"I know." He stroked her back, shoulder to hip. "Dear Lord, how I know..."
The song began to soar, and he moved with it. They moved with it.
"You could disappear as quickly as you showed up, you know. I couldn"t...it"s not possible for me to...oh, h.e.l.l."
"There is such a thing as the moment."
"Like "Vienna"? Love followed by regret? No, I couldn"t do that. I just couldn"t, Alex."
"And yet, ""tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.""
Maggie stopped moving, pushed slightly away from him even as they continued in the dance. "Tennyson? He wrote too late for the Regency Era. I"m very careful to use only quotes written before your time in history. So how do you know Tennyson?"
"Noticed that, did you?" Saint Just rolled his eyes, smiled at this change of subject. Dearest Maggie, so transparent. But he was getting to her, and she had begun to weaken. He could afford to be patient. "My Maggie, the nitpicker. What? I cannot attempt to improve my mind?"
She shook her head, walked over to the portable CD player and shut it off. "I suppose not. But you could have used Congreve. He wrote before the Regency. Remember? You said it in The Case of the Pilfered Pearls, right before you gave your mistress her walking papers. "Say what you will, "tis better to be left than never to have been loved.""
"And got my face slapped for my pains. Yes, I recall the moment. There are times, dearest Maggie, when I believe your mission in life is to deny me pleasure."
"Bite-never mind. And that"s not true. I"ve written a couple dozen love scenes for you and-oh, no. I"m not going there. I don"t want to talk about the books. I most especially don"t want to talk about the love scenes. Do you have any idea how difficult that is for me since...since you got here?"
She looked so lovely when she was fl.u.s.tered. Saint Just couldn"t help himself. He pushed. "No, not really. Tell me."
"Oh, right. You"d love that, wouldn"t you? Forget it." She ran her fingers through her hair, which settled again most becomingly, which it should, for the price she paid for a silly man with scissors to snip at it once a month. "Okay. This has been a long time coming, and it"s not going away without talking about it, is it? So let"s get this over with, why don"t we?"
"Perceive me as amenable to your every wish, if the it you"re referring to is our, shall we say, mutual attraction," Saint Just said, fingering the ribbon holding his quizzing gla.s.s. "Shall I put the music on again?"
"That was not what I meant, and you know it. G.o.d! This is like arguing with myself-you know all the snappy answers, probably even before I ask the questions. Do me a favor, Alex, and get out of my head."
"Done and done, my dear. Sterling and I both. Not that it wasn"t enjoyable there, but I so much prefer our present situation. Although, after seeing Dennis Lloyd in the Saint Just livery, I must say I still do lament that you have yet to make him a fully well-rounded character, so that Clarence might join us here. He had such a way with boot black. I vow, I"m soon to shed a tear, feeling so very nostalgic for the man."
"Shut up. Just shut up." Maggie began to pace, yet another of her fortes. For a woman who detested exercise, she was quite the accomplished pacer, some days going for miles in her own living room-c.u.m-office when one of her stories was first percolating in her brain.
Saint Just watched her for a few moments, then broke the silence. "Maggie. My dear, dear girl. We are destined, you know. The left-tenant is a mild diversion, nothing more, poor man, and we both are aware of that, also. When you created me, the perfect hero of your dreams, there was nothing else for it but for me to appear in your life."
She stopped dead to glare at him. "Oh, really. Really? Boy, you"re a piece of work. You"re telling me you"ve ruined me for other men? Of all the arrogant, self-serving, miserable excuses I"ve ever heard, that one-"
"Hits closest to the mark?"
"The h.e.l.l it does." Maggie pressed her palms to her forehead, whether in pain from a dose of the headache or in a vain attempt to push him back inside her head, he didn"t care to ask.
But because he knew her so well, and because he was who he was, Saint Just advanced on her slowly, took hold of her hands, and gently pulled her into his arms.
"The h.e.l.l it does, yes. I am everything you both love and loathe in a man, Maggie. I appeal to you physically, as well as to your mind. You are attracted to my strengths as well as to my foibles. I attract you even as I sometimes frighten you, as I did when you and Sterling were in danger, and for which I apologize yet again, even as we both know I would do the same again. I am your imagination, all of it, come to life. And even more, now that I have been here for a while and have-and I know how you loathe the word-evolved. Now, do you wish to know what I think of you? How I am attracted to you? How I was attracted to you from the beginning and am more so with each day that pa.s.ses?"
