Chapter 11
Luna didn’t mind. It gave her more time to pull herself together for a day of fun.
She didn’t get to go about enjoying herself very often, but she did own one special occasion dress—cherry print, with a sweetheart neckline.
The sleeves were short, which didn’t serve well to hide the heptagram mark, and cherries weren’t particularly autumnal either.
But, when paired with her faded cream cardigan, she hoped it would do.
It was already warming up nicely outside, so she could dispense with her coat and hat as well.
She was in the process of restyling her hair, adding a little red ribbon to hold it back from her face, by the time Bryony dragged herself out of bed and began the process of a slow toilette. “I thought you said you had work today,” her roommate muttered between yawns.
“Mr. Grimm gave me the day off.”
Bryony, bent over the washbasin, turned her wet face to give her a look. “You can’t afford days off.”
“Paid holiday.” Luna shrugged and adjusted the set of her ribbon.
Bryony straightened, her eyebrows shooting up her forehead. Her red fingernails clattered against the lid of her face cream jar. “So, the old curmudgeon has a soft center, has he?”
Luna frowned and turned to look at her own face in the oval mirror.
“What gave you the impression Mr. Grimm is curmudgeonly?” She didn’t go telling stories about her employer often (Bryony didn’t much care to listen anyway), but she was quite certain she’d taken pains to mention his generosity. Hadn’t she?
Bryony made a little face as she rubbed liberal amounts of face cream into her freckled skin. The freckles all but disappeared, and Luna, not for the first time, suspected black-market sorcery. “All bosses are curmudgeonly. Unless they’re outright perverts.”
A delicate pink flush stole up Luna’s neck.
For some reason, she flashed back to that moment in the shop when she’d leaned across the counter and .
. . touched Mr. Grimm’s hand. That wasn’t improper, was it?
And she’d all but asked him to come to the fair with her, but .
. . no. That was perfectly innocent as well.
She hadn’t said, “Please, come with me today, Mr. Grimm. It’ll be more fun with you there.
” That would have been an inappropriate thing to say to one’s boss, for sure!
No, she’d stayed well within the bounds of social acceptability. Even Auntie Apolonia would agree.
Well, perhaps not about that hand-touch.
But seriously, she was a grown woman. Surely she could touch a man’s hand now and then. Without it being a thing.
“Besides,” Bryony continued, pursuing her own train of thought, “with a name like Grimm, how can he help being anything but a wet sock?”
Luna decided not to argue the point. It didn’t really matter what Bryony thought of her employer anyway.
They snuck out via the fire escape—Mrs. Boggs did not approve of festivals, not for Young Women of Good Character, and would have caused trouble had she seen them—and hurried down the streets of Lower Eastside.
Even from a distance, they could hear the merry sounds rising up from the harbor.
Eager to enjoy her first holiday in an age, Luna banished all embarrassing thoughts concerning Mr. Grimm and focused on the fun awaiting her.
There was a long line at the festival entrance, and she and Bryony stood for quite a while, jostled on all sides.
Many voices called out to Bryony from every direction, and she waved and smiled and flirted, answering their greetings with little giggles of, “Well, hullo to you too, luv!” As a regular performer at the Rowdy House, Bryony had many friends across Ballycastle.
She was also dressed in a very open fashion.
Her low-scooped neckline emphasized her ample bust, hiked up into prominence via the noble efforts of her brassiere.
Luna, in her cardigan, felt a bit fusty by comparison.
That being said, she didn’t know what she would do with all the male attention coming Bryony’s way.
Greater Snoring wasn’t exactly abounding in beaus, and Luna had rather little experience with men.
Once a week, after Sunday services, while Auntie Aurora devoted herself to an extra hour of prayer, Luna would linger at the chantry gate and flirt with the baker’s boy.
At least, until he got Miss Julietty Nole in trouble and was obliged to marry her quickly to save her character.
Then Luna had tried flirting with the doctor’s handsome young intern, but that lasted no more than a summer.
She returned to town one week to discover he’d been packed off home for dabbling in medicines in some vaguely inappropriate way Luna never could fully decipher.
After that, there wasn’t anyone worth flirting with.
So Luna had focused her attentions on the tea garden, much to the delight of the aunties.
