The Writer and the Rake

by Shehanne Moore

  “I’m not worried.”

  He wasn’t anything if the look of him was anything to go by, apart from vaguely disconcerting sitting there, the white shirt crisper than ever, the black waistcoat and breeches, his eyes like blue lights in sea fog. The other boot thudded onto the floor.

  “This may seem a stupid question but why are you in here? You don’t usually.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake Mitchell, if I wanted to seduce you, I’d just do it, if that’s what you’re really worried about. I already have. You came through here, plainly annoyed, probably with me which, I don’t blame you about.”

  “Good.”

  He rose. So did her hopes even though he went to the decanter and she never wanted to drink again. His back was to her but he stood no more than five steps away. It was simply a question of continuing in this tone. She fixed on her most serene stare.

  “I think so too. This morning . . . well, perhaps we shouldn’t talk about it . . . but I want to set the record straight and thank you for all you did, then and last night. Oh, and for not asking too many questions, for just accepting me back.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Brandy sloshed. “Now will you go please?”

  “Go?”

  He set the decanter lid down. “If that’s what you’ve come in for?”

  “I—”

  “You’ve said your piece. Your mission is accomplished, Miss Carter.”

  She wanted to hold to the fact he’d said ‘if’ when it came to the business of her coming in here, to think he was playing hard to get, but she looked at his back. It was as much as she could see. Worse than its usual rigid, powerful self, there was a couldn’t care less cut that was somehow more intimidating. Not by twenty naked women giving him the come on did he want to be ‘got.’ This would have to wait till tomorrow. He might hold out tonight, he couldn’t do it indefinitely.

  She wasn’t making any kind of fool of herself here.

  “Fine. Well, then goodnight, I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She turned away. As she reached the door, the glass clinked against the tray.

  “There’s one more thing.”

  She paused, her heart skipping the tiniest beat, the door handle suddenly warm in her hand. “Really?

  “You didn’t seduce me. You didn’t even come close.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Father.”

  Mitchell prayed in the bright gleam of late spring sunshine, glinting through the trees that the noise was a twig snapping under his boots, a bad echo of last night when Fleming had woken him, nothing more. Certainly nothing that would put him off his mark, or his intentions, this fine day, now he was washed, dressed in his best coat, the wind was in his hair and he was ready for it.

  “Father . . .”

  Mitchell didn’t slacken his stride. He’d gone to such lengths, slipping down the stone staircase from his dressing room, trampling through the muddy field at the side of the house. The best thing was to keep walking, hope his imagination was playing tricks. He’d reached the lane where the trees grew like cathedral spires, unlike the ones nearer Killaine House where they rose like withered spectres. In fifteen minutes, he’d be at the Swan. It would be an end to what he’d wrestled with since yesterday morning.

  “Father, I know where you’re going. How can you do this to Brittany?”

  He strode on through the loose grit and rutted cart tracks, bright with last night’s short shower of rain. He was being followed. By Fleming at that. He’d thought his son, a sneak. But, following him? It made Mitchell even more determined to take this walk.

  “How can I not? She’s not my keeper.”

  “But, she’s meant to be your wife.”

  “I think the emphasis is on the word meant.”

  “But, what if Aunt Christian finds out? Father, you can’t.”

  Can’t was not a word to say to him. Not since he was nine years old, at least. Maybe even before that when his father, Killaine, had caught him kissing Harriet Wallcroft, her finger only because Tabbs, the house cat had scratched it and he’d wanted to make it better. He paused, flicked his bored gaze over the lichened tree trunk, fingered the fob watch hanging against his waistcoat. It was worth the fifteen minutes taking twenty to get rid of anyone who said can’t.

  “Did she send you?”

  “Who? Aunt Christian?” Fleming’s feet scrunched to a halt on the grit. He’d left Killaine House in a great hurry. Not only was he out of breath, sunlight dappled his linen nightshirt which peeped out beneath his coat. He must have thrown coat, shoes, stockings, and breeches over it. Brown tricorne hat too. “No. How would she know to? Father, please, I know I should never have done what I did but—”

  “Not Aunt Christian. Brittany?”

