Chapter 22 #3
She turned and fled the dance floor. Shoving her way rather roughly through dancing couples, taking more than one elbow to the ribs as she went, she achieved the back of the building and slipped into a dimly-lit side passage.
A trio of ladies making their way in a pack shuffled past her, trailing long streams of cigarette smoke behind them.
It created a weird, surreal haze, and Luna coughed, eyes watering.
She found a door marked LADIES and burst inside, relieved to discover a single space rather than stalls.
She slammed the door, threw the bolt, then sank back against it with a loud exhale of, “Gods!”
Pressing both hands to her cheeks, she stood for some moments, just breathing.
Then, moving rather jerkily, she hastened to the sink, fumbling with the taps, bent over and splashed water on her face.
First cold, then hot, then cold again. This done, she straightened and peered at herself in the glass.
Droplets ran down her cheeks, dripped from her chin, and her eyes stared back at her, oddly hollow and haunted in the weird, low lighting of the shaded thaumatic bulb overhead.
One trembling hand rose from the sink, and she pressed two fingers to her lips.
So. She’d been kissed.
And how did she feel about that, exactly?
“I’m not sure,” she whispered.
In all of Auntie Arabella’s darning-basket novels, the first kiss was always a moment of supreme significance. Fireworks and butterflies and butterflies made out of fireworks. That sort of thing. Right?
It was never just . . . lips smashing.
“Unless all those trashy romance writers have been having us on all this time,” Luna whispered. Her brow darkened into a scowl. “Butterfly-fireworks my foot!”
Then her face crumpled, and she gripped the porcelain sink once more.
What was wrong with her? Seriously, Ward was an absolute hunk, as the girls at Mrs. Boggs’s Boardinghouse for Young Women of Good Character would say.
He’d come through for her tonight too, hadn’t he?
In the moment of crisis? And he’d been nothing but clear about his romantic intentions all this while, and .
. . and . . . couldn’t she somehow manage to dredge up at least one firecracker-butterfly for his sake? She owed him that much, surely.
Luna closed her eyes, bowed her head. And in the darkness behind her eyelids, it wasn’t Ward she saw, peering down at her with such hopeful expectation.
It was Mr. Grimm.
His face, across the dance floor. Staring at her in that way that made her skin go hot and cold.
The way he’d looked at her . . .
That look . . . it was . . . it wasn’t . . .
It was revealing.
It spoke volumes. In a language far beyond words. A language which the two of them shared and no one else. Because she understood him. And he understood her, as no one else ever had, ever could, ever even attempted.
Luna bit her lips, shivering where she stood.
She found herself suddenly remembering that mistletoe kiss from two weeks ago.
Or the mistletoe “mouth bump,” as she’d always taken pains to call it in the privacy of her own mind, refusing to acknowledge it for what it was.
But whether or not that moment fit the legitimate, trashy-romance-novelist definition of a kiss, the moment which followed after—that moment when Mr. Grimm had looked at her, very much as he’d looked at her tonight—was undeniable.
She could see it again: an expression of burning pain, so agonizing and so beautiful, it made one absolutely ache to enter into that pain with him and, by so doing, to transform it into glory.
“Oh gods,” Luna whispered.
She needed to find him. She needed to get back out onto that dance floor, catch him by the arm, drag him away to somewhere private, and explain! But explain what? That she didn’t mean to kiss Ward. That she didn’t want to kiss Ward. That right now, more than anything, she wanted to go home.
Only home wasn’t the garret room over Mrs. Boggs’s Boardinghouse for Young Women of Good Character.
Home wasn’t even a quaint little cottage, tucked away on a hillside in the remote Crimble Mountains, overlooking the sleepy town of Greater Snoring.
No. Home had been transformed into something else entirely.
A nook behind the shop counter. A cane chair beside a squat old stove.
A cup of tea pressed into her hands and a solemn promise that the dibble-dab was, indeed, remembered.
Home was the scent of fresh flowers, the irritable croak of a fusty old raven, the tinkling of little brass bells.
Home was with him. With Nigel Grimm.
Wherever he was, that, Luna knew, was where she was meant to be also.
And she needed to tell him so. Now. Before it was too late.
Dragging a breath through her nostrils, Luna opened her eyes, stared at her reflection again. Her fingers tightened around the porcelain sink. Finally, with a firm nod of her head, she wrenched away, fumbled to get the bathroom latch unfastened, and threw open the door.
The dim light from the bathroom fell into the dark passage and revealed two figures standing there.
At first, Luna’s eyes, confused by the strangeness of low light and dark shadows, thought perhaps a queue had formed up, awaiting their turn for the loo.
But . . . no. The dim figures in front of her were far too vigorous.
Moaning and grappling in a way that was hard to mistake.
Luna’s eyes widened in surprise. She took a step back, quite certain she should not be privy to such an intimate moment. In stepping back, however, she allowed more light to fall, and it illuminated a head of magenta-dyed hair.
Bryony.
Clad in a tight gold gown.
Her back pressed against the wall, her little sleeve fallen down one plump arm.
Her leg hiked up so that the split opened wide, exposing the entire length of her leg and the masculine hand gripping the patch of bare skin above a lacy garter.
Her head thrown back, her bright curls snarled in the grip of tight fingers, her mouth open in an O of bliss, while her companion’s mouth found its way along her neck and shoulder and—
At Luna’s gasp, they both seemed to become aware of her. Bryony’s eyes fluttered open, and she grinned. “Oh, hullo, Lunaloo!”
The man’s head yanked back, turned. Pale hair fell across his forehead.
And Luna found herself standing face-to-face with her employer.