The Writer and the Rake

by Shehanne Moore

  He waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. He was good at waiting in every way. Just not when one word hammered in his brain. Naked. He knew his way about this room blindfold, so why was he still standing at the door when he could have found his way across the floor by now?

  Anyway, the room wasn’t pitch dark. Now he saw this, he stepped forward.

  Disappointment plundered his veins as he peered into the dawn shafts fingering the walls in pale gold scallops.

  Fleming had lied. Had Mitchell really been so remiss as a father?

  Didn’t Fleming know a naked woman when he saw one? She wasn’t stark naked. She’d some covering—a shining, rippling blue, with ebony patches, that glinted in the faint light. When it came to such things as covering, it covered every inch it clung to and her arse. Just.

  Was that why Fleming had muttered something about her not being dressed as they knew it as Mitchell stepped into the corridor? Why hadn’t he listened? Although he wracked his brain—she wracked his brain in some ways too—he might as well admit in all his acquaintance with womanhood, he’d never seen a dress like this one.

  Although he’d seen plenty women’s bare legs, had he ever seen them this bare? She was meant to be dressed. Unless the light played tricks, there wasn’t a stocking, a garter, an anything. Also she was hugging the chamber pot, which she had her head in, as if it was her only friend. Fleming was right about one thing though. A strange stool was caught on the back of her shoe. He unhooked it.

  Too tall to sit on, to shiny to sit on. Unless she was trying to start a fashion by sticking it on her foot? It gave new meaning to the term ‘foot-stool’. As for the smell? He’d never thought to see the day he’d wrinkle his nose. There was a first for everything though. She must have drunk the cellar dry to be breathing fumes like that. She stank.

  Calmness descended on his veins. He could do this. Throw her out. He couldn’t pin his hopes on this. She had danced too fast and she had danced away from him. If she thought she could stagger down the stairs and grace the breakfast table with her presence, she wasn’t on. What was it to him if Christian found out the truth? For years she’d been desperate for him, despite everything, including the fact she was Gabriella’s sister. Maybe it was time he took her instead? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d made love to a woman he loathed.

  “Now then, Miss Carter.”

  “Oh Glod, darlin’, zi’s that you? I’m shust slo sorry. Slo sorry, I’m gloing to die. I’ll nelver elver drink again.”

  All he understood was the last part.

  “A good thing, if this is the state you get in.”

  “I knlow. I knlow. It’s the slorst sleeling in the swrold.”

  “Let’s just get you on your feet.” He slipped his hand under her elbow. “The stool’s gone now, at least it’s not caught on your heel, so there should be no reason you can’t stand up.”

  “Schtool? What school? Was I in school?”

  He set the stool down with a tiny thud. “This one.”

  Her shoulders heaved. She grabbed the chamber pot. “I’m dead.”

  Danced too fast? Staring at her there, retching into the pot, his feet pounded to a specific beat. When she was ‘dead’ why did she have to look like this? Reminding him of himself? Why couldn’t she just be dead?

  “Pulis lemme go.”

  She spoke and he knew. To understand her was to let her go, for his own sake, his sanity and everything he wanted. The thing he held dear above all else. Killaine House.

  When he thought of all the cheap moonlit places he’d been in his life, the places the stars didn’t shine, the places he’d never wanted them to, the ones they never would have anyway and never would, he knew one thing.

  There were still the places he was going. It was why despite everything he knew, everything he’d vowed never to do, everything he held dear, he bent down and gathered her up.

  ~ ~ ~

  How was it possible to suffer death by a thousand hammers hitting the anvil of her brain, and not die? Experience consciousness lapping in like a wave on a dwindling, swaying shore? Have blinding lights fry her eyeballs? And still live?

  “Don’t try to move.”

  What a joke. She couldn’t try, or move, even to throw up the bilge swilling in the pit of her stomach. Oh God, oh God, not if she lived to be a hundred would she ever, ever drink again. How many anvils weighed on her scalp and who were the blacksmiths belting them with hammers?

