, a little soused. Certainly she’s singing incoherent songs, so I’m assuming that’s because she had a good time wherever she’s been. She’s got . . . she’s got this stool attached to her shoe. I tried getting it off but you see . . . you see . . . well . . .”
“Well what? You’ve started so you may as well finish instead of standing there scuffing the floorboards.”
“I think she was sick at that point.”
Embarrassment pulsed through Fleming’s face in violet threads. It was as much as could be expected from someone who was a prude to his toenails.
“You think she was sick?” Mitchell tugged the cords of his nightgown tighter. Perhaps after all, this couldn’t wait till morning? Perhaps after all, it required the immediate attention of the water pump to restore some order and sanity to this situation? “Don’t you know?”
“Well no. You see she’s not what you’d call . . . Well . . . I don’t know how to say this, but it’s very embarrassing.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “What, boy? Spit it out.”
“She’s not dressed, Father. She . . .”
Mitchell let go of the dressing gown cord.
“You stay here.”
“But—”
“You asked for my help. I’m going to give it. The evils of drink are things you shouldn’t witness. I don’t want you being any more of a temperate little sod than you already are.”
She danced too fast and would dance away from him.
Bloody hell, she had danced away from him. Danced off with some jug-head who’d been bursting out of his servant’s livery. He thrust his hand through his hair, prepared to walk along the moonlit corridor for no other reason, but to keep this sordid situation under wraps.
If it wasn’t for the situation with Christian and Killaine House he wouldn’t be entertaining this damned affront. If it wasn’t for Christian he wouldn’t be in this damned situation. Brittany Carter wasn’t his wife. For the sake of all he held dear, he needed to breathe deep, swallow the affront. Nothing he’d not done before.
If Brittany had some servant lover she desired to dally with, that was her affair, so long as she kept to her end of the bargain. Stopped turning up naked too.
Yes, he confessed it. He couldn’t help wondering. What was she like naked? A woman like her? Rounded hips? Rounded breasts? Pin-thin waist? She’d taunted him with her plunging cleavage for weeks, with these sensuous pink lips and the fatal glare of her polished eyes, which were nothing like the eyes of any woman he’d ever known. Even when he’d had her, she’d been half-dressed.
He also admitted it. It was in some respects a blessing she’d gone. His determination to keep this charade in name only, had been breached. He was not a lapdog, the pet poodle of a woman who’d manipulated her way into his breeches in order to stay with her lover.
While he’d love to say he’d had her purely and simply so he could tell her lover, in his heart he knew the truth. She’d caught him off guard and he’d responded to the siren call of her amazing lips, the flame of her body, her absolute forthright behaviour, before and after. Had he ever had a woman like that, in all his years of having women? No. Even when he’d had her she’d somehow escaped him.
A moment’s ecstasy. A life of misery. He didn’t need reminding his life hadn�
��t been composed of moments of bliss. It had been composed of miserable years laid end to end because he couldn’t damn well contain himself in the first place. Years when he’d wondered how many balls he had that could be broken. So the animalistic encounter, the encounter, period, was something he’d tried pushing to the back of his mind for weeks now.
But it kept catching him off guard. Was that how she liked sex? Hot, wild, basic. He didn’t mind it any way. Was that why she thought lovers were overrated though? Or had she just wanted it without any frills because she already had one lover? Mitchell didn’t think he’d disappointed her. But, afterwards she hadn’t given a damn thing away.
He shut his bedroom door behind him, took a deep breath. Now, she was back, he needed to establish some ground rules if she was going to stay. Rules that included no more sex, him living like a monk and her keeping those indecent kisses to herself. It also included not standing at his door. Fleming was probably listening. Mitchell knew he’d be if the shoe were on the other foot. He set his jaw. The corridor was uncarpeted but he was expert at padding silently along it.
Moonbeams silvered Fleming’s door lighting the way. Mitchell should glance around, check he wasn’t being observed entering his son’s bedroom, but no one knew Brittany Carter was here.
Grasping the handle, he sipped a breath. Then, he clicked the door open and slipped inside on softened soles. How he’d stand up to this—apart from the obvious way—he’d no idea. But stand up he would. While ‘lenient’ wasn’t his middle name, there were times he could be known for it.
She’d dug him out of a hole by re-appearing. A brisk attitude was the order of the day. He shut the door. A pity. It was dark. Leave the door open though and she was running the risk of being seen. He’d like to say it was nothing to him. The story he’d told involved her visiting relatives, not coming back from that visit, naked and being sick on the floor, however.
The Writer and the Rake Page 15
