Society Girl (Animos Society)

by Alys Murray

  “Danny Boy?” The stocky redhead burst through the door, piercing the air with her usual greeting. “You about?”

  “Right here.” He waved from behind a stack of overstock shoved rudely into a corner.

  “And now you’ve got guests!” Nan waved her hands dismissively at his childhood friend. “You’d better do the stocking like you’re supposed to.”

  “I’m on it.” He made a show of groaning, showing her how hard he was working. It didn’t matter the books might as well have been a box of biscuits to him; she needed to believe he was working his ass off. He climbed up to the second-story loft, not entirely aware he was taking them two at a time. Certainly not aware he’d grabbed a stack of romance novels.

  “Angie O’Reilly.” Nan’s sharp voice turned on their new entrant. “I hope you aren’t about to come into my shop without telling me hello.”

  “Hey, Nan.”

  “Now, have some tea before you catch your death.”

  “It’s not raining,” Angie stated.

  “Don’t you children listen to the radio? What do they teach you in these schools my taxes pay for? You can catch your death anywhere nowadays.”

  “But I have to tell Daniel something important—”

  “It can wait until after you’ve warmed up.”

  Once Angie finally accepted a cup of tea, she pounded up the stairs. Soon, her head of vibrant hair appeared next to him, clouded by the steam coming out of her mug.

  “Is the new song ready?” Angie panted.

  “No.”

  Ugh. The song. Daniel hadn’t so much as thought about the song in days. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He was always thinking about his songs. Lines fluttered between his ears and harmonies whispered to him from the trees, but lately, he hadn’t come up with anything worth playing in public. Every time he tried to write something, music suddenly became the furthest thing from his mind. He was stuck.

  “Well, you might want to hurry it up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re playing a show in two days. And I have some news.”

  Daniel scoffed, unable to keep from rolling his eyes though his smile still hadn’t retreated. “We’re just playing here. It’s not like it’s the O2 or anything.”

  “No, but—”

  “And besides, you should try to write when you have no inspiration.”

  This was Angie’s cue to slump against the nearest bookshelf in exasperation. They danced this tango every time the subject came up, leaving them both dizzy with all the circles they turned.

  “Right,” Angie said, sighing. “The damn courtly poet of Oxford.”

  She meant it as an insult, but he couldn’t take it as one. The nickname suited him. Every time he picked up a guitar or put his hands to a piano, his fingers recalled all of those great love songs. “I Will.” “Your Song.” “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” “God Only Knows.” “Such Great Heights.” “I Will Always Love You.” Those songs were written in his DNA, the songs linking two people and setting their worlds on fire. Those were the songs he wanted to write. Those were the kind of songs that would win him the hearts of the crowds, the kind that would make him into something more than a poor nobody from Oxford.

  Finding love in this world was so hard. If he could write it into a song and give it back to people…maybe they would remember him. Maybe he would mean something.

  “I write what I dream, Angie.”

  “You”—Angie pulled out a cigarette, talking with it clenched between her teeth as she fished in her pocket for a matchbook. It wasn’t technically legal or allowed for anyone to smoke indoors, but she was Old School Irish. Cork born and bred. No one would tell her where she could drink pints or smoke cigarettes, not even Nan—“should write what sells.”

  “Love songs sell.”

  “Your love songs don’t.”

  “Because they’re not true yet.”

  “Well, can we get you laid and make them true? I’m really tired of playing your nan’s shop. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “None taken? What’s gotten into you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve never let me get away with talking bad about Crowdwell’s. You also haven’t stopped whistling since I got here. It’s not right for a man to be this happy when I haven’t even told him my good news yet.”

  He hadn’t even noticed he’d been whistling so much. His mind flashed back to the woman in the window at Ashbrooke, but he shoved those thoughts away. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I started a new job today.”

  “At the Ashbrooke place, yeah? And?”

  “I don’t know. Turns out I like old cars.”

  “Daniel.” Angie’s disapproval cut the air. “How long have we been friends?”

  “I don’t know…” He and Angie met when she came into the bookshop desperately seeking some Proust novel she could use to impress a girl. Daniel tried to tell her being herself was more impressive, but Angie left with the Proust anyway. She did not get the girl. But they did become friends. “Five years, I guess?”

  “After all that time, you still think you can lie to me? You think I’m gonna believe that you’re whistling some ‘Over the Rainbow’ bullshit because you got your hands on some vintage cars?”

  “I don’t know. Have you ever touched a Rolls-Royce?” A joke rolled off of his tongue before he thought better of it. “I think it’s better than sex.”

  “Only a person who’s never had sex would say that.”

  Daniel’s eyes widened. An embarrassed flush rushed his whole body.

  “Not so loud!”

  “What? Who’s gonna hear me? The thousands of girls hiding in this store?”

  Yeah, he was a virgin. Not that he exactly advertised that information. Nothing weirder—especially in a university town like this one—than a twenty-three-year-old virgin. He wasn’t ashamed of it. He just didn’t want to be a social outcast for it, that’s all.

