Greetings and salutations, gentle readers! I know I'm not obligated to post several recaps each day, but I kept feeling like something was drawing me to the next chapter, nagging at me to check it out, promising wonders I had never seen before, or at least not since the first time I read this thing. So I decided to take a look. And oh, I was so right.
Join me on this journey once more as the stupidity reaches the... first of several peaks in this book.
Warning: today's chapter includes a scheme involving badly acted spousal abuse. No one actually gets hurt and it's pretty much impossible to take seriously, but it is there. Proceed with caution.
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| Yet again... today's reading face needs no explanation. |
Chapter 16: AMERICA, [BLEEP] YEAH
Previously on Moonlit Obsession: having finally arrived to New Brunswick, creepy douchebag Stephen Burke and incompetent spy Anemone Carstairs set out on their mission to rescue Burke's imprisoned best friend from the ship Belvidere. To do that, they did some of the least covert spying I have ever seen – seriously, they might as well have come in with a marching band – and managed to find out where the Belvidere is docked in the harbor. Then they sat down and wrinkled their brains about how to best go for the rescue, and got as far as agreeing that they would need a diversion.Chapter 16 opens by revealing what the super mega spies' brilliant plan actually is: we follow a woman (it's Anemone, obviously, but we start in a different POV for some reason) running down the dock screaming for help, with her muscular love in hot pursuit. I'm gonna have words about the plan in a moment, but first, please enjoy this description.
Her expression was one of terror, and her voice rang through the peace of the night with the desperate clamor of cymbals clashing above a mellifluous string quartet.
Hot tip from a reader: if you're trying to create suspense in a scene, don't use words like "mellifluous".
Anemone then PFFFFFTT wow. She name-drops the officers in charge of the Belvidere and the Zenith as she pleads for someone to come save her.
SUPER MEGA SPY!
Because it won't look weird at all that this woman they have never seen in their life knows them by name, and is specifically asking them to pretty please drop everything and pay attention to her.
Burke follows Anemone down the dock pretending to be drunk, calls her a "scheming little tramp" – swoon – and yells at her as she keeps screaming. Overall, their masterful diversion consists of them making a bigger commotion than a Macy's parade, drawing the attention of most of the sailors with eyes and ears in the vicinity.
SUPER MEGA SPY!
Pardon me for plagiarizing myself from the previous recap, but: way to stay covert, you two. Also it's very fun to see that when Anemone and Burke had to agree on a ruse, the best thing that came to mind was "abused woman fleeing angry husband". HMMMMMMST.
Anemone makes it to the end of the dock where the Belvidere is anchored, and keeps asking the sailors to lower the gangplank, please, she totally needs to come on board right now. She might as well be dancing naked and waving a sign that says I HAVE NEFARIOUS PURPOSES, but apparently she's selling the helpless woman thing so well (hmmmmmst) that the sailors actually think she's in trouble. Also we get this wonderful sentence.
He fingered his mustache uneasily.
Such beautiful prose.
At this moment, Burke catches up with Anemone and grabs her; she pauses to think that she'd genuinely be scared of him if she didn't know better, which is a weird flex, because the fact that she's not scared of him shows that she actually doesn't know better. But go off, I guess. She then proceeds to treat the sailors to so much ham and cheese, it's practically a banquet.
"Oh, Stephen, no! Don't beat me again! I can't bear it! I'd rather you just killed me and were done with it!"
I honestly didn't think I would ever read over-the-top melodramatic acting rather than see it. Will the wonders never cease.
Nonetheless, the racket draws the attention of Captain Fredericks, the commanding officer of the Belvidere. He does actually agree to lower the gangplank, but only so he can get off the ship and onto the dock, telling Burke to stay away from Anemone. Burke reacts thusly.
"Don't lay a hand on her?" Stephen bellowed. He cast a quick glance into the faintly glimmering water beyond the frigate for some sign of the smallboat containing William Tuttle and the two other men who had volunteered for the rescue attempt.
Amazing acting, dude – follow up the hammy angry bellow by sneaking a look behind the person you're talking to. Did they teach you that, or are you a natural?
So as the two super mega spies try to out-Shatner each other, Captain Fredericks looks at them with some distaste because apparently he doesn't actually care about the screaming abused woman groveling at his feet, he just came to check out whoever was making a scene. Sigh. He studies her "sculptured face" – I don't know if that's a word, my good man – and admires how pretty and well-dressed she is, because of course.
SUPER MEGA SPY!
I think the Carstairs Family Handbook of Spying needs a chapter about disguises. Maybe in the revised edition.
Anyway, Fredericks makes the wise choice to get rid of both our noisy leads and maybe stop the display that has everyone staring at them, Burke decides to crank his acting up a notch by calling Anemone a whore – swoon – then Anemone actually name-drops the innkeeper as the one who told her where to find British officers in town.
SUPER MEGA SPY!
How do you blow a cover you came up with two hours ago?!
I then lose all my sympathy for the entire crews of two gosh darn ships in one fell swoop when Burke grabs Anemone again, because we get this sentence.
He addressed the men who now lined the decks of both the Belvidere and the Zenith, all watching with a mixture of curiosity and amusement the little scene being played out on the dock.
When I was rereading the chapter for this recap, I chose to interpret this line as them being amused at how bad these two are at selling their diversion and wondering when the captain is going to catch on too... lest I blow a fuse if I read anything else into it.
Alas, the book decides that I don't deserve happiness in my life, because Burke then actually asks the sailors if they think he's in the wrong to beat his wife, and "A chorus of nays greeted him". Sea Urchin is a bit disgusted, but admiringly thinks about how Burke is playing the men like a violin (paraphrasing, of course... but I agree, as long as we're talking one of those plastic toy violins that have buttons to play music and badly translated instructions) and how brilliant their diversion is. I hope the room's ceiling was stable when that particular line was typed up for this novel, or it might have collapsed from that nuclear combo of character shilling and utter bollocks.
