Forever in Your Service

by Sandra Antonelli

  Basil stood at the fireplace, warming himself. Slumped, Ruby’s sunglasses remained in place as they had during breakfast. Forehead in her hand, she shaded her eyes from the glare coming through the windows, or perhaps from returning Mr Nash and his trousers, which were turquoise and dotted with tiny white stars.

  “You still hungover, Ruby?” Nash plopped into a white armchair that made his trousers look even brighter. He had a book in his hand.

  “Are you sure that green slime you drank at breakfast was supposed to cure a hangover?” Reed said, brushing the dog aside, phone in hand.

  “It’s not a hangover, it’s a grape depression,” Still cannabis-mellowed, Taittinger laughed, perched on the arm of Ruby’s chair, rubbing her shoulders. “Is there anything I can get you, Ruby?”

  “More aspirin.” Ruby groaned. “I think I may die.”

  From the right, Mae entered the great room. Kitt watched her and she looked at him, dour-faced, back stiff. She gave him a solid stare. He lifted his head slightly and scratched his nose, finger pointing toward Taittinger. The dog scampered to her side, licking her hand, and she kept staring, eyes widening slightly, subtly. With a small pulse of her jaw, she approached Taittinger and leaned close to the bespectacled man.

  Taittinger’s ever-present smile faded and his mouth formed a clear, single word, ‘What?’ He rose from the sofa’s arm, adjusted his glasses, rubbed his goateed chin, and left his spot beside Ruby, following Mae.

  She halted near the ottoman. Kitt listened to their quiet exchange. “There’s blood everywhere,” she said.

  Taittinger chewed his bottom lip for a second. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m a little shaken. All the blood and gore. It’s rather gruesome.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, you would be. Probably coyotes. They go for the weakling.”

  Weakling? Kitt listened intently.

  “You don’t think it could have been...” Mae turned slightly to cough, eyes squinting then flashing wide at Kitt, “...a bear?”

  Kitt stayed in his slumped, sprawled-leg position, listening, watching. Weakling. Coyotes. Bear. Yes, something had gone arseways and balls up.

  Taittinger rubbed his chin again. “There’s that much of a...mess?”

  “Perhaps I ought to ring animal control?”

  “That and,” a deep groove dug into Taittinger’s brow, fingers pinching the end of his chin whiskers, “I guess I’ll call Hector. Have him send one of his men over to... Right in front of the studio?”

  “Yes.”

  “Valentine, sugar,” Ruby cupped a hand to the edge of her dark, oversized sunglasses, sheltering from the snow-bright outdoor glare. “Could you pull down the shades in here, maybe turn off the grandma music?”

  “Of course.” Mae crossed the room, dog on her heels, and tapped the touchpad on the wall. Music stopped, grey shades rolled down, filtering out the brightness of the late morning sun.

  Taittinger licked his lips and began to clear his throat.

  “You’re not coming down with Grant’s bug, are you, Jools?” Reed tucked his phone away.

  Arm on the stone fireplace mantel, Basil chuckled. “I think Jools and Ruby are still feeling the effects of a New Year’s Eve well spent.”

  Ruby smiled, albeit wanly. “You have such a nice way of putting things, Baz, but I’ve got whistle-belly thumps and skull cramps. I’m thinkin’ I may go back to bed for a bit—like ’til the Chungs get here this afternoon.”

  “I have to be honest,” Nash straightened, book in hand. “I thought ten-thirty was too early a start for you people. Look at Somerset over there. So much for the healing power of Vegemite.”

  Basil chuckled. “How anyone can eat that salty muck I’ll never know.”

  Ruby sighed. She made a half-arsed attempt to get up but sank back into the chair.

  “Hey, uh, everyone...” Taittinger began, voice a little croaky with tension. “I need to excuse myself. I’ve got a small situation to tend to.”

  “You mean how your dog needs to go to canine obedience?” Basil pushed Felix away from his knee.

  Felix trotted to Ruby’s wide chair, hopped up, and plopped down between her and the cushions, head on her lap. For a moment or two she scratched his chin. “Oh Lord, dog. You’re sweet, but not now, I can’t. I just can’t.” She prodded him off the chair.

