Today’s prompt comes from 101 Prompts for Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers. This is #47, at location 204 in the copy on my Kindle.
A woman enters the bedchamber she shares with her husband, only to find the head of her lover pickled in a jar and staring at her from the mantle.
The Errant Spouse
“Well done,” the Duke told the assassin as he set the object on the mantle. “Now, be at hand. I do not wish her to have to wonder for long as to her fate.”
Alexander bowed and stepped into the necessary, then contemplated the view down the hole. It was far wider than necessary, wide enough to be hazardous. They said that a previous Duke had dropped one newborn daughter after another into the moat far below before he finally fathered a son. The loo would make a perfect way to dispose of a body, particularly if it seemed the body contained a great deal of alcohol and lost its balance while discharging some of it. He peeked back into the Duke’s bedchamber and saw his master gazing at the jar on the mantel while sipping some of the duchy’s fragrant white wine. A second cup sat on the table beside the bottle. Perfect.
The assassin ducked back as the door to the hallway opened. He heard the swish of the Duchess’s silk skirts, and then… not a scream, exactly, not even a true squeal… he heard what he would always after describe as a squeak.
“Do you like my new ornament, my dear?” asked the Duke.
Another squeak.
“It does render one speechless, does it not?” he continued. “I was told, though, that you particularly appreciated…items of this appearance.”
Finally the Duchess found her voice.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“I think you do, my dear,” her husband said, and knocked on the privy door. “Perhaps,” he said, turning back toward her, “you would care to explain it to Alexander.”
The assassin emerged behind the duke as his wife began to stammer something incoherent. She squeaked again as Alexander swung his truncheon against the top of her husband’s head. The Duke emitted a choking gurgle and a small amount of blood, then fell forward on his face.
“How do you think we are going to get away with that?” the Duchess hissed.
“Dump him down the jakes,” Alexander said. “It’ll look like he fell through while he was taking a whizz.”
Alexander sat the Duke up and emptied his glass down the front of the man’s coat, then hefted the body over his shoulder and stepped back into the garderobe.
“And whose head is this in the jar?”
Alexander dumped the Duke and turned back to the new widow.
“New guardsman that got over-insistent with my sister Rose a while back. Rose does not take anything from any man.”
He leaned down and kissed the Duchess on the lips.
“And neither do you, my love, not anymore. Now clean up that smear of blood while you give me time to get clear, and then scream like anything, all right?”
“All right.”
She kissed him again, reaching around him to squeeze his backside, and then found a cloth to wipe up the blood as he slipped out the secret passage.
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