Any Other Name (11 page)

Cathy smiled at the thought of it, admiring the solution.

“They realised what she was doing,” the Shopkeeper went on, his expression humourless.

“What happened?”

“They packed her off to the Agency and replaced her with a more obedient wife.”

“Perhaps life with the Agency was preferable.”

 

8

 

Will stroked Amelia’s back, breathing her sweet scent in deeply. She was nuzzled into his chest, the bed was soft and they were both warm and relaxed. He could feel her belly against his hip, her right leg draped over both of his, her breasts pressed against his side.

Her skin was divinely smooth and free of blemishes, her hair long with a slight curl having been freed from its elaborate pinning. He explored the curve of her waist, brushed his fingers down her hip as hers traced the line down to his belly-button.

Will planted a kiss on the top of her head. She tilted her face up and stretched to meet his lips with hers. Her nipples grazed his skin and, seized with a pulse of passion, he grasped her about the waist and rolled her on top of him so her breasts would be squeezed against his chest. She giggled and let her hair fall around their faces, forming a secret world in which only their kisses existed.

Gradually, the realisation that he couldn’t stay there all day as well as all night crept in and tarnished the gilded pleasure. This was how it should have been with his wife. He should have been tempted to tell Catherine that his plans for the day had changed and that they weren’t to leave the bedroom until their marital home was ready. Instead, he found himself dreading seeing her again.

“What is it?” Amelia asked. “Do you have to go?”

He wrapped both arms about her, pressing as much of her skin against him as he could, wanting to have her leave an impression in his flesh that he could take with him. “Soon,” he whispered. “I don’t want to. But I should.”

“It is your honeymoon, I suppose,” she said, a twitch at the corner of her mouth waiting to break into a smile.

“Hardly,” he muttered. “I’d rather pretend it was ours.”

“I’m game,” she said. “Let’s pretend you’re being called away to a function at Black’s that you simply couldn’t get out of. Whilst you’re drinking cocktails, I’ll bathe in milk and honey, and while you play billiards I’ll wash my hair in rosewater.” She kissed his throat. “And as you play cards, I’ll brush my hair a hundred times with my sandalwood comb until it shines.” She kissed his chest. “Then I’ll come back to bed and warm it for you, so you can slip between the sheets.” She kissed his belly. “I’ll wrap myself around you and steal the chill from your skin.”

He pulled her back up to kiss his lips, trying to control his baser urges. “If I’m not careful, I’ll never leave.”

“I’ve always preferred a carefree man,” she said, smiling.

After a few moments locked together, he summoned all the willpower within him to slide her to the side and get out of the bed.

She pouted at him as he reached for his shirt. He was ashamed by the strewn clothing he’d have to reclaim and wear again. “I’m sorry, my love,” he said softly, watching her hand stretch across the sheets towards him. “I have to go.”

She heard the conviction and flopped onto her back, though even that was graceful. Her hair spilt across the pillows, she stretched, languid and the very epitome of temptation. As she stared up into the inside canopy of the bed. Will struggled into his underwear, embarrassed by the effect she still had on his body.

“I never thought I’d be a mistress,” she said as he pulled on his trousers. “I was taught how to be a wife in charge of a household and oiling the wheels of Society for my husband’s success.”

He twisted round to face her. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She smiled, and he couldn’t help but reflect it. “If I’d married, I never would have been with you and I wanted that, secretly.”

“I wanted to be with you,” he said. “I resented other people for taking my time, I kept waiting for when I could see you again. I never dreamt I’d have anything like this with you. I’m sorry you won’t have the life you deserve, but the selfish part of me is glad we can have this.”

He leaned across and kissed her again, then brushed his lips down her throat, skimming her breast until he reached a nipple and sucked it into his mouth. He felt her back arch as she gasped and cupped the other breast in his hand as he nibbled playfully. When he pulled back, her green eyes were bright with lust, her cheeks flushed and lips deep red. She grabbed at his collar but he pulled back before she could catch it, wagging a finger.

“You’re a cruel man, William Iris,” she said, pulling the sheet up to cover herself as he resumed his dressing. “You do that to me before you leave? Am I to assume you want me to do nothing but lust after you all day?”

