Chapter 29 #2
I stand there until gooseflesh breaks out on my skin and the rain becomes too chilly to bear, and finally head back inside, leaving my clothes outside.
I’ll collect them later. My fire is warm and the cat—I must name the cat, I think, affectionately—appears to be sitting in front of it.
I lean down and give her a tentative pat, and she chirps at me sleepily and wraps one of her soft tentacles around my wrist.
I wind myself up in a blanket and drape myself on the most comfortable chair in front of the fire, and close my eyes.
I feel the thump of the cat on my lap and for the first time in the longest time I can remember, I feel totally at peace.
Whether I break the curse and leave the bookstore, having discovered—and unlocked—my heart’s desire, or even if I’m stuck here forever…
well, somehow, in this moment, none of it matters. This, right now, is enough.
I don’t know how long I linger before the fire, feeling its warm glow on my skin and the cat purring on my lap, listening to the crackle of the logs and the patter of the rain, when I’m startled out of my reverie by a knock.
Honey’s enchantments included some sort of spell that makes knocking at the bookstore’s front door echo in here, so I always know if someone’s trying to get hold of me.
“Who on earth,” I tell the cat, although I suspect it could be only one of a limited number of people: Sasha, some prince (hopefully not a new one; I’m not in the mood to deal with a new prince tonight), or the pirate.
I move the cat off my lap—quite an activity, since she still appears to be sitting on the hearth before the fire—wrap my blanket around myself, and head out into the bookstore, the bluecaps drifting after me. Clearly they’re as curious about my visitor as I am.
I peek through the glass and smile, and pull the door open.
“Barn Pirate!” I say, genuinely pleased to see him. “You knocked! You usually just break in!”
“Yes, well, I brought you dinner,” he says, looking uncharacteristically uncertain. He hefts a basket toward me.
“Is it the curse? Is the rain bothering you? Do you need company?”
He shakes his head. “I thought you might want something besides turnips. It looked like a busy day.” He is completely soaking wet and yet looks as though he doesn’t mind at all. This despite being cursed to be afraid of water. It’s astonishing.
“I suppose you’d better come in, then,” I say.
I decide it’s the mead that has me feeling suddenly and unaccountably buoyant.
“Don’t steal anything, for mercy’s sake.
Unless it’s another cobweb.” I’ve sent all the spiders packing and dusted ferociously, so I doubt there are many cobwebs left for him to steal anyway.
I open the door and step aside. He casts me an inquiring look as he enters.
“Are you…naked?”
“No,” I say. “I’m wearing a blanket. Stay here.”
I return to my room, leaving him at the desk.
My clothes are still in a sopping puddle outside, so I pull on another of Mrs. Gooch’s old dresses, something soft and faded.
My skin’s dried but my hair’s still wet, so I leave it down.
Quite a daring move for a princess, but needs must. And it’s not nearly as daring as roaming around without any underthings on, which I’m also doing.
My mother would be appalled. At the first little quaver of uncertainty in my breast, I snort and toss my hair.
I shall banish my doubts and do what I like tonight. Perhaps with more mead.
I return to the bookstore proper and hand him a towel, which he takes and stares at.
“You’re all wet,” I say.
“Ah, yes,” he says, making no move to dry himself.
“You’d better come all the way in and dry off,” I say, and head back toward my apartment. He follows; I can hear him behind me, and, of course, the bookstore suddenly smells like the sea on a stormy day.
“So, dinner!” I chirp. I am not paying attention to the way his wet shirt clings to his chest.
“Why are some of your clothes in a pile outside?”
I glance out the still-open door leading to my tiny garden. To be sure, my clothes are just visible.
“That’s where I put them,” I answer.
He nods. “Was that before or after the mead?”
“What mead?” I say, and then hiccup.
He raises an eyebrow at the half-empty bottle of mead next to my one nice teacup, sitting on the counter beneath the shelf that holds my dishes.
“Oh, that mead. After.”
“Mead’s a bit sweet for me,” he says.
“If you’re angling for something to drink,” I say, trying to sound like I’ve taken the high road and have never made a single questionable decision in my life—as though my mother would ever permit such a thing as a questionable decision—“your options are limited.”
“I’m not angling for something to drink,” he says.
“You brought dinner?” I remind him, hopefully. “I’m ravenous.” Which, I realize, is true.
“It’s not much,” he says, offering me the basket. “And probably rather wet now.”
I open the basket and gasp in delight. Oh, there are sausages.
The little kind you can eat in a single bite.
