Chapter 9
By the time he uttered his final, “And please consider The Arcane Bouquet for all your future floral needs,” and locked the door behind the last customer of the day, that idea had grown into conviction.
Nigel flipped the sign on the door to CLOSED, pulled the shade down over the little square window, then turned to face the flowers in the shop, all of whom looked at him with bloomy expectation.
“I’m going to do it,” he declared, then turned sharply to a pot of dahlias, pointing a stern finger. “And don’t try to talk me out of it!”
What was the use, after all, in sitting around the shop, pining away for a girl who did not want him?
It was pathetic. That’s what it was. Simply pathetic.
Luna had made her feelings perfectly plain all this time.
She liked him, yes. As a brother. All those little moments when he started to think, to hope, to wonder?
They were nothing more than pure delusion on his part.
And following the disastrous events of yesterday morning—the arachnidification of Lord Bruxley right before her eyes—any chance he might have had of winning her over was gone.
“You have to accept the truth,” he muttered to himself, running both hands through his hair. “She isn’t yours. She never will be.”
And what was he going to do about it? Cast himself from the highest dome of Saint Agatha’s Cathedral in a fit of despair? Because that would show her, wouldn’t it?
“Yeah,” Nigel muttered. “Real mature, Grimm.”
Somewhere off on Giltspur Street, the chantry bells rang out 5 o’clock.
Time for Luna’s date with Ward to begin.
And was he taking her to the King’s Crown as he’d originally planned?
Luna didn’t own a dress glamorous enough for that restaurant.
Not that it would matter. She could go in her dingy little work skirt and blouse, and she’d still outshine every woman there, in all their satins and jewels and . . .
Nigel turned abruptly, marched over to the double-delight rose in its pot, and braced himself. “Will you do me a favor?”
She lifted her blooms at him.
“I need you to smack me. Hard. Across the face.”
She fluttered her leaves, heaved an aromatic sigh. Then, swinging a cane, she thwacked him a good one. Her leaves whispered together in a satisfied purr of sound.
Nigel touched the cut on his cheek where a thorn had snagged. “Ouch,” he said and fished out his handkerchief to dab away the spot of blood. “Thanks,” he added ruefully.
Skulking back to the counter, Nigel got to work settling the register for the night, in between blotting away droplets of blood.
The pain was enough to put his mind into gear, and all the sums came out right in the logbook the first time around.
When this was done, and the cash was stored in the strongbox in the back of the building, he busied himself with caring for all the plants.
Every chore was performed with rigid focus, his concentration solely on the immediate tasks at hand.
By the time he was through, the cut on his cheek had scabbed over, and his mind was firmly made up on one subject at least.
“Right,” he said with determination, removing his apron and hanging it on the peg. Then he donned his suit jacket, straightened his cuffs, and cast about the shop. “Which of you lot would like to be made into a bouquet and given to a beautiful woman tonight?”
Dozens of flowers raised their leaves and waved their bright heads with tremendous enthusiasm.
None were so enthusiastic, however, as a cluster of marigolds in a tray near the counter.
Yes, marigolds were just right. Nigel carefully snipped a dozen and arranged them in a pretty little nosegay, complete with yellow ribbon.
“I’m off now, Debbie,” he said to the raven. “Hold down the fort until my return.”
She gave him a deeply disapproving stare. “Never mind,” she declared with more vim than usual.
But Nigel drew himself straighter, jaw set. “No, you’re wrong. It’s about time I took action. Wish me luck!”
With that, he set out from The Arcane Bouquet with a spring in his step and purpose fixed firmly in his heart.
An eruption of barks and yaps and yips exploded on the other side of the door when Nigel knocked at Number 27 Bootblack Alley a short while later.
He braced himself, keenly aware all over again that he no longer had the option of simply summoning up a chunk of burning Dire Matter and blasting the little blighters to oblivion.
Not that he would. Most likely he wouldn’t.
But it would be nice to know he could, should the inclination strike.
The door opened at last, revealing the stern face of Mrs. Boggs, clad in her mourning black.
She stared at Nigel for a moment without recognition.
Then, all the harsh lines and angles of her features concentrated into an expression of abject horror, and she began to slam the door.
Nigel deftly inserted his foot, wincing at the force with which she tried to crush it to bonemeal.
“Mrs. Boggs,” he said in his poshest, most impressive voice, “how do you do this fine evening?”
