Finagled

  "Andrew was already heir. I didn't need George anymore, did I? No. I didn't. From there things did not move as quickly as I had hoped. There was a young fop, he was hopelessly in love with you, at first, but with my experience and skill, he was falling even more in love with me. I finally got him to agree to do what must be done, but it was your wedding night. I could be too late. I didn't imagine that George could keep it in his pants when he had a lovely young virgin to sully. How noble of him, to keep his promise to me. You are still a virgin, aren't you? Your big blank eyes drive me crazy with their virginal vapidity. God. I just want to..." With the shotgun still over one shoulder, she made a claw with her other hand, and scraped her nails down Ramona's injured calf. The sensation was nauseating.

  "God, that felt good, thanks," Regina said.

  Ramona struggled to keep consciousness.

  "Yes, well, the fop didn't do the job, as soon as the knife entered George’s back, too high to be of use, by the way, though I had shown him where to stick it, he suddenly up and lost the nerve. He did, however, swipe that pocket watch, it had been Malcolm's and I knew George would carry it. I pawned and used the money to add a few nice touches to my wardrobe to travel here, just in time, in fact, for your little weekend party. So fortuitous, it was like... a homecoming party just for me. George couldn't send me away in the midst of that, not that I expected him to, but," she shrugged, "it worked out very well. It also gave me the juicy gossip that you were expecting. Everyone was talking about it. You were dizzy, weak, nauseated, and had been married just long enough for it not to be scandalous.

  "And then, the next morning, you felt ill. I was even more convinced of it. I did not have a horse, and I was directed to yours as one docile and suited for late Malcolm Flanders’ widow. It was a stupid mistake on Andrew's part," Regina said. "Yes, that’s right, my son, he had heard the rumors too, and without any prompting whatsoever, planned to take, if not you, then at least your little bundle, out of the picture. When he came running into my room that afternoon, the terror in his eyes, I knew right away. Well, it gave us something to bond over. A good start. It is a shame that he made such an unfortunate mess of things. I really have no idea where he got that impulsiveness. Neither George nor myself are incautious people. In any case, I thought, if Andrew seemed to run away after this mess, what did it matter? I could be the terrified and grieving mother, and, well, George couldn't stop me, how could he? I could so easily say that Andrew had been his, and not just his, but his and the product of rape,"

  Ramona gasped.

  "Oh God. No." Regina laughed. "Actually, as much as I am enjoying that horrified look on your face, no. Your precious husband did not rape me, little girl. In all actuality, I raped him. It's kind of incredible that it worked, but then, I drugged him, he was barely conscious, and then, his masculine seed took, in one go, it was so perfect that I can't believe my plans were afterward so horrendously mucked up. But, they were. And so, I made Andrew disappear. I suppose it was a bit messier than I had intended it to be. I had forgotten about George's fondness for blood hounds. He found him devilish quick. In his old nursery, my poor baby, 12 times with a pen knife, about the face and chest.

  "There we have it, I hid under the bed after opening my bedroom window. George, thinking, I am sure, quite nobly, that I had realized what I had done, and leapt to my death like a decent human being, went to gawk at my crumbled and broken body. Out I came with a valuable piece of artwork, a bust of a great scholar, bam! right on the head, down he went. I tried my damnedest to toss him out the window, but, he is a solid piece of work, and so magnificently endowed," she said, reminiscently. "And that's where I left him.

  "Well. I think that's every evil deed that I have done that in any way concerns you or those that you love. Any questions?"

  Ramona opened and closed her mouth noiselessly, tears streamed down her face, she made some unintelligible noises and closed her eyes as Regina raise the shotgun. She did not face the barrels, she could not make herself. It hurt so much to breathe, her legs were burning, she willed herself to lose consciousness, but of course, that never works.

  The shotgun went off.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was a noise so loud it felt like her eardrums would burst, but it didn't hurt, like she had expected. It smelled horrible. She opened her eyes.

  Tirinia stood, awkward above her, a large bookend that had sat on the bedside table dangling from her fingertips.

  A scuffle in the hallway. Lady Imelda Havishamble came in wearing her nightdress, a cap tied under her chin in a ridiculous bow.

  "Why are you all standing here in the dark, and what is that smell?" she asked dumbly, sitting her oil lamp down and rubbing the sleepy from her eyes. "I mean, I heard a noise, was that gun?"

  "You heard a noise?" Tirinia said, exasperated and collapsing on the bed. "For God's sake, Imelda, we were nearly killed," she indicated Regina's prone form on the floor, the shotgun beside it.

  "But... women don't kill with guns," Lady Havishamble said in confusion, "They do it with poison, that's what I have always heard."

  Ramona looked around to see where the shot had landed. The bedside table was in shambles, splintered, smoking wood near the pillow where her head normally rested. She cried. She sobbed with joy and relief. She looked at Tirinia beside her and held out her small arms to the elderly woman. "Oh, oh God," she said, "George! And... we must get her tied up. Oh how I wish I could walk. Run, Mother, Mother, you must find someone, send them to Regina's room, George is there! And, oh Tirinia, have you the strength, here, we must... the rope that holds my bed curtains back, we must get that gun away from her," she sat up in the bed, and weeping through her words, flailed her arms about helplessly, "This is so infuriating!" she exclaimed.