"No," she mumbled against his chest. "No...no. I was wrong. Let"s not do this. I"m not ready for this."
"Yet, sad to say, even your reluctance attracts me. Your determined obstinance in the face of all that"s reasonable. But there is so much more. You"re also a loyal friend in the face of all obstacles. You can be rather funny at times, most often when you are not aware of that fact. You"re intelligent and most remarkably human. Genuine, even in your faults-your very few faults. You"re endearingly vulnerable and yet courageous and strong. You are totally unaware of how very beautiful you are. And, of course, you had the splendid good sense to invent me."
Maggie pushed back fractionally and looked up at him as he held her in the cradle of his arms. "Oh, that was so Saint Just. There are times, lots of them, when I feel like Doctor Frankenstein after his monster ran amok in the village. Now let go, okay?"
"You"re afraid of me? Of yourself? Of us?"
She pushed a little harder, but he wasn"t letting go. Not this time. "Cut that out. I am not afraid of you. Then again, I"m not nuts. You"re a fictional character. My fictional character."
"All yours, my dear," Saint Just agreed, trying not to smile. She was weakening. He could sense it.
"Yes, but I don"t write fantasy. And you"re fantasy. A real fantasy."
"Also all yours, my dear. Have you ever wondered about that? About the need I might have filled in your life ever since the day you first dreamt me? Could I be the explanation for your reluctance to become seriously involved with other men?"
"Stop that! You"re fiction. There"s nothing magical or...or kinky about a writer"s imagination. It"s not my fault you"re here."
"No, but was it your wish that got me here. After all, we"d all but lived with each other for five years before I made my existence known to you."
"Since you poofed into my living room. Right. I remember. How can I forget? It"s been months, and you"re still here." She opened her mouth to say something else, then shut it again.
"But how long will I be here. Yes, I know."
"No. That"s just it. You don"t know. You don"t know, I don"t know. We"ve been in woo-woo territory from the moment you and Sterling showed up, and n.o.body knows how long you"ll be here. I...I can"t take that chance. I won"t let myself be-oh, forget it!"
This time when Maggie tried to free herself, Saint Just let her go. Time, it would seem, was his enemy. He"d not spent enough of it here, with her, for her to believe he would always be here. Then again, time was also on his side. Every day that he spent with her, she would feel safer with him, until the day she felt secure enough to really be with him. Be his. As he was hers, as he had been hers, even before he"d admitted as much to himself.
They were two halves of the same whole.
Sterling, bless him, was in the way of a bonus. Sweet, gullible, all-that-is-wonderful Sterling. The best of both him and Maggie, with no shadows. Childlike, in many ways.
Saint Just smiled at the thought, but prudently decided not to share that conclusion with Maggie, who was once again prowling the room, all her pent-up energy looking for a release.
He could have told her where she"d find it, but that would only get his face slapped. Pity.
"And another thing," Maggie said, just as if there had been no break in their conversation, which there hadn"t been, Saint Just understood, at least in her mind. "This mess we"re in. I mean, really. No heat, no hot food, no electricity. Cut off from civilization. Trapped here with a bunch of Hollywood hoo-hoos. Undercuffler and his asinine script. Joanne and her stopwatch and her penny-pinching-don"t say it! I am not that bad. Tabby"s shacking up with the valet-sort of-and I"ll never be able to look her miserable husband in the face again, not that I can look at him now without wanting to smack him one. Bernie"s sick, poor thing, and about an inch away from hunting for a bottle. My book stinks, and I have to start it over from scratch when we get back to New York. I"m fat, and I have to go see my mother again in less than a month, for Christmas. I mean, my life just keeps getting better and better."
"That is quite a thick budget of woes, I agree. Have you considered, as I"ve heard you say on occasion, going out into the garden and eating worms?"
"Very funny. Besides, all I could do around here is go out in the garden and drown." She stomped over to the nearest window, pulled back one side of the drapes even as she turned to him. "Look! Look at it out there. Did you ever see such a mess?"
