Ever After (Dirtshine Book 3)

by Roxie Noir

  I smile, then sniffle.

  “You said it, not me.”

  “Believe me, I know better than near anyone what a massive pain in the arse my sister can be. Let me guess, when you fell in the mud she looked right down her pointy nose at you like she was trying not to laugh instead of asking if you were all right?”

  I rub my eyes with my fingers, probably smearing mud on my face.

  “How’d you know?” I ask.

  “Long experience,” he says. “Listen, you’re doing fabulously. They’ll all come around, I promise. Let’s go inside, get you showered, have a cocktail and you’ll be right as rain in no time.”

  He stands, offering me his hand, and I wipe my face with my shirt sleeve before I take it.

  For the tiniest fraction of a moment, I swear I see something flicker across his face. Irritation, annoyance, impatience, something that I can’t quite put my finger on before it’s gone and he’s all gentlemanly smiles again.

  He guides me to the back stairs so I don’t have to see anyone else, and up to my room, where I strip off my muddy clothes and stand under a hot shower, hoping it washes off more than just mud.

  It would be nice if it washed away the awkward, ungainly parts of me. If it washed away all the social clumsiness I’ve got, the not quite understanding what’s appropriate here.

  I wish it would wash away my emotional overreacting to something as silly as Alistair calling me Françoise instead of Frankie. It’s my name, isn’t it? Even if I’d rather be Frankie, does it really matter than much?

  It shouldn’t. The water beats down on me as I scrub myself clean, and I tell myself that what Alistair calls me shouldn’t matter that much.

  But I can’t quite help it. The hottest, longest shower in the world combined with all the calm self-talk doesn’t completely erase the tiny, nagging suspicion I have that his apology wasn’t the sincere part of our conversation. I worry that when he smiles and tells me things like Frankie is a name for pets, he means it.

  Stop it, I tell myself. It’s Alistair. That’s just his sense of humor. He’s been this way since you’ve known him.

  I get out of the shower after using most of the water in England. I dry my hair, and for once, it actually looks all right. With all the perfectly straight blonde hair around here I’ll still look like a zebra in a herd of horses, but at least we’re close to the same species. Zebras and horses can interbreed, after all.

  Then I dress for dinner in the loudest thing I brought: a drapey, long-sleeve, gold lamé dress circa 1975 and the peep-toe shoes.

  It’s fabulous as hell.

  The Ladies Winstead are going to hate it.

  They do. So do tonight’s guests, some man who’s the heir to a Greek shipping fortune and his social-climbing wife. None of them say it out loud, of course, but I’m not stupid.

  To make matters worse, I’m finally realizing the reason that Elizabeth’s friends seem to hate me.

  One of them wants Alistair. I think her name is Bridget, though I can barely tell her apart from the rest: long, stick-straight blondish hair, thin as a rail, flawless pale skin, and the air and demeanor of someone who’s used to dressing for dinner and going riding and probably doesn’t even know what a resumé is.

  She connives to sit next to him at dinner, which means that as I sit on his other side I have to hear her stupid laugh and her stupid posh accent and the breathless way she takes in everything he tells her.

  I’m not jealous, because that would be dumb. Alistair is engaged to me and is just being polite to this other woman, but something about it still grates on my nerves, dumb or not. We just had a fight and I think we made up from the fight, but I’ve still got that post-fight unease sloshing around inside me.

  Would it kill him to talk to me a little more than he’s talking to her? I think, stabbing at a bite of salad so hard that my fork squeaks against my plate.

  The elder Lady Winstead looks over at the noise, and though a heroic effort at self-control, I don’t stick my tongue out at her. Alistair glances at me, smiles, pats my leg, and resumes his conversation with Bridget.

  I get through dinner, dessert, and after-dinner chitchat by reminding myself that I’m overreacting and Alistair is allowed to talk to other women. It’s probably even encouraged and polite, because it’s not like he could just ignore her.

