by Muir, L. L.
Even the air seemed soft around her...
“If I kissed you, you would have to call me North.”
“You will do no such thing,” she hissed, even though she prayed he would do just that. She should not encourage him. She should not lean her head back against his collar bone, but she did. What in the world had come over her?
It was the darkness. It had to be. If there was even a hint of light, she would not dare act as she was. But perhaps that was a trick men used.
She tried to straighten but was immobilized by chills as first his hair brushed against her ear, then his breath skimmed over her neck. Warm lips against her shoulder turned her knees to liquid and they failed her.
He caught her, lifted her, held her up while he continued. She sighed as she had never done before. He laughed quietly against her skin, then straightened.
“Forgive me, Livvy. That was quite unfair of me.”
“Hmm?” She could think of not a word to say, or a muscle that might help her say it. With chills down the front of her and Northwick’s warm form behind her, she felt quite content to remain that way until she woke in the morning. For the mist covering her brain had to be a dream. Only in her dream would Northwick choose her over his precious Plumiere.
“Livvy?”
“Shhh.”
“Livvy,” he growled in her ear.
Chills began their waterfall all over again.
“When Ashmoore kisses you, compare it with this. Remember me standing here, holding you this way. Remember how you are trembling.”
“You made me cold. Clearly not my fault.”
“Yes, it is all my fault. I did this to you. I will be the only one to make you cold and make you hot. Only me. I cannot stand by and smile, Livvy darling. You are meant for no one but me. Remember that, when Ashmoore takes your hand—”
She shook off the mist, pulled her shoulder out from beneath that waterfall of chills, and turned to confront the darkness.
BLOOD FOR INK
The Scarlet Plumiere Series: Book 1
By L. L. Muir
AMAZON KINDLE EDITION
PUBLISHED BY
Lesli Muir Lytle
www.llmuir.weebly.com
Blood for Ink © 2012 Lesli Muir Lytle
All rights reserved
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This ebook is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Dedication
Blood for Ink
Excerpt from Bones for Bread
Excerpt from Going Back for Romeo
Acknowledgements
About the Author
DEDICATION
*
To Marlin—
my Thor
and the inspiration
for every step I take.
*
Just me and you.
CHAPTER ONE
The Capital Journal, January 31st, Saturday edition, Fiction section
A rumor currently circulates among the gentry in The Grand City that the white-blond Viscount F had a visitor one recent morning, or rather, visitors, as the woman who claimed to be his wife brought with her a pair of identical offspring closely resembling the viscount himself. Piercing blue eyes and straight white hair adorned both cherubs whose mother was blessed with the dark hair of her Spanish ancestors.
Not believing the woman, or his own eyes it seems, Viscount F shooed the little family from his noble steps and into the halls of a certain hotel where they have taken up residence until a higher authority might be able to hear their tale.
It was also rumored the mistress of Viscount F has moved out of his grasp as she deemed it unwise to associate with a man who possesses untrustworthy…eyes.
It remains to be seen whether or not the current fiancée of this poor-sighted creature is also saved from his company.—The Scarlet Plumiere
“Well, Stanley, you cannot 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, Stanley Winters, Viscount Forsgreen, was not the first to be chastised by the red-penned writer. That he was being so dramatic about it, so early on a Saturday morning, 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 blond.” Presley Talbot, Marquess of Harcourt and the worst tease among them, prodded poor Stanley from behind, then walked around the man and offered him a much needed drink.
Stan raised the glass, then paused. “It is early.”
“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 have only been to Spain two years ago and... Oh, dear.”
“Well, the vixen got that right at least.” Earnest Meriwether, the unfortunately named Earl of Ashmoore, chimed in from the far stacks of North’s immodest library. His given name was spot-on, as if his mother might have read the sobriety in his eyes the moment he was born, but the family name was far afield. Ash was never merry; he was deadly serious, and deadly otherwise. After everything that transpired in France, North was no longer quite as dedicated to England as he was to his sober friend; if the Earl of Ashmoore decided to turn coats, North would turn his as well rather than face his dark friend in any skirmish. No man did so and lived.
