Chapter 15 #2
Was it a compliment? Luna wasn’t sure. But the blush roared to her cheeks regardless. Compliment or not, there was implication in his words.
Ward leaned in again, dimples dancing. “I like it when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Get all pink and flustered like that. Like you’ve never had a fellow notice how cute you are before, much less tell you about it.”
“I . . . I mean, I . . . well, that is, you see . . .”
“Don’t tell me all the Crimble Mountain boys are blind?”
She stirred ice around with her straw. She was probably meant to say something equally coy or flirtatious back.
Something clever. Bryony would know what to do, would have a quip or, at the very least, a well-timed giggle.
And she’d smack Luna silly for missing her cue like this!
But Luna’s brain had turned to mush. She simply wasn’t prepared.
Not for a man of such proportions, leaning toward her like that.
With his eyes all green, and his dimples all dimpling, and . . . and . . .
“I lived with my aunties, you see,” she murmured.
“Ah! That explains it.”
“Explains . . . what?”
“The buttoned sweater. The promises of prayer.” Ward chuckled again and tipped back in his chair, all easy grace and power. “Yup. You’re a fresh one, Luna Talbot, and no mistake. Fresh as a sweet little daisy.”
The music started just in that moment, a welcome distraction from her blushes.
Luna turned to the dance floor, fixed her gaze on the musicians.
They struck up a boogie rhythm, one she instantly recognized from her housemate’s thaumatic radio: “Don’t Care Tonight.
” The lyrics were scandalous (she’d heard her housemates singing them at the tops of their lungs on the nights Mrs. Boggs was out), but the rhythm was infectious.
A shout immediately went up from the festival-goers, and couples flocked to the floor.
Ward tilted his head to one side. “Do you dance?”
Luna, realizing her foot was tapping, quickly set down her lemonade. “Oh, maybe.” She held up her thumb and finger, close together. “A very little.”
“Good enough for me!” Ward stood and offered his hand.
Luna gaped. “My sandwich?”
“It’ll keep.”
“My unicorn?”
He laughed. “I doubt anyone’ll try to steal it. But if they do, I’ll come down on them with the full force of the law. Got it?” He winked.
Luna blushed. Because of course she did.
Blushing seemed to be her default state in this man’s presence.
But she let him pull her to her feet and lead her out onto the dance floor.
She would have thought a man his size wouldn’t be much of a dancer, but .
. . she did see that teacup vision of him.
He was dancing then, and very gracefully too. With her. In a ballroom.
Perhaps—and her cheeks burned all the brighter just to think it—her story with John Ward was only just beginning.
She concentrated on her feet. Ward was a wildly enthusiastic dance partner, and she was soon laughing out loud at her own attempts to keep up. “You’re amazing!” he shouted over the blare of trumpets.
Objectively, she was not. But it was nice of him to say so.
He gave her a spin, first out, then in, catching her around the waist. Her cherry-print dress swirled, her little worn-out pumps clipped smartly, and she felt carefree.
And pretty. Just like an ordinary young woman, enjoying her youth, without a worry in the world.
No room for reality out on the dance floor.
Here, she could pretend all her future lay before her, not a dark cloud in sight.
The song ended just as Ward turned her and dipped her backwards so far, her hair nearly brushed the ground. Luna gasped for breath. She didn’t think it was possible for someone like her to dance like this!
Ward helped her find her feet, his hand still at her waist. “Luna Talbot,” he said, “you can, in fact, dance more than a little bit!” He held up finger and thumb and widened the gap between them significantly.
The music started again, another lively beat.
“Hey!” Ward whooped. “The ‘Something Borrowed Boogie Balloo.’ Now we’re cooking with gas!
” He began to shimmy his shoulders and snap his fingers, and Luna wished she dared take off her cardigan and tie it around her waist. That one dance had overheated her enough!
But Ward’s enthusiasm was infectious, and she couldn’t resist taking his hand.
He whirled her back, forth, then out again.
Much to her surprise, she found herself suddenly facing a complete stranger, who took her hand and began twirling her in much the same way.
Momentarily shocked, she glanced around, and realized that everyone was changing partners.
This must be the “something borrowed” bit, she thought, and went along with it, spinning from one partner to the next in quick succession.
There were old men and spotty teen boys, and she was half-convinced that one of her “borrowed” partners was Bryony’s dock worker from earlier in the day (his suspenders seemed familiar).
She didn’t really know the steps, but as long as she spun out and in again, vaguely in time with the beat, she could kind of make up whatever happened in between.
Her fifth time changing partners came, and she spun out, extending her hand to take hold of whoever would claim her next—only to find herself face-to-face with Mr. Grimm.
She stopped.
He stopped.
The song and dancers continued to boogie on without them, while they stared at each other in mute surprise.
“Where’s Bryony?” Luna blurted.
“Erm. Somewhere out here,” he replied.
“Oh.”
“Where’s Ward?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps with Bryony?”
“Ah.”
Then Luna held out her hand. “I don’t really know the steps,” she said.
“I don’t either.”
“I guess we just . . . try not to step on each other’s toes then?”
He took her hand. Drew her toward him. Placed his other hand on her waist.
They stood there. Looking at each other.
Neither of them moved.
“Maybe . . . a spin?” Luna suggested.
Mr. Grimm set his teeth as though gearing up to perform some great feat . . . when the music stopped. All around them, dancers clapped, whooped, and applauded, while Luna and her boss stood in a little space of silence, their mouths both slightly ajar with surprise.
