Teaser: In Which Coulter, Crane and Snydley disguise themselves and become menial laborers

Summary: Damien brainstorms a counter-ruse to teach Patience who's on first. That is, who comes first...in their marriage. However, the best laid plans of mice and men (but not cats, who pretty much always come out on top) often go astray.

***

Damien paced the parlor at his swinging bachelor pad like a caged tiger, obviously one not yet made into a rug. A tiny lightning storm that represented his mental activity appeared above his head. Not used to such visceral representations of the thought process, or, in fact, much evidence of thought out of Damien at all, Snydley and Crane eyed him with growing trepidation.

"I say," Crane began, "it's not the thing to rain indoors. Is it?"

"Don't think so," Snydley answered. "Gets the carpet wet, makes the ladies angry."

Damien halted in front of the other two men and, with a movement as lightning swift as his thought process, bonked their heads together. "Shaddup, you knuckleheads, can't you see I'm thinking?"

"Ow!" Snydley rubbed his head where it had impacted so thunkily against Crane's. "I barely know you, Coulter. 'Pon rep, what's the big idea?"

Damien poked Snydley in the eyes with his fingers. "That's for being a whiny baby."

"Ow again!" Snydley rubbed his eyes, Crane played with a feather he'd found on Damien's floor, and Damien resumed pacing.

"The way I sees it," Damien said, lightning flaring, "I have to teach Patience a lesson. She can't make a fool of me." Each time he stomped across the room, it jostled the pot of flowers that, for some reason, had been placed atop the cabinet behind the settee where Syndley and Crane perched. "No woman makes a fool of the Earl of Coulter, not even his wife!" He stomped one last time and the flowers crashed on Snydley's head.

Snydley's eyes fluttered shut in semi-consciousness. "Oooh," he moaned. He began to sway as flowers and water dribbled off him and onto the settee.

Damien sat on the other side of Snydley, not seeming to mind the squelch of the wet cushions. "What we need is a plan."

"Thought you already had a plan? Said so at the end of the last chapter." Crane pushed Snydley, who had, in his barely conscious state, slumped against the other man.

Snydley wavered into a sitting position and then fell against Damien. Damien shoved him, and he landed on Crane, who shoved him back into Damien.

Damien raised his fist with a surly expression. "Why I oughta..." he began, but instead of pummeling Snydley, he stood back up and the baron draped over the arm of the settee. A patch of water the shape of a bull's eye wet the seat of Damien's trousers.

"What we're gonna do is disguise ourselves. Yeah, disguises."

"Disguised? Sounds good. Where's the brandy?" Snydley mumbled. Crane's head rotated back and forth as he stared at the bull's eye on Damien's behind and soon Snydley's head began to echo the movement.

Damien ignored them both. "If we're in disguises she won't know it's us and we can get away with moider."

"Here now, I didn't sign up for no moider." Syndley grabbed a flower from the broken vase, flung it like an arrow, and it landed right in the center of Damien's booty bull's eye.

Damien squawked and pulled out the flower with a plinking sound like a broken piano. "I'm not a dartboard, I'm the Earl of Coulter! And I have a plan."

He paused in front of Crane and the brainstorm above his head culminated in a blinding flash. "We'll disguise ourselves as painters, break into the townhouse, and redecorate. We'll tell her I hired me. I mean us. I mean, the Earl of Coulter hired us."

"Hey, that's you," Crane observed. He tilted his head back and blew the feather into the air.

Damien slapped him in the back of the head. In shock, Crane sucked in the feather and began choking. Snydley pounded him on his back.

"Of course it's me, you chowderhead," Damien said. The water from the now-dwindling brainstorm had slicked his stylish Windswept hair into an odd bowl-like cut that did nothing to flatter his aristocratic features and square chin. "I'm the Earl of Coulter. But the real me will be in disguise."

Crane gulped and gagged, and a funny expression crossed his face. "I swallowed it. Tastes oddly like chicken."

"It was a chicken feather, you ninny. Now listen up. The Earl of Coulter has hired us to redecorate his townhouse."

