Chapter 27
Footsteps on the garret staircase signaled the return of her roommate, affording Luna opportunity to dash tears from her face, grab hold of her blanket, and pull it up over her head as she threw herself down on her pillow.
Only just in time it would seem. The door burst open one moment later, and Bryony loudly declared, “Well, that was a bust!”
Luna swallowed hard. The tears stinging her eyes fought to get free, but she squeezed them back with a tremendous effort, refusing to utter even the faintest sound.
“I know you’re awake, Lunaloo,” Bryony said, slamming the door behind her and taking off her shoes with a loud clatter.
She began the laborious process of undressing herself, a matter she did not usually care to perform on her own and which she had certainly not intended to manage solo tonight.
“That Mr. Grimm of yours is an absolute drag. Do you know what he ordered at dinner tonight?”
I don’t care, Luna told herself silently, her hands knotting tightly in the folds of her blanket. I don’t care, I don’t care, I just don’t care. It doesn’t matter, and I don’t care.
“Tea!” Bryony uttered a snort that was more eloquent than the entirety of her vocabulary.
“That man went and ordered a tea! Did you know he was a teetotaler? Well, it’s nearly impossible to get any fun out of those blokes!
You should have warned me, Luna. Really, it was too bad of you.
I couldn’t get him to talk about anything else.
Just tea. And something about carnations.
Ugh! I’ve never been so bored in all my born days! ”
She went on in this vein for some while, stomping around the room, washing her face, slipping into her silky pajamas. She didn’t require a response, which was just as well. Even if she’d wanted to venture a comment, Luna could not have spoken through the lump lodged in her throat.
Finally, Bryony climbed into her own bed. Luna heard the clink of the thaumatic light bulb’s chain, and the room plunged into darkness. Her roommate settled down under her covers, heaving out a huge sigh before declaring, “He is a damned good kisser though. I’ll give him that.”
With this pronouncement, she rolled over. Within a minute, her soft snores filled the room as she slept the sleep of the righteously indignant.
And Luna found herself once more rolling onto her back and staring up at her peeling ceiling.
She tried to tell herself that she was thinking about those kisses with Ward. After all, they were her first kisses. And they were certainly ardent. And plenteous. Worth a certain amount of rumination, surely.
But it was Mr. Grimm’s mouth she kept seeing. Swollen and parted as he yanked away from Bryony’s throat.
And it was Mr. Grimm’s hand seared across her memory. Gripping Bryony’s thigh.
“It doesn’t matter,” Luna whispered to herself, her voice lost beneath the duet of a snoring Bryony and the crackling radiator. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Because, in the night, before she’d heard her roommate’s feet on the stairwell, when she’d sat on her bed with her arms wrapped around her legs and her eyes pressed into her kneecaps, willing herself not to think of Mr. Grimm and Bryony together .
. . she’d come to a decision. It was time for her to leave Ballycastle.
“One month,” she whispered into the darkness now. “One month from today.”
She’d save up everything she could. It wouldn’t be enough for a ticket to the Southern Continent, but that was fine.
She should be able to get herself to Bromley Bay.
She could find some kind of job there, surely.
Perhaps in one of the factories down there; it was quite the busy manufacturing town, they said.
A few months more, and she should have enough for the boat fare. It was a good plan. As good as any.
She could handle one more month.
What would this mean as far as Ward was concerned?
Well, she probably wouldn’t see him again.
This new assignment was likely to take up most of a month, and Luna fully intended to be gone before he returned.
Sad. But just as well. He had been rather more enthusiastic about those kisses tonight than she liked.
“Come on, Luna,” he’d said, while they waited for a cab on the sidewalk outside of the Rowdy House. “Let me take you back to my place. It’s just one night. And I’ll be the soul of honor, I swear! Your Crimble maiden virtue is safe with me.”
But the heat of the kisses he’d pressed to her mouth in tandem with those words had made her suspicious.
She’d pushed him away at last, gasping, “No, Ward!” Then she’d added firmly, “I’m tired.
I’m going home. To bed. Alone,” she’d added with a little laugh that she didn’t quite mean in response to the teasing look he’d given her.
