“Mr. Grimm?” #2
At last, he forced himself to drag a sharp breath through his teeth. Expelling it with a whisper, he said, “It’s not your business, Grimm. You’re her boss. Not her . . . her . . . anything else.”
His gaze lifted, coming to rest on that portion of the counter where the teapot had sat last night.
Sat in a puddle of hot water, which he’d sloshed while attempting to prime the pot.
And there was that tea towel, the one she’d grabbed to mop up his mess.
Still dropped there. Where they’d left it.
Left it forgotten and soaking up the water, while he’d pulled her close and . . .
Stomping across the kitchen, Nigel grabbed the kettle, slammed it onto the burner, and set about fixing tea with a force of will that was possibly too aggressive for teatime.
His hands shook. Damn that severmist in his veins!
How long would it take before it finally worked its way out?
Because he wasn’t about to sit around tonight, thinking about Luna dancing with Ward, thinking about the possibility of her going home with Ward.
No. He would find productive ways to fill the long, dark hours ahead.
Like sorcerer-hunting. And bloody murder.
Too bad he’d wasted those precious drops of distilled Dire Matter on that flubbed transmatterportation spell last night.
He had little enough left to his name, but no fear!
He would be clever. He would be cunning.
He would wring absolutely every possible ounce of power from each and every drop, crafting spells of such dark subtlety that his enemies would never—
“Mr. Grimm?”
Nigel, who was just reaching for a tea tin at the top of the shelf, startled. The tin fell, the lid popped open, and dark twists of tea leaves spilled across the counter. Nigel stared at it stupidly.
“Damn,” he whispered.
Then he turned and faced Luna, who stood in the kitchen doorway.
Her eyes went to the mess he’d made. Then to him. Then down again. Then dropped to her shoes, her cheeks pinking. “Um, I’m sorry to startle you,” she murmured. “Only, um, Bryony is leaving.”
“Oh, yes?”
“She, um. She asked to speak with you. Before she goes.”
Nigel’s heart hitched with alarm. “Why?”
Luna shot him a swift look. “How should I know?” Stepping into the kitchen, she made her way to the counter and took the half-empty tea tin from his hands.
For a moment, she was close enough for him to inhale the intoxicating scent of vanilla and honeysuckle lingering in the limp strands of her hair. He briefly closed his eyes.
“Were you making tea?” she murmured.
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “I . . . I thought perhaps . . . It’s two o’clock, you know.
” The words came out so thick, so rough, he struggled to form them at all.
Standing here, so close to her, all he could think about was how, not even twenty-four hours ago, they’d stood in almost this exact same place.
Only she’d been in his arms then, and those delicious lips of hers were responding to his with such eagerness, and that sweet throat of hers was vibrating with the most delightful whimpers, and . . .
“Yes,” she said, breaking through the fog in his head. “It’s a good thought. I’ll take care of it. If you’ll just, um, see Bryony off, will you?”
“Oh. Right.” He lingered a moment longer.
But she didn’t turn to him, didn’t look at him.
She simply went on brushing the spilled tea leaves into her hand and dumping them in the wastebin.
As though he wasn’t there. And what was he going to do anyway?
Grab her and kiss her again? When his apology for having done just that hadn’t even cooled on his tongue?
Turning abruptly, Nigel marched back out into the shop. Bryony was there still, leaning against the counter, and she turned to watch his approach. Even with her winter coat on, she still managed to make that lean impressive.
“Well, Grimmsy,” she said by way of greeting as he stepped behind the counter.
“Miss Braithwait,” he answered stiffly.
Her mouth curved faintly. “Oh, come now, after everything we’ve been to each other, surely you can work up the nerve to call me Bryony.”
Nigel cleared his throat and resisted the urge to pull at his collar. “What can I, erm, do for you?”
“You can get off your posh arse and ask that poor girl out is what you can do.”
A shot of ice went through his veins. “What?”
“It’s been a month. A month since I caught you sulking on the sidewalk over her kissing that swoony wardsman of hers.
” Bryony angled her hip one way, her head the other, and raised a well-plucked eyebrow.
“And I’m telling you what, I’ve never heard so much sniffling and sighing in all my born days as I have in the four weeks following.
Night after bloody night! It’s enough to drive a body quite mad. ”
“Sniffling and sighing?”
“Yeah.” She leaned in closer, dropping her voice. “From certain parties. You get me?” And she tossed her head in the direction of the kitchen passage.
Nigel blinked. He felt he should understand, but something in his mind was slammed shut and fast. “Ward the, erm, wardsman,” he ventured. “He was gone all last month.”
“Oh, don’t try to tell me she’s been weeping into her pillow each night over him!
” Bryony snorted and shook her vibrant curls.
“That man has made it perfectly clear he’s ready to jump through hoops for her if asked, poor fellow.
No, no, a girl doesn’t go all weepy like that over the bird in the hand.
It’s the one in the bush what’s the problem. ”
“Miss Braithwait.” Nigel paused, glanced at the passage again, then shook his head and forced himself to face the young woman before him. “I’m not sure you fully understand the, erm, the nature of the dynamic between Miss Talbot and myself.”
The look she gave him was positively scathing. “Oh, don’t I?” Her lip curled, and she ran her eyes pointedly up and down his frame, ending with a little shake of her head. “You’re a cutie, Mr. Grimm, and no mistake. But, as my grandma used to say, spineless noodle never won fair maiden.”
“Faint heart,” Nigel murmured.
“How’s that?”
“The saying is, ‘faint heart never won fair maiden.’”
“Yeah, well, noodles never did any better, I’ll bet.
” Bryony pushed away from the counter at last, one gloved hand planted at the curve of her jutted hip.
“If I were you, I’d find a way to stiffen that noodle of yours before she rides off into the sunset with her hunky wardsman.
” Her eyes ran down his body again, lingering on the front of his trousers suggestively. “If you catch my drift.”
With that, she turned and sauntered from the shop, leaving Nigel feeling vaguely violated.
As the shop bells tinkled in Bryony’s wake, Nigel turned to find that Luna had hung up the green dress on the nook curtain bar.
He blinked, surprised at the sight of it—and was momentarily cast back to the evening when he had seen Luna wearing those satiny green folds.
A shimmering vision, which lingered in his imagination, particularly on those dark, lonely nights when he lay still upon his pillow, staring straight up at his ceiling, and trying not to remember what it was like to hold her in his arms.
He swallowed now, staring at that dress on its hanger, easily recalling how the satin and ruching clung to her gentle curves.
Though he hated to admit it, even in the privacy of his mind .
. . he agreed with Ward. Luna didn’t need a ballgown.
In that dress, she would outshine any woman at the Governor’s Ball.
Truth be told, she would outshine them even in her rumpled work skirt and blouse.
“Never mind?”
Startled, Nigel turned to catch his raven’s knowing gaze from where she sat on her skull-pot. “I can’t,” he said, keeping his voice down just in case. “She’s going out with him tonight. And . . . and kissing him.”
“Never mind!”
“Yes, well, you have a point. But I don’t think she’ll want to kiss me now that she knows who I really am.”
“Never mind?”
“And how do you propose I go about asking her something like that? ‘Pardon me, Miss Talbot, but would you like to kiss me again despite knowing that I am, in fact, the foulest of villains ever to walk the face of the earth?’”
“Never mind.”
“You think of a better way to put it and let me know.”
Debbie muttered wordlessly and stomped in place on the skull-pot. Then, to Nigel’s great surprise, she launched herself abruptly from the pot and, with a great flutter of wings and raucous croaking, flew straight at the green dress.