Gods smite him, had he really just invited this strange young woman up to his apartment?To undress?She continued to look at him, his hanky clutched in both hands, an odd expression pulling at her lips. Nigel almost wished he was back in the dock before the Plym Authorities, waiting to learn his sentence. Suddenly, drawing and quartering didn’t sound so bad.
“I would, of course, remain down here,” he managed to force through mortified lips. “To watch the shop. Or I could leave . . .”
So saying, he lunged for the counter. He’d already swung up the hinged portion and taken three steps down the aisle before her voice arrested him: “You’re not really going out into that gale?”
Nigel stopped in his tracks, paralyzed with indecision. It took all the courage he could muster simply to look back at the strange woman. She stood in the nook, arms wrapped around her trembling body.
And still that smile of hers would not relent.
“You’re very kind, sir,” she said. “I would appreciate a dressing gown. And do you think I might hang up my suit to dry by the stove?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll find some string.”
“Wonderful! Wool does shrink so dreadfully unless one takes proper care of it.” She stepped out from behind the counter then, looking this way and that. Nigel pointed out the little stairway leading up to the apartment. He wondered if he ought to escort her, then thought of the tiny space that it was, dominated primarily by an old brass bed. Best, perhaps, to let her find her own way.
“There are towels under the sink,” he said, not quite meeting her gaze.
She took the first step before pausing and looking back. “And to whom do I owe thanks for such chivalry?”
He managed a little bow and cleared his throat. “Nigel Grimm, at your service.”
“Luna Talbot,” she answered, and sniffled to prevent another sneeze. Pressing the hanky to her nose, she hastened up the stairs before Nigel could remember to mutter the customary, “My pleasure.” So he simply stood at the base of the stairwell, listening to her footsteps.
Only when the door overhead opened and closed did he turn to face the stern scrutiny of Debbie. “Well?” he demanded, raising his hands in defense. “What was I supposed to do, toss her back out into that storm? One must have some compassion for one’s neighbors if one is to make one’s way in this world.”
“Never mind!”the raven replied. And in that biting phrase, he heard all the disparaging dismay of a familiar whose master could once conjure tempests of such fury, they would make the storm outside look like a gentle spring shower.Oh,she seemed to say with a sideways glance from her bright black eye,how are the mighty fallen!
Nigel ignored her and stepped back into his nook to fetch the kettle. There was a sweetness to the air he hadn’t noticed before. “Chamomile,” he whispered absently, “and lavender.” Was hemistaken in thinking the overall atmosphere of the shop was rather less gloomy than it had been but a few minutes ago?
Still puzzling over this mystery, he approached the trimming sink to fill his kettle. As he reached for the taps, however, he heard a sudden rush and gush in the pipes, which froze him on the spot. Those were the pipes for the upstairs bathroom. Which meant Miss Luna Talbot was . . . that she most likely . . . unless he was much mistaken, she . . .
He gulped.
She was upstairs in his apartment.Using his shower.
“Great gods,” he whispered faintly.
A search under the sink did, indeed, reveal a stack of precisely folded towels: white, fat, and Oh! so soft. Luna eagerly selected the top one and held it up, delighted to discover it was one of those extra-large towels, the kind one might take on a beach holiday, were one of a beach-holidaying station in life. Which she certainly was not, but that didn’t stop her from imagining what it might be like.
Her brow crinkled slightly, however, as she turned the towel around and discovered a portrait of kittens with uncannily humanoid faces gamboling about a field of buttercups, all picked out in colorful cotton thread. Mr. Grimm had not struck her as the gamboling kitten type.But then,she reminded herself,one never really knows what goes on behind anyone’s closed doors . . . or under their bathroom sinks, for that matter.
With all the secrets she herself was keeping, who was she to judge?
She draped the towel over the brass rack on the wall before pulling back the rubber-coated bath curtain to test the temperature of the water streaming from the shower head. Green Mother bless her, it washot.Not tepid, not lukewarm, not ‘good enough I suppose.’ Actual boil-a-lobsterhot.Almost toohot to stand, but, freezing as she was, Luna figured she could stand it.
Hastily shedding her sodden suit, undergarments, and hose, Luna did her best not to consider the extreme impropriety of what she was doing. It wasn’t as though she could simply put on Mr. Grimm’s nice silk robe without first washing off some of the street muck and storm dredge caking her skin, right? Besides, it would take all the hot water the boiler room tank had to offer to get the chill out of her bones before it set in permanently.
So, trying very hard not to think of how Auntie Apolonia would scold, or how Auntie Arabella would clutch her pearls, or how Auntie Aurora would hasten to light a candle at the Green Mother’s shrine and pray for the eternal soul and—more importantly—tarnished character of her little niece, Luna draped her dripping garments over the lip of the basin sink and hastily stepped into the shower spray.
It was like stepping into heaven itself. Surely the Green Mother couldn’t be all that offended by Luna’s lack of decency if She was willing to allow miracles like hot showers to exist!
For some moments, Luna simply indulged in the sensation of heat making its way through layers of dirt, chill, disappointment, and dread, to finally warm her right to her core. Her spirits, which had been low when she made her way up Addle Street—her back bowed against the battering wind, her umbrella all but dragging her behind it—finally began to lift.
Sure, the proprietor of that quaint little tea shop over on Nettleton Lane may have taken one look at the tattoo on her wrist and tossed her out on her ear with a stern warning never to return.
Sure, she was finding it much more difficult to secure work in Ballycastle than she ever could have anticipated.
Sure, she couldn’t begin to guess how she was going to scrounge up the money to cover her half of the tiny little garretroom in the ramshackle boardinghouse she currently called, for want of a better word,home.
