Chapter 30
Luna threw herself upon her bed, hugged Gruffles close, and let her tears flow freely. It felt like the appropriate thing to do, under the circumstances, though the teddy bear might have thrown off the aesthetic somewhat.
It’s all right to have a breakdown, she told herself with the part of her brain that wasn’t totally consumed with heartbroken sobs. It’s not really about him!
No, of course it wasn’t.
It was about being kidnapped. Imprisoned. Held in a dark, windowless chamber, her hands clapped in irons. Having her clothing stripped, her energies siphoned, her will taken away. It was about believing her fate had finally caught up with her, and there was no escape save the long-foretold doom.
See? There were plenty of reasons to justify a fit of hysterical weeping.
This certainly wasn’t about . . . about . . .
“Oh!” she squealed, muffling her voice in Gruffles’s musty fur.
Why, why, oh why did she think she could get away with not being a Good Girl for once?
Good Girls didn’t take stupid chances. Good Girls didn’t put either their virtue or their dignity on the line.
Good Girls certainly didn’t straddle the laps of Nice Gentlemen and kiss them like there was no tomorrow and basically offer themselves up on a silver platter and, as a result, Good Girls didn’t get their hearts dashed to tiny little pieces.
She should have stayed a Good Girl. Demure.
Morally upright. Stifling all these stupid, stupid impulses.
Just like she’d done for the last many weeks and months.
She’d had the right idea then, hadn’t she?
‘Don’t throw your arms passionately around your boss’s neck and beg him to take you in a manly fashion.
’ It was pretty simple when it came right down to it.
And maybe, if she hadn’t been so overwrought by all the other horrors of the last twenty-four hours, she would have remembered as much and never—
Tap-tap-tap.
Luna caught her breath. Silence followed the gentle sound, interrupted by nothing but her own hiccoughs.
Then: “Miss Talbot? May I come in?”
“Oh!” She muffled her voice into Gruffles again. Sitting up and dashing tears off her face, she said, “Go away, Mr. Grimm!” And snuffled loudly.
A long pause followed. Luna waited, counting heartbeats.
Finally: “Your, erm, your auntie. She sent me upstairs. While she deals with the, erm, vicar’s son.”
Luna set her teeth. He must mean Auntie Arabella.
She was the only one who would take a single look at Mr. Grimm in his unbuttoned and disheveled state and think, Oooh, yes, let’s send him straight up to my little niece’s bedroom, pronto!
Auntie Aurora would never. Too bad she hadn’t been the one awakened by that drunken serenade.
But she was such a righteous woman and always slept the sleep of the just.
Smacking more tears from her face, Luna sniffled again and spoke with great dignity: “You can just sit on the top of the step then, Mr. Grimm.”
Another silence.
At last: “Please, Luna. Let me in.”
Oh that damned voice of his! Why did it have to be so liquid and deep and melodious and sexy as all hells?
Why couldn’t the gods have seen fit to curse this man with a little wheezy, squeaky voice, or at least a hideous accent of some kind to balance out the natural timbre and tone?
Just to give the women in his life a fighting chance!
But alas, Luna must deal with the hand the gods had dealt her. And they’d chosen to grant this man a voice that could make her do . . . well, far more embarrassing things than she’d just done, truth be told. Whatever he wanted. Basically.
With a huffing almost-curse, she slid off her bed, stomped across the cold floorboards, yanked back the little metal latch, turned the knob. Even as the door creaked open, she pivoted on heel and marched back to the bed again, still carrying the tear-saturated teddy bear.
She slumped down on the edge of the bed, pressing the old bear against her stomach, and turned her head forcefully to one side.
Limp strands of hair clung to her wet cheeks, and she brushed them back impatiently, even as she was keenly aware of Mr. Grimm’s tread.
He stepped into the room, closed the door softly behind him.
After a moment, to her surprise, he flicked the latch.
Her heart jumped at that, and something hot churned quite low in her gut.
Refusing to look at him, Luna stared out her window. The night was deep and full of moonlight gleaming on snowy mountain slopes. It had been so long since she had looked upon this beloved view. Too bad she’d had to spoil everything about this return home by going and being a little hussy.
Mr. Grimm watched her. Still standing close to the door, he eyed her with palpable trepidation.
Was he afraid she was going to launch herself at him again?
Oh, gods, she’d probably traumatized the poor man!
