The Peculiar Pets of Miss Pleasance

by Delilah S. Dawson

  “I have my ways,” she said, enjoying his incredulity. For a quiet London lass in a dowdy tweed suit, she held quite a few secrets. As long as Thom never found his way to the roof, she didn’t have much to fear.

  “I’ve brought a bit of wood and glass and my kit. Mind if I bring it into the shop before we head upstairs to assess the damage? Never seen a city with such sticky fingers. They’d steal the hoses off the truck, if we weren’t careful.”

  He eased a cart through the door, careful of the old boards and wrapped bit of glass. Frannie locked the door behind him, an oddly intimate gesture in the dusky morning. It was even stranger when he followed her past the curtain and up the narrow steps to the upstairs hall and into her room. The last time a man had been in there, the ensuing kerfuffle had ended worse than badly.

  Thom went first to the window, his brow furrowing as he ran a leather-gloved finger over the jagged, fire-darkened remains of the glass.

  “I couldn’t really see the damage last night, but the Brigade didn’t do this. Did you break it trying to escape?”

  Frannie came closer but didn’t reach out to touch the thick, wavy glass. It wasn’t the newer, thinner glass that one could easily see through, but had been original to the house, too heavy to let in anything but a token bit of light.

  “I didn’t touch the glass. There was smoke everywhere, and the curtains were on fire. I didn’t even look, really. But it would have taken a lot of force to do this much damage, correct? It’s as thick as my thumb!”

  Thom looked out the window, mindful of the scorched shards as he scouted along the street below. Much to Frannie’s surprise, he dropped to his hands and knees and began to crawl around on the fire-blackened wood boards. She hadn’t installed her new curtains yet, and the light through the broken glass laid the room’s every fault bare. She was mortified when he stuck his head under the bed; surely the neglected dustbunnies were one step away from craving blood.

  When Thom emerged holding a crude device of charred metal and fabric, Frannie was more confused and embarrassed than concerned. After all, she hadn’t moved her bed a single time in her entire life, and she hadn’t spent much time poking around under there, either. Having grown up with a mortal fear of bludrats, hanging about under a pitch-dark bed wasn’t something that interested her.

  “Tell me, lass. D’ye have any enemies?”

  “Not to my knowledge.” She had many secrets, but no one knew about them. And if anyone did, setting her home and shop on fire would have rendered them useless, anyway. “What is that thing?”

  Thom stood, turning the object over in his dusty leather gloves. Although he held it easily in one large hand, when he gave it to her, she needed both hands to manage the size and weight of it.

  “An incendiary device.” She cocked her head at him and raised an eyebrow, a trick she had picked up from the parrots. He moved closer, his arm brushing hers, to point at a blackened, pointy part. “Bit like a fire lighter. See, here, where the bit of slate strikes the flint? My best guess is that someone threw it through your window while it was on fire. That would explain why the flames were concentrated on the curtains, aye?”

  Frannie handed it back to him, noting that for a fellow who seemed rustic and rough, his vocabulary was rather crisp. She stood before the window, the skin crawling on her neck as she thought about the only person who’d ever tried to hurt her. But this—this wasn’t his style. She was fairly certain it couldn’t be the neighbors, either. The building across the street was owned by a baker, and she knew the family well enough to be sure the device hadn’t originated there. In any case, the baker’s roof was sloped, not high and flat like her own.

  “It must have come from the street,” she said. “But why me? The shop’s worth nothing burned.”

  He shrugged, his shoulders stretching the gray coat. “Plenty of arson in this city, most of it never explained to my satisfaction. Did you sleep here last night?”

  She blushed and stared at the bed, which was stripped to an old, singed sheet over the striped mattress.

  “Of course ye didn’t. Good. Ye never know when they’ll try again. I’ll speak to the local Copper, make sure someone patrols this street at night. Have you considered barring the windows? Or setting a clockwork to guard?”