"Um, Maggie?" Saint Just said, his smile thin, his tone, he hoped, merely conversational. "I have a splendid idea. What do you say you and I toddle off downstairs and find Sterling? He"s been ghost hunting, you know, and he has the most amusing story to tell you. Really." He held out his hand to her. "Come along. You"ve been sulking up here long enough."
Maggie glared at him, then took a single step backward. "What? What"s wrong? You"re talking to me, but you"re looking past me. You"re looking at the window. What"s-" She turned around before he could stop her.
"Well," he said a moment later as she fainted and he caught her, "G.o.d knows I wanted the woman in my arms again." Then he tipped his head to one side and considered Sam Undercuffler, who was hanging by his neck from the scaffold on the other side of the window, his body swaying slowly in the wind and rain.
Chapter Nine.
Maggie sat propped up by pillows on one of the sofas in the candlelit main saloon and watched out of one slightly open eye as a rather low-keyed mayhem unfolded around her. She"d been back among the living for some twenty minutes or so, but had been "floating," not really awake, not really paying attention.
She could get away with that only for so long, however, because reality kept coming back to hit her in the face.
That reality was that Sam Undercuffler was dead. In an old English manor house. With its inhabitants cut off from civilization. In the dark. While a storm raged outside. It was all so cliche.
Ten Little Indians. Sort of. Maybe the Three Stooges version...
Arnaud Peppin appeared not to want to partic.i.p.ate in directing that mayhem, having taken to a corner of the room, where he sat with both hands on his blue beret, which he was audibly sucking between his teeth.
Nikki Campion was weeping into the hem of her Regency gown, when she wasn"t checking to make sure everyone noticed her weeping into the hem of her Regency gown.
Evan Pottinger, also still in Regency costume, hovered at the mantelpiece, clipping his nails, flipping the clippings into the fire. Yeech.
Dennis Lloyd, out of his Clarence the valet costume, but unfortunately having misb.u.t.toned his shirt in his haste to get to the main saloon, a nervously grinning Tabby in tow, was busily explaining to anyone who would listen that he and Tabby were very sorry for Sam, but they"d heard nothing, seen nothing out of the ordinary about the man. After all, they"d been together the entire time, mostly in his bedchamber. All day in his bedchamber, as a matter of fact.
"And what would be the entire time, sir?" Alex asked the man, sticking his quizzing gla.s.s to his right eye. "After all, we have no idea how long poor Mr. Undercuffler has been hanging outside Maggie"s window, now do we?"
"Well...um...it doesn"t matter. Tabby and I have been together since last night, first in her room, then in mine, because n.o.body would bother us there. Haven"t we, Tabby?"
"Shhh, Dennis," Tabby said, her cheeks going red. "No one was supposed to know that."
"Oh, yeah, right," Bernie said from her seat on the facing couch before blowing her nose quite noisily into her handkerchief. "None of us knows the two of you have been banging each other senseless, Tabby. Not us. Jeez. Nope. Totally clueless."
Maggie believed she should step in before her friends came to blows, but when Tabby put a hand to her mouth and ran out of the room, scarves flying, Dennis chasing after her, Maggie decided the two would sort themselves out in time. They always did.
Sterling-both Sterlings-leaned over the back of the couch, which for a moment had Maggie believing her faint had left her seeing double. "Maggie?" Sterling asked her. "Are you all right now? When Saint Just came down the stairs like that, carrying you, I had quite a fright. Didn"t I, Sterling?"
"Oh, he did, he did," Sterling redux said, nodding furiously. "But you"re all right now, right? Right?"
"Yes, I"m fine, thank you. Both of you."
But they didn"t take her word for it and go away. They just leaned over the couch some more, still staring at her. As if she might go pop at any moment.
"Um...so, have you guys found Uncle Willis yet?"
Both Sterlings frowned, shook their heads. "We thought we heard him earlier on, while we were poking about in the attics, but we didn"t see anything."
Ah-ha! As Alex would say: a clue. Perhaps even the beginning of the reason Sam killed himself. Please let him have killed himself. Maggie pushed for more information. "You heard something? What did you hear? When? Which wing of the attics? The wing where Sam was hanging?"