  “Brittany doesn’t even know you’re gone.”

  Mitchell squinted at the shining face of the watch. Twenty past ten. Early, but the Swan would be open. What was more, Chastity would be working. “Good. So I’ll just ask one more thing. Are you blackmailing me?”

  Fleming blushed to his hair roots. “No.”

  “Good. Well then—” Mitchell tucked the watch back in his pocket and the coat shut.

  “I—I’m just trying to save you, Father.”

  “How fanciful. From what? Chastity Barsfield? I think I can take care of Chastity Barsfield, Son, I’ve been doing it on and off, for a year or two, now.”

  He’d long thought Fleming was an idiot. Fanciful as Gabriella. Sanctimonious as Mitchell’s father, Killaine. But, this wasn’t worth chuckling over. Listening to either. Sunlight glinted between the trees and what it glinted on was the stile that led to the Swan. He turned to take the rutted path through the bracken.

  “From yourself.”

  “I need saving? Son, that’s the first I’ve known of it.”

  “Yes, you do. You just don’t see it. The way you are, the way you’ve been since Mother died. When you didn’t love her, I know and it shouldn’t matter.”

  It didn’t matter. Whether he needed saving, or not, whether he saw it or not. Brittany Carter had done more than raise the gale in him and clung to the harbor wall—if it was just that, he’d hardly be here. She was blatantly pursuing her own agenda, whatever it was. He wasn’t a pet poodle. He’d like to think he was mistaken about her behavior last night, wouldn’t have been quite as brutal if he was.

  He may have lived like a monk for months to ensure Killaine House. He wasn’t a monk. He was a man who needed to obliterate the stupid handprint she’d laid on his heart, the only way he knew. It was always going to come to this whether he was mistaken or not. He chased tail and he had never been faithful to one because he had never loved any, either. A sad indictment when it had brought so much ruin, but there it was. He looked into Fleming’s wan, freckled face. The one that was so like Gabriella at that age, she might have been standing there, gauche, awkward, a doleful puppy dog.

  “Well, son. Maybe, I do need saving, but better men than you have tried.” He lied, of course. In fact, he couldn’t think of anyone who’d tried. Maybe he’d misjudged his son, completely, utterly. Maybe Fleming was a far better man than Mitchell would ever be. The stile was there and he’d every intention of crossing it.

  ~ ~ ~

  As she stumbled through the grit and dust, in the over-sized boots Dainty had whipped off her feet and given her, Brittany acknowledged the effect of these words, spoken fifteen minutes earlier. What do you mean? Gone?

  Then there was Dainty’s reply, Sir’s gone.

  Brittany had been sitting there, in front of the mirror, planning the mounting of her new attack at that point. Now, here she was, chasing after the bastard. Why? Especially after his insulting remark last night about her not coming close to seducing him when she hadn’t wanted to seduce him at all. And he certainly ha
dn’t come anywhere near seducing her that time either.

  She smothered a shriek as she tripped over a large stone and pitched forward. Her nose smacked hard earth. A cloud of dust flew upwards. For a second she lay there counting stars, dazzling ones at the back of her vision, her cheek pressed into the dirt. She certainly wasn’t chasing him because she liked him.

  “Are you all right, Brittany?”

  Fleming turned back towards her. She spat a mouthful of grit. “I’m positively brilliant, darling. In fact, I’ve never been better.”

  “It’s just you don’t look it.”

  “Did I ever say that you always say the nicest things? No. Please, don’t wait for me.” She pressed her palms into the dirt. “I’ll catch you up.”

  She glanced round. If it was over that stile thing blotting her horizon, she had her doubts. And actually, did it even matter if the servants discovered Mitchell Killgower had gone off with some hussy? It was just one of the things men did. Either they couldn’t keep it zipped like Atholl, or they were like Sebastian, couldn’t be bothered to unzip it in the first place.

