"Is something the matter, sir?"

It was an inquest to which Edmund was rather accustomed by now. He'd heard it fielded many times before, by various persons, ranging from his late father to his friends at the country club and now, with a blithe blink and a polite tilt of his head, a butler inquired the same of him. Held out in front of Edmund, balanced perfectly on the tips of the butler's five fingers and home to a display of champagne, stood a platter. He cleared his throat.

"Sir?"

He was a young man, with thick tabby fur with grey and black lines, and small, rounded ears, and a pair of eyes rather given to a paralysing stare. Though it took him a moment, Edmund shook his head from side-to-side, "Oh, no. My apologies."

The man then gave an awkward bow and continued on in his duties, though when Edmund next walked past him - and he had to, to reach the other side of the room and the coat-rack, to fetch his things - he noted an awkward stare, suspicious almost, and the slightest bit aloof. Edmund exhaled a heavy breath. The coat-rack. It had been an afternoon at the gentleman's club, and it dragged on, and he simply wished to leave. The atmosphere was stifling. The place, given to an air of secrecy about itself despite the sign outside promptly advertising it as The Grinning Fox, had no windows to speak of; only dispassionate wood panels, each of which was about twice the width of a man's shoulders and home to a sconce, a painting, or a drapery, and all done up in dark, muted reds and greens. Why always reds and greens, Edmund wondered, why not something rather garish pink? Anything to break up the monotony of the place. He could still hear the din of conversation, too. A smattering of men made themselves at home on the far side of the hall.

From where Edmund stood, near the door and in the very corner of the chamber, he noted how much they resembled a painting, or some other impression of what a business meeting ought to be, but never quite was: five men, each sat in his own plush green armchair, in a circle around a small, round table, upon which drinks had been laid out. All non-alcoholic, of course, but they'd been laid out still and were being brandished with the same incensed affect as any other tumbler of Whiskey may be. One of the glasses shot up and its bearer followed, stretching to the fullest length of himself. He was rather thin, wiry almost, a persian fellow with familiar cream brown fur, turning darker around his eyes and muzzle and framing the grin he presently wore nicely. And though he knew each of the other four men at the table, Edmund paused to survey the reveller in particular: Sedgewick Sable.

"A toast!" He beamed proudly, to a chorus of muted cheers, "To new opportunities in deeper places."

The group threw their glasses back in unison. The cause for Edmund's early departure, which he'd clad in a series of polite apologies and disaffected nods, was not so much the company. Nor was it Sedgewick's persistent jostling on the topic of speakeasies and other less-than-legal enterprises, no. Adding a speakeasy to his litany of sins did not trouble Edmund in the slightest. Quite the opposite. The Church Family's portfolio had never been entirely clean, not once in the history of all their dealings, but the crimes they were usually given to were of a smaller nature, and mostly in the realm of taxes. This, in and of itself, was not some immense transgression in such social circles. Most every man here concealed his taxes. Liquor-running was a much newer charge, and one to which far fewer could lay a credible claim. In the past, mentions of smuggling or other such thuggery would be seen as unbecoming. But, as the Prohibition dragged on, it became an increasingly profitable form of thuggery, and as such, it lost its beastly trimmings. Edmund acquiesced to the topic easily as a result. It was almost pleasant, in a way. The way the gathered men spoke of it, it seemed to almost be a tradition of the great state of Missouri, one which fell out of favour solely due to a lack of call for it. It had now returned to its fullest zenith and thus, there was glory in it, given with a measure of almost roguish style.

It would be talk of this style that would bring the conversation around, and away from impersonal matters. Impersonal matters, Edmund mused, eyeing himself in the mirror, and uncouth speculation. What, precisely, spurned it, he could not say. Maybe it was his appearance? The man that stared back at him from the polished surface was as he'd always known him, though seeming a little older each time. Grey tuxedo fur, with a single, brilliant patch of white in the middle of his face, which framed his muzzle and his lips, and they were, as usual, drawn into a hollow line, and only the occasional twitch of his thick eyebrows giving any sign that he was still alive. It was the symmetry, probably, the rough cut of the white that clashed so starkly with the grey, and at once, Edmund did not like himself all that much. He shook his head, pressed a paw onto the knot of his tie, and made for the door.

