Chapter 1 #2
“It is,” he agreed. “I have written to the watch and to the committee overseeing the lamps. We must keep cashboxes locked, be prudent about closing hours.” He paused—deliberate, almost kind, which improved nothing.
“It would be wisest if certain establishments kept fewer ladies upon the premises after dark.”
“Certain establishments,” Vicky repeated, testing the words as if they might splinter. “Are you speaking of the bauds down by Covington Way? Surely you don’t mean ladies being… me and Miss Fairchild?”
Mr. Stouts glanced at Gracie in the way one glanced at a sturdy table—present, useful, unconsidered—and back to Vicky.
“Unmarried ladies,” he said. “I mean no insult. There is no shame in seeking protection where the neighborhood is uncertain. I would never mention women of that ilk within your presence, Miss Abbott. Surely you know that.”
Brushing off his censor, Vicky continued, “Protection,” she said pleasantly. “From thieves—or opinions?”
Something flickered over his face. Not anger. Annoyance, certainly. And something else that looked, dangerously, like confusion trying to find its hat. “From danger, Miss Abbott. Surely your family—your brother-in-law—would say the same.”
“My family,” she said, equally pleasant, “is admirably occupied producing more of itself. They are not in the habit of advising me how to turn a key. I am, however, in the habit of turning one.”
He inclined his head, impeccable, infuriating. “I have taken the liberty of asking His Grace to speak with you. Only for a time—until the matter is resolved.”
Ah. There it was. The fizz inside her stood up and selected a sword. “You wrote to the Duke of Blakeney about my closing hours, about how I run my store?”
“It is no trouble,” he said, misunderstanding bravely. “We must all do our part.”
“Indeed,” she said. “Some of us by keeping our doors shut. Others of us by keeping them open.”
Gracie coughed—her version of both warning bell and applause.
Mr. Stouts’s gaze flicked to the chalkboard, landed on “Seasonal Selections,” and looked briefly, absurdly, as if he wished to argue with it. Then something softened by a degree one might only notice with a ruler. “Your bow,” he said, nodding toward the journals, “is crooked.”
Shots had been fired.
“It is rakish,” Vicky replied through clenched teeth. “And sells faster than the straight ones.”
He blinked, as if the world had introduced a rule without consulting him. “Good day, Miss Abbott. Miss…?”
“Fairchild,” Gracie said, crisp as a ledger. “I do sums. Among other mortal sins.”
A beat. “Good day,” he repeated, and left. The bell, traitor, made a respectful little sound.
The door shut. For a moment the shop held its breath around the space he’d occupied, as if even the dust motes were deciding what to think.
“Unmarried ladies,” Gracie said at last, tasting the phrase and finding it dull. “How fortunate you are that I am here to chaperone you. I am extremely disapproving after dusk.”
Vicky huffed, then laughed, then didn’t. “He wrote to Nathan.”
“Men like that,” Gracie said, “imagine themselves useful. It is a disease. Their sisters rarely recover them.”
“He has sisters?” Vicky asked, betraying herself by caring. “Those poor dears!”
“Men who issue advice like receipts always have sisters. I’m told there are four or five of them.”
“I feel for the poor creatures,” Vicky murmured, and straightened the journals as if readying them for battle.
Her mind, annoyingly energetic, conjured him as a boy at a breakfast table crowded with female chatter—trying to put a word in edgewise and developing that jaw to force a path.
It was an image far too human for a man so determined to tidy other people’s lives.
She banished it. “If Nathan appears with a lecture about early hours,” she added, “I shall clock him.”
“Nathan has never tried to run roughshod over any of you girls,” Gracie suggested. “However, if he attempts it, Bea will likely clock him for you.”
The afternoon brought more customers and better humor.
A pair of schoolboys bought a dog-eared copy of Plutarch’s Lives and attempted to look wise; Vicky sold them a bag of sugared almonds “for intellectual vigor,” which they accepted with reverence.
A soldier on leave chose Burns and a little volume of Cowper; when she asked if it was a gift, he shook his head and said, “For the road.” She wished him a safe one with a smile that meant every syllable.
By four, the winter light had already begun to fail, turning the street into a ribbon of light.
Gracie lit the lamps one by one until the shop glowed.
Vicky balanced the day’s takings in the palm of her hand before locking them away—sober, careful, and stubbornly proud.
She wrote a note to the night watch, concise and practical.
She added another note, much shorter and far sharper, in her head to Mr. Stouts, which she would not send. Probably.
When the bell clanged once more, she looked up, prepared, she told herself, to be civil if the stationer returned, which was nonsense, but it was only Tibbs again with gossip.
“They say the thieves tried for Carter’s apothecary last night and found nothing but a sleepy apprentice and a jar of leeches,” he reported, eyes round. “Gave the lad a fright and he took clean off, leaving the leeches to the thieves.”
“Good,” Gracie said, unruffled. “Leeches and thieves are in good company together.”
After Tibbs left, silence gathered and they worked companionably on their separate tasks.
Vicky liked the late hour, when the city softened at the edges and every candle became a star.
She liked the steady breath of the fire and the scratch of Gracie’s pen and the whisper of pages turning beneath her hand.
She liked being tired from the right work.
She liked—blast him—the small, reluctant corner of her mind that hoped Mr. Stouts’s letter to Nathan would go unanswered because Nathan trusted her, because she had made a life that required no signatures but her own.
She turned the sign to Closed and fastened the bolt. Gracie wrapped her scarf with an efficiency that explained why her bows always behaved.
“Same time tomorrow,” Gracie said.
“Earlier,” Vicky said, then grinned at her own hypocrisy. “We must be prudent.”
“We must,” Gracie agreed, and tucked the note for the watch into her reticule like she was smuggling state secrets. At the stairs she paused. “If Mr. Stouts arrives in the morning to count your virtues and find them wanting, shall I trip him?”
“No,” Vicky said primly. “But if he corrects my ribbons again, you may.”
Gracie’s smile flashed—brief, sharp, fond. “Sleep well, Vicky. Will you be up soon? I don’t like you down here all alone.”
“I won’t be but a minute more, Gracie. Go ahead and light the fires upstairs, I will be there in thrice.”
Vicky banked the fire in the grate, checked the window latch, and stood for a moment in the middle of her shop—hers—listening to the quiet.
Outside, snow began again, soft as a promise.
Next door, a shadow crossed the stationer’s lamp; a tall figure paused as if considering the street, the hour, the woman who had declined his protection with a smile that had teeth.
“Jawline,” Vicky told the empty room, purely for the satisfaction of rolling her eyes at it. Then she laughed at herself, blew out the last candle, and climbed the stairs—shoulders set, mind already turning over lists and bows and the exact, rakish angle at which journals sold best.
If the thieves came, she would be ready. If the neighbor came, she would be wittier.
And if her bell continued to clang like a dying cow, she would murder it before Epiphany.