  But I still get away the moment I can. It’s been a long, exhausting, weird day and once more I’m actually grateful that Lady Catherine thinks it’s inappropriate for an unmarried couple to share a bed, because being alone right now is glorious.

  I flop onto a chair, the lights off. I look out the window at the moonlit gardens, take a deep breath, and try not to think about Bridget blatantly flirting with my fiancé, or about my fiancé cluelessly chatting her up the whole evening, or about his stupid sister telling everyone at dinner the hilarious story about how I fell into a mud puddle, or the look his stupid mother gave me when she saw my dress.

  I half-sit, half-lay in the chair for a long time. Until I start to feel guilty that I’m on vacation, in the beautiful, half-wild north of England, staying in a ridiculous manor house with actual servants, and I’m having a bad time.

  And I think about the pub I went to last night, the one where the guy tending bar really looked like the guy who was trying to jump off a bridge when Alistair and I went to the northeast coast and Scotland last year.

  It’s not the same guy — the bartender is pretty hot, the other guy’s probably dead, let’s be honest — but they look enough alike that I thought about that night on the bridge for the first time in a while.

  God, that was weird. I still wonder why I stopped, even though I’m glad I did. It was late, and I was tired, and in one of my nothing bad will happen on my watch! moods.

  Even though everyone knows those moods don’t help. He slunk off that night, sure, but I know all too well that he was probably back there the next night and the next until he finally got slashed to smithereens on those tracks, because that’s what happens. People don’t change, no matter how you try to help them.

  I sigh, glance out the window. I’m not even a little bit tired, and honestly, I could use a drink. It could even come from a cute bartender, and after watching Alistair smile at Bridget for an hour, I don’t even have to feel bad about some harmless flirting.

  Before I know it, I’ve got my dress off and I’m pulling my jeans and a shirt on. Grabbing my jacket and my purse, taking the pins out of my hair and running my hands through it so it’s a little livelier.

  Then I’m down the back stairs, outside, to the garage again. Rupert’s there — I did find out his name — and he looks amused again as he hands me the keys to the Toyota.

  Twenty minutes later, I’m opening the door of the Hound’s Ears for the second time this week.

  Chapter Four

  Liam

  She’s back. After two days I was fairly certain I’d never see Pretty-Girl-From-The-Bridge again, but on day three here she is. This time she doesn’t hesitate uncertainly at the entrance, just marches in and sits at the bar, the same stool where she was before.

  “We still haven’t got any appletinis,” I say.

  She puts her purse down on the stool next to her and just gives me a look.

  “Do you have boilermakers here?” she asks, her tone frosty.

  “I assume someone does make the boiler.”

  “It’s a pint of beer and a shot of whiskey,” she says. “For as much as you people drink you must have it, I just don’t know the name.”

  “We call it ‘a shot and a pint,’” I say. “As much as we drink, we don’t dress it up with silly names.”

  “Good,” she says. “Give me a — wait, I have to drive back. Shit.”

  She puts her face in her hands, the massive rock on her ring finger glittering in the light.

  “Just give me a pint of bitter,” she says through her hands. “Please.”

  I pour her a pint. I don’t know what’s going on, but sh
e clearly needs it more than I need her to leave the bar. Besides, it’s obvious that she doesn’t remember me from our first encounter. She doesn’t exactly seem the type to keep much that she’s thinking under wraps. I find Americans generally don’t.

  “You sure about that?” I ask. “A whole pint?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she mutters into her hands, then takes them away from her face, leveling a look at me. “Look. If there was another pub within, I don’t know, thirty miles of here I promise you I’d be there right now instead of arguing with you over a pint of okay beer. But there’s not, because we are currently in the butthole of the north of England—”

  Malcolm and Giles, both seated down the bar, raise their heads from their glasses and look at her.

  “It’s a lovely butthole,” she says, giving them a half-wave.

  I have to bite the inside of my lip to keep from smiling.

  “—But I am currently in the middle of nowhere with a house full of people who don’t like me, and I want a drink, and at this time of night you’re pretty much my only hope, so how about you let me pay you for a pint?”