“But Ash, I am telling you, there is no such woman.” Stanley looked at a chair, but North frowned and shook his head, as if to say the morning’s business was so serious the viscount should keep on his toes.
Stanley’s shoulders fell. Poor man, so easily manipulated. The Scarlet Plumiere really should not 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.” Ash joined the rest, eyes fixed on an open volume of Shakespeare—the red leather set. He lowered his dark form into the seat Stanley had been eyeing.
“He is right, of course. Let us hear it, Stanley. What have you done?” Harcourt threw North a conspiratory wink, then hooked a leg over the corner of a table and leaned forward for the details, his interest and enthusiasm more than making up for Ash’s lack of both.
Of course, Stanley broke.
“I have done nothing! Nothing the rest of our lot has not done from time to time.”
North could not bring himself to prod the viscount further. The poor chap had asked his three closest friends to meet that morning to find a solution to his newest problem—fresh as the morning paper. They really should get ‘round to the business of helping him.
Harcourt was in no such hurry. He folded his arms and lifted a brow.
“Stanley, you are trying our patience. Spit out your confession, or I do not see us making much of an attempt to save your sorry hide.”
Stan flushed from his pinned cravat to the roots of his snowy hair—a shade of red that might well have been the only color that did not become the overly-blessed viscount. He braced himself, as if for the executioner.
“I set Ursula aside.”
“You what?” Three baritones in unison sounded almost rehearsed.
North shook his head. “I am sorry, old boy. You did what?”
“He set her aside.” Harcourt slapped his knee.
North turned to Ash. “He set her aside.”
“Yes, blast you. I set her aside!”
Ashmoore closed the book, laid Shakespeare on the overstuffed arm, and shook a lock of black hair from his forehead. “Pardon my slow wit, but just how does one put an Ursula aside?”
Ash was right. Stanley Winters had enjoyed the pick of females since the four of them were in knee breeches together. Now he had the pick of all mistresses and had chosen very well. Ursula was indisputably the most sought after mistress in all of London, and 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 the mighty 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?”
The viscount’s blush looked to be seeping into his actual hair.
“I let her go,” he said quietly.
“Ah. Like fishing, then? You took the hook from her mouth, so to speak, and put her back in the water.” North could not help but laugh at Harcourt’s miming skills.
“Can she swim, do you suppose?” Ash’s usual sobriety fled. He dissolved into laughter at his own jest, as did they all—except poor Stanley of course.
The viscount 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 pleased.”
North nodded and composed himself. “And you paid her a nice settlement, of course.”
“Actually, she would not take it. She was not at all happy that I offered it.”
A giggling Harcourt bent over and dove onto the couch like a man run through the gut with a saber.
Ash rubbed a hand over his face then stiffened. “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 Plumiere has predicted, you, my dear Viscount 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, Ash’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 is doddering, she will find a way to bear another son to replace me.”
“It is unsettling the way that woman tosses that threat about,” North admitted. “Love her as I do, it fairly gives me nightmares thinking about it.”
“Well, thinking about it put me off seeing Ursula,” Stan mumbled.
“Quite so. Quite so.” North nodded, thinking. The mystery was solved, but what were they to do about it?
“It would be best to have her put down, Stanley. For your own good,” Harcourt mumbled against a cushion. With all his antics, his gold-brown hair was coming loose from its tether.
“Who? The Scarlet Plumiere? I cannot have a woman murdered, even if she has essentially ruined my life with her blasted article, using my very blood for her ink, as it were. Why, I cannot believe you would 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 and enjoy the reprieve. Marry in another ten years.”
“Put down my mo...you are mad!”
“No. Actually, it is not a bad idea a ‘tall.” Ash closed his book again and tossed it onto the side table.
“All right. You are both mad. I will not be having my mother put down, for God’s sake.”
“Oh, Stanley. Do keep up.” Ash folded his hands and unexpectedly grinned. He must have had a grand idea; he did not smile easily. “I mean The Plumiere, of course, not your dear mother.”