  “Here. Try this.”

  That voice? Low, dark, rich. Oh God, Oh God. Oh miserable God. Where did she know it from?

  “It’s what I’ve always found most helpful.”

  Oh God. That smell wafting under her nose. Hair of the dog. Drink. She was never drinking again. She tried parting her lips. On a sliding scale with ten being a labor of Hercules, this must rank at a hundred. Someone had taken out all her teeth and her tongue and replaced them with sandpaper.

  “Please. No,” she croaked. “Take it away.”

  “Fine. This then.”

  Something cool brushed her throbbing forehead. Cool and soft. The billowing breeze blowing somewhere beneath her nose was one she could fly away on. It even freed her tongue to pass over her lips.

  “What’s that?”

  “Spirit of hartshorn.”

  “It smells funny.”

  “So do you but it could be worse. Pliny recommended eels suffocated in wine and eaten raw.”

  The contents of her stomach hit the back of her teeth. It took every ounce of her strength to stop them going further. Look on the bright side. At least she still had her teeth, even if they didn’t feel attached to her.

  “Disgusting, eh?”

  Oh God, had she really caught her foot in a bar stool last night? And who was this person yacking away as if the fact she’d nearly chucked up was fine. If only she could open her eyes. Did she have weights on them too? Needles stuck in the lids, their fine metal points shredding her eyeballs.

  “I’ll . . . I’ll pass.”

  She didn’t need to see. The billowing curtains flapped. White birds. She should write about them when she’d peeled her eyelids apart. When her thumbs weren’t stuck in these lacy cuffs. When Mitchell Killgower stopped bothering her.

  Mitchell Killgower?

  It couldn’t possibly be Mitchell Killgower. What a horrible dream, like when she first came here but the voice went on.

  “I undressed you last night.”

  Her throat dried. How wonderful. Her happiness was complete. If it was him, she wouldn’t have wanted to die not knowing.

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t look.”

  “Thank you.”

  She didn’t care if he looked or not. Thank him either.

  Mitchell Killgower.

  Actually, it did matter that he’d looked. Unless she was imagining this, they’d screwed a few weeks ago.

  “And I slept over there on the chair in case you think there’s something else to thank me for.”

  Her hair roots throbbed. Mitchell Killgower. She wasn’t imagining it. Who else would talk like that? What the hell was he doing here? Was he following her? Unless? She inched a wavering eyelid up. Oh God. Where was the hole she could crawl into and die? 1765. A voice screamed in her head. Nooooo!

  Oh God, oh God, she’d no more to say. Except, was it him who’d kept covering her up last night and she was going to be sick. 1765. Should she look on the bright side? Was there one? Something creaked? The bed? The chair? She turned her head. Mitchell Killgower had sat down in his paisley pattern dressing gown. “You know, Brittany, I’ve seen you in better states.”

  “You’re not alone. So has the world and its granny. Just tell me I really do have nothing to thank you for? That you didn’t—”

  “Would you
like me to make a remark about fire-tongs here?”

  “Oh please, darling . . .”

  “Not now?”

  Oh, thank the lord for the mercy of him finishing her sentence. Especially when she couldn’t, ever, ever again.

  1765.

  “How—”

  “How did you get here? The answer’s simple. I carried you.”

  Not from Skinny Joe’s he didn’t.

  “As for your clothes, this gown you were wearing . . .?”

  She tried to focus her eyes. Hard when she was wearing a blurry veil. But there it was. The little number from Saskia’s. Vague memories of pitching herself at some stranger on the dance floor, in that dress, lights and music clung to, floated into her head.

  “I think it’s—it’s a . . . a . . .” Why did she want to say chemise? Because every noise, every word, every anything broke the fragile eco system that was her head. “Well, anyway I think it’s probably mine.”

