Forever in Your Service

by Sandra Antonelli

  “Mae.”

  She rose, her breath ragged, impatient, angry. PTSD, she’d developed PTSD, like her brother, and it was turning chronic. Was there a family predisposition for PTSD? “No, God damn you.” Shaking, she clutched at the chain around her neck, squeezing the ring hanging from the slim, twisted gold, and walked away. She threw open the bedroom door and stomped into the sitting room, gritting her teeth, clutching a ring that belonged to another dead man. “Eejit. Fool,” she muttered and the other eejit in the sitting room looked at her.

  Reed buttoned the damp cuffs of his shirt, his eyes travelled over her, up and down, and he smiled faintly, like Kitt.

  “Do that again and I’ll give you a black eye.”

  “Do what, petal?”

  “Look at me that way, call me possum or petal again.”

  “Sorry. It’s a nice dress. It suits you better than the last one.”

  “Yes it does,” Kitt said, behind her.

  Felix trotted over, nosing her, licking her knee. Mae flexed her hands. “Shut up,” she said. “I don’t want to hear any more shite!”

  Reed laughed.

  Felix huffed and so did Mae. The dog wandered off to the sofa and blankets. Mae crossed her arms and glared at Reed. “You’re an arse.”

  Behind her, Kitt laughed. “I think arse is putting it mildly.”

  “Would you shut up?” Mae ground the words between her mint toothpaste-flavoured teeth.

  Reed adjusted the other sleeve, and smiled broadly, the way Kitt had when he was amused. “She doesn’t like you very much, does she? And who could blame her? I don’t like you either, Hamish.”

  Mae stared at Reed, his eyes vivid blue-green. “What did you say?” she whispered.

  “I don’t like Hamish either. Never have. The little shit.”

  Mae turned and the room expanded and contracted at once, colours magnified and garish. Cold blue-grey eyes of a living apparition regarded her dispassionately. The softened wax quality returned to her knees, flowing down and up into her chest, spreading, melting through her. “Away with ya,” she whispered.

  Chapter 6

  Reed hurried over and grasped her elbow. “You know, Kitty, I think Valentine’s about to pass out.”

  “I’m not going to pass out,” she said, and the man’s grip barely registered, the words she’d spoken a far-off hum.

  “Hello,” Kitt said, concerned by the two feverish splotches of vivid pink standing out on her cheeks. He dragged a wooden chair from the dining table, placing it beside her. “Sit down, Mae.”

  “I don’t want to sit down,” she murmured.

  “Well, isn’t this glorious,” Reed snorted and led her hands to the back of the chair. “Loelia in Singapore, the nurse in Athens, and this one. I think you take the whole playboy spy thing a little too seriously, don’t you? So, how do you know her?”

  “She’s my butler.”

  “I don’t work for you anymore,” Mae mumbled.

  Reed looked Mae up and down and laughed. “You’re absolutely shameless, Kitty.”

  “Give us a minute, Reedy.” Kitt didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to proceed. Mae was overloaded by shock, the shock of his presence compounded by the shock that had come from finding Grant dead, and the shock that had come from Reed’s bungling intervention outside. Kitt made a fist, fingers curling peculiarly into his palm.

  Mae stared at him, hands shaking on the padded top edge of the chair, her facial expressions a free-form jazz tune of emotions. As much as she was staggered by seeing him, her presence had him reeling. He’d bungled it a few minutes ago, let anger and fear and shock get the better of him. He wouldn’t do that again. “Give us a minute, Reed,” Kitt said.

  Reed exhaled. “Yeah, nah. I’ve done that already. I gave you more than a minute and she hit me with a wedge of cheese.”

  “Be glad it wasn’t a toilet brush. She killed a man with a toilet brush once.”

  Mae inhaled deeply and took a step toward him, frowning, blinking, her breathing shallow, staccato, her eyes shifting to Reed. She shook her head, pointing at Kitt, “But he knows nothing about wine.”

  “Simon,” Kitt gave Reed a hard look. “A minute. Please.”

  “See? Good manners make all the difference.” Reed turned and went into the kitchen.