No wonder the other men thought him a beast. He was not wont of conversation with them. Edmund found them bestial in equal measure, as bestial as their little games of speculation and probing, and he held himself aloof and separate, a tad ragged of tone in this self-imposed solitude, which he fortified with a dug moat of his own cynicism. That, and his Clemmie sometimes told him, 'you've the face of a murderer', even if she did tend to do so when he was rather tired and not at all in a mood to kill anyone; perhaps, he'd figure, in a mood to be killed, rather. But he associated himself with them still, for the sake of business and opportunity and keeping up appearances, and it was all so disdainful to him.

The air outside was brisk at first, and then bitingly cold. It was mid-winter, the early days of February. Snow blanketed the world. It was early evening, and the sky above had turned to a miasma of orange and blue, streaked with thin, white clouds that seemed almost frail from the ground. Edmund exhaled into his scarf and watched as his breath danced in front of him. His car was not far. He trudged through the drifts, down a carved line that other pedestrians had woven in it, and found that his shoes were as ill-suited to the task as when he left the house. Clementine would love this weather, he thought. She'd love a walk in all this, in the drifts, and she'd kick one up next to him and cheer and when he asked her why on Earth she did so, she'd say, why, to stun the American out of you. Or something about how they did this all the time in Scotland. One of the two. Edmund climbed into the car, started the engine, and pulled out of the parking spot slowly. He did not trust drivers on days like these, feeling himself more capable than they. His wife begged to differ sometimes. And the closer he got to home, the more she was on his mind. She, Edmund paused, and the speculation they'd levelled against the two of them, and against him, specifically.

...

Writing. It was a horrendous job. It entailed all manner of little niggles, of foibles which were so impossibly tiny that to spot them required an eye far keener than the one usually lent to the scrivener who was responsible for their existence, and as such, they came back as haunts later on. Later on, as it turned out, was a week after she'd finished her latest chapter, and Clementine was at a loss. She sat, cross-legged, in a pile of her own papers. They surrounded her on all sides, festooned about her mockingly, and each seemed to radiate more and more errors. She'd already spent a good bit of red ink already, and as she held the pot in the palm of her paw - flat atop it, balanced precariously, a little unsteady still and growing more unsteady with each jab of her nib into it - Clementine wondered if she should perhaps give the lot up. Throw the chapter out, as the situation warrants, literally and figuratively, and the former would be out the window. Into their backyard. Into the snow. Maybe the crows would be able to make something of it. Defeated, she clasped the inkwell shut and fell back. Papers crinkled under her. One rustled terribly. That probably tore. If it didn't, it smudged. And if it did either, it was almost certainly atop one of the only good passages she had. She exhaled deeply.

It was nearing seven. A sound hour to pack all this up. Clementine slid across the sheets and then rose up onto her feet. Languidly, she collected the papers, one by one and added them all to a big stack which she then shook out and pressed to her chest. One was missing. She counted them with her index finger and found only twenty, and so one was missing.

"Buggery," she muttered.

The search began. First, it was on the floor. Nothing. The bed was empty. The inkwell had been stowed and safely put away and of that she made sure, and that was the third time she checked for it. No paper. Clementine paced across the bedroom. No paper. Then, she stopped - the mirror. Her eyes met a pale form, and it took her a minute to even recognise herself: the gentle, lengthy lines of her muzzle looked tired, worn even, and despite it being quite round usually, her chin struck her as jagged now, and alien, almost. Her curly red hair, normally neatly styled, now sat at odds with itself. It looked like a fire atop her head, really, and she reached up to flatten a bit of it out, but found that it sprang back up defiantly. The rest of her was no better.