  Undaunted, Felix moved on.

  “Don’t even think about it, mate.” Reed shifted and waved his arms, preventing the dog from latching on to his leg. Instead, Felix hopped onto the sofa, walked over Kitt, and squished into the small space between his thigh and armrest.

  For two seconds, Kitt lifted his head, had a look about, crossed his arms, and slouched into his pre-jostled position.

  Taittinger, frog gone from his throat, stretched out his hands like a referee at a sports match. “I know you might want to get some fresh air, or have a cigar, maybe you might even change your mind and go for a ski, but if you do, stick close to the house. Looks like we may have a cougar or black bear roaming around on the property.” He adjusted his glasses and licked his lips again.

  “A bear?” Basil’s eyebrows undulated, arching from left to right, his dark moustache twitching. “How do you know?”

  “There’s a...carcass.”

  “What kind of carcass?” Reed asked.

  Nash glanced up from his book. “Don’t bears hibernate in winter?”

  “They come out now and again, but yeah, this time of year it could have been a cougar. They’re active year-round. A cougar’s more likely.” Face pinching, Taittinger gave a helpless shrug. “And this one took down the deer Valentine found.”

  “You know,” Nash balanced the open book on his yellow-clad thigh, “a set of antlers above your fireplace would look quite rustic, manly.”

  “Right, Bob.” Ruby chuckled softly. “Nothin’ says masculine like a set of antlers. Was it a doe or buck, Valentine?”

  Faces turned in her direction. Mae pressed both hands over her mouth. Her shoulders sagged. She knew exactly, exactly what to do. Her actions were artful, flawless, and, for a brief moment, it gave Kitt a sense of pride that immediately turned to regret. She was here because of him, play-acting because of him, in the centre of danger because of him. “Forgive me. Blood makes me a little...” She swallowed. “What did you say, Ms Bleuville?”

  “Oh, shit, Valentine.” Taittinger led Mae to the ottoman in front of Kitt and Reed. “Sit down.”

  “Aw, dang, yes, sit.” Ruby nodded. “You ought to be restin’ peaceful, sugar, not here.”

  “So, were there antlers?”

  Mae’s briefly eyes shot to Nash. “No antlers.” Stiffly, she sat and began to fidget with the strings tied at the front of her apron. “It’s out there, outside in the snow, right in front of the old stable and the—”

  “You have a stable, Jools?” Nash snapped his book shut. “I like horses.”

  “No, no.” Taittinger shook his head. “It used to be a stable, now it’s my mother’s summer art studio.”

  Mae shuddered. “There’s so much blood.” Slyly, with skill that made Kitt inexplicably proud and horrified, she rose, gave another shudder and plopped back onto the ottoman. “I beg your pardon, Dr Jools. I believe I’m a little light-headed.”

  Kitt sat upright, shoved his hat back, a groove of sleepy irritation on his face as he looked about the room.

  “If you’ll all excuse me.” Taittinger exhaled unhappily and left his guests.

  Nash tossed his book aside and hopped to his feet, looking at everyone “Well, isn’t anybody going to give Jools a hand? Aren’t any of you going to help?”

  Kitt yawned and counted. He got as far as seven before Nash headed out of the great room. “What’s going on?”

  “Don’t concern yourself. Just go back to sleep, Ian,” Reed leaned over, kissed Kitt on the mouth, shoved the cowboy hat back over his eyes, and exited in the direction Taittinger and Nash had gone.

  Ruby looked at Basil, Basil glanced at Kitt, and Ki
tt yawned, and began counting again. He knew human nature well. Help? Nonsense. Long ago, it had ceased to surprise him how people were drawn to gape at car accidents, house fires, disaster zones of any sort. Helping Taittinger had nothing to do with it. Kitt got all the way to six before Basil pulled Ruby to her feet. The pair went after the Nash, Reed, and their host.

  A long moment of silence filled the room. Finally, Mae sighed. “Russell Grant’s body is missing.” She stood, went to the window, and watched the snow fall. “He was replaced with a dead deer.”

  “So I gathered.”

