Chapter 32 #2
Luna started toward the back passage, intending to venture into Garden in search of her employer.
Before she reached the boiler room door, however, sounds of clatter in the kitchen arrested her attention.
The tightness in her chest relaxed somewhat.
Of course! He must be back there. Eating breakfast, maybe, and no doubt would have some explanation for how things had gotten so out of hand.
Maybe there was an . . . an infestation.
Or a mold problem. Things like that could happen. Mr. Grimm was fine, and—
She pushed open the kitchen door and was met with the sight of not Mr. Grimm in his nice waistcoat and cufflinks.
Instead, it was the gangly image of Tobias Goddard, youngest son of Mrs. Goddard, the landlady, which presented itself to her vision.
Or rather, his bum. Sticking out from the icebox in which he was rooting around.
Luna crossed her arms and leaned against the doorway. “Can I help you?”
Tobias straightened rather too fast, hit his head, and cursed colorfully.
Rubbing the sore spot, he turned, saw her, and his eyes widened with something between delight and dismay.
“Whoops. Pardon my Plymish,” he said, then attempted what was probably meant to be a charming smile, but definitely came off more leer-ish than anything.
“I say, I was wonderin’ where you’d got off to.
Started to think the old man had given you the boot. ”
“No,” Luna answered coldly. “He has not. What are you doing in Mr. Grimm’s icebox?”
Tobias held up a jar of one of her cold brew teas. “Was lookin’ for somefin’ a mite stronger,” he admitted.
She glanced at the kitchen clock. “At a quarter to nine in the morning?”
His leer lacked even the faintest hint of shame. “It’s five o’clock somewhere!”
“Yes. On the next continent over.”
Tobias shrugged. “Well, t’ain’t as though old Grimm has got anything in’eresting about the place, has he? Just these soppy teas. He would be a tea drinker, innit. Namby old bloke like him.”
Luna almost pointed out that, until recent history, Mr. Grimm was decidedly not a tea drinker.
Far from it, in fact. But that would involve much more conversation than she wanted to have with this disagreeable young pup.
“Where is your mother?” she demanded instead.
Usually, Mrs. Goddard was the one to bring Mr. Grimm’s meals, morning and evening.
She also tidied his apartment upstairs twice weekly.
She used to sweep up the shop as well, but Luna took care of such tasks now, when Mr. Grimm didn’t handle it himself in order to prevent her from working too hard.
In answer, Tobias pointed a finger at the exposed pipes running around the high ceiling. “Ma’s up there. Checkin’ on old Grimmsy. Guess he’s been a bit under the weather.”
“What?” Luna uncrossed her arms.
“Yeah, pew-monia. Nasty case of it. Been hacking up a lung, you can hear him right frough the—”
She didn’t wait to hear the rest. Leaving Tobias to decimate her tea stores as he wished, she raced back to the main shop and around to the stairway leading to the apartment upstairs.
She hadn’t been up those stairs since the first day she came to The Arcane Bouquet.
It felt a bit wrong, somehow, to ascend them now.
Like she was invading Mr. Grimm’s privacy.
But her heart raced, and she couldn’t help thinking, I did this to him!
It’s my fault! If he hadn’t come to take care of me . . .
She found the door at the top of the stairs cracked open.
Someone was moving around inside. She bit her lip hard, then pushed the door open.
Her gaze was immediately taken up with the sight of Mr. Grimm, lying on his bed under a mound of quilts.
His back was to her, his face to the wall, but she recognized the tuft of disheveled pale hair sticking out from under the blankets.
If this alone was not proof of identity, there was also the raven, perched on the bedpost, who turned a bright eye Luna’s way and croaked a faintly accusing, “Never mind!”
“Oh, Mr. Grimm,” Luna breathed.
“Hush now, duckie,” a voice by the window spoke.
Luna turned to see Mrs. Goddard, the landlady, fiddling with a glass and a little medicine bottle on a table by the window.
She held a finger to her lips. “He’s resting like a sweet lamb now, but he seems to have had a long night of it.
Still, I expect when he wakes, he’ll have turned a corner.
Looks to me like he’s in one of those deep, healing sort of sleeps.
” She grinned at Luna, her little button eyes bright behind wrinkle lines.
“I’ve raised sons enough and nursed them through fevers enough to know a thing or two. ”
Luna drifted a little closer to the bed, then stopped.
She didn’t belong here. And she knew it.
She was just the shop assistant and certainly didn’t have any right to go bursting into Mr. Grimm’s private spaces.
And yet, she couldn’t quite bring herself to leave.
It was as though she felt again the weight of his arms, wrapped around her middle as he held her against his chest. The warmth of his mouth as he breathed against her shoulder.
Swallowing back tears, she turned to Mrs. Goddard again. “Has he been really bad off?”
“More miserable than anything.” The landlady moved to stand over her tenant’s bedside, tsking and shaking her head so that the laces of her old-fashioned matron’s cap wafted over her ears.
“He seemed to sink into a sort of funk, as though he wanted to feel miserable and didn’t have the desire to feel anything else.
But I don’t think he was ever in any sort of danger.
For such a scrawny little fellow, he’s strong enough. ”
Luna found herself suppressing the urge to protest that Mr. Grimm wasn’t scrawny. That, while he may be slender, he had surprising muscle definition, but . . . Mrs. Goddard would be sure to wonder how Luna had come to such a conclusion. So she bit her tongue.
“Did you have a nice holiday?” Mrs. Goddard asked conversationally, as she placed a cover on a half-eaten tray of supper left on the bedside table.
It took a moment for Luna to realize that Mrs. Goddard must have assumed her absence of the last week was due to holidaying. She didn’t feel like explaining the real circumstances, so she said only, “Yes, thank you. And you?”
“Oh, I got three of me seven boys home, so I can’t complain. And the youngest with me still! Ain’t I the lucky mother?”
If there was a trace of sarcasm in that last, Luna couldn’t quite pinpoint it.
Before she could decide, Mrs. Goddard took her arm and guided her out of the room, back downstairs. “Best to let the man sleep,” the landlady said. “When he wakes, remind him to take his medicine—men can be such idiots about remembering things like that. Otherwise, leave him be and let him sleep.”
There was something firm about the way she said it. As though she suspected Luna of rampaging up to Mr. Grimm’s apartment all the time! Luna blushed and tried to remind herself that she didn’t care what Mrs. Goddard’s opinion of her character was, though . . . she kind of did.
She walked the landlady to the kitchen, where Tobias was helping himself to bread and cheese from the pantry, along with some of Mr. Grimm’s favorite raspberry preserves.
“Tobias!” Mrs. Goddard snapped. “Love me, child, don’t I feed you ‘nough as it is?” She bundled her recalcitrant son out the back door, calling over her shoulder as she went, “Don’t forget to make him take his medicine! Every four hours, there’s a dear.”
With that, the two of them disappeared into the back alley, shutting the door behind them.
Luna stood alone in the empty kitchen. Uncertain what to do.
She had no doubt that Mr. Grimm caught pneumonia from taking care of her.
Only he’d not had a faithful nurse, just occasional visits from Mrs. Goddard and—shudder—Tobias.
He must be worried about his dependents.
While Mrs. Goddard may have taken care of essentials, she had obviously made no effort to tend to the plant life.
Which meant Luna’s purpose was clear.
She left the kitchen, returned to the shop. Everything looked so dismal, so sad, but not for long. She slipped out of her coat and scarf, hung them on their peg, added her hat, then slipped on her green apron.
“Right, you lot,” she said out loud. The double-delight lifted its blooms forlornly her way, while the tiger lilies growled without aggression. “Let’s get you sorted, shall we?”