“I know what you are!” the old lady snarled, pointing a boney finger at his nose. “I saw what you did on Green Yule! I sent a report over to the SSSD about you, and they promised to look into it! You’ll be dragged off to prison soon enough, and the city will be well rid of your filth!”
Nigel blinked blandly. “And when that joyous event takes place, you will find yourself suddenly deprived an income stream.”
Mrs. Boggs’s thin lips rounded in a little O of realization.
Nigel had been paying the radiator bill for the garret room at the top of the house.
An absolutely outrageous bill that no one in their right mind would pay, but Nigel was a sorcerer—it had been a long while since he was in his right mind.
And sorcerer’s coin was as good as anyone else’s.
The landlady hesitated, her nostrils flaring through a sharp inhale. Then, somewhat less viciously than before: “What do you want? Your cousin isn’t here, you know.”
“I’m not here to see Miss Luna Talbot,” Nigel replied coolly. “I’ve come to call on her roommate, Bryony Braithwait. Will you kindly let her know I’m here?”
Mrs. Boggs’s eyes narrowed, somehow managing to express whole new levels of disapproval hitherto unmatched. “Miss Braithwait hasn’t returned from work yet.”
“That is no trouble. I will wait for her.”
“Not in her room, you won’t!”
“Surely a fine establishment such as this boasts a parlor for your boarders and their guests.”
“Naturally.” Mrs. Boggs lifted her imperious little chin, one wiry hair bristling with great dignity. “But my girls do not receive gentlemen callers.”
Nigel leaned in then and allowed a trace of Dire menace to reverberate in the depths of his chest. “Ah, but you and I both know I am no gentleman, Mrs. Boggs.”
Blood drained from her withered old face.
She shivered from head to toe, but backed away from the door into her swarm of terriers.
These were all quite cowed and tucked their little nub tails, some of them retreating up the passage, others diving under their mistress’s skirts.
“You can wait in the third-floor parlor,” Mrs. Boggs said, holding the door for Nigel as he stepped through.
“Second door on the right. And you’re not to go poking into any of the girls’ rooms!
My borders are respectable misses and will not welcome the intrusion. ”
“Your girls’ reputations will remain unthreatened this evening, Mrs. Boggs,” Nigel said, and turned a glinting eye her way. “Of that, at least, you needn’t fear.”
Pleased by the last look of quivering terror she shot him, he strode on down the gloomy passage, found the staircase, and began his ascent.
He remembered the way well enough from the last time he was here and mounted the first floor at a quick, sure pace.
As he made his way to the second, however, the bravado with which he had faced the redoubtable Mrs. Boggs faded somewhat. His heart began to hammer in his ears.
Oh gods. What was he doing here?
It had been such a long, long time since he’d last asked a girl out.
In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually done so.
How pathetic was that? He was with Jastira for so many years, but she had been the one to crook her finger his way.
All he’d done was leap up and follow at her bidding, no pursuit needed.
Before that? He remembered cherishing a grand and secret passion for the beauteous Miss Calista Quick back in undergrad, a dream never realized for numerous reasons (not least of them being that she utterly despised him).
For the most part, he’d avoided women, truth be told.
Feminine mystique was an unknown and perilous quantity.
If he was going to risk life and limb delving into the Great Enigmas of the Universe, he felt he’d have better luck with whatever lay beyond the boundaries of the Void than with anything in lipstick and a skirt.
Nigel gulped, but forced his feet to carry him round the bend to the third floor.
A ladies’ man he was not, but he’d picked up a thing or two over the years.
And it certainly wasn’t doing him any good to mope around his shop, pining after his shop girl.
Not when Bryony Braithwait had made it so abundantly clear that she saw him as a likely prospect for a good time.
Where she’d gotten that idea from, Nigel couldn’t begin to imagine.
But if she was keen, why shouldn’t he take her up on it?
Why shouldn’t he make an effort to get Luna out of his system?
It didn’t mean he would stop being Luna’s friend, oh no.
They would be friends. Good friends. And he would continue to watch over her, to make certain she was safe and provided for.
But maybe an evening spent in Bryony’s company was just what he needed to resolve some of these more inconvenient feelings.
“Or maybe you’re a gods-damned fool,” he muttered, as he stepped onto the third floor of Mrs. Boggs’s Boardinghouse for Young Women of Good Character.
A long hall stretched before him, with many open doors yawning like hungry mouths.
