by L. L. Muir
“Well, Stanley, you can’t very well sue the paper for libel when they did print this in the fiction section.” Ramsey Birmingham, Earl of Northwick kept a straight face, but only just. His friend was not the first to be chastised by the red-penned writer. That he was being so dramatic about it, so early in the day, was an invitation for torment.
“But North! I tell you there was no woman. No wife. No children with my blue eyes and white hair.”
“White hair, even. Not blonde.” The Marquis of Harcourt prodded poor Stanley from behind, then walked around the man and offered him a much needed drink.
“It’s early.” Stanley waited for someone to agree.
“Drink!” Harcourt slapped him on the back, nearly spilling the shot of courage.
Stanley needed no more prompting and emptied the glass, then stared into its empty depths. “Yes, white hair. There are no such creatures, I assure you. I’ve only been to Spain two years ago…oh dear.”
“Well, the vixen got that right at least.” Earnest Meriwether, the unfortunately named Earl of Montpelier, chimed in from the far stacks of North’s immodest library.
“But Monty, I’m telling you, there is no such woman.” Stanley looked at a chair, but North shook his head, as if to say the morning’s business was so serious he should keep on his toes.
Stanley straightened and lifted his chin, poor man. So easily manipulated. The Scarlet Plumiere really shouldn’t have picked on such a harmless chap. North was of half a mind to hunt her down and tell her so.
“Well, the Scarlet Plumiere has yet to accuse an innocent man, even if she is a bit inaccurate on the specificity of the crime.” Monty joined the rest, eyes fixed on an open volume of Shakespeare--the red leather set. He took the seat Stanley had wanted.
“He’s right, of course. Let’s hear it, Stanley. What have you done?” Harcourt hooked a leg over the corner of a table and leaned forward for the details.
Of course, Stanley broke.
“I’ve done nothing! Nothing the rest of our lot hasn’t done from time to time.”
North couldn’t bring himself to prod the Viscount further. The poor man had asked his three closest friends to meet that morning to find a solution to his newest problem--as fresh as the morning paper. They really should get to the business of helping the chap.
Harcourt was in no such hurry.
“Stanley, you’re trying our patience. Spit out the confession now or I don’t see us making much of an attempt to save your sorry hide.”
Stanley flushed from his pinned cravat to the roots of his transparent-like hair. The color hardly became him.
“I set Ursula aside yesterday.”
“You what?” Three baritones in unison sounded almost rehearsed.
North shook his head. “I’m sorry, old boy. You did what?”
“He set her aside.”
North turned to Monty. “He set her aside.”
“Yes, blast you. I set her aside.”
Monty closed the book and set Shakespeare on the overstuffed arm. “Pardon my slow wit, but just how does one put an Ursula aside?”
Monty was right. Stanley and his hair had had the pick of women since they were all in knee breeches together. Now he had the pick of all mistresses and he’d chosen very well. It was quite possible Stan, old pal, was the first man to actually end an affair with the woman. Ursula did the shopping for a new lover. Ursula let that lover know when he was no longer welcome. But Stanley Winters, Viscount Forsgreen, had set her aside.
“I suppose he picked her up by the shoulders, turned, and set her down again.” Harcourt demonstrated with an invisible model, then dusted his hands. “Out of his way, presumably. Is that accurate, Stanley?”
Stanley’s blush looked to be seeping into his actual hair.
“I let her go.”
“Aah. Like fishing, then? You took the hook from her mouth, so to speak, and put her back in the water.” North couldn’t help but laugh at Harcourt’s miming skills.
“Can she swim, do you suppose?” Monty was ever concerned with details. In exact opposition to his given name, he was obsessed with remaining sober and somber. But no longer. He dissolved into laughter at his own jest, as did they all.
Stanley stood straighter, if possible. “You know perfectly well what I mean. I ended our affair. I told her she was free to do as she pleases.”
North nodded and composed himself. “And you paid her a nice settlement, of course.”