She’d never so much as been kissed in her life.
Bryony, by contrast, knew a thing or two (or three . . . or more) about men. She winked, shimmied, smiled, frowned, pouted, and tossed her hair with a confidence Luna couldn’t help but admire.
They reached the gate at last, and the top-hatted gentleman there brusquely demanded the entrance fee.
Luna felt like an absolute spendthrift when she laid down the required coin.
Green Mother, such a price! Perhaps she should have kept her holidaying to the booths and vendors outside the main fairgrounds.
But Bryony, flush with cash following the previous night’s dancing, took Luna’s hand and hurriedly dragged her into the fray.
It was quite loud and busy, and at first Luna couldn’t make sense of anything.
A large carousel stood directly in front of the main entrance, swarming with happy, shouting, half-wild children and their hollow-eyed parents.
The hilarity was contagious, and Luna couldn’t help laughing at the sight of them hanging off the pretty painted ponies, giraffes, tigers, and hippopotami.
“That’s kid stuff,” Bryony declared, tugging Luna firmly away from the carousel line. “Come on! Saint Jollify’s got loads better things to offer, only a girl’s got to know where to start.”
“And where does a girl start?” Luna inquired.
“Why, at the food court, of course!”
Luna’s brow puckered. It’s not that she wasn’t hungry (she was always hungry), but she’d not thought they’d begin their day with food.
Not to mention, she’d already spent more than half her purse on the entrance fee alone.
She’d allotted herself what she’d thought was a tidy amount from her shoe-savings, but apparently that wasn’t going to get her very far.
“I don’t know that I can afford this, Bryony,” she said uncertainly.
Bryony tossed her red curls. “That’s why we’re going to pick up a couple of beaus for ourselves right away!”
“What do you mean?”
“Stick with me, Lunaloo. I’ll teach you my secrets!
The only way to see Saint Jollify is on the arm of a doting young idiot with coin enough jingling in his pocket to show a girl a good time.
” She glanced sideways, caught Luna’s expression, and snorted.
“Don’t worry your prudish little heart! You won’t have to put out if you don’t want to.
A kiss or two should be plenty, maybe a little grapple.
It is a saint’s holiday, after all; even the young men have some respect. ”
Luna couldn’t begin to come up with an answer for this. Oh, Green Mother, what would Auntie Apolonia think? But Bryony took hold of her hand and dragged her firmly on to the food court, and Luna didn’t want to be a killjoy, not when her roommate had charitably offered to spend the day with her.
Upon reaching the food court, Luna was struck all over again with how well Bryony knew the world in which she moved and breathed.
There were, as promised, many young men loitering about on the fringes.
Young women too, all gathered in clusters of two, three, even up to ten.
All lingered in expectation of some gallant offering to pay for her funnel cake or corn dog.
Bryony leaned close to whisper in Luna’s ear: “Don’t stare at the blokes. Let them wonder about you a little. Pretend like you don’t care.”
But the instant she was told not to stare, Luna found her gaze irrepressibly drawn to the various groupings of potential beaus.
They winked at her, gave her once-overs .
. . though their attention was swiftly diverted to Bryony and her bouncy assets.
And who could blame them? Luna certainly couldn’t.
Particularly when her cardigan was buttoned up to the throat.
She fingered the topmost button, wondering if she ought to . . . loosen up a bit?
“Here!” Bryony dragged Luna to a funnel cake vendor under a pink-and-blue striped awning. “Buy one of these.”
Luna’s heart sank at the price on the chalk board. “That’ll cost everything I’ve got left!”
Bryony giggled. “Trust me, Lunaloo. Buy one of these now, you’ll not pay a penny for anything else the rest of the day.”
Though uncertain as to the soundness of this strategy, Luna obediently stood in line.
Bryony quickly struck up conversation with a strapping young dock worker and his pal, standing in front of them.
Luna listened, blushing and clutching her coin purse, and wondering if this ploy would pay off.
And, if it did, would she really be obliged to spend the rest of the day with a fellow who uttered an emphatic, “gor-blimey!” every three sentences or so?
She and Bryony put in their order, and Luna emptied the contents of her purse on the little counter. At least the funnel cake smelled delicious; if this marked the end of her Saint Jollify’s fun, it would be a delicious end.