"Is something amiss, Maggie?" Alex asked, for he was a man who missed nothing.
She looked up at him in mild disgust, and with a fleeting nervousness as she remembered their earlier interlude. Oh, bad word, interlude. Much too romantic a word. "What do you have, anyway? Built in radar? And not amiss, Alex, no. But the Sterlings-I mean, Sterling and Perry-said they heard some noise in the attics. Earlier." She turned to the Regency Twins. "When earlier, Sterling?"
The two exchanged looks.
"After the suit of armor?"
"Definitely after the suit of armor."
"But before the bat?"
"Most definitely before the bat."
"Gentlemen? Can we be a tad more precise, if you please."
"Let them alone, Alex. They"re trying," Maggie said, then finished the rest of the water someone had brought her and sat up straighter. "What bat?"
"The one in the attics, of course," Sterling said. "We heard the squeaking, the wings flap-flapping. One bat. Maybe more. In any case, we concluded that we didn"t wish to stand about and wait for the thing to get tangled in our hair."
Maggie looked at the nearly identical, both partially bald men. Best casting of the whole movie. "No. You wouldn"t have wanted that to happen, would you? So, you heard the bat, but you didn"t see the bat. Or bats. But when?"
They looked at each other, then said in unison: "Before dinner."
"Just before," Sterling added. "Sorry we can"t be more precise, Saint Just. I know how you like things precise, and all of that."
"Not to worry, Sterling. So, shall we say at approximately five o"clock? Once it was already dark? Very well. Thank you, gentlemen," Saint Just said, and the two retired to a corner of the room where Marylou had set up a small dessert table consisting of the pies and cakes she"d so industriously prepared in the, thankfully, gas-powered ovens.
Sir Rudy, still in his waders, entered the room, wiping his forehead with a large red handkerchief. "So sorry to report this, but the telephones won"t work. Checked them all, I did, and it surprised me how many I"ve got. Upstairs, downstairs. Don"t know why I have so many. But they"re all those portable types, you understand, and we need power for them to operate. We"ll have to find a way to get to the constable in the morning, if the water dissipates. Not that it makes much difference, for the constable couldn"t get to us tonight in any case, and the poor boy is still dead. Oh, peach pie. Smashing! Excuse me!"
"Nice to see him so concerned," Maggie said, getting to her feet. "Poor Sam commits suicide, and our host cares more about peach pie."
"If it was suicide," Alex said quietly. "Which I very much doubt."
Maggie closed her eyes, took a deep breath. "Why did you say that? Why did I know you were going to say that? Why do I know that Sam"s ego was way too big for him to kill himself? Do the others know? d.a.m.n it. Alex, we could be stuck here with a murderer. Do something."
"I am doing something, my dear. I"m observing. Have no fears, we"ll have this settled before dawn."
"You wish."
"I promise," he corrected, chucking her under the chin, so that she swiped his hand away, which was less revealing than throwing herself into his arms and screaming, "Protect me!"
"The police can"t get here? n.o.body can come take away the body?" Troy Barlow, still in his Regency costume, spoke from the drinks table, where he"d been dedicatedly depleting an entire carafe of wine, one gla.s.s after the other. "So Sam stays here all night? Oh, no. We can"t have him here all night. He could start to smell."
"No more than you do, you imbecile," Evan Pottinger said on his way out of the room. "I"m going to go get changed. Suddenly, this costume feels silly. Troy? Did you hear me? You look silly. You, too, Nikki."
Nikki interrupted her grief for Sam to stare down at her gown in sudden horror. "Oh!"
Maggie looked at Alex as Nikki ran past them, then picked up two of the many flashlights on the table and pointed toward the hallway. Even with Evan and Nikki gone, there were still too many ears in the main saloon. Not to mention too many imbeciles.
Once the two of them were sitting side-by-side on the stairs leading down to the ground floor, Maggie asked, "Sam"s in the house? When did that happen?"
"While you were still playing the die-away heroine who"d had a tremendous shock to her sensibilities, I imagine, my dear," Alex told her, carefully wiping his hands together as if to rid himself of any lingering feeling of having touched the dead screenwriter as he hauled him in through the open window.
"You pulled him in? You touched him? Boy, that took guts. I couldn"t do that."