Her bushy, white fur, a little short and thick and decidedly Scottish, had more than one unsightly lick in itself, most notably on the back of her neck, where it rose above the collar of her nightgown. It was pure white, from tip to toe, with the exception of the very base of her back, which bore a smattering of small, black spots. They were fully invisible now. Clementine swung her tail up and then back down again. That, at least, looked alluring in any configuration, she mused. But the rest of her? Her brown eyes were bloodshot. Bloodshot and tired and she looked as if she'd spent one half of the day running a marathon and the other weeping over ever having had to do so. A disaster. A mess. And now she had a missing page, too.

The door opened. Her head turned slowly. Edmund. She tried to suppress a laugh. She really did. It took every ounce of her strength and she still failed, and as she surveyed her husband, what began as a chuckle turned into a raspberry and then a full on laugh, "My God, what happened tae ye?"

Edmund was wet. He was drenched, in fact. His white dress shirt was a single transparent stain right down to his waist and he had a towel about himself, presumably given to him by their butler, Whittaker; dependable as he was, he no doubt intercepted Edmund on the way into the house to prevent disaster. Limp fur hung from Edmund's face, most notably from his cheeks, which now served to frame the descending line of his lips. It took her almost half a minute to regain her composure and, when she did, she found that the line turned into a sad little downcast arch.

"Come, come," She urged, with a wave of one of her paws, and he trudged towards her slowly. Clementine looked down, gasped, and held that same paw out to stop him, "Just one wee moment, stay right there."

"Where on Earth would I go?" He queried, in a tone usually reserved for people on their deathbed. Clementine shoved the papers into the nightstand on her side of the bed, and then slammed the drawer shut unceremoniously. Without wasting another second, she turned back to him and ferried him into the master bathroom. For a moment, she lingered in the door. Edmund sat down on the closed toilet and was busily drying himself with one of the towels he pilfered from their rack.

"Snow," he said softly, between presses of the towel to his cheeks and chin, his paw traversing the span of his face in a semi-circle of sorts, "A big drift of it. Massive, in fact. Directly above our garage?"

"Aye?"

He turned his head and spat a bit of his own fur out, and then shook his head side-to-side, "I nearly died."

"Ah can see that," Clementine managed through another, suppressed snort, and then raised both her paws up defensively, "Sorry, sorry, isnae funny."

Across the span of white towel, which was now pressed neatly up against his chin, Clementine could see the ghost of a smile on him. Edmund whispered, "Isn't it?"

"It is deeply unfunny."

"You are, as always, a terrible liar."

"And you," Clementine took a step forward and then reached out, to touch the tip of her index finger to his nose, "Look far better wet than dry."

"Slander," Edmund volleyed back and they fell simultaneously into a low laugh.

It took them no time at all from that point on. Within a matter of moments, they were on their bed, both nude and in a crescent shape; she, atop him, his head beneath hers and cradled in her touch softly and he beneath her, with his chin flush against her chest and ears folded back slightly.

"The other men suppose me an animal."

Clementine laughed a little, and then some more, and ran her paws along the high of his back. He'd been curled into her for an hour now, and he'd made no great attempt of anything - only a feeble few kisses, hot and driven in themselves but aimless, and she'd kissed him back with equal aimlessness.

"That fellow, Wick, he is quite candid with this sort of stuff. Got quite a rise out of me, almost, with his speculating," He whispered, and Clementine tucked her cheek in against his hair, to where she could draw him closer to herself still, "Thinks I must be some sort of savage in the sheets. He's dead sure of it, in fact. With a whip."

"A whip!" She snorted the words out and could not even finish them before they fell away, and she tried; Lord, she tried.

"Some sort of monstrosity, I am sure," His laugh was deep, bass-like, and it had a little titter to itself near its upper boundary, as if he were somehow running out of air the entire time and it all made her laugh even more fiercely, "How I abuse you, my sweet."

The little shape she left in the hair between his ears was a near perfect imprint of her lips, and so she tried again, and then a third time, and he'd content himself with three just then, each a little less perfect than the last, "Ah'm so troubled. Ye should know this by now."

