“Why, that’s fantastic news. Congratulations!” Thom said, and Frannie turned to find Reve colored all over in pinks and fuchsia, a full-body blush of joy.
“What’s happened?”
“I shall be leasing ze haberdashery next door to Maisie’s. For my shop,” Reve said. “Monsieur Halifax will take ze upstairs for his clockmaking, and I’ll take ze downstairs, a showroom in front and a workroom in back.”
“What lovely news! Reve, darling, I’m so happy for you!” Frannie surprised herself by folding the daimon woman into a warm hug. Daimons were known for affecting less clothing, as Bludmen didn’t care for their blood, and it was strange to feel the heat of Reve’s arms against her own thick jacket. Reve wore mostly ruffled vests and tight breeches when not on the street, with a slit in back for her tail. The first time Frannie had seen daimons as a child, she had been frightened. But she knew that Reve’s reputation as a popular costumer would be a positive force for business. Frannie immediately began to think of what sort of pet she could offer as a shop-warming gift.
“Was there another reason you stopped by? I’m terribly happy for you, dear, but it’s not often I find you in the alley.”
Reve looked down, her long fingers rippling over in a cacophony of colors that made Frannie a little dizzy.
“Your lodger. The musician. ’E is here?”
“Called away on emergency, or so his note said. Why?”
“He is trouble,” Reve said simply, her eyebrows raised in entreaty.
“Maisie mentioned that. Trouble how?”
“I get zis feeling.” She shrugged, green and pink rippling over her arms and the triangle of throat above her ruffled vest. “ ’E has a good heart, but zere is something below, something dark. There is more than wine in his flask. Zey say that artistic genius is just a shade of madness, you know. He’s no good for you, of that I am sure.”
Thom cleared his throat, and Frannie looked down, pulling at a loose string on her sleeve.
“He wasn’t under consideration,” Frannie said, very proper. “Just another lost thing taken in. Someone had bludgeoned him, for goodness sake. And he looks . . .”
“So much like Bertram. But ’e isn’t Bertram, ma chère. You must let it go.”
Reve’s hand was light on her back as Thom took a step forward. “Is she in danger, then?” he asked softly.
Reve gave a graceful shrug. “Who can say what the future holds? I am not, as zey say, that sort of daimon. But when he is here, the air tastes of pepper, of a sneeze waiting to happen at ze most inconvenient time. Frannie’s world is normally sweet and warm, like baking bread.” She cocked her head at him, closing her eyes to inhale. “Oh, la. And zis one smells of salt and butter.”
“Tea, anyone?” Frannie squeaked upon seeing the thoughtful, pleased smile on Thom’s lips.
“Tea would be lovely,” Reve said, her skin shivering over in a clear, pale green as her dark eyes went dreamy. “Bertram was a bit like tea with ginger biscuits. But his friend who was always about at the end, he was like absinthe. Like something that makes you forget, and then you never forget. What was his name?”
“Charles,” Frannie murmured without thinking, because she was lost in her memories, spurred on by Reve’s musings. The daimon was right. Charles had been very much like absinthe—heady, dizzying, overpowering, and then one woke up empty and alone. Or one never awoke at all.
“Frannie? Lass, are ye well?”
Thom’s hand on her arm brought her back to the present. She caught her breath and looked madly around the kitchen, trying to ground herself in the little paradise she’d made of her home and shop.
“I need a moment. Reve, will you excuse me?”
Reve nodded, her skin going a warm blue that felt like an apology. Thom nodded, too, but looked very much as if he wanted to follow her through the parlor and back into the closed-up shop.
Everything was where it belonged. Everything was as it should be. And yet she was deeply unsettled. She walked slowly along the wall of cages, trailing a gloved hand over the bars and setting them to sway lightly in her wake. The little bright birds hopped about, the larger ones eyeing her curiously.
“Crackers, miss,” said an old gray parrot, which she ignored.
