“Does it?” He sounds surprised and holds out a hand, as if expecting to feel a drop. “I should’ve brought an umbrella.”
A laugh escapes my lips, a nervous sound. “I’m no weatherman.”
“No, you are not. But I have a feeling, a slight intuition, if you say it’s going to rain, the heavens had better just give up and drop their payload on us.” As if to illustrate his words, lightning flashes across the sky, and the skin on the back of my neck prickles.
I realize I am staring at him, mouth agape like a giant, ridiculous carp. It’s too late to save face, so I just close my mouth and shake the auburn nuisance out of my eyes.
Ardal’s smile turns mischievous. “All confessed, I did view the weather report before leaving my house tonight.”
That’s when I smack him in the shoulder, and he shakes with silent laughter. “You jerk.” But I’m smiling as well.
“Good timing,” he says to the sky, which booms back at him. “I think it’s going to miss us. So much for your forecast.”
A cool breeze brushes my shoulder. “Guess I shouldn’t quit my day job, huh?”
“Oh, I think you should quit it.” Is he teasing me again? He must be. I don’t get to find out, though, because he changes the subject. “So, what are you doing out all on your own this fine, rain-free evening?”
It’s like he twisted my arm behind my back. “All on your own.” I am, aren’t I? When I speak again, I try to keep the pain out of my voice. “Oh, taking a stroll.”
Ardal frowns. “You shouldn’t.”
“Shouldn’t what?” I think he’s teasing me again but soon realize he is serious. “What?”
“You may think cat-calling is where it’ll end but you don’t know—”
I laugh without humor. “Oh, those charmers a few minutes ago? Yeah, they weren’t cat-calling. It was just a harmless whistle.”
He stares at me, unmoved and stern. “You don’t know what a man is thinking when he does that.”
“Then enlighten me.” My tone is harsher than I mean it to be. Why are my feathers so easily ruffled today? I want to duck back inside and drink but stand my ground.
His fingers twitch. He looks not at me but over my shoulder.
I think it is someone standing behind me, but no, it’s only a breeze that has caught my hair and is twirling it about. “What?”
Ardal blinks himself out of a daze. “You wanted to know what a man thinks when he looks at you.”
I swallow, hard. “No, I wanted to know what a man thinks when he cat-calls—whistles. At a woman. Any woman.”
He puffs out his English cheeks and laughs a dry English laugh, bouncing on the balls of his feet like he’d rather be moving. One hand is still behind his back like he’s pushing back some secret. “The men who do that sort of thing, cat-calling, whistling, whatever you want to call it, are showing their lack of respect. And without respect for a fellow human being—well, without it, anything goes.”
The breeze whips some more at my hair as we stare at each other. “You’ve put a lot of thought into that,” I say, wanting no more awkward silences.
He nods. “It’s important to me.”
“So, you’ve never whistled at someone?”
“Well, no one is perfect. And besides . . .” He moves closer. “It is acceptable when you know the person, and she knows you.”
“How is it acceptable?”
“Well, for thing, you know the other person means no disrespect. You know the other’s intentions.”
“Do you?”
He is impossibly close. “Do you?”
I take a step back but cover the move by sticking a hand up in the air. “Did you feel that?”
“Yes, I did.” He’s swiping at his right eye. “Your hair, is it registered as a weapon?”
“Did it get you?”
“Yes, how could it not, with you letting it whip about?” he says in mock outrage. “Speaking of great dangers . . .”
Please, let’s not turn this into a safety lecture. “I’m fine. In fact, I think I’m going to go back in and—What is it?”
Ardal holds a tiny box in front of him, wrapped in emerald green paper. It is nestled just so in the palm of his hand, and he is offering it to me. When I don’t accept but continue to stare, he says, “This, my friend, is called a gift. You take it and you open it and you enjoy it, yes?”
“I know what a gift is.” I laugh but still don’t take it.
“Then why is it still sitting in the palm of my hand?”