  Mae lifted a trembling, tentative hand to her forehead. “Major Kitt?”

  “Hello, Mrs Valentine.”

  Mae took a rattling breath, moved another step closer, the moment silent and slack, her mind blank. The tips of her fingers poked his sternum. “You’re here.”

  Kitt reached out, pulled her close, held her tightly. She stood stiff in his arms. “I’m here.”

  “You’re not dead.”

  “I’m not dead.” His eyes stung and her fingertips began to probe across his middle, digging into his side the way Saint Thomas would have dug his fingers into the wounds suffered by Jesus Christ before believing his resurrection. Or maybe that was how he felt, resurrected. There had been that moment, when he’d been convinced that he was dead and he’d never see her again, and yet here she was, where she wasn’t supposed to be. He shook and her rigid body trembled against him. He didn’t know which one of them shuddered more. “It’s all right,” he said, perhaps more for himself than for her. “It’s all right,” he said again, even though it was anything but all right.

  Mae laughed thinly and pulled back, eyes running from the curve of his bent nose, over his bottom lip and the whiskers covering his chin. For a half-second, as if she were about to kiss him, her lips parted, but her gaze shot to Reed, to the black cowboy hat on the kitchen worktop, and back again. “You’re working?”

  “Yes.”

  Mae stared at him. What she had witnessed and borne in the last twenty minutes had been frightening, disturbing, enough to disorient anyone, but Kitt recognised the shock shifting in her eyes as she stared at him, the room quiet except for the dog licking his nether regions. He watched it happen. The first bubble of emotion that her mind seized upon wasn’t relief or joy or excitement. Her shock kicked over into unmistakable, unreserved fury. “Oh, you sodding liar!” She tore from his arms, and swore, louder, more Irish intoned, and more coarsely than he had ever heard her swear before. The noise startled the dog and drew amused Reed into the sitting room.

  Christ, she was angry. He knew she’d be angry, but she didn’t corner the market on the fervent emotion. He’d been running on spleen and bile for the last two months and was simply far better practised holding his rage in check than she was. Calmly, with a slight chin jerk, Kitt sent Reed back to the kitchen. “Mae.”

  “Why?” she said, brushing away moisture that had crept beneath her eyes. “Why?”

  “We’ll discuss this later.”

  “Is it because I said no?”

  “You didn’t say no, you agreed to a very long engagement, and this is about safety. Mine...yours. Always yours.”

  “My safety? This is about my safety? Yes, how could I forget that? How could I be so stupid? Why didn’t I ever stop and think it through, like Bryce told me to? How’d I forget I was dealin’ with a feckin’ professional liar.” She looked over at Reed. He watched them from the other side of the kitchen worktop. “Are ya workin’ with that one over there, just using him, or is he a liar too? Oh, I hate ya. I hate ya so much.”

  “No, you love me.” Kitt glanced at the diamond ring dangling from the chain she wore. “I know you love me.”

  “Oh, dear God!” Reed gave a short burst of a laugh.

  Kitt ignored the man’s ongoing amusement. “Why are you here, Mae?”

  She inhaled, very slowly. By the time she exhaled, Kitt realised he was wrong about being better-practised at holding anger in check than she was. Mae jerked back the reins on rage and eased into professional, slipping into cultivated English dialect, which made her sound very much like Princess Anne. “You said we’d discuss this later. What an excellent idea.” She smiled, and there was something saccharine,
something calculated in the way she did it.

  The hair on the back of Kitt’s neck prickled. “I know you’re angry about Christmas,” he said. “And about this too.”

  “Excuse me, sir, I have work to do.”

  “No, Mae,” he said. “You’re leaving. Right now.”

  “Oh, there it is, that façade, that cloak of detached nothingness you wear so well.” Her smile remained, hands clasped behind her back.

  “Indeed. You’re still leaving.” Kitt smiled back.

  She watched the dog hop off the couch and trot over to Reed. “My leaving would not be professional. I have a contract. And I don’t work for you anymore, sir.”

  “Write a letter of resignation. You’re leaving.”

  “I’m working.”