The puppies were all asleep in their bin, the kittens batting about a long feather that looked as if it could have come from one of Casper’s fancier hats. She almost panicked when she realized that one of the kittens was missing, before remembering that Filbert was probably asleep on her rug, where she’d left him that morning, safe in her room with fresh food and a box of sand. Approaching the glass jar on the counter warily, she noted that the green snake was wound up perfectly like a rope, its head resting on its back, its eyes wide open and as shiny as buttons painted with poison.
She’d all but locked herself up, after what happened with Charles and Bertram. She’d sent her assistant away, trimmed the shop hours, and made it so that everything could be done by herself, alone. Even if one of her strays had bitten her back, and a human one at that, she didn’t stop throwing herself into the lost creatures that found their way to her doorstep—Charles couldn’t kill that part of her.
Having lost one future, she hadn’t let herself get her hopes up again, only to have them destroyed. But now, looking at the old parrot’s patchy feathers and noting the places where the bricks needed repainting, she finally let the weight of her world go, for just a moment. Growing old among other people’s pets was a lonely sort of comfort. A cowardly sort of comfort.
She flicked the glass in front of the snake’s face.
She wasn’t a cowardly sort of girl.
And so, when Thom came through the door, carefully carrying a teacup and saucer dwarfed by his large hands, she reached up to peck him on the cheek.
A smile bloomed over his face, and he asked, “What was that for?”
“The tea, of course.”
“I hope it’s good tea, then.”
“It will be.”
9
Thom left soon after that. After a yawn that cracked his jaw, Frannie insisted on it.
“We can’t have you falling asleep at the hose,” Frannie said, and he reluctantly agreed, leaving her with a belly full of her favorite tea and work to do.
She was helping a shady-looking daimon choose between two crows when the bell over the door rang. Casper strolled into the room with an armful of hothouse flowers, looking like a million coppers. With a dazzling smile on his face and perfectly tumbled hair, he pulled up a stool and laid the ribbon-tied bouquet of roses on the counter. Frannie could feel his gaze, and if she had been a bird, her feathers would have ruffled. The nerve of the man, to stare at her like a piece of meat while she was doing business, and after she had already told him off!
After convincing her customer that the most recently returned crow would make an excellent familiar, she accepted his payment and tucked it into her bodice. The crow squawked indignantly as the daimon carried out its swinging cage, and Frannie turned to narrow her eyes at the sharply dressed fellow posing by the green snake in the jar.
“Your emergency was flowers?”
His blue eyes smoldered, dancing with flames that heated her cheeks. “Let’s just say it was a bad day for my condition. I got what I needed, and I’m fine now. The flowers are the apology. For the emergency.”
“You can’t charm your way out of everything, you know.”
He sauntered over, his eyes keen and his mouth curved up with a confident smile. “I might surprise you.”
The look of disdain she threw at him would have frozen and shattered a man with less ego. But not Casper. He stepped a little too close, close enough for her to smell an undercurrent of red wine and expensive scent; the unfamiliar combination left her half intrigued and half sick, and she took a step back.
“Speaking of which, I’m looking forward to seeing you Friday night,” he said, giving her his best dimpled smile and ignoring her obvious discomfort. “It should be t
he finest box in the house.”
Frannie grimaced. “Wait—you’ll be in the box? I thought you’d be onstage. Isn’t that how it typically works?”
He barely brushed her sleeve on his way to the desk, and she drew back her arm, overwhelmed by the strange signals her brain was sending. Her lodger had an undeniable animal attraction and knew how to use his words and his body to best effect. But, as Reve had said, something was wrong underneath the surface. And she still couldn’t look at him without seeing Bertram.
“I’ll be onstage for the first half, for the harpsichord dueling. And I expect I’ll win and spend the second half onstage as well. But I have something planned for the intermission. Celebratory champagne, cheese, imported oysters. Have any favorites?” He raised his eyebrows and cocked his head invitingly.