  “You mean it might be someone else’s? You wear other women’s things? And you really don’t remember? Because Brittany, whatever you think—”

  “So I’m not a Georgian housekeeper? I think we’ve all got that. Now, why don’t you just leave me to die?”

  “Because that’ll happen without any help from me. The way you’re damn well going.”

  “And that’s something to you? Stop sounding like my bloody father, would you?”

  She tried dragging the pillow over her head. Would he get his arrogant bloody face out of hers while she tried piecing the broken glass back together, instead of sitting there like a hanging judge? Trying to sound as if he cared.

  A sharp rap on the door? Or a sharp rap on her head?

  She heard him rise. “That will be Dainty. I asked her to bring you some coffee. I thought you could do with something.”

  “Yeah.”

  Peace, quiet, the fortitude to deal with this.

  1765.

  She didn’t need a bloody great lecture in it. Her dress, that didn’t belong here, shoved in her face. She’d been in worse states. It was hardly anything new. Fame, success, riches was what she needed. Maybe this wasn’t a random bed, it wasn’t a blessing she’d slept with Mitchell Killgower. He probably thought she’d run off with Mort and wasn’t going to let up till he found out.

  Mort.

  Who’d been there last night in the seconds before she’d kissed that guy. With that paper.

  Had she signed? Was that it? Why she was back here? Because if she had and Mort had gone up in flames, she was stuck here forever. Her shoulders sunk. Her throat, already calcified bone dry, dried further. How could she ever have thought it was better to be alive than dead?

  “Thank you, Dainty, I know I can trust your discretion.”

  “No trouble, sir. I just said the mistress had gotten back in the middle of the night and was having a lie-in so you wanted the coffee brought here this morning.”

  A die-in was more like it. Mitchell Killgower needed to continue this idiotic charade. At all costs. Or he’d probably have doused her in water and been done with it. A man genuinely so concerned for her, Dainty was at the door for any other reason? Yeah. Right. He didn’t just need her, she’d slept with him. Was that why he was being nice? He hoped she’d do it again? She was done with all that. Definitely, unequivocally, whatever the word was, done with all that. Done.

  “Did anyone say anything?”

  “Not a flamin’ word, sir. Not even that stodgin’ ole trout what her toffship sets such store by.”

  “Good.”

  “Though their eyebrows raised good’n proper.”

  “To be expected. Well, thank you. I won’t forget your help.”

  This was the moment Brittany greeted him as the adoring wife. She couldn’t. She didn’t have it in her. How? Why? What? Questions she needed to answer. Couldn’t. Couldn’t bear to listen to the muffled exchange at the door either. Not if she’d signed that paper. She tugged the pillow tighter.

  Was it stupid though? Despite everything, including the length of the telescope she looked down, she needed to think.

  If Mitchell Killgower wanted to play as nice as the smiles on her ashen lips, if her ashen heart said sit back, why not do that? Most of his questions were unanswerable and she’d her own questions about last night, about Mort. It would be one way of shutting Mitchell Killgower up, getting him off her back. She dragged her head out from under the pillow. Anyway, it sort of smelled of him. Herbal. Woody. The door clicked shut and she arranged herself as best as she could against the bedrail.

  “Why, darling,” she even managed to croak. “Coffee. How very nice.” Even if it wasn’t.

  The coffee pot, silver, gleaming, steamed into her vision. She pushed her hair back from her face. As she did she glanced down. Her gaze froze. The deathly smile she’d mustered did too. The contents of her bag were splayed over the bed. And not just any contents. Foil-wrapped packets she and Sasha had spent a fortune on in the machines in the ladies’ loos last night.

  “Is there something wrong?”

  Although she told herself not to panic, she did. The tray rattled and clinked onto the bedside table so she couldn’t gather them up and shove them back in her bag either. She’d just have to brazen this out. What was space but a matter of occupation? She swallowed. Her throat and tongue were so wizened even saying ‘nothing’ was impossible.

  “Perhaps you think so, but I don’t that it’s your place to be looking in my bag.”

