What hedidknow was that this morning had gone horribly wrong several times, that most of the ways they’d gone wrong had been his fault, and that Liberty Lennox was likely spitting mad.
He wondered if she was still wearing that red dress.
He frowned.
He wondered if she was still wide-eyed and batting her lashes like a vapid ninny, practicing her Xandine feints in his absence. Or if perhaps she was just pacing a ditch into the floorboards of Starling’s Rest, her hands in claws, as she muttered over the happenings of the early hours.
It turned out neither was true.
He found her seated in the parlor, opposite Hattie Selwyn, with a parcel between the two of them full of purchases from Miss Persephone’s Oddities and Curiosities. She was back in her normal clothing and appeared calm as you please.
Both women looked up at him in surprise as he walked in, though Hattie did give a little gasp and cover her mouth.
“Is it that bad?” he asked her, frowning.
She nodded, fingers still glued to her lips.
One could always count on Hattie to tell you true.
“There’s more salve on the mantel,” Libba said without looking up from the box in her lap. “Be liberal with it, especially on your lip.”
“Yes, madam,” he replied tartly, but he turned to obey anyhow.
“Oh!” Hattie exclaimed, reaching out to accept another small tin from Libba’s cache. “Sour drops! I haven’t had these since I visited Iberia! The lime ones are the best.”
“I like the grapefruit,” Libba replied. “Honestly, I thought you’d be most excited over the cashews.”
“My palate changes by the minute,” Hattie said seriously, her hand drifting to her belly. “Or the baby’s does, anyway.”
“Horrifying,” Libba commented mildly. “So you aren’t cross with me?”
“Oh, no, I am,” said Hattie, popping a little, green sweet into her mouth and sighing like it had just relieved a decade of pain. “It just doesn’t matter very much in the face of sugar and acid.”
She opened her eyes, her teeth crunching down on the little candy, and focused them on Jasper, who was dabbing the salve on his lip, watching this all with a wary fascination. Her eyes were wide and guileless and she blinked them, taking in his new scratches over the puffy bruises.
“I am cross with you too, Mr. Townsend,” she said softly. “You ought to know that.”
“Me?!” he said, immediately wincing at the way it stretched his sliced lip. “What did I do?”
At that, Libba finally set her box aside and, ever so slowly, turned to stare at him.
It was both women observing him with wide-eyed incredulity that brought him up to speed, his cheeks heating again. “Oh,” he said. “Right.”
“Hm,” said Hattie, giving him a once-over with those unsettling eyes, the color of freshly polished bronze. “I will help you, anyhow. It sounds like this morning made a fine mess of things.”
He winced and nodded, dragging up another fingerful of salve for the hatch mark on his throat. “Well, at least I’ll have a few days to heal before we try again.”
Libba blinked. “Yes,” she said grudgingly. “I suppose that is true. I am just vexed that I didn’t account for further injury. However, you did behave heroically in an organic fashion that we could not have planned for even if we had tried, so that is something. And clearly, it was in a manner important to the woman you wish to woo.”
“It was?” he said, salve-glossed finger hovering over his cuts. “How so?”
She sighed, rolling her eyes. “The cats, you fool. She obviously loves the cats. And you saved them from drowning.”
“Cats can swim,” Hattie said serenely, fishing through a clicking collision of hard candies with a single finger on the hunt for another one to her liking. “It does not sound like you gave them a chance to.”
“It’s the wet dock,” he said defensively, his eyes falling curiously to that tin of sweets despite himself. “It’s very deep. Might I have one of—?”
“No,” Hattie sang, plucking out her treasure. “Candies are for good children.”
