Luna released a cold breath, one finger tracing first theNthen theG, feeling the silken texture of thread. She’d meant to wash and return his handkerchief, but for some reason she’d held onto it. A memento of that day when the tea leaves in the bottom of her morning cuppa had promised a change of fortune.
That change of fortune had come in the guise of Nigel Grimm.
A strange, prickly feeling worked its way through Luna’s veins and settled in her gut. Howfoolishshe felt. So completely foolish.
“He’s a sorcerer,” she whispered. Why couldn’t she seem to get that thought through her head? He wasn’t justanysorcerer either, but a Dark Sorcerer. The last man in the world she ought to be having prickly-sick feelings over. If he were to find out who she truly was, how quickly would the man she believed she knew vanish into that image of seven-foot-tall whorling power and terror?
Luna bit her lip hard. “He can’t do that now, though,” she reminded herself. “He pledged the Sovereign Troth. You’re safe. From him.”
That was no comfort, however. Because she didn’t want toneedto be safe from him. She wanted to trust him. Fully. Completely. Because shehadtrusted him all this time. Even when he’d revealed the secret of Garden, even when he’d openedthe front of his shirt and showed her that ugly heptagram tattoo emblazoned on his chest. She’d known then that he was more than he appeared. She’d known then that she should, by rights, fear him and flee.
But she hadn’t.
She just couldn’t fear Mr. Grimm. NotherMr. Grimm.
“He’s not yours,” Luna reminded herself firmly, crumpling the handkerchief into a ball in her fist. “He’shers.”
Deep in her mind, she heard again the timbre of his voice when, lying unconscious in her lap, he’d spoken that name.
“I’m sorry, Janet.”
How desperate he’d sounded. So desperate and so sad.
This, then, was the secret to that great sorrow which clung to his soul so profoundly. Not the death of his father as Luna had always believed. No. Janet.The woman he loved. Slain by the Shadowbane Lady. She haunted him still and . . . and Luna knew that, even were she foolish enough to let herselffeelcertain things for her employer, it wouldn’t matter. His heart belonged elsewhere.
That’s why he hadn’t kissed her that night behind the counter.
That’s why he didn’t dance with her on her birthday.
That’s why every time shethoughtperhaps something drew them together, he always pushed her away again.
Janet.The woman he loved. And lost.
“You’ve got to stop this nonsense,” Luna whispered, spreading the crumpled handkerchief on her lap once more. “You’ve got to put him out of your mind.”
“Bootblack Alley, miss,” the cabbie said abruptly.
The taxi lurched to a stop. Like all the other cabbies, this one refused to actually turn down Bootblack and carry her to Mrs. Boggs’s doorstep. Luna didn’t press the issue. “Thank you,” she murmured and scrambled out. The taxi pulled away, and she began the hike down the dark street. Hopefully none ofthe lowlifes lurking in the shadows decided to make a grab for her purse. They’d be sorely disappointed if they did; there was nothing in it but lipstick.
Mr. Grimm’s handkerchief she kept knotted tight in her other hand.
“I’ll give it back to him. Tomorrow,” she said out loud as she stepped from slushy snow-pile to slushy snow-pile. She wasn’t going to act like some sort of drippy heroine from one of Auntie Arabella’s silly romance novels, weeping over his hankie like he was her long-lost lover. Because he wasn’t. He was just her boss. Nothing more.
Her sweet, kind, funny, considerate, gentlemanly boss.
Whousuallyremembered to add the dibble-dab to her pot of orange llarmi.
Weaving between snowdrifts, muck, and piles of garbage, Luna finally achieved Mrs. Boggs’s icy doorstep. The door was unlocked; Mrs. Boggs was due to visit her invalid sister tonight and, though she always left strict command for regular curfew to be enforced, no one paid any attention. Luna walked in to a chorus of yapping terriers. “Shoo,” she told them, not wanting them to put runs in her one nice pair of stockings, practically the only item of this ensemble that was hers. Lifting the edge of her emerald skirt, she hastened upstairs. Jazzy music oozed from Suella’s portable radio on the third floor, and Luna recognized the all-too familiar strains of “A Rose in the Rain” on the lips of a mellow-voiced crooner.
“If only you’d see, beneath layers of time,
The love that I carry, a bittersweet rhyme.
But dreams slip away as night turns to dawn,
And I’m left here to mourn what was never my song.
Oh, love! Like a rose in the rain,