  Saying nothing was impossible. He’d no business after all. These were her things. Unless her notebook had something in it she couldn’t let this go. Her mobile phone, ballpoint pen, worse than the mobile phone, worse than the ballpoint pen, those little foil wrapped packets, banana-flavored, didn’t just require explanation. They required it when an army of tiny trolls played that piece about the Mountain King in her head on a set of hammers. These things screamed her life, down to the pile of parking tickets and armory of plastic. Credit cards, most of them maxed out, she’d got from companies who were prepared to lend to someone with Sebastian’s level of debt, his failure to pay that mortgage, when she’d give her eyeteeth, despite the fact she couldn’t feel them, to deal with this later.

  Mitchell Killgower rubbed the side of his neck. He didn’t look unreasonable. The azure eyes, the killer cheekbones were probably the most reasonable, his expression the least guarded, she’d ever seen it. The arrogance, the power, he wore like armor, were one thing. This was a little more vulnerable, charming. She could see why women found him attractive. But, her life was lying there and he’d had the temerity to poke through it, so she wasn’t going to. She wasn’t fooled by his niceness to her. She snatched the notebook, flicked it open, hoping, praying, when she struggled to lift an eyelid, she’d written something. Every page was blank.

  “Perhaps not, Brittany. I know these are your things. But—

  “There’s no perhaps about it. I’m not your son, thank God. And I don’t care about the state I was in, or what you did for me last night. These are my things? Why did you go through my bag?”

  “Look . . .”

  “No, you look.” She grabbed up what credit cards she could. There were too many to get them all and her hand was shaking too badly. He stared at it.

  “I am.”

  “Don’t bother saying you don’t know what at. You need me. That means no questions. About me. Or what I’m doing back here when the fact is I am back here. I don’t need your care and I don’t need your concern. That will be a first and my head will fall off if I start laughing hysterically.”

  She didn’t fight to keep her voice even. Despite speaking out of turn, she had this. She wasn’t just in 1765 without her fame, success and riches. She was completely screwed in 1765 when she hadn’t written a thing down. Her last, he
r only hope of knowing how she got back here. Her fame, success, and riches were gone forever. How could life be so cruel, letting her have what she craved with a passion and a longing, craved more than anything in the world, then taking it all away? When she’d damn all else? Something stung her eyes. She hoped it wasn’t tears.

  If she had scrawled Mort’s words down, would they be legible though? Once or twice in the past—oh, not so often anyone would notice—she’d done that, written things down that had come to her over a glass of wine, or two—all right, it was ten—in what appeared to be Martian.

  “Well.” She flung the notebook and the cards back on the bed. “Do you understand?”

  Mitchell Killgower merely stopped rubbing his neck and shrugged, so he must have. But then he leaned forward. He raked in the heap, credit cards, driver’s license, pens, and drew out something.

  “Explain this to me.”

  “Mitchell, I’ve just said—”

  “Well, Brittany, I’m saying now. So why don’t you tell me?”

  He sank into the chair opposite, flicked the hair out his eyes, his expression several shades more unfathomable than previously. She didn’t have this but it could have been worse. It was only her mobile he wanted to know about.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because.”

  “Because isn’t a reason. Now give it back unless you think of one.”

  “Very well.” He set the mobile on the chair arm and folded his hands across his stomach. “Because I’m trying to understand things that really aren’t clear about you.”

  “Why?”

  “The state you came back here in for one thing.”

  “What state? You call this a state? You’ve led a sheltered life.”

  “Brittany . . .”

  “But, maybe if you came to where I live you could trot about the streets with pots of coffee and that hartshorn stuff.”

  It was true. If she stopped sounding petulant and furious about it, she’d sound her usual bored, enigmatic self. It was a much better way to handle this. Anything else was letting him in. The old Brittany might have. The new one didn’t have time for it. Or what invariably ensued. He’d soon get tired of this.