Page 15 of Hazard a Guest
“Get off my barman, Freddy,” came Ember Donnelly’s voice from a mezzanine above, sending Cresson’s heart directly into his jaw. “He’s busy.”
“He’s not too busy for me,” Freddy called back, grinning with perhaps the first genuine joy Joe had seen on his face since he’d met him, some three years prior. “Here, give me one of those brushes, I’ll assist!”
Jones looked skeptical but shuffled off to do just that.
“The coach is late,” Joe offered, probably too quietly for anyone to hear him.
Freddy shouted, “I love the new floors!” before he could finish the final word anyway.
“D’you want coffee, Mr. Cresson?” Ember called down, leaning over the brass railing of the mezzanine balcony above. “I’ve a pot up here! Jones! Grab some more crumpets, please!”
“Oh, I …” Joe managed, craning his neck back to look up at her with an odd anxiety tugging at his fingers and toes.
She smiled down at him and he crumpled, feeling his body floating toward the stairs before he’d made any sort of conscious decision to ascend them.
“That’s a good man,” she said when he reached the top, handing him an already-prepared cup. “Sorry about the coach. Everyone is always late around here.”
Mr. Jones appeared so suddenly behind him that Joe felt his soul briefly flee his body, fling itself around the whole of Europe, and return with a slam. He cleared his throat in an attempt to cover it and chose a surface to throw himself upon so that he could not humiliate himself further.
A plate of hot crumpets was deposited in front of him, the pat of butter on the side already melting into the porous embrace of thebread. Three strips of bacon also had found their way onto the plate, beckoning him closer.
Belowstairs, Freddy had apparently already taken up his tiny wire brush with the gusto of a tourney knight, chattering at Jones with all his new housekeeping skills with questions like “But have you tried orange peel in the wood oil?” and “Cold water is better for rinsing, anyhow. Fewer spots!”
Oddly, even with Ember Donnelly settling alarmingly near him on the chaise, smelling of anise and wearing a devastatingly well-cut riding kit, he felt a thrum of relief.
He should be burning at the ears, stammering, and looking to escape, he knew, but instead he felt … reassured? The clanging below, the overlapping conversation, and the scents of brass polish and hot bread and coffee were stroking his concerns away with the invisible fingers of familiarity.
This place, he realized, this gambling hell … it felt like being back in Lisbon.
“You’re smiling,” observed Ember, looking delighted by it. “Are you smiling for me?”
He released a self-conscious little gust of breath, lifting the gold-rimmed teacup to his lips to cloak his bashfulness with coffee. “I was just realizing how different the inside of this place is to the outside,” he said. “Everything out there is so …”
“Haunted?” she offered with a chuckle. “It’s damned eerie. I hated it at first too. My own flat is only a few streets down, but close enough to Soho that I can escape to sanity when I need to.”
“That fruit stand on the corner…”
“Ah,” she laughed in earnest. “My mam would burn the whole block down if she saw that place. I hear what you’re saying, Mr. Cresson. You don’t even need to say it.”
He considered her, wondering why it surprised him that she might have a mother who hated this luxury and pomp. She had been wealthy the whole time he’d known her, a powerful businesswoman in a world that didn’t quite want her.
It was what made him weak for her. That and the freckles.
“My mother wouldn’t allow herself the satisfaction of arson,” he offered, surprised at how steady he sounded. “But she’d find a donkey, drag it through the muddiest riverbank she could find, and then trot it through the avenues until she’d upset as many of the locals as possible. I know because I saw her do it once.”
Ember looked shocked.
“Twice,” he amended, with a little chuckle of remembrance. “Twice, actually.”
“We ought to ensure our mothers never meet,” she returned with a sparkle of surprised pleasure, “for the safety of poor St. James.”
“Perhaps that’s all the more reason they should be acquainted,” he answered, winning from her a tittering laugh that felt like a cache of gold coins.
“Mr. Cresson!” she chided, clearly enjoying this exchange.
They looked at one another for a sustained, taut little moment, both holding those dainty teacups, both softly smiling over the prospect.
“Coach is here!” called Freddy from below them, oblivious to the violence his loud, disruptive call had just done to Joe Cresson’s soul. “Shall I load us up?”
