Chapter 12 #2
“No, no!” Mrs. Lambert’s voice shrilled. “All of this must be torn down immediately! Everything must be returned to the vendors for a full refund!”
Nigel caught Luna’s stare, saw how she paled and shook her head. They certainly could not afford a full refund. Their contract ought to protect them, but Nigel hadn’t thought to include caveats in case the bride got cold feet the day of the event.
“Now, Delilah,” a mealy voice spoke, as though sucking on a mouthful of marbles, “there’s no reason we can’t treat our guests to a little something after all the trouble they’ve been through. It’s all bought and paid for anyway from Eugenia’s account, and if she wants to—”
“No, Mandrake!” Mrs. Lambert protested. “I will not sit by and allow myself to be publicly humiliated! The scandal would—”
Whatever else the society dame might have said was drowned out by the boom of a door bursting open, a garble of many voices, and one loud voice in particular shouting above the din, “Strike up the band!”
Immediately, music burst into full bloom, filling the banquet hall with lively jazz strains.
More voices shouted for food, others for drink, and whatever Mrs. Lambert had to say in the matter was lost to the explosion of merriment which had taken hold of the ill-fated wedding feast. Within moments, Eugenia’s self-proclaimed Declaration of Liberty Luncheon was in full swing .
. . while Nigel, Luna, and the violets, crouched beneath the table together.
Luna peered at Nigel through the lyre’s spindles. “Dare we make our escape out the back way?” she asked. There was no need to lower her voice now the band was playing; no one could hear them.
“Let me check,” Nigel said and scooted around so that he might lift the tablecloth and peer out. A crowd of legs and feet met his gaze. Hastily, he dropped the cloth and retracted his body more deeply under the table. “We’d best wait until the coast is clear.”
Luna’s brow wrinkled. “On a scale of one to ten, how disastrous to the reputation of The Arcane Bouquet would it be if its proprietor and assistant were caught sneaking out from under a table at their first big banquet commission?”
“I’m uncertain there is a scale up to the task.”
Chewing her lower lip, Luna looked around at the violets, all of whom gazed up at her with adoring trust in their little faces. “We could abandon the aprons?” she suggested. “Then they wouldn’t necessarily associate us with the shop. No evidence, right?”
“But after all the work Mrs. Goddard put into embroidering the logo . . .”
“Right.” She nodded once. “So we stay put, I suppose.”
“Do these confines worry you?” Nigel vividly recalled other instances of closed-in spaces and the panic they had inspired. Luna had never shared with him the reason for her phobia, but he had his suspicions. And he certainly didn’t want to see her distressed.
But Luna shrugged and waved a dismissive hand. “No doors or walls in this case. It’s only when I can’t get out that it’s . . . bad. I could in this instance. If I needed to.”
Satisfied, Nigel settled a bit more comfortably.
A difficult feat to accomplish with his head bent and his shoulders hunched, but he didn’t mind finding himself once more sharing a confined space with Miss Luna Talbot.
Today had been an unexpected delight in so many ways, and while he suspected everything would go back to the stiff and awkward normal between them in the morning, he wasn’t in any rush to let go of whatever was happening between them now.
“How about some wedding cake?” he suggested after a moment.
Luna shot him a look around the lyre’s curve. Wordless, she lifted a corner of the tablecloth again, her gaze searching. The wedding cake sat on its display table clear across the room. “No chance of that, Mr. Grimm,” she said. “Not without revealing our presence.”
“Don’t be so sure, Miss Talbot.”
Aware of the way she watched him curiously, Nigel scooped up one of the violets, held it to his mouth, and whispered gently.
It shivered a little then nodded several of its purple heads.
When he set it back down again, it slipped from his fingers and darted out from under the table into the crowded room.
“Where is it going?” Luna asked.
“Just watch,” Nigel said.
Peering out from under the cloth, they observed the violet’s quick scamper to the nearest table.
Little leaves and stems coiling, it pulled itself up to the centerpiece, where it lifted its little faces to hold conference with one of the big peonies, which bowed its frilly head to listen with earnest interest. None of the guests took any notice of these doings.
There was a great deal of talking and laughing and milling about, not to mention dancing closer to the band’s location.
Even Mrs. Lambert had been convinced to take a seat and was already several glasses of sparkling wine into a sweeter temper than usual.