Grey fur moved beneath her touch curiously and she saw the white of his muzzle appear, and then the rest of him. Clementine smiled down at him and then slid along his form. This was always his favourite, to where he could lay his head onto her chest and hear her heart, and now he was nose-to-nose with her. Clem could feel his paw atop her birthmark, at the base of her back, and she could feel the way he unconsciously rounded off each spot, touch spread to the boundaries of the mark and holding her and she rocked against him a bit. An animal, she thought again, through a little smile pressed in against the crook of his neck. An animal, and her eyes remained fixed on a spot on the far wall.

"Why do ye 'hink they say such things?" She inquired and felt her husband shrug a bit, and the motion fell seamless into a kiss to her neck. His head leaned to the side and he cast it deeper, and pressed it forward, and she felt a little sound rock all of him. It was half a sigh and half a quizzical grunt, and Clem knew that he meant nothing by it; nothing conscious nor tangible, "Do ye suppose that it is because yer wife is how she is?"

To that, he laughed, titter and bass and all, and threw her onto her back a bit. He was atop her now, and between her legs, and they'd parted for him out of instinct and need in equal measure, "And what is my wife?"

The little bite she delivered to her lower lip swiftly turned to a kiss she pressed to his chin and that was her little defiance. He caught the torch of it and pressed it back into a full embrace, unflinching and deep, and she let him burn onwards, burn through the throw of his tongue against hers and the locking of their muzzles; then, and only then, did he think to part long enough to speak.

"She is a filthy little minx," He contested, and Clem cast a downward glance, along the span of herself and into the part where her now-upturned nakedness met the tip of his, "The Scottish sort of filthy she is, that Clementine Milligan, with her stories of boats and ships and that inkwell I saw earlier, which she nearly spilled on our bed, and she's all a terrible, frisky mess."

"Oi!" Came the sound of protest and he silenced it with a click of his lips to hers, into which he dove fully. That is all it took him. The boundary was crossed and now he was within her and she engulfed all of him readily, readily and wet and a slight bit pathetic, though she'd never let him see. Nobility she was, even with him in her like so.

"Terrible," He grunted out, and then began to thrust in earnest, and though she had a rebuttal - Clementine seldom did not, and when she did not have one, it was usually because he'd otherwise occupied the parts of her that did - she felt herself incapable of fielding it. It was the assault of kisses, the fierce peppering of them, each short, short and hot and full of his breaths, "Not to mention...un-Christian in the extreme."

"Ah...suppose this is where ye..." The rest of that was lost to her in a cry which she stifled in the fur of his chest, "Oh Lord above."

"Blasphemy!" Edmund called and she could hardly stop herself from laughing, though it was a peculiar sound, half laugh and half moan, and half his name at the end, begging him for more.

"Inside! Inside!" A pointless thing for her to beg for as a statement would have sufficed, but she did anyway, and now was the time to ask. The man had a terrible habit of unsheathing himself at the very end of the proceedings, for nothing but the satisfaction of staining her, and she felt it rather intimate: a marking, but it annoyed her after, and he knew it did, and so he did it still. They collapsed into one another. His paws found her shins and he held her, firmly, taut and beneath him and kissed her again and again, and with each she felt more of him in her. Each little rush of come he punctuated with a cry of her name, and each time she returned it in kind with one of his until she felt like they were calling one another in the night, and he collapsed beside her. Clementine drew deep breaths. In them, she lay her head under his and felt him kiss her hair - fire red, and Scottish, and filthy, she thought.

"Oh, and," He whispered, coy, "Not to mention she likes it up the ass."

"Ye liar, cease yer slanderin'!" Her demands were met with yet more kisses, "Isnae polite to expose a lady like so."

"A strong call for decency from a woman that called out the Lord's name in vain just now."

"Several inches of vain," she countered and he kissed her forehead; gold met gold again, and a smile from him trade for one from her, and she scratched under his chin with her index finger, "Ye monster."

"Simply horrendous."

"I'll get the blindfold next time."