Blood drained from her withered old face. She shivered from head to toe, but backed away from the door into her swarm of terriers. These were all quite cowed and tucked their little nub tails, some of them retreating up the passage, others diving under their mistress’s skirts. “You can wait in the third-floor parlor,” Mrs. Boggs said, holding the door for Nigel as he stepped through. “Second door on the right. And you’renotto go poking into any of the girls’ rooms! My borders arerespectablemisses and will not welcome the intrusion.”
“Your girls’ reputations will remain unthreatened this evening, Mrs. Boggs,” Nigel said, and turned a glinting eye her way. “Ofthat, at least, you needn’t fear.”
Pleased by the last look of quivering terror she shot him, he strode on down the gloomy passage, found the staircase, and began his ascent. He remembered the way well enough from the last time he was here and mounted the first floor at a quick, sure pace. As he made his way to the second, however, the bravado with which he had faced the redoubtable Mrs. Boggs faded somewhat. His heart began to hammer in his ears.
Oh gods. What was hedoinghere?
It had been such a long, long time since he’d last asked a girl out. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually done so. How pathetic was that? He was with Jastira for so many years, but she had been the one to crook her finger his way. All he’d done was leap up and follow at her bidding, no pursuit needed. Before that? He remembered cherishing a grand and secret passion for the beauteous Miss Calista Quick back in undergrad, a dream never realized for numerous reasons (not least of them being that she utterly despised him).
For the most part, he’d avoided women, truth be told. Feminine mystique was an unknown and perilous quantity. If he was going to risk life and limb delving into the Great Enigmas of the Universe, he felt he’d have better luck with whatever lay beyond the boundaries of the Void than with anything in lipstick and a skirt.
Nigel gulped, but forced his feet to carry him round the bend to the third floor. A ladies’ man he was not, but he’d picked up a thing or two over the years. And it certainly wasn’t doing him any good to mope around his shop, pining after his shop girl. Not when Bryony Braithwait had made it so abundantly clear that she saw him as a likely prospect for a good time. Where she’d gotten that idea from, Nigel couldn’t begin to imagine. But if she was keen, why shouldn’t he take her up on it? Why shouldn’t he make an effort to get Luna out of his system? It didn’t mean he would stop being Luna’s friend, oh no. They would be friends. Good friends. And he would continue to watch over her, to make certain she was safe and provided for.
But maybe an evening spent in Bryony’s company was just what he needed to resolve some of these moreinconvenientfeelings.
“Or maybe you’re a gods-damned fool,” he muttered, as he stepped onto the third floor of Mrs. Boggs’s Boardinghouse for Young Women of Good Character.
A long hall stretched before him, with many open doors yawning like hungry mouths. Women’s voices carried from these doorways and filled the atmosphere, along with a tremendous mingling of perfume and jazz music and a haze of cigarette smoke. “Edwina!” a voice called from one of the nearer chambers, “did you steal my lucky black brassiereagain?”
“I never did!” the presumed Edwina bellowed from a farther doorway. “You must have left it at Jerry’s!”
Nigel’s cheeks burned. He would much rather plunge into the Dire Dimensions than be lost to this altogetherfemalespace. But he was here now. Time to be a man and see it through.
With a quick hunch of his shoulders and ducking of his head, he darted through the second door on the left into the parlor. This was a small, shabby little chamber, stuffed with furniture that was probably the height of elegance a good fifty years prior, but was now quite battered and threadbare. There was a couch, a lounger, several over-stuffed armchairs, bookshelves packed with what looked to be “improving” reads, thick with dust. A young woman sprawled across the couch, one foot on the cushions, the other on the floor, her skirt hiked rather more than was altogether decent. She had a box of bonbons on her stomach and appeared to be listening to the noise emanating from a portable thaumatic radio propped on the spindly table behind her head.
Her eyes swiveled in their sockets at Nigel’s entrance, and she raised a carefully-drawn-on eyebrow. “I say,” she purred in modish tones, “are you what I think you are?”
Nigel blinked, frozen in the doorway. He turned the nosegay of marigolds around in his hands. “Erm. That depends. What do you think I am?”
She sat up, swinging her legs down and pulling her skirt over her knees. Popping another bonbon into her mouth, she chewedwhile studying him. Then: “You’re Luna Talbot’s boss. I saw you at the Year’s End party.”
“Did you?”
“You were making cow-eyes at Luna all night.” She swallowed contemplatively, then shook her head andtsked.“’Bout broke my heart.”
“Erm.”
“Suella.” She held out a hand, painted nails glittering in the lamplight. Nigel accepted it, shaking rather limply. “Bonbon?” she offered next, holding up the box.
“Thank you, no.”
“Your loss.” She shrugged and popped another into her mouth. “Luna isn’t here, you know,” she added, speaking around a full cheek.
“Yes, so I am informed.”
“You here to give her those?” A quick nod at the marigolds.
“Erm, no, actually.”
“Pity.” Suella rose in a sinuous uncoiling of long limbs and picked up her radio. “Well,” she said, “see ya around, Luna’s boss,” and sauntered past him into the hall.
Flushing, Nigel moved more deeply into the parlor and took a seat, very stiff and very awkward, in one of the equally stiff and awkward chairs. Without the radio in the room, there was nothing to block out the ongoing chatter of female voices in the hall.
“Hey, did I see amango into the parlor?” someone shouted.
“A man?No!”
“Really, I saw one!”