This scene has been going on for close to five pages in the book now. FYI.
To make sure it goes even longer, Commander Whiting of the Zenith chooses to join the discussion, but just as I was debating skimming again, something beautiful finally happened and I laughed very hard.
Before Anemone could answer, a sound reached her ears. She recognized it, in horror, as the scraping of a rope ladder dragged against the side of a ship. Painfully loud, it drew the attention of several men on the Belvidere [...]
Look, I know I said the three-word skyward scream was reserved exclusively for Anemone's mad spying skillz, but I think we can make an exception for this entire chapter.
SUPER MEGA SPIES!
To distract the two officers from his men fucking up that spectacularly, Burke punches them both out. Dear Lord. However am I going to bear the tension of such intricate strategy. Then, to stop the sailors from giving her manly love's ass a well-deserved kicking for what he just did to their commanders, Anemone jumps Burke and knocks him and herself into the water.
SUPER MEGA SPY!
I literally don't know what she was trying to achieve here, considering that they get fished out immediately. Burke drops the drunk act, saying the cold water took it out of him, but Fredericks and Whiting agree that he just earned himself a night in the ship's hold and twenty lashes. Sea Urchin tries to divert them from actually taking Burke, by asking them to please let him go because he's only like this when he's drunk and she still totally loves him. I spit. Also, it doesn't work.
After I actually started skimming because even Anemone agrees they "had stretched out this little charade to its very end" – much like they did with my patience – I ended up finally landing on a paragraph that made me laugh very, very hard.
"President Jefferson might not look kindly upon your actions against a citizen of America – particularly a citizen of his close acquaintance," Anemone interrupted.
SUPER MEGA SPY!
Brilliant.
So after Burke tells Fredericks and Whiting that he totally knows and is related to the President of the United States and that he'll send him to kick English ass if they don't let him go right now, and also that his dad could beat up their dads... they actually let him go.
AMERICA! FUCK YEAH! COMIN' AGAIN TO SAVE THE MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY, YEAH!
God, I needed that laugh.
Once they're out of earshot from the English Navy's finest, Burke and Anemone share an anxious moment because they haven't received the signal from the Sea Lion yet that would mean William and the men are back on board with Johnny. Before the audience could experience even a drop of tension that their mission didn't succeed... they get the signal. There goes that, uh, mildly interesting moment? They kiss to celebrate, it turns Anemone's "bones to jelly" and she's "forgetting everything but the feel of his hard, exciting mouth on hers" and I really wasn't expecting "mouth" to be the word the author would go with in that sentence. Anyway, after Anemone dissolves like an Alka-Seltzer just from kissing (I'd ask what would happen if they actually got down to business but "whirl and dip and spin and splinter" is burned into my brain already), they finally get back to the ship. Once on board, the two zeroes are informed that Johnny's in bad shape so the crew took him to Anemone's cabin, which is usually Johnny's cabin anyway, to tend to him.
Johnny, as it turns out, is all filthy and covered in blood and weak, but he manages to force out a greeting and a handshake as he and Burke gaze deeply into each other's eyes. I'm not dignifying it with a gay joke, just FYI. They banter a bit as Johnny gets patched up, and William reveals that he and his men rescued and/or let go all the other imprisoned men too. Smooth – that can't possibly turn into a huge headache of a diplomatic incident after these two super mega spies went the AMERICA, FUCK YEAH route with their cover story. Then Burke makes the introductions between Anemone and Johnny, and Johnny thinks that she's Not Like Other Girls. No, seriously.
Something about her, about the confident, straightforward way she smiled at him, signaled to him that this girl was not at all like the others.
This lad doesn't waste any time to make me want to dropkick him into the ocean too, does he?
After... fucking that, Anemone apologizes for her fellow English mistreating Johnny, which turns out to be a tactical mistake. Apparently Johnny doesn't like the E-word very much right now and he tells her to GTFO.
"Get this English bitch off the ship."
As much as I hate to take Sea Urchin's side in anything, was the Belvidere's hold that comfortable, John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt? Because you wouldn't be here to fling that word at her if she hadn't super mega spied you off that ship. FYI.
After Johnny attempts to hate her to death despite everyone telling him to quit it, Burke takes Anemone away from the rapidly worsening general atmosphere. They take a bath together, go to bed, and Burke tells Anemone to stop worrying about his bosom buddy giving her the stinkeye because Johnny will get over it come morning.
(Spoiler from the future: no.)
And then I laughed very hard.
His blue eyes darkened to indigo as he bent over her.
The mood ring eyes are officially canon! Fire up the confetti!
Burke then has a Clive Barker moment as he looks at Anemone's "glistening flesh" – what, did she forget to put her skin back on after the bath? – after which we get treated to this description.
He captured her lips in a long and sensuous kiss that ensnared Anemone in ribbons of silken fire.
I'm honestly giving up on riffing the horny metaphors in this book. I can't think of a single thing that would make these mental images any funnier. Alas, the book must have heard me laughing at it, because it distracts me from whatever that was with Burke saying something that freaks me the fuck out.
"Don't even think of leaving me. I'll never let you go."
Not pictured: healthy and romantic things to say to your partner in the heat of the moment! Like, not pictured at all! In the fucking slightest! But Anemone, alas and of course, is still into Buffalo Burke's serial killer flirting... and they end the chapter by procreating until dawn.
Good God, what a journey. Picture me like the aftermath of a cartoon explosion with my hair all blown back from my face after this chapter, gentle readers. See you next time because I think I need a nap.
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