  “You’re going.”

  “I’m staying. You’ve killed a man. Your job is done. Mine isn’t. You leave.”

  “Is this serious, mate?” Reed crouched to scratch Felix under the chin.

  Kitt ignored Reed and lifted a hand to touch Mae’s shoulder before he thought better of it. Yes, she was going to leave, he’d see to it, he’d knock her out if he had to, he’d... A flickering notion skimmed the periphery of his mind, skipping across his resolve. Her being here instead of London was every kind of wrong there was and it threw him, made him sloppy, inept, slow. The flickering notion, a matchstick of thought tried to strike, sparks skipped up his spine. “Why are you here?”

  She moved, heels tapping on the kitchen tiles. “You and that silly Christmas tree. I needed something to do for Christmas.”

  “You couldn’t have gone to see your brother in Dublin, like you always have?”

  Mae laughed, high and bright, and began washing a soup bowl. “I had to deal with how you left me. I had to get away from all those things, those memories of you, and the promise of a future I’d never have. Sean praying for your soul would been not have been a comfort.”

  “You made an actual promise of a future, Hamish?” Reed straightened, brow arching.

  “Simon.” Kitt smiled up through his lashes, at the redhead pushing at the dog trying to hump his leg. “I’m not asking.”

  “Yes. You made a promise of a future.” Chuckling to himself, Reed went into Grant’s bedroom and left the door open.

  Mae reached for a towel, mirroring the angle of Kitt’s head. “You are such a bully.”

  “I am, Mrs Valentine.” He crossed into the kitchen and this time Kitt took hold of her shoulder, turning her from the sink. Despite his so-called detached coolness, a round of nausea and alarm rose in his gullet, the moment of queasiness more sour, sweatier, and heart-pounding than when he walked into the party and saw her standing on the other side of the room, kissing Russell Grant. How he hadn’t knocked everyone out of the way to get to her still amazed him. Sparks skittered up his spine again. “All right. You’re here because you needed ‘something to do’ for Christmas.”

  “I’m here because you left me with a Christmas tree and weren’t coming home.”

  “I told you I’d always come home to you.”

  Mae gave Kitt another sickly-sweet smile and dried the bowl. “You died in a shipping container in Singapore. How could you come home if you were dead?”

  “I had postcards sent to let you know otherwise. I’d thought you’d work it out.” As soon as he’d said it he recognised the asinine futility of what he’d thought and what he’d done.

  “Postcards.” She went on smiling, the brightness flashing on incredulous for a half-second. “You thought that would... Yes. Yes, you did.”

  The sweat on the back of Kitt’s neck turned both cold and fiery. His grip on her shoulder slackened. Her laugh a small sniff, Mae flicked his hand off as if his fingers were bits of lint, and he had the sensation he was nothing more than a bit of lint drifting to the floor. The injuries he’d sustained had made him stupid and desperate to think that sending her postcards would refute the news of his death. Amazed by his level of irrationality, he looked from her to the dog nuzzling its nose into her hand and drew a fat red circle around one more option. The match flared.

  This was not a bizarre coincidence. This, all of it, from Geneva to the hell in that shipping container in Singapore, to standing here staring at Mae, had been a God almighty set-up. He’d heard it and missed it. Do you like dogs, Mrs Valentine? Llewelyn, in his stage actor’s voice, had asked for a Christmas favour. The dog was the bloody favour, the goddamned skinny little ginger dog.

  Kitt knew there had been a rat. While he had an idea who the rodent was, realising there were two was nearly as nauseating as finding Mae here at this house. An unstable swell of incredulity, confusion, rage, and nausea rushed into his gut. He swore, his words crude and strident. Mae’s being here dog-minding had everything to do with him. How in hell had Bryce let her take the position?

  She smoothed silk over her hips, the same way she often did when she wore an apron. “Postcards,” she sniffed. “Of course, you’ll explain this later, but I know this is what you do. Bryce enlightened me some time ago. I know how this works. It’s a ‘need to know’ thing I didn’t need to know. You needn’t worry. I’ll keep my mouth shut. I’ll play along. You had to kill Grant. It’s your job. Now, I’ll tend to mine.”

