“What about me?” Luna asked innocently.
“What doyouthink of your Mr. Grimm?”
“Oh!” Another flood of heat to the cheeks. Luna found herself flashing back to that moment behind the counter. To that not-a-kiss. And the far more fiery moment which followed, when Mr. Grimm grabbed her arm, when he pulled her back, when he gazed deep into her eyes, and his lips hovered so near to hers . . .
She gave her head a little shake. “I think very highly of him. He’s been good to me. Just like a . . . a brother.”
“A brother?”
“Yes. A brother,” Luna repeated firmly. “Nigel Grimm is like my kindly, considerate, and”—she snorted softly, her lips twisting in a little smile—“rather stuffy older brother.”
The words had no sooner left her mouth when there was a knock on the door. Luna and Bryony exchanged glances. “Go away, Mrs. Boggs!” Bryony shouted.
A pause. Then another, tentative knock. Not at all Mrs. Boggs-like.
With a huff, Bryony rose from her bed, crossed the room, and flung the door open. To reveal Mr. Grimm. Standing there at the top of the steps. Very pale. Hollow-eyed.
Very much not looking Luna’s way.
“Pardon me,” he said softly with a little clearing of his throat. “I seem to have left my overcoat.”
“Oh, have you now?” Bryony turned and cast about the room. She spied the overcoat where it lay on the floor, having been knocked there when the chair on which it was draped had overturned. Bryony swept it up and handed it to him. “Anything else you need?” she asked, lounging against the doorframe, angling her hips and arching her back rather more than she had a moment before. Her voice could only be described ascoy.
“No,” Mr. Grimm replied in monotone. “Thank you.” He turned to go. Paused. Almost looked back. Then he covered a cough in his sleeve and, with a short shake of his head, disappeared down the stairs.
Bryony lingered, fist planted on a still-cocked hip, watching him go. “And Merry Green Yule to you, Mr. Grimm!” she called after him, to no response. With a sigh, she shut the door, then turned back to Luna, shaking her head. “Slow mover my foot. If that man moves any slower, he’ll be going backwards!”
Luna couldn’t answer. She stared down at her hands. For some reason she couldn’t explain, she heard a voice in her head. A low, uncertain voice, murmuring the words of the old hymn:“Like a whisper of love, a gleam of light hails the hope of dawning day.”
Two tears escaped, racing tracks down her cheeks. But Luna sniffed and hastily dashed them away.
Nigel stumbled down the stairs so fast, head bowed and shoulders hunched, he didn’t see the figure coming up in front of him until he bumped into it rather roughly, and a voice growled, “Steady on, man!”
Nigel lifted his head, eyes struggling to discern the face before him in the gloom. “Dr. Bucket?”
The face beneath the bowler hat, somewhat flushed with holiday cheer from the night before, glowered at him from above the salt-and-pepper mustache. “The one and only. You trying to take me out before your bill comes due?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
“Didn’t see me coming up the stairs directly in front of you?” The doctorharrumphed, then looked at Nigel more narrowly from under the brim of his hat. “You look terrible. Long night?”
“Erm, yes.”
“And how is your little cousin?”
The numb brain-gears in his head clunked several ponderous turns before Nigel managed to comprehend the question. “Oh, Miss Talbot?” he blurted. “Yes. Erm. She is . . . I believe she is beginning to feel a little better.”
“Stayed on top of the poultices, did you?”
“Yes.”
“And the dose? You didn’t flake out and stop giving it to her, did you? No matter how she struggled?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then you’ve done a princely deed, my boy.” Dr. Bucket looked him over again. There wasn’t much room to hide from scrutiny in the narrow stairway, and Nigel found himself wishing he’d donned his overcoat already, rather than carrying it draped over his arm. As though somehow, its bulk would shield him from that knowing gaze. “So why are you abandoning the poor miss now?” the doctor demanded. “Had enough of the sick room?”
Nigel felt suddenly as though he’d had just about enough of . . . everything. The powerful and possibly not-altogether reasonable urge came over him to flee back to the shop and out into Garden, to simply lose himself in that green, rolling acreage, never to be heard from again. Maybe, in time, he’d grow an enormous, ragged beard, and would eat locusts (whatever those were), and wear nothing but the rags of a once-fine waistcoat, and speak in the strange tongues of birds and beasts, and all memory of his former life and former self would be forgotten in the world beyond the boiler room door. It was the best fantasy his sleep-deprived brain could invent just then.