  “My family has been here for thirty years without a single problem. This part of town is still good.” Her glare dared him to disagree, but he only raised his eyebrows. “I’ve never felt unsafe before.” She swallowed, crossing her arms over her chest as she stared at the cold, charred incendiary device. Metal was so impersonal. “Not like this.”

  Thom set the device down on her bed and stepped closer. His hand half-lifted from his side, but in the end, he didn’t touch her.

  “You’re scared of something more than the fire, lass. What’s amiss?”

  She hugged herself and tried to smile, although it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

  “It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.”

  “Was it that rakehell with the floofy shirt? Because I’ll turn his face into liver.”

  She couldn’t help laughing, which surprised him. “He couldn’t hurt a fly, that one. Not my type, anyway. All bluster and no blood, as my father used to say.”

  His eyes were crow-sharp, considering. “So you two . . . aren’t involved?”

  “I took him in like a dying dog, and he’s paying me well to sleep in an empty room. That’s the depth of our involvement.” Looking up at him, she fluttered her eyelashes just a bit and said, “Why do you ask?”

  He cleared his throat and stepped closer still. Frannie couldn’t help responding to his closeness, to the bulk of him and a warmer-than-warm radiance that made her think of the sun shining on the ocean. He smelled a little like heather and violets and salt, and she could tell the sea had suited him. As much as something about Casper pushed her away, something about Thom beckoned her closer.

  She suddenly realized that she was focusing on his lips, barely parted, waiting for him to speak or kiss her or just keep breathing, near and warm and safe. It was possibly the first time in three years that she’d been close enough to touch a man and not wanted to bolt away and hide behind a locked door.

  “Ye like what ye see?” he whispered, his voice teasing and deep, and she looked up quickly to find his eyes dancing with humor.

  “I was waiting for you to answer the question,” she teased right back. “You were taking your time.”

  “Aye, well, all the best things take a bit of time. Best not to rush into things. Ye never know what you’ll— Oh, hell.”

  They’d been moving closer and closer all along, and he bridged the distance to kiss her, softly. His lips were warm and dry, settling firmly over hers as his hand splayed against her back to pull her closer. She stiffened, just a little, her nerves thrumming with forgotten sensation. He opened his mouth, his tongue seeking hers, and panic slammed into her heart. She gasped and bolted backward and tripped into his cart like a complete goose.

  “I’m sorry, lass. I thought—”

  But she was already downstairs, pulling a corgi pup into her lap and trying to remember how to breathe.

  “I’ll just . . . take care of the window, aye?” he yelled from upstairs, and she nodded to the empty room.

  Let him fix the window and the bed. Fixing Frannie was all but impossible.

  7

  Frannie went about her day in a muddle, running business as usual as the sounds of hammering and sawing drifted down the stairs. One of the parakeets had snagged a talon while lost in the streets, and catching it and touching the wound with iodine took the better part of the morning. Her thoughts churned all the while, trying to tease the present from the past, possibility from pain. She had known she was damaged, but she hadn’t known how very deeply the rot ran until the kiss that first thrilled her turned to torture. And poor Thom had looked so . . . hurt. Not that she had rejected him—that he had caused her pain.

  She wasn’t ready to explain he
rself, so she did the next-best thing: she baked. In between customers, she bustled around the kitchen attached to the parlor, carefully cracking eggs and measuring out flour and sugar as her mother had always done when nervous, despite the pet shop’s ongoing agreement with the baker across the street. Around lunchtime, she flipped the sign on the door, locked it, and headed upstairs with a heavy tray.

  Thom looked up as she stood in the doorway, a wobbling smile on her face.

  “Hungry?” she said too brightly.

  He stilled to watch her, his gaze cautious but warm. “Verra, thanks.”

  She was surprised that he hadn’t made more progress in five hours alone. She’d heard a little bit of sawing, a little bit of hammering, but the room was still dark, a curtain covering the window.