“Actually, she wouldn’t take it. She wasn’t at all pleased that I offered it.”
Harcourt bent over, giggling, and dove onto the davenport.
“So, you have slighted Ursula.” Monty sobered. “That has to be it! Ursula found the Scarlet Plumiere and had you punished. Severely punished, it appears; if night follows day, and things play out the way the SP has predicted, you, my dear Viscount of F, are about to be released from your engagement.”
“But that’s why I let her go, you see? It would be poor form to keep one’s mistress while one is preparing for marriage, and honeymoon, and fatherhood, and…”
“And death.” Having solved the mystery, Monty’s nose was back in the book.
“Yes, that too. If Irene Goodfellow breaks it off, Mother will have me fed to the fish, and even though she’s doddering, she’ll find a way to bear another son to replace me.”
“It’s unsettling the way that woman tosses that threat about,” North admitted. “It fairly gives me nightmares thinking about it.”
“Well, thinking about it has put me off seeing Ursula.”
“Quite so. Quite so.” But what to do about it?
“It would be best to have her put down, Stanley. For your own good,” Harcourt mumbled against the cushion.
“Who? The Scarlet Plumiere? I can’t have a woman murdered, even if she’s essentially ruined my life with her blasted article. I can’t believe you’d suggest such a thing.”
“Oh, not her, man. Your mother.” Harcourt rolled onto his back and spoke to the ceiling. “Have your mother put down like the old horse that she is and enjoy the reprieve. Marry in another ten years.”
“Put down my mo...you’re mad!”
“No. Actually, it wasn’t a bad idea a’tall.” Monty closed his book again and tossed it onto the table.
“All right. You’re both mad. I won’t be having my mother...put down, for God’s sake.”
“Oh, Stanley. Do keep up.” Monty folded his hands and grinned. He must have had a grand idea. “I mean the SP, of course, not your dear saintly horse-of-a-mother.”
“You mean it? You can stand here in front of God and good whisky and talk of having a woman murdered? Because all of London knows it’s a woman writing those articles. Good lord, man. Perhaps I don’t know you at all. Perhaps you could actually do the deed yourself!”
“Oh, I would rather not do the deed myself, of course. But I suppose if I must...”
North couldn’t take it anymore. He tossed up his hands.
“I surrender as well, Monty. What are you thinking? You can’t be talking about having a woman murdered.”
“Not murdered. Put down. Taken out of the picture--or the Capital Journal at least.” Monty leaned in and lowered his voice. “The only way to control a woman these days, gentlemen, is to marry her off.”
Harcourt rolled back onto his face and mumbled, “I was afraid you would say that.”
Callister stepped into the library with a small box tied with string. North nodded his butler over and reached for the package, but the old man shook his head.
“I beg your pardon, my lord, but this just arrived for Viscount Forsgreen.”
Something yawned and stretched inside North’s breast, something that had been sleeping for years. Usually, when it woke, he drugged it with Brandy until it slept again. He wasn’t sure, but it might have been his soul. And with some sort of premonition which he’d never been known to possess, he suspected that thing within him would somehow be affected by Stanley’s box.<
br />
He watched, as did they all, as Stanley slowly pulled the tails of the string, as if they expected a cat to jump out of it any second.
The string fell away. Nothing happened. Stanley sat the box upon the table, lifted the lid, and set it aside. He frowned, looked at North, then reached inside. He pulled out a pair of spectacles and a bubble burst in North’s chest.
He laughed. Stanley didn’t seem to understand.
“Who did you tell about this meeting, Viscount F?” Monty had to raise his voice to be heard.
North laughed harder. Watching Stanley’s face as realization dawned, struck him as particularly amusing. Or maybe it was the joke played by the Scarlet Plumiere.
“Poor eyesight.” Harcourt laughed. “I say, she’s a clever minx.”
North agreed. The woman was clever. And she might have just won over his heart, if not his very soul.