  The truth? Cheesy at it sounded, even to his own ears, he was a romantic. A rioting heart, sentimental, wide-eyed, hopeful romantic. It was hard to find sex when all he wanted was pure, passionate, life-changing love.

  Or rather, he wanted sex. But he wanted the kind of toe-curling, moan-inducing, all-consuming passionate sex that two people had when they were in love.

  “Now, you tell me your news—the truth, this time—and I’ll tell you mine. And you’d better hurry up because I’m bursting here.”

  “Fine. Fine,” he said, chuckling, trying to play off the pounding of his own blood in his ears, trying to play off what a big deal it was, how often she’d come up in his thoughts since leaving her. “I kind of met someone today.”

  “At Ashbrooke? Is it one of the maids?” Angie’s eyes widened; she’d already seized on the erotic daydream potential. “Does she wear the uniform? That’s some hot—”

  “Not a maid.”

  “Cook?”

  “No.”

  “Chimney sweep?”

  “Do they still have those?”

  “…Lady mechanic?”

  “No.”

  With all of her options expended, Angie’s pale Irish skin went impossibly whiter. Her jaw dropped. For several seconds, she simply shook her head, not managing to speak.

  “Don’t tell me it’s the duke’s daughter,” she choked.

  He played dumb, but his voice pitched too high and he knew there was no way she’d buy it. “Does he have a daughter?”

  Truth be told, if Thomas hadn’t told him about her, he wouldn’t have known the duke even had a daughter. Growing up, he’d always heard of the lord’s son, especially considering he was the head of the Animos Society and a consummate troublemaker when he was younger, but he hadn’t heard of a daughter.

  “Shit, man! You’re Bambi-eyed over Lord Dubarry’s daughter? What did you say?”

  “…We didn’t, you know, talk. As such.”

  “What? You shoved her in a closet and gave her
a silent, passionate dicking?”

  “Don’t talk about her like that.”

  The force of his own words surprised him, but they rolled right off of Angie.

  “Sor-ry,” she practically yawned, the word dripping with honeyed sarcasm. “I didn’t realize she was off-limits.”

  “I just saw her. A couple of times.”

  “And did she see you?”

  “Not the first time. She was distracted. But the second time she did. Through a window.”

  “Ohhh.” She drew out the word, a dismissive taunt.

  “There was a spark!”

  There had been a spark, hadn’t there? He hadn’t spent the day remembering something totally one sided and accidental… Right?

  Oh, God. What if he was totally making up this whole thing because he was desperate for someone to write a song about? How pathetic was that?

  “The rich girl and the poor stable boy. Where have I heard this one before? Oh, right. Everywhere. Because it always ends the same way.”

  “Nothing has even started—”

  “Oh, yes it has. You’ve got the look. The I’m going to get my heart broken by a woman who’s going to marry one of those Animos Society assholes look. The I’m going to get my heart ripped out and stepped on by a girl whose father wouldn’t let me lick his boots look. The—”

  “Enough.”

  Angie was right, of course. She had no reason to look his way or feel anything about him. That didn’t mean he wanted her to continue.

  “Are you sure she was looking at you and not down her nose at you?”

  He didn’t answer her. Not when he knew she was probably right.

  “Danny Boy, she’s off-limits. And you should know that.”

  “She was looking at me,” he said, sounding more like he was trying to convince himself than her. “She felt it, too. Probably.”

  “She was looking at you because she knows she could have you and throw you away. Pretty little rich girls think they can get everything they want.”

  Again, he didn’t answer. He wanted her to be wrong, but every self-preservation instinct in him told him she was exactly right.

  “You’re going to get hurt. You know all of them are like, engaged from the time they’re born, right? Have to keep all their money locked up away from us poors and our dirty fingernails. She might as well have ‘Private Property’ tattooed on her forehead.”

  “Please, don’t talk about her like that. We don’t even know her.”

  “Which is exactly why I’m advising you to be cautious. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  The woman living inside of Ashbrooke Manor could have been the biggest brat on the planet. She could have been some future duke’s private property, a rotten woman who would sooner use his favorite shirt as a dinner napkin before she would deign to speak to him. But… Her eyes haunted him. They were sweet. Curious. But there was a sadness, too. A trapped quality he couldn’t quite understand.

  Lost. Just like her brother had said.

  “I don’t think she’s going to hurt me.”

  Angie tossed her hands in exasperation. “You know what? I hope she’s great. I hope she’s all your little romantic heart can take, the muse of your dreams, because you need a new song for this week.”

  “Does this have something to do with the news you’ve been dangling in front of me since you walked in that door?” Daniel asked, thankful for the reprieve.

  “Yep.” Angie snapped the p sound as she held out her hands as if for silence. “Alanis Trent is coming to the show.”

  Daniel nearly dropped his stack of books. “Alanis Trent? The record producer?”

  “One and the same.”

  “To see me?”

  “No, I ran in here to tell you she was coming to see someone else.” She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Yes, you. She dropped a client recently and she’s looking for someone to replace him. Someone with sweet, soulful eyes that all the American girls will lose their heads over. Your old songs are good and she was impressed with the recordings on my phone—”

  “How’d you get her to listen to recordings of me on your phone?”