I snatch it, my finger brushing the pads of his cold hands. Who has cold hands in August? I hold up the gift to my heart. “There? Happy now?”
He purses his lips. “Close. But happiness would mean you had opened it.” His eyes grow large. “Open it.”
For a split second I think about opening this gift from this strange man, but I freeze. “I can’t accept a gift from you. I didn’t get you anything.” I start to give it back, but he closes my hand around it.
“Ah, but it isn’t my special day.”
Again I am all open mouth and knocking knees. “How did you know?”
“Elementary, my dear Watson—mind if I call you that? The real Holmes never said that, you know.”
“Call me elementary?”
“No, I meant ‘Watson.’ You are anything but elementary. But I digress.” We have been standing here now for what seems like seconds, but must have been at least a quarter of an hour since I first stepped outside. The breeze is kicking up, and I do think it’s going to rain. He reads my body language right when he says, “Shall we take this inside?”
“Yes.” I start to lead the way back to my shop, but Ardal motions for me to join him under the shelter of his bookstore’s forest-green awning. The sign above proclaims its name to be “The Red Jam.” An odd name, but I am too niggled-at by something else to ask him about that. “How did you know it’s my birthday?” I repeat as he produces a key and leads me inside. It is cool and dark, but he makes no sign of turning on the lights.
“Your employer is rather careless.” He shoots me a sideways glance, concern written on his face. Maybe he thinks I’m nuts, but I have no idea how he knows. Unless . . .
Ringmaster remembered it was my birthday and told Ardal? I find this unlikely but remember the sad truth: Months ago, I’d circled the date in bright red ink, hoping Ringmaster would say something. When he didn’t, I wrote “Birthday – Scotch.” This calendar sits behind my workplace, and of course Ardal, who is bouncing on his toes again, saw it. Who could miss it?
“You shouldn’t have,” I say in the darkness.
“You shouldn’t say that until you’ve seen the gift.”
“How can I see it? It’s pitch-black,” I say, teasing.
Ardal taps a long finger to his chin, a movement I can just catch by the streetlights. “I could turn on the lights, but . . . once you see this shop, I’m afraid my paltry offering will be forgotten.” The tone of his voice is so serious, I can’t help but believe him and start glancing around. “Please. I am all anxiety.”
Brows drawn, I slip my finger through a perfect crease in the paper and start un-taping it. But when Ardal sighs, I go ahead and rip through the gift wrap and behold a tiny paper box. The box is pink and has the golden emblem of two needles and a spool stamped into it. “The Gilded Thread,” I read aloud. Heart racing—I haven’t had a gift in forever—I open the box with shaky, sweaty fingers and find of all things, a wooden thimble. It is so quaint and so cute that I smile and slip it onto my left thumb. When, I look up, Ardal is watching me for a reaction. “Thank you.” My voice is a murmur in the darkness.
“So you like it?”
“I love it.” The wood is a dark cherry, sanded out and oiled, not finished with varnish or stain. There are tiny roses carved around the lip. In short, it is gorgeous. But the dark is giving me an ache in my chest, and I’m getting jumpy. “Care to give me a tour?”
With a sigh, he reaches for the light switch, and the
room is bathed in amber. “Ta da.”
The thimble still on my thumb, I spin around and almost drop it. “Wow.”
It is a large shop, which the outside belies. It isn’t wide, but it is rather deep. The walls are lined with dark oak shelves piled high to the ceiling with books of every size and every color. Where there is exposed wall it is a deep burgundy, almost a wine, with crème trim. And every so many feet there is a gap in the shelves where tiny reading nooks rest, cushioned with the same crème that trims the walls.
My steps creak across this hallowed ground, and my mouth is loose and drawn up as I pull a worn copy of Jane Eyre from its spot among the B’s.
“Look up,” Ardal says sotto voce, as not to ruin the moment.
I obey, and it is all intricate wood carvings and cross beams and a clear view into the night sky smack dab in the middle. Moonlight seeps in, and I am giggling. This is my dream haven, and my dreams did it no justice.