Ward had heaved a longsuffering sigh, shaking his head. “Never in my life have I worked so hard for a girl!” he declared. Bending his head, he’d pressed his brow against hers. “But you watch yourself, Luna Talbot. I’m going to figure out a way to properly sweep you off your feet. Just you wait!”
She’d laughed again at this, though she hadn’t felt like it.
Thankfully, the taxi pulled up just then, and she was able to climb inside and escape any more of Ward’s eager embraces.
Then she’d spent the whole ride home sitting very straight, staring at her knotted fists and wondering . . . did she just not like kissing?
Maybe she was doing it wrong.
Or maybe there was just something wrong with her.
“I just don’t get it,” she whispered to herself now, in the privacy of her bed, and chewed the inside of her cheek.
What was the point of all that mashing of mouth against mouth?
Ward had seemed excited about the whole business, and she had wanted to rise to his excitement.
But gosh. It did get old rather fast, didn’t it?
Apparently, all those racy darning-basket novels had lied to her over the years.
Only . . .
Bryony had seemed to enjoy Mr. Grimm’s kisses. Rather a lot.
“He is a damned good kisser. I’ll give him that.”
Luna squeezed her eyes shut. Yes, it was certainly for the best that she leave.
Before Ward got back. Before more kisses were required of her.
Before the memory of Mr. Grimm with his mouth on Bryony’s neck faded, and she let her own imagination start playing tricks with her again.
Before she started believing she saw something in the way her employer looked at her.
Something she’d surely imagined in the heat of a confused and emotionally-charged moment.
A quivering little breath escaped through her lips. “I’m going to be good. I’m going to be strong.”
And she was not going to be happy that Bryony had declared her intention of never going out with Mr. Grimm ever again. Because it didn’t matter.
She was leaving.
“One month,” Luna whispered. “Just one more month.”
The following morning, the street fiddler decided to go classical.
Luna frowned as she darted swiftly past Mystic Infusions (her face turned away from the window, just as usual) and took the turn from Nettleton onto Addle Street.
Though she cast her gaze up and down the sidewalks on both sides of the busy road, she couldn’t spy the fiddler anywhere.
But she heard his music, rising to the heavens in soaring runs and crescendos.
Luna had never heard him play anything but pop songs before, but this virtuoso performance was something altogether different.
Both deep and searing and dizzyingly fast. It filled her heart with strange longings.
As though her heart wasn’t pretty much topped-off with strange longings already.
Hunching her shoulders, she stood poised on the curb, waiting for a lull in the morning traffic before crossing over. While she waited, she looked across to the shop, searching for some sign of life in the windows, and . . . caught her breath.
The door.
It was standing wide open.
Luna blinked swiftly, trying to clear her vision, convinced she must be seeing things. But no—the door really was open wide to the world.
It was probably nothing, of course. Mr. Grimm must be coming and going to shovel the front walk. He usually did that long before Luna’s arrival, so that she’d have a nice clear pathway to walk on her way to the door. There was no sign of any shoveling done now, however.
“Maybe he’s just airing out the shop?” Luna whispered, her breath puffing frostily in front of her lips.
Or maybe something was wrong.
Up the road, the traffic light switched, signaling for a break in the traffic.
Luna looked both ways, then hastened across, her boots carrying her swiftly to the far sidewalk.
She’d been so nervous at the prospect of seeing Mr. Grimm again.
Particularly after the last glimpse she’d had of him was so unprofessional, as it were.
Now fear eclipsed all other feeling, and she hastened under the awning.
The door wafted a little on its hinges, causing the bells to keep dinging cheerfully, their voices a strange contrast to the darkness and cold gloom inside.
Gingerly, Luna pushed the door a little farther open and peered across the threshold.
Her gaze immediately landed on the figure lying sprawled in the middle of the floor.
A little, “Oh!” bursting from her lips, Luna shut the door firmly behind her and locked it. Then she hastened across the floor and dropped to her knees beside her prone employer. “Mr. Grimm! Mr. Grimm, are you all right?”
He still wore the exact same clothing he’d been wearing last night. There was something rather rumpled and disheveled about him, but she didn’t see any signs of injury and, when she checked, his pulse was clear and strong. He just seemed to be sleeping.