  Wait. It was her new curtain, which she had left folded neatly on the table. Her bed was made, the corners neat. The bright blue floor had been swept, the charred wood and ashes removed. Good gracious, the man had put everything to rights!

  “The bed is fixed,” he said softly, holding up the side of the blanket to show shining new wood where charred, ancient boards had been.

  “My. You do work fast.” She set the tray on the now empty table and put up a hand to touch the curtain, but he grinned and gestured for her to move back.

  “Wait. The grand reveal.”

  Careful to give her space, careful not to touch her again, he waited for her to step away before whipping the curtain aside. When she gasped this time, it was with happiness.

  “Just a little something I found,” he said.

  “So you’re a sailor, a firefighter, a handyman . . . and a miracle worker?”

  “I get around.”

  She put a finger to the dimpled glass. It was nothing special, as windows went. Two simple panes of thick glass, but clean and bright and thin enough to show her the world outside, which the old window had never done.

  Without Thom, she would have had to pay someone to board the window over with scavenged wood. It would have been months before she had saved up enough money to pay someone else to install the cheapest glass available.

  “It doesn’t seem like words are enough, but thank you,” she said.

  Although Thom seemed on the verge of stepping closer, he held himself away. She felt his eyes on her, careful and taking her measure. He had the same quiet, contained comfort she had cultivated when taming small birds. They were excitable, flighty, and untrusting, and they needed space, understanding, and time before they would step up onto her finger. Frannie smiled to herself. So she was more like a sparrow than she’d thought, then. And he was more patient than she had expected. She suddenly realized that she had to see him again.

  “Do you like music?”

  The question caught him off-guard, and he warily said, “I don’t dislike it.”

  He glanced about the room, probably looking for a gramophone or some other modern contraption for enjoying music in the home—and forcing it on unwitting victims. But her bedroom was a small, tidy spot, and he’d seen everything but the closet, so far as she knew. She narrowed her eyes at the door, wondering. But if he had opened it, she’d have heard the squeal of the hinges, and he would have had a few choice questions for her by now.

  “I’ve a box at the Vauxhall for Friday night and would appreciate an escort,” she began, and a small smile quirked his full lips.

  “I’m not really the theater type, lass,” he said. “Big brute like me.” But he was teasing, and she knew it. And liked it.

  “I’m not, either. But if someone’s running about throwing incendiary devices through my window, I’d be glad to have my own personal brute in tow. For safety, you understand.”

  The gleam in his eyes said he understood just fine, but he continued to play along. “Well, if it’s a public service, I can’t really say no, aye?”

  “I knew I could count on your altruism. You seem amenable to helping a lady in need.”

  “It’s no’ a habit, but I do make exceptions. And I doubt you’re helpless at all. Ye seem a very apt lass, to me. Running this place all alone, keeping up the creatures and sorting your own house. I was raised by just my mother, and she was worn ragged from the running of things. Ye do fine.”

  She couldn’t help blushing. It was hard work, but she’d honestly never considered anything else. What else could she have done when Bertram passed? Her parents were gone in a horseless-carriage accident, and all her wider family were dour, religious folk who had never supported the idea of a pet shop. When she’d turned down her grandmother’s offer that Frannie move in and act as maid, companion, and cook, that was the last she’d heard of the humorless biddy. She’d let no one close enough to see the truth of her life, not in a long time. Except Maisie, but their relationship was based on wisdom disguised as grumbled complaints. And she never left her own courtyard, either.

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Thom. Please let me know what I owe you for your work and materials.”

  He glanced at the window, his mouth twisting. “I don’t think—”

  “Just enjoy your lunch and send me a bill, aye?”

  He grinned. “I’ll do that. Before the theater on Friday.”

