Page 14 of Goodbye, Earl (Ladies’ Revenge Club #4)

C laire had come to fear sleep.

For the third time in recent memory, she found herself deep in a pit of altered memory, living through a moment both past and present, both imagined and real.

He kissed her cheek softly, just a brush. Then her jaw. Then her throat. She felt his tongue, his teeth, his hands circling her wrists and pinning her to the mattress.

She woke up gasping for air, hot and shaking and desperate. Desperate to escape him. Desperate to pull him back.

She could smell him like she’d summoned his shade into her bed. She could feel the brand of his lips on her body. She could sense the exact weight and warmth of his fingers, twining through hers.

“Stop,” she breathed to herself, turning her face into the pillow and squeezing every muscle in her body before she could feel anything more, anything that might be too delicious to release in favor of reality and consciousness. “Stop it.”

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been having these dreams all along, she reminded herself.

There had been many nights in the last several years where she’d fallen into Freddy’s arms in her dreams, where she’d remembered his bed, his kiss, his body.

Sometimes, when she awoke from those dreams, they would haunt her for hours; they would taint her entire day.

This wasn’t new!

She kept telling herself it wasn’t new.

She’d recovered from it a thousand times already. She’d navigated her life without letting herself be shattered by it. She’d accepted it was nothing more than a dream, and dreams were sometimes cruel.

So why was it sitting atop her now, weighing down her bones until they creaked in distress? Why could she not shake it now, no matter how many times she got up and plunged her hands into the icy water in her windowside basin?

Why would he not simply leave her be?

He was in the house now, she knew. He was only a few feet of mortar and plaster away from being back in her bed for true.

That was why.

Just survive until the wedding , she told herself. Just until the wedding, and then he will go.

Why had he kissed her cheek? Why had he done that? She closed her eyes, feeling it again, feeling the brush of his lips, still so soft and featherlight.

The Freddy in her memory touched her waist. He nipped at her earlobe. He whispered things, hot and sweet in her ear.

“Stop!” she moaned, throwing herself off the side of the bed and scrambling for her tinderbox. “God above!”

Her hands shook, but she got the damned thing lit.

She glowed into relief in the mirror that stood in the corner of the room, wild-haired and shrouded in her night rail, which floated just above her skin like the air had taken on static and embodied her own haunting to demonstrate itself to her, should she doubt it.

She fell to her knees and rolled onto her stomach, digging under the bed for the little box she kept there, away from immediate thought, but never far enough away to be forgotten.

This was her dower chest, she had decided some time ago.

This was her legacy, her reminder of who she was and what marriage could do to a girl.

She huffed, getting it free and falling back onto her backside as it slid out from under the bed and into her lap.

Every girl should have a box like this one, Claire thought.

Boxes could hold quite a lot of things, of course, but a box like this should always hold a reminder of the truth.

It should sit under their beds so when dreams came and tempted them with lies about love at first sight and fairy-tale marriage, there was a strong foundation below to fall back upon when they woke.

She flung the lid off and tossed it away, sinking her fingers into the stack of paper within, a great variety of papers of different sizes and shapes, some from a printing house, some in her own handwriting.

Millie’s Wallflower Manifesto was on top.

That would not do for tonight. Next was a short story Claire had written, one of many she had penned over the years.

She nodded and took this one, lifting it above her head to set on the mattress.

She hadn’t been looking for that story, but it was a good one for tonight.

The story of a betrayed queen who got her revenge on her wicked husband. The evil king had been found on his throne with a golden quill buried in his heart.

She had decided, after finishing it, that while the story was decent, it would not be appropriate for Oliver until he was quite a bit older.

Several of her more adult fairy stories waited in this box for such a time as there was anyone who might read them.

Many, Claire suspected, would only ever be re-read by Claire herself.

Still … ah! She found what she was looking for. The gossip sheets, deep in the box, almost at the very bottom.

There were two, layered with tissue paper to keep them in good condition. She drew them out and climbed back to her feet and into the bed, stacking them above the short story in her hands like the three documents followed one another into a cohesive narrative.

Actually, Claire thought with a smirk, they sort of did.

Noble in Name but Not in Deed : A Dastardly Earl and his Victims.

She smiled. The stark black ink of the headline still glowed beautifully against the white paper.