CHAPTER TWO
Capital Journal, Fiction Section, February the Third
A wild tale is spreading like the black plague through ladies’ parlors at this very hour. Supposedly, the men of Londonberry, or at least those allegedly eligible for marriage, have held a meeting in the honor of a particularly talented writer and drawn lots to see who among them is the lucky so-and-so who must not only ferret out the identity of said writer, but must marry her in order to control her...uh, plume...thereby removing the threat to his fellows’ reputations that might very well be the last resort for some women to find justice in this world.
Bravo, Mr.Lott! Did you think of this scheme by yourself? I cannot imagine a sweeter justice than for the man who imagined such a lottery to be its first selected victim. I say “first” because after you fail at your task, sir, undoubtedly there will be a few boisterous fools who think they can succeed where you are about to fail.
And you’ve boasted you can find me by Valentine’s Day? Bon chance!
If you’d like to read more about North and his search for the Scarlet Plumiere, visit my website www.llmuir.weebly.com and you’ll find Blood for Ink on the Regency Book page.
SOMEWHERE OVER THE FREAKING RAINBOW
CHAPTER ONE
“You’re such an idiot.” Jamison shook his head.
Ray grinned as he watched his paper airplane glide out the glassless window and into the darkness. “You love me.”
Jamison didn’t know whether it was his imagination or the glow of white paper that his eyes followed, arching off to the right, then lodging in a corn stalk twenty feet below the old tree house. He itched to turn on the flashlight, to see if it had landed where he thought, but that would screw up their little stake-out.
The tree was enormous, nearly five feet in diameter, and the ancient clubhouse was so insanely high people forgot it was there. Built thirty or forty years ago, before people knew better than to pound railroad stakes into living trees, a dozen three-foot boards were nailed to the side of the trunk, creating a ladder. Not realizing it had been mortally wounded, the tree hung on to those boards like a dutiful soldier. Unfortunately, and fortunately, the gaps between the rungs stretched with each year and little kids could no longer use them.
Not that they would want to; even Jamison hated being up so high.
Another page was loudly ripped from a dusty tabloid.
“Dude!” Jamison groped for the magazine in the dark and pulled it away from the childhood friend whom he’d barely recognized two days before when Jamison had returned to his grandpa’s farm. “I didn’t freeze my butt off ‘til three o’clock in the morning just so you could give us away.”
“Oh yeah. Okay.”
Behind them, Burke began to snore.
“Hey. Hey, wake up. It’s almost time.” Ray thumped on the guy until he stopped snoring and dragged himself over to join the party.
“This better be good, man.” Burke rubbed his eyes and set his chin on the two-by-four window frame. There was no moon, but in the eerie blue light from the stars, the skater beanie hanging off the back of his head made his profile look like an alien’s.
Space was tight, with all three of them looking out the rectangle opening, but at least Jamison was warmer. Colorado in the fall was like Siberia to a kid who’d spent the last five years in Texas.
A door spring creaked from the left, then creaked again, as if the neighbor’s old porch screen had slowly opened and then shut even slower.
“Holy crap,” Ray whispered. His legs started bouncing.
“Relax.” Jamison tried not to get too excited. So someone was up at three a.m. just like Ray had promised. They still had no clue what was planned, only that it was a secret, and maybe a cult thing.
“It’s not that. I have to piss.” Ray’s legs still shook.
“You’ll have to hold it,” Jamison ordered.
“No way, bro. My Dew just hit.” Ray stood up. “I’m going down.”
“Me too.” Burke stood up. “I gotta go too.”
A chill ran up and down Jamison’s spine like a pinball between bumpers. If he got busted spying on their neighbors, his mom would kill him. Heck, he’d die of embarrassment all by himself, especially if the hot one heard about it; either way, he’d be dead. When he started school tomorrow, he wanted to be able to look her in the eye again, not hide from her.
“Just find a bottle,” he pleaded.
“No way. It would overflow.” Ray shuffled toward the exit in the corner of the floor. “I’d arc it out the window, but I might hit someone.”