Women’s voices carried from these doorways and filled the atmosphere, along with a tremendous mingling of perfume and jazz music and a haze of cigarette smoke.
“Edwina!” a voice called from one of the nearer chambers, “did you steal my lucky black brassiere again?”
“I never did!” the presumed Edwina bellowed from a farther doorway. “You must have left it at Jerry’s!”
Nigel’s cheeks burned. He would much rather plunge into the Dire Dimensions than be lost to this altogether female space. But he was here now. Time to be a man and see it through.
With a quick hunch of his shoulders and ducking of his head, he darted through the second door on the left into the parlor.
This was a small, shabby little chamber, stuffed with furniture that was probably the height of elegance a good fifty years prior, but was now quite battered and threadbare.
There was a couch, a lounger, several over-stuffed armchairs, bookshelves packed with what looked to be “improving” reads, thick with dust. A young woman sprawled across the couch, one foot on the cushions, the other on the floor, her skirt hiked rather more than was altogether decent.
She had a box of bonbons on her stomach and appeared to be listening to the noise emanating from a portable thaumatic radio propped on the spindly table behind her head.
Her eyes swiveled in their sockets at Nigel’s entrance, and she raised a carefully-drawn-on eyebrow. “I say,” she purred in modish tones, “are you what I think you are?”
Nigel blinked, frozen in the doorway. He turned the nosegay of marigolds around in his hands. “Erm. That depends. What do you think I am?”
She sat up, swinging her legs down and pulling her skirt over her knees. Popping another bonbon into her mouth, she chewed while studying him. Then: “You’re Luna Talbot’s boss. I saw you at the Year’s End party.”
“Did you?”
“You were making cow-eyes at Luna all night.” She swallowed contemplatively, then shook her head and tsked. “’Bout broke my heart.”
“Erm.”
“Suella.” She held out a hand, painted nails glittering in the lamplight. Nigel accepted it, shaking rather limply. “Bonbon?” she offered next, holding up the box.
“Thank you, no.”
“Your loss.” She shrugged and popped another into her mouth. “Luna isn’t here, you know,” she added, speaking around a full cheek.
“Yes, so I am informed.”
“You here to give her those?” A quick nod at the marigolds.
“Erm, no, actually.”
“Pity.” Suella rose in a sinuous uncoiling of long limbs and picked up her radio. “Well,” she said, “see ya around, Luna’s boss,” and sauntered past him into the hall.
Flushing, Nigel moved more deeply into the parlor and took a seat, very stiff and very awkward, in one of the equally stiff and awkward chairs. Without the radio in the room, there was nothing to block out the ongoing chatter of female voices in the hall.
“Hey, did I see a man go into the parlor?” someone shouted.
“A man? No!”
“Really, I saw one!”
A minute later, three pretty faces peered around the doorway, blinking mascara-limned eyes at him. Nigel swallowed and raised a tentative hand in salute. The faces all retreated, and the voices took up again.
“It is a man!”
“He’s cute. One of yours, Joan?”
“Not mine. I’ll bet you anything he’s one of Bryony’s. She’s always got a string of ‘em.”
“I’ll take that bet.”
“No, don’t take it!” Suella’s voice hollered from farther up the hall. “That one’s not Bryony’s, he’s Luna Talbot’s!”
“Luna Talbot’s? Isn’t she out tonight with some fellow? I saw her wearing Myrna’s evening gown.”
“Yes, but keep it down. This guy might not know about the other one. Don’t want to scare him off!”
“Who would have thought? Luna Talbot, a player! One in the frying pan, one in the fire.”
Nigel wondered suddenly if the ancient chair in which he sat might be kind enough to swallow him alive. He cleared his throat. “I, erm, I’m not here to see Miss Talbot,” he piped up.
A sudden hush fell over the denizens of the hall.
“I am, in fact, calling for Miss Braithwait.”
A prolonged stillness answered this declaration.
“Who the heck is Miss Braithwait?” someone whispered at last.
“Does he mean Bryony?”
“So he is one of Bryony’s after all! I told you. Pay up, Margaret!”
“Gosh darn it!”
Nigel stared hard at the marigolds in his hands. Would it be so very cowardly of him to beat a retreat at this juncture? Yes. Yes, it would be. So he sat himself more firmly in his seat, straightened his shoulders, and determined to wait it out.
Come hell or high water, he was asking Bryony Braithwait on a date. Tonight.