“You mean it? You can stand here in front of God and good whisky and say such things? Good lord, man. Perhaps I do not know you at all. Perhaps you could actually do the deed yourself!” Stanley straightened his waistcoat as if preparing to leave in a huff.
“Oh, I would rather not do the deed myself, of course.” Ashmoore frowned and scrubbed a finger back and forth across his mouth.
North could take it no more. He tossed up his hands. “I surrender as well, Ash. What are you thinking? You cannot be talking about having The Scarlet Plumiere murdered.”
“Not murdered. Put down. Removed from power—or The Capital Journal at least.” Ash 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’d rather plan a murder than a wedding.”
Callister stepped into the library with a small white box tied with crimson ribbon. 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 two years. Usually, when it woke, he drugged it with brandy until it slept again. He was not sure, but it might have been his soul. And with some sort of premonition which he had never been known to possess, he suspected that thing within him would somehow be affected by Stanley’s box.
He watched, as did they all, while Stanley slowly pulled a crimson tail, as if he expected a cat to jump out.
The ribbon fell away. Nothing happened. Stanley sat the box upon the table, lifted the lid, and set it to one side. He frowned, looked at North, then reached into its depths. He pulled out a pair of spectacles...and a bubble burst in North’s chest.
He laughed.
Stanley did not seem to understand.
“Who knew about this meeting, Viscount F?” Ash had to raise his voice to be heard.
North laughed harder. Watching Stanley’s face as realization dawned, struck him as particularly amusing.
“Untrustworthy eyes.” Harcourt’s grin widened further than the confines of his face. “I say, she is a clever minx.”
North agreed. The Scarlet Plumiere was clever. And had he a heart, she might have just won it over with her wit alone.
CHAPTER TWO
Monday evening all the most eligible bachelors currently in London, Torreys and Whigs alike, gathered for the lottery on the second floor of White’s Gentlemen’s Club. Corralling such a group was the unattainable dream of every match-making momma of the ton, but this was no time to have a woman about.
Of course the younger bachelors were excluded from entering their names; it would have been unbelievably cruel to expect the more innocent among them to participate. North and his friends had deduced that if the winner, or loser rather, were over the age of thirty, there was a better chance the chap
deserved his fate in some way. Those young men who had not received invitation were in attendance of course. It would be too good a show to miss.
“I wish we would have been able to do this more privately,” Stanley murmured next to North. “There’s not a chance of keeping this a secret with so many witnesses.”
“Sorry, Stanley.” Ash stood to the other side of Viscount F. “You came to us for help and this was the best we could think of on short notice and tall whiskeys. I am rather regretting it myself.”
North was nauseous, but for a reason all his own. The suggestion of a lottery had come from his own tongue and now his friends were in jeopardy of paying the price. His mind raced for a way to stop the madness, as it had been racing all day, since he had awakened with a pain in his head and a piece of parchment in his hand. It was nothing less than a copy of the missive he’d sent to many of the gentlemen present—a call to arms.
And the fools had come.
He could tell them it was simply a grand joke, but judging by the sober faces before him, they were in no mood to believe it. And considering the turnout, many must view The Scarlet Plumiere as serious a threat as he had, at least while deep in his cups.
Harcourt joined him and the others. Forsgreen and Ashmoore to his right, Harcourt to his left—The Four Kings, as they liked to call themselves—facing a mob of nervous and determined goats, waiting to see who among them would be sacrificed.
Harcourt snorted. “Perhaps our chances will be better on this side of the table, eh?”
Like North and every man who had received the missive, Harcourt had paused at the head of the stairs and written his name on a lot to be added to the barrel, and North feared for his odds of losing a friend today. If one of them were chosen, he would never forgive himself. If his own name were pulled from the pile, he would surely be forced to live out his years in the country, or hiding from Society altogether in a secluded cottage in Scotland. Either way, his friends would be lost to him, and that was entirely unacceptable. Not a thing in this world could drag the four apart—certainly no woman had yet managed it, nor had his weakness in France—but with one flippant suggestion of a lottery, he had placed their brotherhood in jeopardy.