He wasn’t equipped to deal with her hysterics, particularly not when they’d manifested in such an unexpectedly lascivious form.
He cleared his throat.
“Yes, Mr. Grimm?” Luna said coldly. Sniffling, she lifted one of the bear’s paws to swipe across her nose. “Did you have something you wished to say to me?”
Floorboards creaked under his feet as he crossed the room.
She wanted to tell him not to come any closer, but .
. . couldn’t. She simply turned her shoulder more thoroughly away from him, fixed her gaze more intently out the window, and tried very hard not to be aware of all the places on her neck and shoulder and jaw and ears where his mouth had been playing only minutes ago. She hugged her bear a little tighter.
Mr. Grimm perched on the edge of the bed beside her, a small space between them. “Who’s this?” he asked softly.
Luna looked down, saw his hand reach out to pluck one of the teddy bear’s paws. Thankfully, not the one she’d just used as a hanky. “Gruffles,” she said.
“He seems . . . friendly.”
“He’s a flesh-eating predator.”
“Ah.” Mr. Grimm was silent for a moment. “Perhaps he should have come along with you on your adventures. Might have been handy when it came to fending off Dark Sorcerers.”
“He’s a creature of the mountains. I couldn’t take him away from his natural habitat.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded. For your sake.”
Luna inwardly writhed. Was it allowed for a recently-repentant Good Girl to turn abruptly and beat her not-quite paramour over the head with a stuffed teddy bear, shrieking at him that he should have told her how he really felt a whole lot sooner, before letting things get as far as they did, before she’d embarrassed herself beyond all redemption, and—
“Miss Talbot, I want to be your husband.”
Everything went incredibly still. Pristine.
Starlight twinkling on snowy mountaintops.
Very, very slowly, Luna turned her head, met Mr. Grimm’s gaze.
And there it was again—that expression she’d first recognized when she’d seen it caught in the thaumagraph.
Only there was no need for a thaumagrapher’s magic now.
The truth was all too evident, spotlighted by silver moonglow through her windowpanes.
“That’s what I meant,” he said. He stretched out his hand, using his pinky finger to gently swipe another wet strand of hair off her tear-soaked cheek and tuck it behind her ear.
Then he cupped her face with his palm. “When I said I don’t want to be your lover.
It’s because . . . because I want to be so much more. ”
“Really?” Luna’s voice was so soft and high, it hardly sounded like her own. It certainly wasn’t the right voice to be the counterpart of those dreamy deep tones of his. But it was the best she could manage in the moment.
He brought his other hand up, framing her face gently.
“When I make love to you, I want to make love to my wife.” His voice broke a little, the emotions too intense.
“My beautiful, my brave, my brilliant Luna, I want to love you and adore you with all my heart, body, and soul, from now to the end of our days. Holy and sanctioned in the eyes of the Green Mother.”
Luna sniffed and hated that it was not a romantic sound at all. “You don’t believe in the Green Mother,” she said.
He chuckled and drew her face toward him, kissing her forehead. “I do, actually,” he whispered. “Only a supremely gracious goddess could have created someone as perfect as you.”
She hiccoughed out a little laugh-sob. “I was just envisioning your murder by teddy bear-bludgeoning!”
His mouth, pressed against her forehead, broke into a smile. Chuckling again, he leaned his forehead to hers and looked into her eyes. “You see? Perfect,” he said. “Oh, my Luna, my dear, you are perfection itself in my eyes.”
He was so close, her view narrowed down to make him look a bit like a cyclops.
But it was, nonetheless, deeply sexy. Luna let her lashes drop as his mouth drifted over hers.
A much sweeter, gentler, more tender kiss than those they’d shared downstairs on the rocking chair.
The purity of his passion was undeniable, and she trembled as she leaned into him, even as she kept her hands to herself, tightly wrapped around Gruffles’s threadbare body.
He pulled back at last and pressed his forehead against hers once more. “Marry me, Luna,” he said roughly. “I beg you. Marry me, and let me be a husband to you. Let me care for you and protect you and love you for the rest of my life.”
Luna’s lip quivered. She sniffled again, trying to withhold a sob. Placing her hand on his cheek, she kissed him, very softly, before drawing back and looking deep into his eyes. “I can’t.”
He blinked, his brow puckering. “Erm.”
“I can’t marry you, Mr. Grimm,” she said, shaking her head.
His mouth moved a few times before he managed to tilt his head a little to one side. “Erm, might I ask . . . why not?”