Though, Nigel suspected, she’d have to be pretty much pickled to be rendered totally palatable.
Suddenly, the peony stretched out two long green stems like legs and stepped out from its arrangement.
Beside him, Luna gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth.
She continued to stifle gasps as the peony slipped from the table and began to duck and dodge its way across the crowded banquet room, avoiding feet and watching eyes alike.
It crept all the way to the wedding cake on its display and crawled up behind it.
A carving knife flashed. Two generous portions of cake and frosting slid out onto little paper plates.
The next moment, the peony appeared again, making its undulating return across the room, balancing the two plates on broad, green leaves.
Several times, it narrowly avoided a stomping.
Once, a high heel came within a whisper of connecting with a plate and sending cake flying.
But somehow, through magic or artifice, the bold flower successfully navigated the fray to the bride-and-groom table in one piece.
With a triumphant flutter of petals, it slid the two paper plates under the tablecloth.
Luna turned her gaze to Nigel, her dark eyes wide. “How did you do that?”
“I didn’t.” He plucked a plate from the floor and offered it to her. “That was all the flower’s doing. Green Magic is powerful stuff, you know.”
“But I don’t understand! How was it not spotted a dozen times over?”
Nigel shrugged. “Reality filters. Garden is absolutely brimming with them, and they’re infused into everything he grows. Any one of our flowers can go undetected if it so desires, save by the most magically-adept individuals. Such as yourself, Miss Talbot.”
Her mouth pressed in a considering line, Luna sat up as straight as she could beneath the table, her knees bent elegantly to one side. She looked at the plate in her lap. “No forks?”
Nigel frowned down at his own plate. “Blast. Plants don’t concern themselves overmuch with utensils, I’m afraid. Shall I send the peony back?”
“Oh no, no need!” Luna pinched a bit of cake off with her fingers and popped it into her mouth. Her eyes brightened, and a little moan thrummed in her throat. “It’s good.”
Flushing, Nigel dropped his gaze to his own piece. “I believe I saw the Tokens of My Confection logo down in the parking lot earlier.”
“Oh?”
“It’s the bakery from which I purchased your, erm, birthday cupcake, actually.”
“Ah!” Luna swallowed hard and studied the cake in front of her.
Suddenly the atmosphere in that too-close space brimmed with memories of a magical night: a shared dessert, a meaningful look, an innocent kiss on the cheek under the awning.
Not the stuff of romantic epics, sure. Just little moments.
One after the other. Moments which had left an indelible impression on Nigel’s soul, moments which he knew he would cherish to the end of his days.
But still nothing more than moments.
He took a bite of his own cake in silence.
Luna, meanwhile, drew back a corner of the tablecloth and watched the dancers out on the floor.
The celebration of Miss Eugenia Lambert’s liberty was in full swing now, and all the guests were in high spirits.
The musicians, catching on to the mood, threw themselves wholeheartedly into ever more lively numbers, which zipped and tugged at the heart, practically daring those who listened not to dance.
It was all a bit frenetic for Nigel’s taste.
“I can’t imagine,” Luna said suddenly around a mouthful of cake, “wanting to spend my wedding day like this.”
Nigel’s brows rose. “Really?”
She sighed and shook her head. “It’s just so crowded. And noisy. And busy, and energetic, and so many people demanding your attention, and . . . I don’t know. I never understood the appeal.”
Shifting his seat slightly, Nigel eyed her from under the lock of hair fallen across his forehead. “I was given to understand that most women dream of large productions for their weddings. Is that not so?”
Luna rolled her eyes. “That’s just what the mags and the flicks want you to think!
I’m sure there’s plenty of girls who would get a kick out of a big to-do like this, but not all of us are party animals, are we?
” She leaned her shoulder back against the lyre support and tilted her head a little as she took her last bite of cake.
“The only wedding I ever envisioned would have taken place in my aunties’ tea garden, with the old vicar of Greater Snoring officiating and just a few close friends gathered round. ”
“Friends like the Archduke of Barksdinny?” Nigel suggested.
She flashed him a quick glance, eyes crinkling. “Well, of course! He would have been guest of honor, rest his noble soul.”
“And Gwendolyn Astoria and Pearline Pompadouria?”