Page 22 of Kept
“Sure, sure,” she laughs.
“I’m not.”
“Right.”
“God, fuck. Take the money then if you are going to get so snippy about it.”
“I’m going to.”
I shake my head at her.
“Even if you do, I’m going to keep putting the rent into the canister on the fridge, so it is there if anything goes to shit, and he wants his money back.”
“Agreed,” she nods, “I’m going to spend my rent money on shoes.”
“Seriously,” I groan, turning back to the cabbage, “how many pairs of shoes can one woman want?”
“Wash your mouth out,” she giggles.
I laugh along with her, I can’t stay mad at her for long, and she’s my best friend. And if I am honest, she is a little bit right about the whole restaurant thing. I am tempted to do it again; I’d even had dreams about driving to the next big city, where no one knew me, and eating at another fine establishment, just to see if the food was any better.
Then again, I’d also had dreams about a ménage with a certain blonde cop, a bloodthirsty vampire and a history teacher – and there was no chance any of that was happening.
New Entry.
The landscape designer is exactly how I like them; a drop of blue blood, a large dollop of up themselves cunt and a few hundred connections that go back far enough for her to have no idea what her family tree is like, and for me to have a very good understanding of her lineage.
Her name is Lucy Bernshire, but unfortunately for her, she is one of the Lanesboroughs, a distant one, but still, it is high time I took out another little branch of that bastard’s tree.
I am quite sure that when Richard Lanesborough tried to stake me in 1690 he had no idea that he had made not only a mortal enemy, but an immortal one that would wreak its revenge upon his house every generation for timeimmemorial– but there you have it, I have a vengeful temper and a photographic memory, I make no apology for it.
This evening Ms Bernshire perused the hall full of deceased Mrs Montague’s with the air of someone who felt she would be the next – she could not be more wrong.
“I sense your style,” she said breathlessly, turning to look me in the eye, her prodigious and no-doubt fake, breasts filling out her twin-set cardigan perfectly.
“Really?” I drawled, “and what might that be?”
“You have taste, real taste. The kind that can’t be bought, but is rather in the blood,” she laughed.
I laughed along with her; she had no idea how funny I found her words, but for exactly the wrong reasons.
Of course, I had to keep telling myself not to bite her. I want very much to rip her throat out, especially given who she is, but I won’t, not until I have the garden I desire.
“At least a year, perhaps two,” she said quietly, looking out the nearby wall-length windows to the park beyond, “you have let the grounds fall into such a state of disrepair, it will take me six months just to get the soil level, let alone begin the plantings and the reinstatement of the ponds, streams and fountains.”
I shrugged.
“Just get it done. Your plans seem satisfactory.”
“Money is, obviously,” she turned to me and smiled, “no object.”
“On the contrary,” I raised my eyebrow at her, “money is an object to be spent and enjoyed. I will wish you to give me monthly spend projections – managing an estate of this size is not inexpensive, and I do not have an inexhaustible supply.”
“Of course, Lord Montague,” she smiled. And this time I noticed she had a tiny almost imperceptible chip out of one of her teeth on the bottom row.
I always notice the flaws in people’s faces – I really wish I didn’t, but I have done it ever since I was a child. Now, every time she smiles, I will see that fucking tooth.
It makes me want to kill her even more.