“I would like nothing more,” he said, truthfully. “I like the thought of you lying naked and restless under these sheets, needing me to return and quench that fire. I always knew something burned in you.”

“And I you,” she said. “We were meant to be together. Perhaps fate conspired on our behalf.”

“Perhaps.” He wondered why fate would be so unfair as to place Catherine in the role of wife.

Will did the best he could with the cravat, knowing he looked dishevelled and guilty of a night away from home. He ran his fingers through his hair in the hope of calming it into a neater tumble on the top, and took a last look at her. She’d rolled onto her side, propped up on one elbow, the sheet clinging to her curves beautifully. Her eyes were coaxing him back into bed.

“No,” he said, as firmly as he could. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

He tried to leave, then kissed her once and forced himself to walk out of the room. When he shut the door, the rest of the world came crashing in: the guilt at not consummating the marriage, the worry over what Catherine was doing now and where they could go from here. He leaned against the door for a moment, wishing unreservedly that Amelia was his wife, that Cornelius was his brother and that Catherine was off living her strange life in her own strange way with someone else.

 

Sam dropped his keys onto the shelf in the hallway and slung his rucksack on the sofa. The house felt horribly empty and was lit only by the orange glow from the streetlights outside. He switched on the light and went to the fridge only to find lumpy milk and something unrecognisable that smelt awful. He rescued a lone tin of beer from underneath a rotting lettuce, poured its contents into a glass and leaned against the kitchen worktop.

He knew he had messages from work to pick up and emails to check but he just couldn’t face them. He was probably going to get dragged over the coals by his boss in the morning and rightly so; his productivity and attendance had nosedived. He’d wanted to talk it over with Leanne but she’d been obsessed with showing him the sights. It was as if she was trying to sell him a lifestyle whilst keeping him at arm’s length, and he hated the way it felt. Every time he tried to have a proper conversation with her something came up. Either the bloody light started flashing on her Blackberry or it was time to get to the tube station to do the next “fun” thing on the list. He’d felt like a relative visiting, someone to keep busy and dazzle with success whilst ensuring there wasn’t enough time to have a meaningful conversation.

Sam rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a takeaway menu. There was a noise from the hallway and he assumed he’d not shut the front door properly. He took a menu with him to read as he went.

“Evenin’, Sam.”

Sam yelled. The gargoyle was standing in the middle of his hallway with Max behind him.

“Don’t you know how to use a bloody doorbell?”

“We came to make sure you’re not dead,” the gargoyle said in its smoker’s voice.

“Why would I be dead?”

“You disappeared,” Max said, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a small octagonal box. “After you went back to Exilium. I take it you took the tainted there?”

“I had no choice.”

“But you disappeared the day after. Has the puppet been in contact with you? Did she take you into the Nether?”

“What? Look, I didn’t disappear, I was in London. And what puppet?”

“Catherine,” the gargoyle replied.

Sam felt the churn of guilt again at the memory of her face when he passed on the message from Lord Poppy. But they had met in Mundanus. “I haven’t been in the Nether, I don’t know how to get there and anyway I don’t ever want to go there ever again.”

“You’re certain?” Max asked.

“Course I bloody am, it’s a bit hard to miss, isn’t it? Even I would notice if the sky turned silver and night never came.”

The gargoyle and Max looked at each other. “Something’s not right,” the gargoyle said.

“On Friday evening shortly after eight you went somewhere else, correct?” Max asked.

“Yes. I went somewhere else.”

“Where?” asked the gargoyle.

“None of your bloody business.”

“This is important, Sam,” Max continued. “You were taken somewhere outside Mundanus several times over the weekend and that shouldn’t be happening. Even though we’ve had dealings, as far as anyone else is concerned you’re an innocent. If someone has been taking you out of Mundanus that’s against the rules of the Treaty, so I have to investigate. You may not like it, but it’s my job.”

The Arbiter and gargoyle both looked out of place in his house and showed no signs of leaving. “Whatever your Sorcerer did to keep tabs on me must have something wrong with it,” he said. “I visited my wife’s new flat which is very definitely in London, not the Nether, and I would have noticed if it was because it has bloody great big windows that look over the city, OK?”