  Snowflakes meandered to the cold, white ground. The last fifteen minutes had been surreal and absurd, right down to that smacking kiss Reed planted on Kitt. Mae crossed her arms, snorted, and muttered, “Anything for Queen and country, use whomever you must, lie back and think of England.”

  “I didn’t quite get that, Mae.”

  “Sorry. I said, anything for Queen and country, use whomever you must, lie back and think of England.”

  “Actually, it’s lie back and think of you,” he said, directly behind her.

  Mae turned and looked at him, one eye squinting. He’d taken off the hat.

  He wore a faint, somewhat mocking smile as he removed his brown jacket and slid it onto her shoulders. “Is that an additional thing you’ll have to come to terms with about me and my work?”

  “No. But I wonder what it makes you?”

  “A professional.”

  “Well, I never thought of a spy as a whore, but you are getting paid. I hope you enjoyed it. Reed is rather attractive.”

  Ever so ridiculously nonchalant, he slid his left hand into a trouser pocket. The navy-blue polo neck he wore turned his eyes a deeper blue. “He likes to irritate me.”

  “You don’t look irritated.” She pulled the jacket close.

  “Christ, he’s a terrible kisser.”

  “Perhaps he thinks the same thing about you.”

  “I don’t give a damn what he thinks. He ate onions. They were in that mushroom burrito thing you made. Whoever taught him to kiss should be put up against a wall and shot.”

  She snorted and mumbled something again.

  “What was that?” Kitt left her by the window and moved to the sofa.

  “Everyone thinks they’re a good kisser even when they are not.”

  He leaned on the arm of the sofa and regarded her. “I am a very skilled kisser.”

  Mae smiled again, softly, but the softness had pointed edges. She came toward him. “Who taught you to kiss?”

  Kitt bit his back teeth together for a half second. “A pretty Greek girl named Vassiliki. I was fifteen.”

  “And what did you learn from her?”

  “A little tongue goes a long way. Who taught you to kiss?”

  “A pretty American girl named Lisa Patton. Is that what Reed did, slip you a little too much tongue?”

  The left corner of his mouth lifted. “No, no. Let’s go back to Lisa Patton.”

  “You are curious about the strangest things.”

  “The point is I’m curious.”

  “And I’m pissed off.”

  “I hadn’t noticed. Lisa Patton?”

  Mae crossed her arms. “We were eleven and were acting out something we’d read in a romance novel.”

  “I like romance novels,” he said.

  “Read many, have you?” Mae gave him that look, the one that told him he was full of shite.

  He’d missed that look. “You think Jane Eyre is the only romance I’ve ever read? A man can learn a lot from the much-maligned, humble romance novel. Everything, from the agency of women, power dynamics in relationships, communications skills, to kissing and how to have sex, it’s all there between the pages.”

  “If you learned so much, where did you go wrong?”

  “I’ve had a little trouble with the ending. And, I suspect, so have you. There was, a very long time ago, a woman—a girl, really. I thought I loved her, but she very nearly killed me. She stabbed me in the back, literally. That scar, the one at the top of my shoulder blade, the one you like to run your fingers over, she did that.”

  Mae gave him another reminder that he was full of shite. “What was her name?”

  “Honor, which was something she did not possess. With the benefit of hindsight, I know that whatever I felt for her wasn’t love. It was infatuation; immature feelings of passionate tenderness, or whatever passes for what you think is love when you’re twenty and stupid. The point is you are new ground for me. I don’t know what I’m doing, or really how to do it. I’m improvising. I’m usually quite good at improvising.”

  Again, she squinted an eye.

  “Right. I’m terrible at improvising anything with you. You, on the other hand...I must be honest and admit I was impressed how well you improvised.”

  “I was good, wasn’t I?”

  “Quite.”

  “Then why don’t you trust me, Kitt?”

  “Oh, but I do,” he said, aware the pause before his reply was a fraction longer than it ought to have been.

  She crooked her head slightly, a pale smile on her lips. “I am not going to stab you in the back.”

  “Perhaps not intentionally,” he said, and knew how positively ridiculous and childish it made him look, but sometimes being ridiculous and childish opened one’s eyes to what one failed to see. “That’s why you said no isn’t it?”

