Getting Kieran (Sequel To Killing Blackie)

I have already related the tale of poor old Blackie, and your views on my actions concerning that sad episode are rather unimportant as what’s done is done. I have a much more important story to tell now, and that’s of how I got engaged. Believe me, it’s no tale of love at first sight, it’s no Wurthing Heights or Pride and Prejudice.

I was rather bored. It was two years after poor Blackie had passed away and I just didn’t have anything to do. I don’t know how I got the idea, but somehow or other it came into my head that if I was bored I should get engaged. Not best motive perhaps but some people marry for money, some people marry for love, I was going to get married because I was bored. Well not necessarily married, just because you’re engaged doesn’t mean it will end up in marriage. Oh no.

But either way, it’s pointless to discuss the morals of it now, as I can’t really go back in time and change my decision now can I?

So there I was, ready to get engaged, and all I needed was the perfect man. I didn’t want someone rich. I stood a much easier of getting him if he needed money. He had to be hansom. I don’t know what idiot decided to make up the whole, ‘it’s what’s inside that’s important’ bit, but no one really buys it anyways. He had to have a good rob. Not a particularly well paying one, but one that other people would have to respect.

I was just deciding on all this when the perfect man seemed to just drop in my lap. My cousin came to visit. And before you get any ideas, no, my cousin was not the perfect man for me, for one thing he’s forty-five and for another he’s already married. But he knew the perfect man, Kieran.

The topic of Kieran came up over dinner, the second night my cousin was visiting me. We were discussing which one was better, The New York Times or the Washington Post. Actually my cousin was discussing it, I was just nodding to everything he said. It was then that he mentioned a newspaper reporter, who worked at a small newspaper in Tucson, who would be wonderful at the Washington Post.

A reporter sounded good. It was the type of job that had dignity, but not all that much money. And he was attractive, something I found out on the internet after dinner. Thank-fully Kieran had a family website with lots of good pictures to prove that he was just what I wanted. Also this beautiful website informed me he was single and just two years older then me. The perfect the amount.

The trick was to get him to propose. I don’t know why but for some weird reason men only seem to propose to girl’s they know. It’s very strange. Whatever happened to the good old days of arranged marriages? Scores of men would have been more then willing to propose to Elizabeth the first without ever meeting her, but I doubted Kieran would leap for joy if I wrote to him and asked him if he wanted to be engaged to me.

I was stuck for many days on how to bring the thing about. I could go to Tucson and try and meet him and then try to get him to fall madly in love with me. In retrospect I should have done that. Not because I don’t approve of my solution but because since I was bored it would have entertained me for a good deal of time. But as you have guessed by the fact that I said that’s what I should have done, I did not do that. Instead I hired a privet detective.

You see, at the time, I really wasn’t in the mood for a lot of bother, which making him fall in love with me doubtlessly would have been. And really, the only sure way to get someone to propose is blackmail.

I suppose you’re shocked. But remember I really was bored. And it’s not like I couldn’t afford a privet detective. I was just worried that there wouldn’t be anything to use against Kieran and that I’d end up having to go to Tucson, which I wasn’t really didn’t want to do. You see it was summer, and it’d be so hot there.

I needn’t have worried about there not being anything on Kieran, I was quite pleased to find out that there was a rather big thing on him. It seems when he was a bit younger he had had some rather shady dealings with a rather shady man who worked for the mob. Poor Kieran had long since ended all shady dealings but sadly for him, and happily for me, I have no scruples about blackmailing a man who is sorry for his crimes. So I wrote to him.

I highly doubt very many men are blackmailed into engagements, I don’t think it’s the common order of things. But that’s what I like about me, I don’t conform to the standards of the day, and I highly believe in thinking outside the box. If I didn’t, then Kieran would never have proposed, and oh it was a beautiful ring, I know I payed for it but he did pick it out and it was just gorgeous. Kieran does have nice taste I must.

I’m sure you’ll be happy to know I stopped being bored. One can’t be bored when you get to go around introducing a man to all your friends as your fiancé. I don’t think Kieran was too happy about the whole thing at first, you can’t really blame him. But he did perk up a bit when I gave him his own credit card.