  She should have known Mitchell Killgower came into the former category. This made him unfaithful to her. It also made perfect sense of his remark last night, the one that had put that temporary dent in her armor. A peashooter attacking the titan, but a dent nonetheless. One it had taken all of five seconds to repair. All right it was ten.

  Repair it she had until Fleming burst in, his hat falling down over his eyes, the breath tearing in his throat. Despite everything, she wouldn’t want Mitchell to lose Killaine House. When she got home she’d have so much, it was the least she could do. She needed to kiss him. She’d be hard put to do that if she had to find him first. Infidelity was neither here, nor there. What if the damned bastard dallied with that hussy for days? His mood last night had not been his usual obnoxious mood. It had been worse. When it came to choice she didn’t have one. She’d have to go on, not back.

  She staggered to her feet, stumbled through the bracken to the gap in the tree line and grabbed hold of the rotting fence post. Fame. Success. Riches. Fame. Success. Riches. The words were a mantra as she clambered onto the first plank of the stile. How dare Mitchell Killgower go off like this though? After she was gone, after she’d stuck her foot on the rotten plank of wood and crack, crack, became her mantra, the plank snapped and she pitched backwards into the bracken, hitting her head on a tree stump, he could do what he liked. But before?

  “Brittany . . .”

  “Please, I’m fine. I’ve probably just broken my back and permanently damaged my backside, but you go on.”

  “Then, come on.”

  Fleming bounded on through fetid ditch water away from her. And Mitchell Killgower didn’t think Fleming was anything like him?

  “We’re not far now,” he yelled. “The inn’s at the foot of this back road. We can get down to it if we cut through this field.”

  “Well, thank heaven for small mercies.”

  “Sorry, Brittany, I didn’t think. Here.”

  Fleming panted back towards her, put out his hand. Take it and she’d get to her fame, success and riches. Despite everything, such joy would surely ensnare the hardened ventricles of Mitchell Killgower’s heart when she saved him from this hussy, he’d kiss her. Then she need never worry about another thing.

  Choice?

  Definitely.

  ~ ~ ~

  Considering the Swan from the vantage point of the ditch opposite, Brittany felt obliged to speak.

  “What the hell is your father thinking about? Doesn’t he care that Christian might find out?”

  “Oh, he doesn’t think.” The smell of foul swamp-water rose as Fleming pressed down harder beside her. A smell she was going to struggle to wash away in 1765 and all the more reason to get home. “He never has. Except maybe about you.”

  Brittany pinged a fern aside. “Oh, I don’t think so, darling. I mean what the hell would he be doing, going off with some other woman for—”

  “Because—”

  “If that was the case? You didn’t let me finish. But there, let’s not quibble. This barmaid is?” She turned her gaze on him.

  “Because—”

  “A very strange name for a woman.”

  “Because sometimes he just needs, well—he needs saving.”

  “Oh, don’t we all, darling. Me, you, the—”

  “From himself.”

  “Really?”

  She spoke coolly, nonchalantly, rolling the word off of her shoulders like a cardboard tube. It was so light. She didn’t want to laugh which was a good thing because then she’d have to look at him again in the silence of this ditch and the little bit of her life that was here. And she wasn’t going to. Even as she did, she wasn’t going to.

  “Well, you’re his son, so you would know. So . . . so let’s get in there and save him for you, shall we?”

  “We’re not saving him for me.”

  “Well darling, we’re not saving him for me.”

  She smothered the treacherous desire to say more. When she went in the door opposite, the one set low in white stone, with the wooden sign dangling above it, it would be to get what she wanted, not what Fleming wanted. She fisted her cloak.

  “Now let’s go. Count of three. Are you ready? One, two, three.”

  And yet, as they scrambled up onto the road, darted across it, something tingled. Exhalation? Discomfort? The fact the count of three probably should have been six because Fleming slithered and lost his footing?