  “One of my flames got me into a party. We got chatty, a little flirty, and she asked me if I knew any up-and-comers she should take a look at. She says she likes your old work but wants to hear something fresh. Something she can make into a hit.”

  Unbelievable. He’d been dragging himself to London whenever he could scrape the money for bus fare, toiling away at open mic nights, when what he needed to do was flirt with a producer.

  Still, his mind struggled to put together a coherent sentence amidst the shock and nerves and gratitude flooding him.

  “Angie, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say you’re going to write me that hit song.”

  “I will,” he promised.

  That was the thing about Daniel, the thing he knew Angie hated more than anything else. He believed in the power of the word yet.

  No, I don’t have a hit song…yet.

  No, I don’t have any clue how to write a hit song…yet.

  No, I don’t have a muse…yet.

  But the wonderful thing about the word yet was that the answer to that yet could be just on the horizon. He only had to find it.

  Chapter Five

  On Saturday night, the Rage continued. As the drinking clubs and socialites and frazzled youth of Oxford made their way home, and as the pubs rang their closing bells, Sam’s night was only beginning. She’d been under the impression the Rage was a private affair, a way to infiltrate the home of a rich man and live like kings for a weekend, but there she was, standing in the yard of Christ Church, wearing nothing but her underwear under an impossibly long fur coat. It dragged along the ground as she walked, occasionally tugging the fabric away to reveal her state of undress.

  Knickers. Lingerie. Bra and panties.

  She tried telling herself it was like wearing a bathing suit. When she was in high school, her foster mother would drag her and the gaggle of children she’d collected out to the beach, and on those excursions, Sam braved less clothing than she was wearing now.

  The defense was as thin as the high-waisted purple lace she’d chosen to cover her modesty. No one who passed her by—and there would be plenty once the pubs let out in earnest—would shrug off her near nakedness. They would gawk, stare, and titter about her near-nudity and she wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it.

  As the regents walked her toward the center of the yard, she clutched the fur closer, hoping it was fake but doubting very much that it was. Either way, she was glad for its temporary warmth it gave her already chilled skin.

  “Everyone does this? This is usually part of the initiation?”

  “Chickening out?”

  “I’m comfortable with my body,” she said, noncommittal. “I’m only curious.”

  “Everyone does it. Most of us don’t have the goods you do.”

  “Except Wellington here.”

  A chorus of guffaws rang out as Graham swung around the portly man to squeeze his sagging pecs. If she hadn’t sealed off the feeling parts of her, Sam might have pitied him. No one seemed to give her a break for her looks, either. But Wellington didn’t give her any slack or feel anything for her; it seemed a waste of her shivering energy to feel anything for him.

  “We’ve paid off the guards down the way,” PJ muttered, too low for any of the cutting up men to hear him. “They’ll turn a blind eye to the public indecency but keep an eye on you so no one—”

  The curly haired black man didn’t have time to complete the thought, but Sam understood him. The local cops wouldn’t keep these guys from forcing her to stand basically naked in a public place, but they would make sure she wasn’t going to get assaulted for her troubles. It was as thoughtful as it was nauseating and as relieving as it was painful.

  When they finally reached their destination, Captain dropped a cardboard sign at Sam’s feet. Even in the dim light of the
surrounding lamps, she recognized the Animos insignia and the words written around it. BY DECREE OF THE OXFORD REGENTS, BRAND THIS PIGGY. Her stomach turned. She didn’t dare let them see her shivering, not from the cold and certainly not from the chill the sign ran up and down her spine. All of this had been explained to her before, but cold reality stung her harsher than the early winter winds ripping through the courtyard.

  “Graham,” Captain barked. “Rules.”

  “You are to stand here, uncloaked, until morning. You are not to move. You are not to hide. With your marker”—he pulled a round black marker from his pocket and dropped it beside her cardboard sign—“you must let anything be written on you. Any violation of these rules means an automatic disqualification from initiation.”

  “How would you even—”

  One look from Captain and the question died in her throat.

  “If you make it to the stroke of six tomorrow morning, when the morning service starts here, you’ll be an Associate Member of the Animos Society.”

  “And I’ll be a full member if I do the ball thing?”

  “Full only if you win the Mud Duck Ball,” Graham corrected. “So, you’d better get cracking on your grease spot. Remember, we are the ones who vote on the winner, so you’re going to want the worst date you can get. The more humiliating the whole thing is for him, the better your chances. Now. Take your coat off.”

  Another Sam would have hesitated or at least given a thought to modesty before dumping the coat off her shoulders. The Sam standing before Christ Church didn’t. She tossed the swell of fabric to Wellington, her face an impassive mask.

  “Your time starts now. See you in the morning, Piggy.” They moved to leave, but something stopped Captain short. “Wait…”

  He turned, and the air, chilly only a minute ago, now boiled hot enough to scald. With careful grace, he leaned down, his face inches from Sam’s bare flesh. His eyes taking in everything as they traveled across her skin, his nose so close it brushed the swell of her belly. When he passed her plump thighs, he reached for the pen at her feet, then popped up to standing as if nothing had happened.