I pop one into my mouth and take the basket to the sideboard, and begin laying things out: A loaf of bread and two kinds of cheese, wrapped in wax paper.
Little sausages, a big sausage—the kind that needs to be sliced with a very sharp knife.
Little tarts. “Where on earth did you steal all this from?” I say, delighted.
“I didn’t,” he says, humbly. “Earned my keep right honest, I did,” he adds, in that deep west-country accent he puts on sometimes.
“Bah,” I say. “I don’t believe it for a moment.”
“It’s true,” he says, plaintively. “How do you think I keep from starving to death?”
“Stealing pies off windowsills?” I suggest.
“Only during blackberry season,” he says. I snort. I happen to know from Sasha—who volunteered the information; I didn’t ask—that Bash is considered an interesting local attraction and kept reasonably well-fed by various interested townsfolk, as well as the princes.
“So you worked an honest day’s work and used your earnings to buy me dinner?” I smile at him. “That’s awfully conventional, for a pirate.”
“Excuse me; I bought myself dinner. I just happened to see the light on and figured I’d drop by and make sure you weren’t eating yet another turnip for dinner.”
I raise my nose in the air. “You specifically told me you bought me dinner,” I say. “Not ten minutes ago.”
“Just pass me a sausage, will you?” he says. Feeling as though I’ve finally scored a point with him, I do.
“So,” he says, “you took your clothes off because…”
“I did,” I say, pouring myself another skosh of mead and joining him before the fire.
“Any particular reason?”
“It felt…nice?” I say.
“Well, look at that,” he says, smiling at me. “You did something for yourself.”
“Bash,” I say, feeling unaccountably bold. “Why do you keep stealing things? What did you leave here the first time you stole those books?”
“I told you,” he says, lightly. “It’s just basic high-seas etiquette. You never take something without leaving something in trade. You’ll figure out what I left the first time eventually. Now, about that mead.”
Surprised, I snort a little laugh, then cough to cover it up. “You said you don’t like mead.” I’m not sure I should be drinking mead, my clothes old and unbinding, my hair unbraided, with a pirate who thinks it’s funny to flirt with me, in a tiny room. Well, more mead.
“I said it was a bit sweet for me. I didn’t say I wouldn’t drink it.” He pauses. “If it were on offer.”
“And here you weren’t angling for a drink.”
“I wasn’t, but now the suggestion’s been made, I find myself thirsty.”
“I’m not sure this is a very good idea,” I say, trying to imitate one of my mother’s more prohibitive tones.
“And why’s that?” he says, his voice suddenly very deep and silky. I have never thought of anyone’s voice as silky before, and I find it disconcerting.
“Where am I meant to put you if you drink yourself silly on my floor?” I say, which strikes me as a very reasonable, even sensible, point to raise.
“Anywhere you like,” he says, and grins. His eyes flashing with something distinctly intimate. I blush.
“So that’s it, then?” I say. “You’re finished with the nice thoughtful dinner thing? We’re just flirting now?”
“Were we flirting? What an intriguing notion.”
I roll my eyes as I rise, and hand the bottle to him. Why stand on ceremony? Plus, if I give him a cup, he’d likely just take it. He’s welcome to the empty bottle.
“Lord Tardigard’s Broken Heart,” he says, reading the label. “How peculiar.”
“The Lord Mayor’s friend makes it for their book club,” I remind him. “They were reading Tardigard’s Revenge. And gave me an extra bottle.”
He takes a swig, and I deliberately do not watch the way his throat works as he swallows. Such responses to the masculine form are unbecoming of a princess.
“Ugh.” He shudders, wiping his mouth.
“It’s not that bad,” I say. I have found I actually quite like the stuff.
“It’s like drinking sugar,” he says, lifting the bottle to take another sip. “Concentrated sugar.”
“That was quite a mouthful, given how little you like it,” I say.
“If the only other thing you can offer me is turnip-leaf tea, Tandy,” he says, and I’m grateful that the dark room means he can’t see me blush when he says my name, “then I’d drink mead for the rest of my life.”
“Honestly, I don’t know why Mrs. Gooch was so excited about turnips,” I say, sipping my own mead.
“I think anything might grow back there and I can’t see that turnips are especially…
magically inclined vegetables. Why not grow pumpkins?
Or strawberries? Something people like to eat?
I’m beginning to think it’s because she had the one book about turnips and never looked any further than that. ”
“Perhaps she just liked them. People are very strange beasts, after all. I’ve always been very fond of pickles.”