“What would you like to do?” Ardal’s voice is somewhat louder now, causing me to jump.
We both burst out laughing, and most of the sound is soaked up into the numerous tomes while the rest booms back at us, mocking our childishness. It is in this moment I realize I am clutching so tightly to the thimble, which is still on my thumb, my hand is going numb.
“Oops.” I remove the sewing tool and nestle it back inside its box. Rain splatters against the skylight, and I look at Ardal, a silent “Told you so.”
“Happy birthday, miss.”
“Miss?”
“Hmm?”
I wave his question away, too enraptured with his books to pay it much mind. But Ardal will not be distracted.
He steps in front of me, blocking my view of the A-authors. “You want to know why I keep calling you miss,” he says. “Does it bother you?”
My teeth skim the skin of my lower lip. “It is pretty formal for someone who’s giving a private nighttime tour of their library.” I mean bookstore, but he doesn’t correct me.
His brow wrinkles up, and his lips are set a little tight. “Let’s not get into that unpleasantness. Not tonight.” He gestures to the room around him. “What do you wish to do? This library, myself, and this night are at your disposal.”
I want to pursue the reason for his displeasure further, but something tells me I’ll have plenty of time to do that . . . later. “Any Jane Austen?”
He chuckles. “I didn’t take you for an Austenite. Don’t they all wear empire waists and sip tea with their pinky fingers higher in the air than their noses?”
I find his teasing refreshing for some reason. He isn’t making fun, not like Ringmaster and his “friends.” Ardal’s and my bantering is lighthearted and . . . natural somehow. “No.”
“No to the empire waists or to the heaven-high noses?”
“No to the Austenite part.” My finger, which has been skimming the shelves, comes across the store’s one copy of Pride and Prejudice. There is no Persuasion, the second-most tolerable of Miss Austen’s books but no one’s favorite. No one raves about Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. I almost feel bad for them.
Ardal is right next to me, our shoulders brushing as he starts straightening the books in the B’s. “You are a Bronte fan, though, yes?”
I peek at him from the corner of my eye. “Which Bronte, sir?”
He motions to the navy blue spine of Jane Eyre, which still sticks out from its fellows on the shelf. “Miss Emily Bronte—”
“Miss Charlotte Bronte.”
He clears his throat. “But of course.” The book falls off the shelf and into his hand, and he splays the tome open to a random page and scans it with his eyes. We are quiet for a moment, when he comes out with an odd question. “Do you think Jane was in love with Mr. Radcliffe?”
A snort slips out of my mouth, a sound I pass off as a cough. “Mr. Rochester.”
“Again, yes. But you’re dancing around the question.” He flips the page, pretending to read. I can tell he is watching me, waiting for my answer.
“That’s an easy question. Of course she loves him.” I don’t think I could love someone as snarky and underhanded as Rochester. But Jane is good. Me? I’m called Scotch for a reason.
Eyes narrowed, he stares down at me. “Did she love him? She had a funny way of showing it.”
I am shaking my head. “By putting up with his horrible behavior? By taking care of him when he’s blind just a year after his trickery at the church? She could’ve married him—well, not legally married him, because he already had a wife. Scoundrel.”
Ardal is laughing, his eyes twinkling. “Yes, Rochester was a scoundrel. But she left him. Not that I blame her. He was a great prat about things, wasn’t he?”
“Prat,” I say. The word is a funny taste in my mouth, but I roll it around a few more times.
Side by side, we spend the rest of the night in this manner, scouring the shelves for our favorites, critiquing the other’s taste, until I find myself in a nook packed in hip to hip with Ardal as we butcher poetry aloud into the wee hours of the morning.
Chapter Six
Scotch
2014
“You louse!” Ringmaster is rather drunk for this hour in the morning, an oddity for him.
I feel like Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne, like there’s a scarlet A hand-stitched onto my shirt. Only I didn’t do anything but fall asleep next door in the tiny nook. What is so bad about falling asleep in a strange man’s bookstore? I say as much to my employer, and that earns me a slap across my face. A reflex, it is a mere reflex when I return the favor.
