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Violetta had warned her that he might act strange. Speaking Russian and calling her ‘Bear-igrine’ certainly counted. And kissing her. That too. That had been a nice kind of strange. But now he was snoring, dead-center in her shag rug, and she felt certain he was going to be deeply unhappy if he woke up that way, no matter how good the high had been. So, carefully, bracing with her knees, she hefted Steed to his feet. It was not a simple endeavor.
“It’s like corralling a baby giraffe,” she muttered, as another one of his limbs flailed uselessly.
“Not a baby,” he grumbled, but the face he turned up to her was soft and guileless as a newborn’s, and she chuckled even as she dropped him into her spare room bed with a flop and a squeak of springs. “I’m a bear. Rawr.”
“You said that already.”
“Did I? Don’t remember.” She persuaded him out of his tie, belt, and wristwatch, and managed to get the shirt onto a hangar. Steed helped by playing peek-a-boo. “Pretty Peri! Where are you? There you are!” She was NOT attempting to divest him of anything below the waist without Samuel or Birdie here to referee, so instead she made him lie down on the bed, in singlet and trousers, and be tucked in.
He rolled to one side, draped in a velvety blue afghan, and pillowed his hands under his head. “Are you my sitter, putting me to bed and going to tell me a story?”
“Yes, James, I will.”
“And kiss me goodnight?”
“You already did that too,” she sighed. “But you don’t remember.”
“I kissed you?” He beamed. “Well done me. Been hoping that would happen.” He paused, then looked at her deeply, and some of the fog must have cleared, because his next words sounded much closer to the usual James, and not this curiously childlike one. “Peregrine, what’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing, Steed,” she said, shrugging. “Nothing much.”
“Nothing much is still something,” he replied, but his attention was drifting again. “You could tell me Goldilocks. With the bears.”
Peregrine suppressed a second sigh. He was right – there was something bothering her. Several somethings, really a whole parcel of them. And much as she had leapt into things and made herself at home, there was just nobody to talk about it with. Birdie was too forbidding, just waiting for her to trip up, Eric would have been all too keen, and Samuel and Violetta didn’t need her whingeing on about her difficulties when they had so many other things to think about. If only Constance… She looked down at James again, who was smiling up at her expectantly. “How about I tell you a story about me?”
“The walls will hear you,” he warned, but she decided to risk the wallpaper listening in all the same.
She told him a silly one first – about putting her mother in the pot plant soil because she’d always wanted to put down roots, but not anywhere she couldn’t move them. Then about them painting their nails with polish dregs nicked from the salon where Mother had worked and both of them going about with rainbow toes. And then, like a stopper had been pulled, the less-silly ones. About beans on toast and eggs from Mrs. Morgan’s chooks keeping her running for weeks after the funeral and then suddenly having a dedicated coffee service and a wireless and a telly all together. About the rust in the roof of the caravan with carboard covering it and doing her own hemming and now owning a bespoke black dress, the last gift from a fashion genius. His eyes drooped, then closed, but she kept going. Wondering if she could hack this P.I. stuff, when she’d never been able to hack anything else or if she was going to bugger up a murder case and have to pack up the silk dressing gown, that lipstick with the knife in the middle, and a few dozen boxes of bobby pins and abscond in the middle of the night because someone had stupidly bet on Flighty Fisher, just so like her useless wart of a Da. About how there seemed to be a giant shadow over everything she did – everyone wanting her to be Aunt Phryne, wanting her to step into those fashionable shoes and keep striding without missing a beat or wasting a penny. Maybe even thinking they’d trade her to get the real Detective Fisher back.
“And thank goodness you won’t remember this, because if you did, I might have to kill you,” she said, “but I dumped Eric a little because of it, you know. Because when he came up the drive and kissed me, you know, I felt it, I felt that he was planting dibs and I wondered if it was because of the money, because we’ve both been such hard-luck cases and suddenly here was me, rich as anything, and into his lap like - like a- a picked apple. And it can’t go like that – I won’t let it go like that,” she said, refusing to sob, though it was hovering at the edge of her throat. Not like Mum, taken in and then tossed away. She wasn’t going to let that happen. “I won’t.”
“You’re not fruit,” James muttered suddenly. “You’re a person. A good person. A… A strong dep… dep… dependapple person.”
“Thank you,” she said, but her smile was sad. “You should sleep, James. Your head is going to hurt in the morning, and I think that shirt might need a press.” She stroked a hand along his hair gently and he nuzzled into it like a cat seeking pets.
“You’re a good person,” he murmured again, lips against her hand. “And I’m glad you’re here. Keep the bears away.”
“Of course,” she said. She touched back two quiet tears with her wrist and left, not feeling his barely-open eyes on the back of her, watching her reflection in the starburst mirror.
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Breakfast was a painfully quiet affair. Peregrine gave him coffee which he spiked with enough sugar and cream to make it qualify as a milkshake, and Steed squinted away from the sunlight that came pouring in the great glass windows that fronted her house while he ate plain toast in minuscule bites. He had found a comb and hair tonic in a drawer and razor on the sink, thankfully of the safety variety, and his pressed shirt and tie were hanging neatly in the washroom, so he was spared the indignity of going into work looking too very much like something dragged out of the bush.
So when he turned, finally, to face her in the car, after she’d gotten him out of that facility, gotten him safe, dragged whatever mess of a sot he had been into her house and turned him back into a respectable person, all without more than a reasonable ribbing, it cracked him in half to see her face. She was worried about him, maybe even wishing…? “I didn’t… do or say anything inappropriate last night, did I?”
“No,” she said, “no, you were the perfect gentleman.” But she bit her lip. Looked down. She didn’t want him to be remembering it. What he’d done. What she’d said. It was too much for her to admit she’d cracked, even for a second, while he’d been a babbling, grab-handed puddle on her carpet. So, James lied. Badly, he felt sure, but he wasn’t on his best game.
“Good. Because I can’t remember a thing.” He watched her expression as the lie landed. Wondered if there would be relief there, or maybe irritation. But she merely nodded. And his head was starting to pound again, so he left it alone and went into the station. Whatever else had or would happen between them, now was not the time to be admitting that he very much wanted to be there for her. To do something outrageous – fight a bear, save her life. That he admired – marveled even – at the daring way she did everything while he rode a desk, hamstrung by his boss’s caution or corruption or both. How could someone as brave as she think that…?
James shook his head and regretted it instantly as his desk and the papers on it swirled uncomfortably. He would make it up to her, somehow.