  “When we first met,” she moved closer, “when you were laid up with a detached retina and I brought you Chelsea buns and coffee, you were convinced I wanted something in return for my kindness. Because of your work, you are so accustomed to not trusting anyone that you fail to understand you can trust me, really trust me.”

  “I’m a fool.”

  “Romance novels. Communications skills.” With a pfft, she uncrossed her arms and shook her head, muttering under her breath.

  “I’d apologise to you again, but I know that won’t make any difference. Some things are out of my hands. One cannot control the variables in intelligence work. I forget that sometimes, particularly when it comes to matters that involve you when those matters shouldn’t involve you at all.”

  Her muttering ceased. “Did you find anything else, anything when you searched rooms and the house last night?”

  “No. There was nothing in Lady Taittinger’s art studio either, except two crates of glass and a metal supply cupboard. There’s nothing in the garage but cars. The barn, I haven’t been in there yet and I’d prefer to get in without breaking in. Do you know the key code?”

  “Yes, but you won’t find anything in the barn besides a tractor, gardening stuff, crates of glass, and the car Taittinger’s restoring. I’ve already searched. More than once. I was very thorough.”

  “You and Reed need to leave thorough to the professionals.”

  “I was thorough. I even searched the car.”

  “How splendid.” Kitt rose from the arm of the sofa.

  Mae looked at him, at the way he stood so casually, so relaxed, left hand at his side, the natural curl of his fingers hiding two missing knuckles. “Don’t tell me you’re angry.”

  “I sodding well am.”

  “Are you angry that I thoroughly investigated the barn or is this about the eggs?”

  Kitt stared at her woodenly, controlled in that way he knew frustrated the hell out of her. He really did not want to frustrate the hell out of her, yet if he let loose his own frustration his expression would turn him even more petulantly childish than he’d already been. What was it about her that reduced him to behaving like a sulky five-year-old deprived of his favourite toy?

  “Really?” She sniffed. “The eggs? You still think I did it on purpose, you think I denied you breakfast, that I was exacting revenge?”

  “Revenge is a very human need.” He glanced at the dog asleep on the sofa.

  “Oh, yes, you trust me.” Mae exhaled a scornful laugh. “Power dynamics. Of course. That’s what this is about: control and domination.
You try to control the people so that the dominant player wins. You once said the work you do was a game.”

  “It is a game.”

  Her mouth curved into an anorexic smile. “We’re all sixes and sevens with each other, aren’t we? Up and down. I can’t quite get my head around it. I saw you everywhere when I thought you were dead. I heard you. Every man was you. Is that happening now? Are you alive?”

  “Pinch me.”

  Mae snagged him by the waistband of his trousers and shoved her hand down the front.

  “Perhaps pinch was a poor word choice.” Her hand slid along the length of him, back and forth. Kitt drew in a sharp breath. “Mrs Valentine, what are you doing?”

  “Just checking.” She pushed him backwards and he bumped into the sofa’s arm. Her fingers moved, delightfully, and kept moving.

  “Last night,” he swallowed, “you thought I didn’t want you, didn’t you?”

  “And now?” She gripped his flesh, stroking.

  “Control and domination. You may have the winning hand.”

  “That,” she paused her movements, “was terrible.”

  “I’m only trying to meet your fictional spy expectations.”

  “I am not a spy.” She withdrew from his trousers.

  “No. You’re not.” The little quirk of his mouth had revealed his amusement. His eyes had grown warm for a while, but his mouth twisted, matching the curve of his recently broken nose. “This is how it’s going to go. Grant’s murder and the disappearance of his body is on me, not you. Llewelyn putting you here to watch Taittinger, that’s over. You are done.” Kitt sat on the arm of the sofa and took a breath. “Please. Please, Mae. I can’t focus on what I have to do with you being a nuisance to worry about. You know I can’t see beyond you. I am sloppy, blind to anything but you, which is going to get you, or me, killed, genuinely this time. Can you understand why I am asking?”

  Mae began to rub the heel of one hand into her forehead mumbling, cursing in Italian under her breath.