Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
To see Charmaine’s face at that moment was a thing of beauty.
The same woman who hounded and bit at me, telling me I was a liar and a fraud, before engaging in all-out political warfare against me, was eye-poppingly staring at my pants-less brother.
It was satisfying. I was grinning from ear to ear when TJ turned his fabric-covered butt to her, waiting for his flogging.
TJ was wearing benign blue-striped underwear that covered him as much as a pair of shorts would.
“Still a boxers guy, huh?”
He grinned at me. “It was a rush job packing. I’ll have something more presentable tomorrow. My apologies.”
“Excellent. I know Charmaine will be interested, seeing that if she pops by, she’ll get another eyeful. Or should I say, trespasses tomorrow.”
“Please!” Charmaine squealed, finding her manners side to her brain. She put her palms out in front of her face as if my brother’s butt was a projectile about to crash into her. “Cover yourself; this is most indecent!”
Next to me, Holly kept her face impassive, something I was wholeheartedly impressed with, but her eyes said she was making a movie in her memory and would replay this scenario down at the pub for a week until all of Glentree heard about: The Baker Kids and the Casswell Agent Who Wouldn’t Take No for an Answer.
I looked back at Charmaine. “Come on, Charmaine, put TJ out of his misery and spank him, or promise to call him TJ in the future.”
“Yes! Fine!”
He was now resting one elbow on the table, his chin propped on his fist. I nodded to his pants on the floor. “Britches up—she promised.”
“I’m not sure. She didn’t sound convincing.”
“I’ll tell you what: I’ll get a device out of the dungeons that will give you one helluva spank, then pull your britches up for you.”
Holly nodded out the door. “Want me tae grab it?”
“Would you?”
“Oh, look,” I said as my brother started to move, “he’s got it. Don’t you, Tee?”
TJ was pulling up his pants, tsking. “You’re so violent sometimes.”
Holly scoffed. “Ye have no idea.”
TJ buckled and turned to Charmaine, his apple back in his left hand. “Now, where are my manners?” He held out his free hand. “The name is TJ, and I’m Nicole’s older brother.”
Charmaine stood, “I’ll not be shaking your hand. T-J.” She pronounced the letters like she was reciting the alphabet. “You deserve no such honors from me, and soon you and your loathsome sister will be far from here, mark my words.”
I groaned and looked up at the ceiling as if the answers for how to get the hell out of this predicament were written up there. “Oh, please don’t do that,” I complained.
“And what, Ms. Baker, is that?”
I shook my head at her. “You keep doing these things… I can’t figure out if you’re doing them intentionally, or are you that ignorant?” When she said nothing, I continued, “Charmaine, you served him an ultimatum.” I nodded to TJ. “There’s no one more loyal and hardheaded than him.”
TJ was grinning and looking at Charmaine. He was happy to have someone call him out so his actions could be applauded, and the subtext didn’t need to be explained.
“I did no such thing.”
“‘Mark my words’? This guy,” I said, gesturing to the grown man-child before her, “will prove you wrong.”
Charmaine’s chin went up as she looked my brother in the eye. He gave her an equal stare back. Then, she did it again. “I’d like to see you try.”
“No. Tee, she’s leaving. She’s a dishonored ex-employee and no business of yours. Goodbye, Charmaine.” I got between her and Tee and, arms out wide, kept him back as if he couldn’t see her around me, and ushered her and her things out the door.
Bulging satchel on her shoulder, she paused at the doorway. Her brown eyes flashed. “You’ll drown Rowan in your ineptitude, and he’ll lose everything he’s held dear. Only at the bitter end will he finally see you for the charlatan you are.”
Her words had the bitter jab of a curse, and I was reminded of what Great-to-a-Billion-Granny Ethel said weeks ago, that there would always be a MacLaoch agent set to destroy the union between the Minory and the MacLaoch.
I suppressed the urge to head-butt her into the doorframe and instead snapped the rubber band on my wrist and said, “I’m sorry you can’t see the passion and connection Rowan and I have for each other.
I’m sorry you’ll live your days with unrequited love and the inability to love yourself enough to move on to someone who cares for you as much as you do them.
I wish you a better future than the one you see for yourself. ”
Her eyes hissed in response before she stalked to the stairs.
I followed to make sure she left. At the top of the stairs, I could see Marion and Flora below swiftly doing busywork arranging pens and the guest book, covering what they had been doing, which was eavesdropping.