  Kitt stared at her. “What exactly is your job here, Mrs Valentine?”

  With a swish of red silk, she turned on her heel and headed for the door.

  “Mae, what are you do—”

  “When you finish here, Major Kitt, I never want to see you again. You may consider the lease on your flat terminated. Now, please let yourself out, and this time, be sure the dog stays in. Oh, and since you and Mr Reed are done killing, sir,” she grasped the doorknob, “I’ll assume you’ll not be staying for breakfast.”

  Kitt swallowed the clammy nausea that had crept in and stared at a door that had just closed. After ten seconds or so, he crossed the sitting room, going into the bedroom Reed claimed he’d already searched. The dog followed, nosing into the back of his knee for a moment before trotting over to sniff and paw a pair of Grant’s socks. The TV was on, the sound low. On screen, cheering, happy people revelled in Times Square to welcome the New Year. Kitt elbowed switch the light switch.

  “So...” Reed said from the bathroom doorway.

  Kitt held up a hand. “Don’t. Don’t say a bloody word.”

  “You always expect the worst. Maybe I was going to ask if you were okay.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “Okay, maybe I wasn’t. Is she going to be a problem?”

  “She’s a goddamned nuisance, but I can handle her.”

  “Yeah, you were doing a bang-up job of handling her.” Reed leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Your butler? Really? The help, Kitty? You slept with your help, the help you said was an older woman?”

  “She’s older than me.”

  “She’s middle-aged.”

  “So am I. So are you.”

  “You love her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Idiot.”

  “Yes.”

  Reed exhaled noisily. “I suppose you want me to get her out of here?”

  “Yes. But not yet. Keep an eye on her. Her presence isn’t an incredible coincidence. She’s here because of me and I need to know why.”

  “You don’t think there’s a logical explanation?”

  “No, do you?”

  Reed exhaled again. “I don’t know, but you sending her postcards was fuckwitted.”

  Kitt ignored Reed and the nausea somersaulting through his gut. He reached for the messenger bag and picked it up with a handkerchief. “Did you look through this?”

  “Yeah. Did you see anyone in or near the art studio?”

  “Only Mae.”

  “Hasn’t this has gone to shit. With Grant dead, I’m going to have to pull the plug.”

  “Give me twenty-four hours.”

  “You’ve had a month.”

  Coolly, Kitt tipped his chin ever so slightly and smi
led faintly at the redhead.

  “Shit.” Reed made a gruff noise in the back of his throat, head shaking. “The things we do for love.”

  Kitt unzipped the middle section of the bag. “Where was his passport?”

  “In the pocket on the side of that bag. Why are you going through it again?”

  “In case you weren’t thorough enough.”

  “I was thorough enough.”

  Kitt dumped the bag’s contents onto the bed, turning the bag inside out. He pulled a little penknife from his pocket, opened it, and sliced along a seam, cutting cloth from leather and a flat strip of lightweight, padded balsa wood. He slipped the wood from the new pocket he’d made. The centre of the wood strip was fitted with a passport, opened and flattened to resemble the padding. Kitt began to prise it up with the little knife, careful not to damage the document with the razor-edged blade no longer than the dull little knife Molony had in the shipping container. “I see your idea of thorough enough,” he said and the bedroom bleached from sight, and Kitt stood neck deep in handbags, scarves and sunglasses, the torn plastic on a crate spattered with vomit and blood, mosaic-tiled eyes peeking out.

  “What time is it?” Dalton asked.

  It was suddenly preposterously muggy, the stench of corpse-filled shipping container filled Kitt’s nostrils. “Chichiltic,” Popo laughed and dead eyes swarmed with flies buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. The balsa wood, handkerchief, and passport fell from Kitt’s grip.

  He barely made it to the toilet.

  Violently retching, he emptied his stomach, the rotting smell and buzzing replaced by the stink of his own vomit and sound of his own gasping.

  “You’re cactus,” Reed said from the doorway, open passport in his grip. “When was the last time you slept, mate?”