  Malcolm whistles, and Giles starts clapping.

  “Ought to be on the house for that,” says Malcolm.

  “Hear, hear,” agrees Giles.

  “What, today you suddenly agree on something? Sod off,” I tell them.

  “Lass has well earned that pint,” Malcolm argues. “Right grumpy bastard like you, she deserves two. One for being here in the first place and another for even talking to the likes of you.”

  “I agree,” the girl says. “If I have to talk you into letting me pay for a pint, it should be free.”

  I don’t answer, but I do grab a glass and fill it. I even wipe the dripping bottom off and give her a coaster when I set it on the bar.

  “Three pounds twe—”

  “Oh come on, Liam, you cranky old hag,” Giles says. “For Christ’s sake.”

  “Jesus,” I mutter under my breath. The girl takes a sip of her beer, and I’m fairly sure she’s laughing at me.

  “Three pounds what?” she teases.

  I give in.

  “It’s on the house,” I finally say.

  “He has got a heart,” Giles says.

  “Going to cry, I am,” joins in Malcolm.

  “Don’t you all start looking for handouts,” I tell them. “It’s a special occasion.”

  “Course it is,” Giles says amiably. “We’re not pretty American girls who appear out of nowhere to give you hell.”

  The girl takes another sip, but I can tell she’s blushing.

  It looks good on her.

  “You should introduce yourself,” Giles suggests. “Even an American could be a decent alternative to all those sheep.”

  The girl gives him a look, but Giles winks at her. He’s somewhere in his late seventies, so he can get away with being utterly shameless around young women and they eat it up.

  “Sorry about them,” I say to her. “Usually they’re too busy fighting over a church bell to bother the other customers. You caught them on a friendly day.”

  “They’re fine,” she says, leaning her chin on one hand and looking down the bar. “It’s lovely that someone around here’s finally friendly.”

  “You see that? People like it when you’re friendly, Liam,” Malcolm says, pointing one gnarled finger at me. “More flies with honey and all that.”

  “So it’s Liam,” she says. “How many names have you got?”

  “The standard number,” I say, leaning back against the bar behind me.

  “Three?”

  “Isn’t that the standard?”

  “It feels like everyone I’ve met here has seventeen names plus four titles and some kind of numbering system,” she says.

  “Sounds like you’re used to a posher crowd than you’ve found here,” I say.

  She just rolls her eyes and takes another drink of her beer.

  “How many names have you got?” I ask.

  “Also three,” she says. “Are you asking what they are?”

  “The first one, anyway,” I say. “Your middle name can wait until the second beer, I imagine.”

  “It’s Frankie,” she says. “Do you shake hands, or if I offer will you look at me like I’m a particularly clever golden retriever?”

  I hold out my hand, and she takes it, firmly. We shake once.

  “Liam,” I say, unnecessarily. “And I’m afraid I don’t even know what the posh people you’ve been spending your time with expect instead of a hand shake.”

  “I don’t know either,” she says, shrugging. “A curtsey? A salute? Maybe I’m supposed to kiss a ring? I’m clueless.”

  “Is Frankie short for something?”

  She nods, drinking. The beer’s half empty already, the ring on her finger sparkling every time she lifts the glass to her mouth. There’s a voice in the back of my head that’s warning me about it, saying don’t get too friendly with her, but for fuck’s sake we shook hands.

  I’m allowed to shake hands with an engaged woman.

  “Françoise,” she says, dragging it out and raising her eyebrows.

  I lean back against the bar again, cross my arms, and take her in for a moment.

  “You seem more like a Frankie than a Françoise,” I say.

  Frankie laughs. It’s a big, loud American laugh that crinkles her eyes and shows all her teeth, and it gets the attention of Malcolm and Giles as well. I like it, though. Makes me smile despite myself.

  “Thanks,” she finally says, her eyes dancing. “I think so too.”