  Later that afternoon, an urchin arrived bearing a letter and a mynah bird in a rough wooden cage. In the wobbly, loopy hand of a man accustomed to being at sea, it read:

  To: Miss Frannie Pleasance, Tamer of Beasts

  Bill for: Acts of Altruism

  Fee: One ticket to the theater

  From: Thomas Maccallan, Finder of Lost Things

  Frannie gave the courier a copper and tucked the note into her jacket pocket. She held her finger out, gratified when the mynah stepped up and ruffled its feathers. As soon as it was settled back in its usual cage, it said, “Naughty lad. Naughty lad, don’t eat that. She’s a pretty lass, no?”

  She couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day.

  The next morning, Casper swaggered down the stairs and into the pet shop, clearly not dressed for helping out with the muck. Then again, she hadn’t expected him to be, not after he’d overpaid her so generously.

  “You’re all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning, eh?”

  He looked up with a winning grin. “It’s recently been brought to my attention that I can come across as a bit disreputable. I’m trying to clean up my act.”

  “I’ll admit you look sharper without sick all over your shirt.”

  He winced and brushed a few stray feathers off his slightly-too-fine jacket. “That was one unfortunate incident that I’m going to blame on a concussion. I’m a talented, self-supporting male in my prime. A star on the rise.”

  “And a pet-shop assistant?”

  He clutched his chest and rolled his eyes. “Anything to impress a lady fair.”

  She rolled her eyes right back. “You’re not my type, lad.”

  “I’ll keep trying.”

  “Please don’t.”

  She spun on her heel, and he put a hand on her arm as she passed. “Frannie, come on—”

  Smacking his hand away, she balled her fists and turned on him. “Who do you think you are? With your grins and your pretty words and your money? Do you think you can buy me, Casper Sterling?”

  The look of utter confusion and mortification on his face made her slightly less angry. “Buy you? God, no. I just . . . have kind of a crush on you.”

  “A crush?” She snorted. “You’ve known me for three days, and most of that time, you were drunk or asleep. Just because I dragged you out of the gutter doesn’t mean you can grab me and start asking favors.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “What’s it like, then?”

  Casper walked to the counter, hopping up to sit on her ledger and receiving another death glare for his trouble. “Things just don’t seem to work in London the way they work elsewhere. How does a guy show polite interest in a nice girl here? I keep mucking it up.”

  “I saw the rouge stains on your chest, lad.
Something tells me you know exactly what you’re doing.”

  It was his turn to snort and shake his head. “There’s a certain kind of woman who throws herself at me. I know how to handle that, but it’s never serious. It’s never real. This is the second time I’ve told a girl here I genuinely liked her, and she’s treated me like I’m a total ass.” He looked at his bare fingers with confusion. “Why do the good girls always say no?”

  Frannie chuckled and sighed, punching him lightly on the arm in a sisterly fashion. “Saying no to fellows like you is what keeps us good girls good.”

  “But what if I want to be good, too?”

  She stood back to look him up and down.

  He made a token fuss at his cravat, held his arms out wide, and smiled a winning, dimpled smile.

  “You’re not good. You might want to be, but you’re reckless and foolish and smooth and sly. And any girl worth her salt will notice and run away.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe you’re asking the wrong person.” She raised her eyebrows at him, and he looked down as if the answers were written on the floor.

  As Frannie headed upstairs on an imaginary errand, she realized that she knew exactly what Casper’s problem was. He may have thought he wanted to be good, but he was a rake at heart. A dashing devil with a dimpled smile and a hunger for more than Frannie and her quiet life could provide. A girl knew the signs of a fellow who would always be looking over his shoulder for something new, once such a man had preyed upon her. If she let herself get attached to him, he would hurt her. So, as with most of the creatures in her pet shop, she wouldn’t even dream of getting attached.

  8

  Upstairs in her room, she pulled back the curtains a little more, glad for the light. The mirror proved that she was the same Frannie as ever, even if something about her had attracted two lads in the same week. She was a pretty lass, to be sure. But with a very busy job and the situation with Bertram, she hadn’t given much thought to finding love.