  "Scoot, Imelda, scoot!" Tirinia said, standing up slowly. "Oh my head, Ramona, I feel just exactly like I was hit with the butt of a shotgun," she chuckled drily. "Oh I am just not any good at knots. We'll just have to quadruple them up and pray, it will probably have to be cut off of her, and it won't be comfortable, but I can't say at the moment that I am terribly concerned with her comfort."

  "She is alive, isn't she?" Ramona asked, peering over the edge of the bed. "I should hate if she made a murderess out of you,"

  "Oh yes, she is alive, I haven't the strength in these old bones to do much damage. Only just enough it would seem."

  "Oh thank God for you, Aunt Tirinia,"

  "Even if I did finagle you into this mess in the first place?" she asked, with a wry smile.

  "Oh you silly goose," Ramona said, her raspy little voice broken with sobs, "I do love him, you know that."

  "Of course I do. And I am glad, but does he know it?"

  Maybe he didn't, but when they came together, it was almost the first thing out of her lips.

  She had come too close, and too often, to losing him to let it go unsaid again. He nursed a wicked headache, a nasty bump on his head, and limped for the rest of his natural life. Ramona looked at him, with his hair rumpled from the fall, and decided that she liked it better when his hair was perfect, not a curl out of place.

  Seeing her small, dirty with gunpowder, her nightgown torn and her face tear stained, he said the words back to her, simply and quietly as he held his lips to the soft blonde hair that fell over her forehead. "I love you."

  "I have to tell you something, Ramona," George said, later, when they were both cleaned up, Ramona moved again to a fresh bedroom.

  "Andrew was my son, but... I did not..." he did not know how to put it delicately.

  "I know. God, I know, George, you don't have to say it. She told me. She told me so much, in graphic detail. George, I don't even know where to start..."

  "Then don't. It doesn't matter. You never have to think of her again, don’t say her name, don’t remember what she did. It is all over now."

  "No, George, I do have to tell you," Ramona said quietly.

  "If it's about Andrew, I know she killed him. I found him," he
said this quietly and simply, he did not have the need or desire to elaborate, though as he said it, he saw the wide and staring eyes of that unfortunate youth staring up at him blankly from the pile of wooden soldiers and blocks in the chest he had been stuffed into.

  "No. Oh, I’m so sorry, George, it isn't about Andrew. It's Malcolm."

  "Malcolm?" George tensed, his grip on Ramona’s hand tightened.

  "Yes," she couldn't meet his eyes with hers. "She poisoned him, George," it was all she could say, and she choked on the words.

  George was shaking with rage and grief, but looking at Ramona’s empathetic face, he steadied his breath, he took strength from the fact that she shared his grief, grief for a man she had never met.

  Regina regained consciousness tied up in the front hall. George had sent a man for the constable.

  She spat expletives, screamed, cried, but most importantly, she incriminated herself in front a slew of witnesses. Perhaps it would have been harder to explain the horrific details of the night to the authorities if so many people had not heard her go over them. She was completely unhinged. She didn't even look remotely beautiful anymore, to anyone.

  The constable was a small town fellow who had no idea what to do with the screaming, spitting, clawing woman he had been saddled with. She made threats on his family, his children, and said terrible, completely untrue things about his mother. Luckily there were plenty of men, men angry at what he had done to their Master’s family, to his sweet new wife they had come to care for, And these men helped him keep her under control as they trudged through the driving snow to the small village jail.

  They did this and said good riddance.

  Epilogue

  Ramona recovered slowly, but George was an unbelievable comfort to her.

  Neither of them could be light or happy immediately after what had happened. George had long moments of quiet rage, confusion, and sadness for all of the loss in his life excited by that terrible woman. Ramona was there if he needed to talk, or to sit in silence, as he was for her. They had shared something pretty incredible, they had nearly lost one another, on more than one occasion, and they were inseparable now. It was not what Ramona had dreamed of, nothing she ever would have wished for, but their bond was stronger than ever, and there was a great deal of comfort to be found in their love, for which she was very grateful.

  George was there, of course, when Ramona began to tentatively walk again. Though she would always be scarred, she was able to function with complete normalcy.

  Hearing of their troubles, the neighbors were quick to seek out their company and attempt to learn the gossip first hand, in the guise of helping them get through their troubled times. Far from ruining them, it seemed to make them even more popular. They had a murderess in the family, but they weren’t related to her by blood. It was the perfect kind of scandal.

  It was a couple of years before Ramona and George conceived a child of their own, not for lack of trying, but they did, and they all lived happily ever after.

  Rachel Kelso is a ridiculous writer/photographer living in the midwest with her husband. She always thought her author bio would say she lives with a bunch of cats, but she doesn't. No cats. Not one. :(