  She threw the wooden door back against the plaster wall. Fleming blinked. Trust her to forget it was probably not the done thing in 1765. As if she could forget. Hens clucked around her feet, pecking at the hem of her cloak in the damp, unlit passageway. The smell of spilt ale wafted from the room to the left. She glanced inside. Whatever room it was, parlor or taproom, a cursory glance of the benches and stools, standing beneath the low roof beams, the tables with candles in various stages of extinction on them showed it was empty. Fleming clattered back down the wooden stairs he’d raced up.

  “He’s not up there. The bedrooms are empty. Well . . . they are sort of empty . . .”

  That was something anyway. Not that she wouldn’t have done it, but she’d sooner not confront Mitchell Killgower in the kind of compromising position, that the shrieks of rage renting the air, said some people had just been discovered in. Yet, what was it to kiss him when he’d just been with another woman? A kiss was just a kiss. Fleming turned to the right.

  “Let’s try the stables. They’re out the back.”

  “No, wait.”

  What drove her to the door at the back of the dim passageway? The low scrape of voices? The fact they hadn’t searched there? That it was tucked away? She’d no idea, but she was there now. She might as well throw the door wide. She grasped the handle, one of these latch efforts and covered in rust, felt the light flood from behind the door almost before she flung it open.

  Her breath caught—the tiniest bit of breath—in the tiniest bit of her throat. She raised her eyebrows. Mitchell Killgower might argue he wasn’t abasing himself. He might argue that sitting letting some woman slaver all over his face wasn’t abasing himself exactly—he was dressed still, it was something. But, there was no doubt he would be abasing himself if this continued, even if the woman was not quite as awful, or as buxom, as Brittany had imagined and she was dressed too, quite nicely actually, although Brittany couldn’t determine the color of her clothes.

  It was abasement until Brittany kissed him, then it could be what it liked. She would kiss him. Not right now, obviously. But certainly once she’d dealt with the sudden, piercing pain in her chest, roughly where her heart was, as if a pin had been run in and out of it.

  She’d run all this way in these aw
ful boots on her worse feet, was it any wonder?

  “Mitchell.”

  He looked up. He’d been on the verge of kissing this woman. Chastity. She didn’t look very chaste to Brittany, not with his hand stuck in her bodice where her breasts were.

  Then again, who was Brittany to think so? Hadn’t she pulled that random man the other night? Hadn’t she kissed Mark?

  “Brittany.”

  If astonishment rippled that she was here in Gabriella’s best brown cloak, Dainty’s boots on her feet, looking as composed as the Snow Queen, it didn’t show. Sprawled there against the cream wall, on the wooden bench, he was utterly composed. Drawing strength from the latch cold as that same ice beneath her fingers, she forced a smile.

  “Yes. Your wife.”

  The woman turned wide blue eyes on Brittany “Woi-fe?”

  “Yes, darling, there is no need for either of you to look so surprised.”

  She’d have really thought, when she wasn’t like her heroines who would have been overwhelmed with emotion, regret and folly, when she knew everything there was to know about men, cheating ones in particular, she could have said something better. Especially when Mitchell Killgower hadn’t batted an eyelid and didn’t look in danger of batting one either.

  “Wo-ife? Mitchell, you never said. ‘E’s never said. Till ‘e does, door’s there. Close it on yore way out, won’t ‘ee?”

  The woman’s peal of laughter hit off the plaster walls as if the idea was ridiculous he’d have a wife and that wife would be Brittany, standing here looking her coolest.

  Had she considered the fact he might now send her packing? She’d thought he’d be grateful, that she could appeal to him if he wasn’t.

  The woman looked from one to the other. Then she looked again. He was going to leave Brittany standing here, as if she was of no consequence to him. Had she really driven him that far when what she needed was him to speak? Her heart hammered. She could still appeal to him but her throat had dried. Why should she appeal to him? He was the one who wanted Killaine House. His shrug was barely perceptible. The coolness of his gaze, sent the most unwelcome prickles of heat racing up her spine, so she could barely stand offering him her coolest stare. Something—curiosity, guilt, the fact she was here—flickered in the depths of his azure eyes.