"You're the Earl of Coulter," Snydley interjected. "You can't hire yourself."

"Sure I can." Damien stuck his thumbs into the top of his pants and swaggered. "Now shaddup and find us some disguises."

"Brandy!" Snydley leapt up and rummaged through a finely crafted liquor cabinet with elegant topless Regency babes carved into the doors.

"No, no, not disguised--some disguises. Painter's coveralls, maybe with lace at the cuffs."

Crane scratched his head. "If you're a painter, who's the Earl of Coulter?"

"I am," Damien said.

"Then who's going to redecorate the townhouse?"

"You are."

"I thought you wanted to redecorate Patience's townhouse?"

"It's not hers, it's mine, and if I want to redecorate my own townhouse, I can!" Damien raged. "I'm the bloody Earl of Coulter!"

"So who's hiring us to redecorate the townhouse?"

Damien looked at Crane as if he were an idiot. "The Earl of Coulter."

"Here's some brandy." Syndley tipped the cut glass goblet up to his lips, took a slug, and hiccuped. "Good shtuff."

"How much does the Earl pay?" Crane asked.

Damien grabbed Crane's elegant nose, struck his grasping fist with his other hand, and yelled, "Bonk!"

"Ow!" Crane rubbed his nose. "That hurt!"

"We're victimsh of shircumshtance," Snydley slurred, tipping the decanter up.

"Find us some coveralls and let's seek revenge on Patience! Then she'll admit she loves me to my face, mind you, not through a duplicitous third party, and we can live happily ever after." Damien hustled the other men out of the room by kicking the backs of their feet as they tried to walk.

****

"My sitting room!" Patience stood in the doorway of her favorite room where nearly all of the story had taken place and gasped in horror. Three men in one piece, paint-splashed garments with lace at the cuffs had set up scaffolding (even though the ceiling was only ten feet high) and myriad paint buckets and drop cloths all over and were currently fighting over a long stick with a paint brush on the end. Each time one of them grabbed it, it smeared another streak of white across the face of the priceless painting over the fireplace. The half-smile on the lady in the small painting turned to a frown.

The three men, upon Patience's exclamation, quit tussling and lined up. "Hello...hello...hello!" they said, each greeting climbing the scale until a rather discordant three part harmony was achieved.

The tallest one, whom she realized was Damien, stepped forward, holding the prized stick. "The Earl of Coulter hired us to redecorate the townhouse."

"But I had a plan," Patience wailed. "An agenda."

"A woman with a plan?" her husband sneered.

"Ish a woman with power," Snydley continued, still drunk. He nodded wisely.

"What power?" Crane asked.

Snydley pulled the glass decanter from his pocket, where it couldn't possibly have fit, much less survived the tussle. "The power of voodoo."

Damien frowned. "Who do?"

"What the hell, Damien?" Patience exclaimed.

"Who's this Damien fellow?" Damien lifted his hand, not realizing he still held the long stick with the paintbrush at the end. The stick bumped the scaffolding above Patience, and a bucket of paint toppled off and landed on her head.

"Why does that seem familiar?" Snydley wondered aloud before all three rushed to Patience and tried to yank the bucket free. They pulled her first one way, then the other, all four of them running as a single unit and bashing into the walls, smearing paint and knocking pots of chocolate, knick-knacks, and buckets to the floor.

Finally the bucket popped off Patience with a loud noise. Her face was covered in white except for black areas around her blinking eyes and screaming mouth.

The men took one look at her and shrieked. "A ghost!"

"She has the power of voodoo," Snydley agreed, trying to climb behind Damien, who was trying to huddle behind Crane. They shoved each other until Damien was in front.

"Spread out, spread out," Damien snarled. Patience ran out of the room, weeping. Damien chased her, leaving Snydley and Crane alone.

"All's well that ends well," Crane declared boldly. He heaved himself into a chair and put his feet on a table.

Snydley shook his head sadly. "Ish not over. An' I'm out of brandy."