  She comes again two nights later, then two nights after that. Both times she sits on the same stool, orders a pint of bitter, rags on me for a moment, and then we end up talking until I’ve got to close the pub.

  Turns out the enormous rock on her finger is from Alistair Winstead, Viscount of Downhamshire-on-Kyne and heir to the lands and estate. We talk about how nonsensical it is that the son of an Earl is a Viscount, at least until the Earl dies, at which point the Viscount becomes the Earl.

  She rolls her eyes that it’s sexist women can’t inherit. I tell her I think the whole thing is bloody stupid and a relic of a time long past when people like Alistair at least had to ride into battle in exchange for owning half the county and lording over all the smallfolk.

  “Well, it’s good for him he doesn’t have to ride into battle,” she says. “I don’t think he’d fare too well if he had to actually fight. Maybe if it were a battle of pointed jabs that subtly undermine your opponent.”

  “I think those sorts of battles were fairly rare in the olden days,” I say.

  “It’s just stupid,” she says. “I mean, I know I get to marry into insane wealth and that’s pretty cool, but the whole class system is...”

  She shakes her head and drinks.

  “It’s so weird. We don’t have it in the states,” she finishes.

  Now I laugh.

  “You’re telling me that America doesn’t have a class system,” I say.

  “Not like this. People don’t have titles that they get from their fathers and insane castles and all the weird stuff that goes along with it.”

  “Right. In America you’ve got the exact same thing, massive wealth and opportunity inherited, but you’ve all got to pretend that everyone in the upper class got their due to pure merit and... perseverance and bootstraps, or whatnot.”

  “It’s less weird,” she says.

  “It’s much harder to figure out,” I counter. “At least here I know when someone’s bound to be puffed-up arsehole.”

  “Have you been to the states?”

  I pause for a moment. Even though we’ve been talking nearly nonstop for a couple of nights now, I haven’t exactly told her my life story. I’ve told her that I’m a bartender who lives in a cottage on a sheep farm and that I grew up in the very northeast of England and that I prefer stouts to bitters, don’t like sweets, and think the monarchy is rubbish.

  Bu
t I’ve not told her any of the real backstory: the band, the infamy, the drugs, the failed and repeated attempts at getting sober, the getting booted back to square one and having to reset my entire life.

  “I lived in Los Angeles for a while, actually,” I admit carefully.

  “You moved from Los Angeles to here?”

  “Oi,” I say. “Nothing wrong with here.”

  She just takes a drink, her eyes crinkling, because we both know I’ve spent at least half an hour complaining to her about nothing being open on Sundays and the fact that I can’t find proper kebab for a good thirty miles. Just because Shelton is good for me doesn’t mean I exactly like it.

  “Yeah, I moved from Los Angeles to here. Bit different.”

  “Because you prefer sheep to palm trees?”

  “Life in Shelton has its own particular pace, you know,” I say, crossing my arms again. “Everyone in the village knows everyone else, the seasons change from spring to summer to autumn, it’s rather slower and not frantic the way cities can be.”

  Frankie’s not buying it. I can tell.

  “Was there a girl?” she asks, then points her left hand. The one with the Viscount’s rock on it. “No. You’re in witness protection because you saw something. This is the perfect place.”

  “No girl, no witness protection,” I say slowly.

  Fuck it. Just tell her the truth. You don’t have to tell her all of it.

  “There was a band, though,” I say. “We had an album that did all right, moved to Los Angeles to record another, but then it didn’t work out, so I came back here to get away.”

  “What band?”

  “Rhinoceros,” I lie. It’s not a big lie. Gavin and I were in a band called that, it just wasn’t the band.

  “Never heard of it,” she says.

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “What did you play? Did you sing?”

  “Drums,” I say, shaking my head.

  She gives me a long, slow look, her chin on her hand, and even though I glance away I swear I can feel the heat of it bubbling up from my toes. I don’t mind the way she looks at me. Despite the big, ugly ring on her finger, I don’t mind it at all.