Burke choked on a laugh.
“Okay. But if you’re going down, be quiet. And hurry.”
A few seconds later Jamison was alone. He pulled his hoodie over his head but held it out from his ears, listening for Ray to make too much noise.
A breeze disturbed the field below.
At first, he worried it was his friends, peeing over the fence. Why else would the tree leaves not be moving too? But the rustling came from the ground and grew louder, as if tons of people were walking through the dense drying field.
Jamison turned back to the window.
Tons of people. Holy crap.
Suddenly he’d have given anything to be tucked in bed, completely oblivious to what his grandpa’s freakish neighbors did in the middle of the night. Maybe if he, too, would have needed to pee, he could’ve snuck back into the house instead of sitting in the front row of what he hoped wouldn’t be some sort of ritual sacrifice.
They made movies out of this stuff—a boy witnesses a murder. Boy reports the murder. There is no body. Soon...there is no boy.
Not daring to sit front and center in case the moon suddenly showed up, he stood and moved back, satisfied to watch only what came into view. He tugged harder on his hood, to hide his blond hair, folded his arms, and tucked his cold hands into his armpits, grateful for the thick soft cotton of his new sweatshirt.
Small glowing lights moved among the plants, headed for the center of the field. As Jamison shifted from foot to foot the specters spread into a circle about fifty yards out from the tree. At first, he thought someone was going to burn the field, but the lights were as steady as the people carrying them.
But they weren’t actually carrying them.
Robes—the light came from under their robes as if each person wore a single, battery-operated Christmas light on one shoe. He would have laughed at the costumes if he hadn’t just noticed that the neighbors were standing in a ring, in the middle of...of...a crop circle!
He, Ray, and Burke had climbed up pretty early—around eight o’clock. They’d looked over that field for an hour or so before it got dark. They would have noticed a freaking crop circle!
Come on. Come on. If those two didn’t hustle, they’d miss it. They’d never believe him if the circle somehow disappeared by morning. He’d never believe it. They’d also never believe the lights—coming from...wherever.
They’d believe the robes, though; this group wasn’t just eco-friendly, they were eco-nuts. Calling themselves Somerleds, they lived like the Amish or Mennonites—keepi
ng to themselves, living simply—only instead of wearing black all the time, they wore white. Ray told him they wore only raw wool and raw cotton, and as far as his friend knew, they only ate raw food as well. No meat. Strictly vegetarians.
At least if they were sacrificing something, or someone, they wouldn’t be eating it afterward. For some reason, that put Jamison a little more at ease. He still stayed back from the window, though. Who knew what might light up next and clearly show the Somerleds the face of their new neighbor/spy?
The circle of lights and bodies settled. Nothing else moved through the field; all were contained in that deep bowl of dried husks, the sides towering over the tallest of heads, the tassels waving in the breeze like flags above a circus tent.
Very clever; no one in that flat county would notice the meeting place unless they were flying overhead...or perched in one of Granddad’s windbreak trees. They would never get away with this closer to the mountains.
But just what were they trying to get away with?
Movement.
A taller one—had to be a man—moved around the circle, stopping at each person for a minute. When he stopped near a small figure, the two hugged. For just a second that hot girl’s face was lit up over the man’s shoulder, her hair spilling down the guy’s arm, and Jamison was hit by an invisible Mac truck.
She was there. She was part of it. He’d fallen for a circus freak.
Jamison moved to the side of the window, wanting a better look, but more afraid of getting caught than before.
"Just show them a little respect for the good neighbors they've been to me," his granddad had asked in his letter.
Jamison had never been so near Somerled people before. For the last two days he’d tried not to stare and had done a pretty good job, he’d thought. He was a good actor, just like most kids in big city high schools; you had to walk a thin line between ignoring the dangerous people and showing them enough respect, and do both without drawing their attention. He’d managed to live a pretty invisible life in Texas and treating the Somerleds like dangerous gang members had been a good plan...