The gargoyle’s muzzle wrinkled. “Could’ve been a glamour, to make you think you were still there.”

“But we watched the telly. There were proper lights and a kettle that worked. So it couldn’t have been in the Nether. And I got a mobile phone signal there, for God’s sake, so just admit it, your Sorcerer is barking at the wrong postman.”

Max had wound up the little box in his hand, Sam expected it to open and show a tiny ballerina twirling to music. Instead, when Max held it out on his palm, the top opened and a tiny horn like that of a vintage doll’s house gramophone emerged and turned slowly.

“Has your wife been acting any differently to usual?” Max asked.

Sam sighed. “Come into the front room. Can I at least get some food in? I’m starving.”

He led Max and the gargoyle into the front room, hastily closed the curtains and then phoned through an order for sweet and sour chicken and rice.

Max was looking at him expectantly whilst the gargoyle was sniffing around the room like a bored bloodhound hopeful for some action. “You didn’t answer my question about your wife.”

“Leanne acting differently? Differently to what?”

“The usual.”

Sam shrugged. “She’s changed a lot since uni but I suppose that doesn’t count.”

The box and horn on the palm of Max’s hand gave a gentle
ping
and he checked something on its side before closing it and returning it to one of his pockets. “Did something happen after university?”

“She got a job. We got married. Well, it was the other way round. We married right after we graduated.” Maybe that was it, Sam thought. Maybe their parents had been right and they had married too young.

“Does she have the same job now?”

“She’s a lot higher in the company.” Sam folded his arms when he realised how far beyond his comfort zone he was. He didn’t want to give anything more away. “Hang on, why are you asking me all this?”

“Has she lost weight?”

“Yeah. But she’s busy.”

“Does she wear different kinds of clothes to the ones she used to?”

The room felt cold. Sam shivered and closed the door to the hallway. “She’s changed since she got this job but that’s normal… isn’t it?”

“Have you changed a lot since you got your job?”

Sam sat down, his legs feeling more unsteady than he wanted to admit. “No,” he finally said. “Not as much.” Perhaps that was the problem with their marriage. But he couldn’t just turn into another person, not like she had.

Max rubbed his chin and then pulled a notebook from the inside pocket of his coat, slid the tiny pencil out from its spine and thumbed to a particular page. “I want you to listen to these times and tell me if you know where you were.”

Max listed all the times he’d been at Leanne’s apartment. Sam felt nauseous by the end. “I was at her new flat – our new flat – in London. I’m supposed to be moving up there. Theoretically.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you.” The gargoyle looked up from the corner of the rug he’d been snuffling around. “Must be something bloody wrong with that place.”

Sam reached for his beer and realised he’d left it in the kitchen. He unpeeled his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Do you think the Thorn brothers are… I dunno… doing something to Leanne? Or the flat?”

“It’s not them.” Max sounded confident. “They’re going to be in Exilium for a long time. Your wife wears a similar wedding ring to yours, I assume?”

“Yes, we made them together. I made hers and she made mine. Oh, fuck. Is this something to do with the wedding-ring protection thing?”

“Perhaps. Do you remember where you made them?”

Sam nodded and dug his phone out of his back pocket. “I’ve got the number of the forge here. I got it off Leanne this weekend, turns out her boss recommended the place to her.”

“Is this boss of hers involved with the new flat in any way?” Max asked.

“It’s a company flat and he chose it for her. He said it had the best view in the building. Fuck, is Neugent dodgy? Is he a fucking Fae?”

“Unlikely, if he recommended making those rings.”

“But something is definitely dodgy,” the gargoyle said. “We need to check that apartment out. Have a sniff about and see what’s what.”

“Agreed,” Max said and looked at Sam. “You need to take me there.”

“Now?”

“As long as your wife won’t be there.”

“She will be there now, but she’ll be out at work tomorrow. I’ve got a key.” Sam stopped. What was he saying? He shouldn’t tell Max where Leanne lived – where he might be living himself very soon.