She dragged her thumb underneath the letters and over the illustration below it, a caricature of Freddy as he was, in a top hat and tails, with sharp, salivating teeth, standing before a trail of hapless, collapsed women.

Her heart lurched absurdly, as though this ridiculous caricature of Freddy was somehow just as appealing as the one in her dreams, just as likely to overpower her body and her sense.

She shook her head. She blinked twice. She forced herself to read it. To really read it. All of it.

She’d written this with Dot many years ago, when Oliver still grew in her belly. Dot had told her that the truth was the keenest weapon in all the world, and then she’d handed her the means to wield it.

And absurdly, at the time, Claire had felt so horribly guilty about the whole thing. She had argued that she should not be absolved in the text, that she couldn’t be, if truth was the object of their mission.

Still, somehow, she had evaded judgement in this story, this retelling of the jilting and the flight and the gambling and the chicanery. Freddy had been the villain. Freddy alone.

She frowned.

It hadn’t really been Freddy alone. She had tried to tell Dot that at the time, but all Dot was interested in was the why of everything. Why had Claire eloped with him? Why had she fled the marriage? Why, why, why?

Annoying.

Claire had refused to answer. Maybe she had refused because she couldn’t find the words. That was certainly the excuse she’d given herself at the time.

But maybe she had refused because there was no answer. Or because the answer was private, so very private and still somewhat precious.

She had tried so very hard to hate him. To loathe him. To blame him for everything.

Writing these sheets had made it easier to convince herself that she’d been successful. She could see the narrative spun out in coherent truth on printed paper, on circulated paper, like a real novel, like a true story. And she could tell herself she believed it.

Even if she didn’t.

She made a noise, frustration and disgust colliding in her throat. She flung the papers off her lap and let them flutter, with a total lack of satisfying weight, back to the carpet.

Damn him. Damn him!

This was impossible.

He wasn’t going to leave after the wedding, was he? He wasn’t going to just piss off back to London and allow her to return to her normal, peaceful, carefully controlled life.

She hadn’t spoken to the ass in five blasted years, but she knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t going to just go away. Even if he physically left, he would never be gone again. And she doubted he was planning to physically leave either.

She wouldn’t, if she were him.

If Claire had been the one in exile, if Claire had missed all of Oliver’s little life up until now, nothing short of death or dismemberment would ever remove her from these walls after reclaiming him.

She had thought with a fragile sort of hope that Freddy would be indifferent to their son.

That he wouldn’t even want an introduction.

She had told herself that it would be easy for him to go on as he had been, living his own life on his own side of Britain, and that a man like Freddy would avoid complications if he could.

She laughed, flinging herself back on the pillow in a cloud of hair and emotion.

Freddy! Avoiding complication! As though the fool didn’t live for complications as the most fulfilling use of his time.

Why was she so stupid?

Had she always been stupid?

Probably.

She sighed.

Millie was the smart one. Everyone knew that.

She closed her eyes, forcing herself to slow her breaths, to deliberate on the amount of air she drew in and released from her lungs. She felt her heartbeat and told it to slow down. She saw Freddy again, trying to kiss her cheek, and told her dream self to shove him before he could.

She frowned.

There she was again, at the top of that bloody cursed staircase. And there was Freddy at the bottom. There was Freddy, turning, raising those blue eyes to find hers across the candlelight and the years.

There was Freddy in the hallway, touching her hand. There was Freddy in the dark cobbles outside her house, begging to know if he alone was feeling it, if he alone was swept into the madness.

There was Freddy kissing her. Touching her. Loving her.

She grabbed the pillow on the other side of her bed and pressed it into her face so that she could scream.

There was Freddy, holding Oliver’s shoulders, tossing him into the air, kissing his head.

She screamed and screamed and screamed.

And still, there was Freddy. Always.

When she was done, she sat up and leaned over to draw the lantern closer. She glanced at the carpet, where he gloated up at her from the gossip sheet, still undeniably himself, even in satire. He grinned at her, flashing those big, sharp teeth.

“Oh, shut up,” she snapped, and then she blew out the light so she would not have to see him anymore.

Unfortunately for Claire, Freddy did not need light to shine.

Unfortunately for Claire, sleep would not evade her anymore tonight.

Yes, she thought, twisting and sighing and luxuriating in pleasure in her sleep. It was very, very unfortunate.