Panicking, Frannie turned away. When she’d found him on the street, half dead, she hadn’t expected to keep him alive, much less around. Normally, she could shut down a cad with a few sharp words, but there was something honest and sweet about Casper, despite his vanity and pride and the danger lurking underneath. She had the idea that he really, truly did hope to win her over, even if he was going about it all wrong and didn’t have a Bludman’s chance in the sea.
“I didn’t know it was like that. I invited someone else along,” she said quietly.
Casper half laughed, half choked.
“That grizzly bear of a fireman? You invited him to share the Maestro’s box at the Vauxhall Theater? I mean, you know the Magistrate will be there, right? I was going to introduce you to him.”
“Casper, I’ve told you from the start that I . . . I’m not . . . that is . . .”
“I’m not your type, huh? You don’t like fantastically rich guys on the verge of being appointed to the London Opera?”
“It’s not that.”
“Is it because I was covered in puke the first time you saw me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You were concussed.”
He looked down, and his hair fell over his face. Pushing it back, he gazed into her eyes.
Accustomed to animals as she was, she could see something wounded and dangerous, deep in his heart.
“Is it because of what I am, because of what’s happening to me?”
“What do you mean?”
He chuckled ruefully and rubbed a glove over his stubbled jaw. “No, of course not. How could you know? No one does.”
He looked so hangdog that her heart went out to him. She bridged the gap between them, one hand on his brushed-velvet sleeve. “Don’t take it personal, eh? You’re a fancy lad, and I’m just a regular ol’ London shopkeep with grit in her shoes and dog treats in her pockets. What do you want with me, anyway?”
He stared at her hand, at the stained and nearly shredded leather glove that no girl in her right mind would wear out on the town. “The day you found me, you were like an angel. The sun here is so weak I can barely feel it on my skin. But it lit up behind you like a halo. Your smile was so warm, and you smelled like warm milk and puppies and the right kind of cookies. All the women I’ve met here are these empty, grabbing harpies. They want money and jewels and riches. They want to claw their way to the top. But you just want to take care of things. That’s very attractive.”
He was still staring at her glove, so she lightly patted his cheek. “I take it you’ve read Sagacity and Susceptibility?”
“Sort of.” A strange twinkle in his eye confirmed it, though.
“When Maryann twisted her ankle, she preferred Mr. Willowbee’s wild bouquet to the Colonel’s hothouse roses, did she not?”
His mouth twisted up in wariness. “She did.”
“And later, what happened to the Colonel?”
Casper looked confused. “Something different from what I remember, probably.”
“He hung himself in sadness after Willowbee and Maryann eloped.” She shook her head sadly. “Don’t try so hard, eh?”
“So you’re still bringing the fireman?”
“If I do, are you going to hang yourself?”
He snorted a laugh, which made him look five years younger and a hundred times more attractive. For just a moment, Frannie tried to picture what her life would be like if she opened her heart to Casper and his high-flying world. Parties, fashionable dresses, glasses of champagne, the finest horseless carriages, and gloves made of actual silk. She could see herself, laughing, sparkling, being adored. Like a princess.
The image terrified her. Might as well put a crow in a bonnet and ask it to sing.
“Suicide? No. I favor longer, less dramatic methods of self-sabotage, darlin’. Enjoy the flowers. See you tomorrow night, and your little fireman, too.”
He gave her a last, long, smoldering look that told her plainly enough that he wasn’t giving up, and what’s more, he had something up his sleeve.
Fine. Let him play at courting. She might laugh, but as a savior of lost things, she sensed the recklessness within him. Reve was right. Casper was bad news—to himself, if no one else.
Frannie closed up shop early on Friday night. She’d gotten in a new shipment of parrots, and they were all crowded together in a traveling cage like old biddies on a train, frightened of foreigners. By the time they were all fed and soothed, she didn’t have the energy left to sell canaries to miners and parakeets to carriage drivers. As she flipped the sign to “Closed,” she realized that her hours had been more sporadic in the last week than in all of the previous year combined, and she didn’t know whether this was good or bad. She also had hope for the first time and a reason to wake up in the morning besides keeping the kittens alive. And she couldn’t deny, even to herself, that the pleasant flips in her stomach whenever Thom walked through the door weren’t something she was willing to give up just for the sake of regular work hours.
