He put the kettle on, partly because that was what one did when one had a visitor, and mostly because if he busied himself with the tea-caddy and fire and water and kettle, he didn’t have to look at Mr Hull or listen to the peculiar tapping of his boot-heels on the floorboards as he ascended the stair and sat at his desk. Yet his awareness of Mr Hull remained.
The kettle whistled. Ephraim transferred its contents to the pot and assembled the tray. With equal parts reluctance and anticipation, he turned from the fire towards the desks.
Where Mr Hull still sat, watching him with those dark, compelling, enormous, beautiful eyes.
Ephraim steadied himself to bring the tray across the room and set it down on his desk. He poured a cup for Mr Hull and handed it over. As Mr Hull took the teacup from him, their fingertips brushed together. A spark seemed to pass between them at the touch—one which threatened to take hold in Ephraim’s heart and burn it all to cinders. He shivered, then cleared his throat to disguise it and sat down.
A heavy silence descended upon the office, as thick as the fog swirling past the window-panes outside, broken only by the sipping of tea as each gentleman in turn avoided the other’s gaze.
“I’ve made a promise to Mr Lofthouse,” said Mr Hull suddenly.
“Oh?” said Ephraim, trying and failing to feign indifference. It might have gone better if he hadn’t dropped his teacup into its saucer in astonishment when Mr Hull spoke.
A hard swallow traveled down the length of Mr Hull’s slender and beautiful throat. “I may return and make an offer once more. If I am refused, then I must depart forever and never bother you again.”
Ephraim’s heart leapt into his throat. In a voice of forced calm, he asked, “Lofthouse knows?”
“He has known for some time, sir.”
Ephraim hardly knew what to make of that. “Lofthouse said he thought your offer a sincere one.”
“It is.”
Ephraim knew still less what to make of that. He beheld his clerk sitting before him—his broad and tall frame hunched in onitself over his tea; his black hair tumbling in all directions in the wake of his hat, tousled as if by sleep or something more; biting his perfect lip beneath his beard as his enormous dark eyes fixed Ephraim with curious uncertainty. If all this was offered up to him in all sincerity, then…
But that was absurd.
Ephraim cleared his throat and stirred his tea. “I’ve no wish to take advantage of a young gentleman and ruin all his prospects.”
“If I may be so bold as to ask, sir,” said Mr Hull. “How old do you think I am?”
Ephraim would have very much preferred to demur. However, he couldn’t escape the piercing gaze of those dark eyes. “Nearer to thirty than forty, surely.”
Mr Hull smiled knowingly.
Ephraim furrowed his brow. “You will shock me very much if you claim anything above five-and-thirty.”
Mr Hull smiled still. “Then I shall make no claims.”
Ephraim didn’t know what to make of that.
“Mr Lofthouse told me you would appreciate honesty,” said Mr Hull. He hesitated, then added, “I would like to show you how I truly look.”
Ephraim had known that beard was too good to be true. He waited for Mr Hull to peel it off his jaw and reveal it as a mere fur and wax contrivance.
Yet Mr Hull did not reach for his beard. Instead he closed his eyes and breathed deep.
His form shivered—as if he were the mere reflection of himself in water and a stone had dropped into the stillness, sending ripples across the surface.
And in the wake of these ripples emerged something unlike Ephraim had ever seen.
The beard remained. Several other additional details, however, appeared.
For one, the shade of his skin had transformed from a pale peach to a slate blue dappled with silvery-white. His ears had turned into those of a goat, hanging down in the shape of bells or lilies, and covered in blue velvet. His black hair acquired a blue sheen, and amidst his curls emerged a pair of spiraling ridged horns.
Something flickered in the corner of Ephraim’s vision, and he tore his gaze away from those self-same warm dark eyes that had captivated him the very moment they first met his own, to find a blue tail tufted with blue-black fur waving idly back and forth like a cat’s. It drew his notice further down, where he saw not the customary boots poking out beneath the hems of Mr Hull’s trouser legs, but a pair of blue-black cloven hooves.
Ephraim’s heart leapt into his throat. His breath came shallow around it. Before he could speak even a syllable of all he felt, the room spun, and he fell sideways into darkness.