I opened my mouth to ask them to open the main doors to flush Charmaine out when something caught my eye down the hall that I hadn’t noticed from the angle I’d been facing when I came up the stairs.
My new vantage point showed me the southern side of the long, elegant hall.
Most was an everyday sight: It was lined with petite cherrywood tables topped with porcelain vases.
Each Queen Anne leg gracefully ended in a wooden paw kneading the Persian rug that ran the length of the hall.
That rug had been a gift to the MacLaoch clan chief in the eighteenth century.
The wide, carved wood panels of the walls were bisected by doorways that stood open on either side, letting soft daylight spill onto the red and indigo of the patterned rug.
Portraits and landscapes in brass or gold filigree frames adorned the dark walnut of the wall panels.
The largest of them Rowan had once seriously considered putting up at auction to cover the estate debts.
He’d ditched the idea, realizing he’d never forgive himself if he did.
The painting was a gift to his clan nearly four hundred years earlier by a Mr. Harmenszoon van Rijn.
To his friends, Rembrandt. Though I’d taken to caring for it as well, at first, I knew it was a Rembrandt only because his name was on the brass wall plate.
The brass plate that had been installed below the painting, which was now just a brass plate because the square of wall above it was empty.
“Where’s the Rembrandt?” I blurted.
The person who answered took me by surprise. Charmaine made an indelicate scoffing sound. “My, my, Ms. Baker, I’m surprised you even noticed.”
She stood midway down the steps. I looked from her down to Marion and Flora, who called up to me, “It was there last night when we closed up! Is it really gone?”
Feeling my eyes narrow in suspicion, I rested my gaze back on Charmaine.
“What have you done?”
“The thing you could never do.”
Holly read my mind and said under her breath, “Want me to give her a push? Such tiny stairs, and they’re carpeted—she won’t get but a few bruises. Been down them myself after a party here in my youth.”
“No, if she takes a tumble, it’ll take her longer to tell me why the fuck she seems so smug.” To Charmaine: “Why are you so smug about that?”
“Why do you think I’m here, Ms. Baker?”
She’d said it several times now, Baker. I was still officially Baker, but it felt like she was using it as a dig—as if, in her eyes, I’d never be worthy of the MacLaoch name.
She continued, “Well, it certainly is not to get into another round of fisticuffs with you; it’s to do my job. And even if Rowan thinks he can go it alone, an idea no doubt you put into his head, he cannot. Mr. Murdoch—”
“The banker?”
“—reached out to me to see if we could come to an agreement, and I’ve spearheaded efforts to pause the loan’s foreclosure proceedings with a good faith payment in the form of the Rembrandt.
The chief knows of this and approved my idea before you came along, and I’m seeing it through to the end.
You’re an annoyance, and if I have to subjugate you to do my job, I shall. ”
“Wait.” I held up a finger. “One, subjugate? Fuck you.” Then added another finger. “Two. You stole the Rembrandt?”
Her face flushed, and her chin tilted up in defiance. “I’ve stopped the bankruptcy proceedings by seeing to the financial expectations set in place when the laird took on the estate debt and ignored the prosperity he could have had through other means.”
“You’re unbelievable.” I was seething. “You don’t work for us anymore, so this is theft, and trespassing. You stole a prized heirloom from the castle. Don’t congratulate yourself.”
TJ piped in, “Quick question for those of us who need the Cliffs Notes version: What does she mean about some ignored prosperity through other means?”
Holly clarified, “She wanted the chief tae marry her, and she’d use her finances for philanthropic means around the castle, etc.”
TJ and I were raised on Southern interpersonal drama, so he quickly grasped the basic meaning. “Oh, she was going to pay him to marry her?”
Glaring at Charmaine, I answered, “Yes.”
Her triumphant brow crashed. Red blotches of rage moved from her neck up to her cheeks. When she spoke, her voice was uncharacteristically loud. “How disgusting—”
Tee moved down the steps toward her; his body language was like that of a man put into the stable of a wild stallion.
With a calm, cool-headed tone, he said, “I bet you’re smart enough to know when you’re being baited, Ms. Chevalier.
” He moved slowly, landing one stair down, so she stood above him.
“This isn’t a place to air our dirty laundry, now, is it?
My sister won the game of hearts; Rowan is hers; he loves the almighty hell, pardon my language, out of her, and I reckon, come hell or high water, he will do anything, and I mean anything, for her.
So, you take that beautiful wreck that is your honor, and you protect it.
Don’t get into it with my little sister anymore, you hear? ”