She had decided to live a quiet, comfortable, safe life. Whether she had been punishing herself for what had happened to Bertram or hiding from the future, she didn’t know. But excitement held a new appeal, now that she’d tasted it.
Her stomach felt fizzy with anticipation as she skipped upstairs to her room. The dress was there on its form, pressed and fluffed to the best of her ability. She decided right then that she would need to talk with Reve about her wardrobe, as the solid, serviceable tweed she’d inherited had begun to feel less like a comfort and more like a cage. She would never be an ornamental sort of girl, but at the very least, she could be presentable. Maybe Thom wouldn’t notice. Then again, maybe he would.
Button by button, she shucked off the tweed until she stood in just her petticoats and corset, once white but now faded to the color of cold tea. Ignoring the chill in her heart, she sought the full-length mirror in Bertram’s old room and dragged it into her own bedroom, settling it in the light of the new window. Standing before it, she took stock of herself for the first time in several years.
When Charles had first started hanging around with Bertram—that was when she had learned to curl her hair with tongs and tighten the middle bit of her corset on purpose. She had giggled with Reve and some of Maisie’s other girls, taking tips from the more worldly Parisian daimons on how to catch the eye of the debonair but ne’er-do-well Franchian lad with the curled mustache and high top hats. And caught his eye she had.
Look how that had turned out.
She shook her head. Things were different now. Not every man was Charles. Thank heavens.
As she passed in front of the window, the sunset stained her with a rainbow of light, and she smiled. She looked like a scarlet macaw for just a moment there, but even her fine new gown would make her more of a raven than a parrot. After carefully unbuttoning the skirt from her dress form, she stepped into it and admired the slick slide of taffeta up her stockings. The tweed kept her arms safe from avian talons, but it didn’t feel pretty, didn’t slither over her skin like the inky indigo of the unworn but long-kept dress.
The new style was different, too, with a separate skirt and bodice, which made it much easier
to get dressed on one’s own. The last time she had preened, she’d missed her mother’s patient hands. And she missed her still, of course. But left all alone with herself and her shop, she was the captain of her ship, and there were certain perks to that. For example, her mother would have insisted that she wear her hair up tonight in a quiet chignon befitting a merchant lass. Instead, she made one long braid in the Franchian style, the tail falling over her shoulder. She could only hope that Casper wouldn’t make good on his promise about meeting the Magistrate. The farther Frannie flew under official notice, the better.
Thom’s knock was so tentative that she barely heard it, despite the fact that she was waiting for it. She smoothed her hair behind her ears once more and lifted her skirt to keep it from the dust of the shop. Thinking of the snake incident, she checked the peek hole to make sure it was him. She smiled when she saw him brushing the top of his hat, a move she had also employed earlier in the evening upon finding spider webs in her old bonnet.
With a deep breath, she opened the door. She only worried for a moment about how he would see her, as she was utterly arrested to see him wearing another kilt, albeit a dark and sober one pinned neatly and topped by a soft white bag with long tails. It was strange, to be sure, but she couldn’t imagine any other costume that would suit him more. The deep navy jacket fit snugly, showing the breadth of his shoulders, a gray vest peeking out underneath. Even his stockings looked tidy and formal, and his boots were neatly polished.
“What a beautiful wee thing you are,” he said softly, and she felt herself flush with pleasure.
“You cut a fine figure yourself.”
“I hope ye don’t mind the kilt.” He looked down self-consciously. “I haven’t any fine trousers, and I haven’t worn this kilt in years, but it’s the best I could do. I know I’m not verra dashing, but . . .”
“Hush, now. I’m smiling, aren’t I?”
He looked up and mirrored her grin. “That ye are, lass. At least, I washed the soot out of my hair, eh? Now, shall I call a conveyance, or would ye care to walk?”