And Ringmaster is crying, drooling, and saying I broke his nose. “I’ll sue! You’ll bleed money. I’ll take every cent, you ungrateful louse. You should’ve been here to open shop.” He backs away, perhaps wary I’ll strike him again, but I already feel bad about what happened.
My face stings, and as I go to nurse it, there is a movement by the door. It is Ardal; he has my gift—which I must have left at the bookshop—in his left hand, and he is pulling on the locked door like a mad man with the other. I am about to open, but his face is so red with rage, I pause. I am concerned but not afraid. “What’s wrong?”
But he is all madness, banging on the door, looking past me. He wants in so much, I think he’ll break through.
I hold up my hands and say, “Calm down.”
His face is so red it looks like he’s sunburnt. When he catches my eye, he calms down a little though his chest rises and falls rapidly. He jabs a finger directed over my shoulder.
Ringmaster is standing in a puddle of yellow. I guess the sight of an enraged Ardal made him wet himself.
I cannot help myself. It’s too funny. I start laughing and tell Ringmaster to clean up his mess.
Ringmaster is too frightened to say anything in return. He backs away, his lower lip trembling.
“Thanks, you made my day,” I say to my new friend as I open the door.
Ardal takes my face in his hands and starts examining me like he’s a doctor and not a used book salesman. “Does it hurt?” he asks.
Yes, it does. I extricate myself. “What?”
“He hit you.”
My hand flies to my cheek, as if I just remembered. “Yeah, he did.”
Ringmaster has disappeared into the backroom, which I am certain is and will remain locked for some time. The rat.
“Come,” Ardal says, holding out his hand, “you must file a police report.”
“A police report? Why?”
He treats me like I’m in shock and not thinking straight. “Domestic violence isn’t something you should sweep under the rug.”
Is that what this was? I’m not sure, and I hint at as much. “Domestic violence? He’s never done it before,” I say. “Don’t know what’s gotten into him lately.”
“Just because he hasn’t done it before doesn’t mean he won’t do it again.”
Yes, this I know, but his concern is so sweet I don’t resist as he leads me out of the shop. “I need to st
ay.”
His fingers trace where I’m certain there will later be an insignificant bruise. “No, you need to have that looked at.”
His touch is so intimate, so backed with feeling that I start to hyperventilate. I haven’t had a drink for so long it seems, and this man is making me think about my life way more than I should—or, rather, want to. “I n-need—” I stutter, frozen to the spot.
His hand remains frozen on my face as well, and for the longest time, we stare at each other. “Please.” His voice is a pained whisper. “Please don’t stay here.”
But I have to. I can’t leave my circus. Where will I go, and who is he to tell me what to do? All at once my tightly glued pieces are falling apart, and I am unsteady on my feet. I must black out for a moment, because I am now sitting in the front seat of a rather nice car without knowing how I got here.
There is a paper cup in my shaking hands, which Ardal helps lift to my lips. The water is tepid and tastes like the vessel, but I drink it all. Closing my eyes again, I lean back against the leather interior.
“Here,” Ardal says, draping a suit coat over my knees. He is in perfect command of himself, absorbed in what’s happening and no longer crying for Ringmaster’s blood. “You must be exhausted; you couldn’t have slept well in that seat all night.” He looks at me, curious.
I flush at the memory of waking up next to him. Ardal hadn’t fallen asleep, but I had—with my head on his shoulder. And I had drooled . . . a lot.
He’d said he didn’t mind, and refused when I offered to pay for his dry-cleaning. “A little saliva never hurt anyone,” he’d said.
“Yeah, but you didn’t sleep at all.” The sting is leaving my face, but it still feels rather warm where he touched me. I open my eyes and try to get up, but Ardal is having none of that.
With little difficulty, he holds me down by my right shoulder, pinning me in place. “You need to sleep.”
I open my mouth to protest but close it again, too tired to argue, which fits well with his statement. My eyes are drooping, curse them. “Fine.”
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