Before Luna could even summon the wherewithal to take a step back, a new song began to play, sighing on the strings of a sweet violin. Immediately, the crowd of dancers burst into singing the all-too familiar lyrics of the hit tune of the summer:
“I watched you dance with someone new,
Heartbreak wrapped in shades of blue,
Every smile you give away,
Turns my dreams to shades of gray.
Oh, love! Like a rose in the rain,
Each petal a sigh, each thorn a sweet pain.”
“Gods, I hate this song,” Mr. Grimm growled, his sad blue eyes still staring into Luna’s.
Luna giggled. “The dance is easy though. Do you know it?”
He shook his head.
“Well, you don’t have to if you’d rather not—”
To her surprise, his grip on her waist tightened. Just a little. And did he pull her a fraction closer?
“I want to,” he said, his voice still so low, she had to concentrate on his mouth to understand his words. “Only, you’ll have to show me how.”
Her breath felt a little tight. Like her cardigan, which had hung loosely all this while, had suddenly transformed into a compression garment.
“All right,” she managed, then gave her head a little shake before continuing in what she hoped was a lighter, careless voice.
“The girls at Mrs. Boggs’s taught me. Here. Like this.”
She backed away a step. For an instant, the hand on her waist resisted letting her go, but it was so brief an instant, she might have imagined it.
She stood now with only one hand held in Mr. Grimm’s, two paces of space between them.
“See?” she said. “Step, step, step, glide. Step, step, step, glide.”
Still holding her fingers tight, his other hand out for balance, Mr. Grimm studied her feet and tried to move his in rhythm with hers.
“There, you’ve got it!” Luna said and caught his gaze with her smile.
“A little closer perhaps?” She stepped toward him, and his chin came up sharply.
“Step, step, step, glide,” she said, bobbing her head in time.
He began to bob his along with hers. “Now,” she said, as his confidence grew, “your other hand.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“On my waist.”
“Oh. Right.”
He brought his hand back to rest on her waist once more and, for a moment, Luna recalled the pressure of both his hands when he’d caught her in the fete wheel carriage. She could still feel where his thumbs had pressed, feel the warm heat of his palms, and . . .
She turned her face away quickly, hoping he could not see her flush. “You’ve got it, Mr. Grimm!” she said brightly. “Feel up to a spin?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Seems like it could get dangerous.”
“For me or for you?”
“For those unlucky souls on either side of us.”
“Are you willing to gamble their safety? Or are the odds of disaster too great?”
He tipped an eyebrow. Then, drawing a breath, he lifted her hand above her head, pushed against her waist, and sent her softly spinning out.
She paused, their fingertips still holding tight.
Then, as the violin sighed, she twirled back again.
Her skirts brushed against his knees, and their faces came rather close together, closer than they were before.
“Any casualties?” she gasped.
He peered over her shoulder. “Looks like you’ve taken out a sailor.”
“What? No!” Luna turned to look and spied a young midshipmen, splendid in his uniform, hopping around on one foot while gripping his shin. A blonde in a pink dress stood back observing, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. “That wasn’t me,” Luna declared. “She kicked him a good one for getting handsy.”
“You’re certain?”
“Quite, Mr. Grimm.”
“Dare we risk another spin then?”
“I don’t know. How daring do you feel?”
He didn’t answer but lifted her hand again, spinning her out. Fairly slow and not quite in time with the music, but there were no mid-dance collisions at least. He drew her back again, and Luna declared, “I think we’re getting the hang of this!”
“Perhaps we should close up the flower shop and take this dynamic artistry on the road?”
“We could travel with the fair.”
“I was thinking the stage, rather.”
“Oh, yes. Much classier that way. We could dance for the Queen of Brython herself!”
He propelled her into another spin. She wobbled a little, her balance not quite sure. Rather than spin her back again, Mr. Grimm stepped swiftly forward and slipped his hand around her waist for support. A shot of heat streaked straight from her heart to the pit of her stomach.
“We might want to rehearse a little more,” he said, entirely unconscious of what that simple maneuver had done to her. “Before our royal performance.”
Luna giggled softly through her blushes. “We’ll push the flower displays back to make a dance floor. Get some good practice hours in.”
They both laughed at this, only . . . even as she said it, it didn’t feel like a quip.
It felt like something else. Something Luna could actually envision doing: the two of them, finishing up work for the day, popping on the thaumatic radio, and clumsily plodding through a dance or two, laughing at their own ineptitude.
All while the dahlias sighed, and the tiger lilies purred, and Debbie disparaged them from her skull-pot.
Why did this vision—not observed in any teacup, simply popped directly into her head—feel so much more real than the glamorous image she’d glimpsed of herself and Ward in the ballroom?
Perhaps because she was simply so much more at ease with Mr. Grimm.
For one thing, he wasn’t a six-foot-five, muscle-bound demigod, beautiful beyond the dreams of a country Crimble girl like her.
Yes, that was probably it. Ward was simply so dashing, so overwhelming, and his obvious interest made her nervous, unused to male attention as she was.
While Mr. Grimm . . . well, he was her employer.
Quiet and dry-humored and shy and comfortable.
Yes. She was comfortable with him. Like .
. . like a . . . like an older brother. Or something . . .
“Look out!”
In the same instant the warning cry went up, Mr. Grimm spun Luna away from himself. Which was why she was out of the line of fire, as a bright red apple streaked from the Bad Apple booth, straight across the dance floor.
And clocked Mr. Grimm dead in the eye.