A/N: Almost everything is historically accurate aside from one or two omissions of place names, fudging of exact locations, etc. I may edit minor details as I learn new things. This all takes place a few miles from where I live. There are still buildings that were saloons and whorehouses standing. No one talks about the women who worked there. The museums don't. They focus on the lime workers and the lumber jacks, the business owners, schools, and clergy. No one talks about the girls and women working, often against their will, doing what needed to be done to survive. Or try to survive. I am actually trying to edit out and tone down most of the horrific things that probably would have happened to a girl alone in this time period and place. Reviews encouraged. Feedback welcome. I'm feeling nervous about this behemoth.
She was tired as dirt. And sore. Her tricks had been rough.
Well, one had been rough (in an eager and inexperienced way, not a cruel way, which helped) and one of the others had been old and limp, and a long time reaching his release. She had been propped up on her elbow at an odd angle working him with her hand for what felt like forever. Her neck had a crick in it and Vi had been on a tear all night. Still ruffled over the time she took to help ease Eunice's passing, Annie supposed. One could never be sure with Vi. Some days it had nothing to do with anything but who walked into the crosshairs. It was usually her, if only because Vi had Annie neck deep in numbers and orders and managing the comings and goings of the place. They were always tripping on one another.
One of her regulars had been by, who knew her well and who she usually enjoyed. Peace Booth had been a stage coach driver, after surviving the civil war as a young teen, but had recently lost most of his work when the rails were lain in the mountains. Now he drove a team of mules that pulled hunks of split irregular redwood for tindering at the kilns. Even Peace had proved bothersome, though.
Such was her night.
It would appear that the thin strands of her attachment to Mr. Bates had not gone unnoticed. Nothing in this camp was ever kept quiet or private. Not for long. And of course, god forbid anyone should ask her something without having their hand on her ass. At least Peace asked her outright.
"How come you been mooning over the Duke's dandy?"
She had raised an eyebrow and tried to keep her expression playful while she hit him with her pillow. "Peace Booth, when have you ever seen me moon?"
She rolled onto her back, pulling him with her and he pressed his thigh against her. When he lipped at the swell of her breast, she affected a moan and rubbed the swollen crotch of his pants, hoping to distract him as he moved fully between her legs.
"All I know is since I seen you talking with him, you have times where you get different."
When she freed him from his trousers and he thrust deeply into her, she grunted and looked away. She knew exactly what he was talking about; the moments when she was pretending it was him inside of her. She hoped any coloring she did would be confused with the flush of arousal and exertion, and tried to form a sultry expression when she looked back at Peace. He unhooked her busk and then his hands were teasing her breasts. At the very least, he understood how to do this and several other things properly.
"You aren't making any sense, you fool man," she obfuscated, rolling here eyes and her hips in a slightly exaggerated way, listening to the sharpness of his breath for her cues. "What business would I have mooning over the Dandy? Do you know me no better than that?"
Annie focused her attention on him, hoping to distract him as fully and thoroughly from his train of thought as she could. It wasn't enough, he still fucked her like he had something to prove. It was tiresome when men tried to force pleasure out of her. So she did what she always did and pretended to enjoy herself more than she was. She made eyes at him and said little things to speed him along, about how good he was, how big he was, how good he felt, whatever load of horse-shit and bollocks he wanted to hear. Each man was different with what he needed. And she knew Peace Booth backwards and forwards. Harmless and all talk, and usually trying to prove something he didn't need to, in every aspect of his life. She was fond of him, or at least not opposed to him. She felt a bit sorry for him most of the time. His lot in life had been easily as hard as hers, and losing his main source of income was a staggering blow to his ego. The logging operation paid him decent wages, but nowhere near what he was making driving stage. He was usually a bit less aggressive and a bit more attentive. This night he walked the edge of roughness. He knew what she would and wouldn't tolerate and skirted it the whole encounter. It left a bitter taste in her mouth. With him gone, she washed herself for her next trick and looked out Fern's window to the street below out of habit. She pretended it wasn't for him, but it was. And then she felt her stomach sink, because he was there, talking to what very much looked like Peace. She moved away from the window and squared her shoulders. It didn't matter. The mule man would run his mouth off and Mr. Bates would think what he would think, both of Peace and of her. And perhaps it was for the better. It was wrong letting him grow attached. She closed herself off from the panic that started to open like a hole low in her gut. She took a few deep breaths, and slipped her Alyssum on, as it were. She had the rest of the night to see to, after all. When she went downstairs she made sure to look for him, but he'd gone.
Fern had locked Vi in her room while Annie was still tending to Peace's needs, which was some sort of a relief. The woman finally passed out just before four in the morning after hollering on and off about cocksuckers and politicians for the better part of two hours, only to rouse when Annie unlocked the door and slipped into bed beside her. She didn't protest when Vi mumbled something and pulled her hand to the slit in her bloomers. It didn't more than a few minutes for Annie to tease something akin to an orgasm from her, which was easier and faster than the whiskey fueled argument that would ensue if she refused and fully roused Vi to waking. She didn't mind, not really. At least she didn't have to sleep by herself.
When Vi passed back out a short while later, she slept like the dead. Annie wondered if she slept like that because she was such a drunkard or if she had turned herself into a drunkard so that she would be able to sleep. Really it was splitting hairs. Annie couldn't find a way to sleep, herself. It never seemed to fully come to her. A few minutes here, a half hour there, and then she would jerk awake, floundering and gasping like a fish out of water. Being inebriated when she fell asleep didn't lengthen her rest, it just meant her head spun and she felt nauseous when she woke up in a cold sweat half of an hour later. She knew she dreamed but could never remember any of them, only waking to the sensation of panic and trying to get away.
The sun broke the horizon and washed the room in pale morning light before Annie slid from under Vi's sleep laden arm. She sat on the bed and stared at her for a minute. Open mouthed and snoring, without her anger to poison her, Vi was a handsome woman, buxom and solid, and pillowed as a cushion. Her long chestnut brown hair was streaked through with silver. The thick rope of it draped over her throat, obscured part of her chin.
Annie scrubbed her hands over her face. The fingers of her right hand smelled of the other woman and she cringed. It wasn't that she begrudged Vi a bit of release - not at all. It was just some nights she wanted to be let alone. She sighed and slipped out to wash in Fern's basin. If Vi was being extra wretched she stayed in Fern and Dawn's room. She never did like to sleep alone; not from the time she was little. Especially not now. Not since the other place.
Fern's bed was untouched. Dawn's was empty, but left mussed. Annie straightened the sheet out of habit. Fern was probably sleeping in Séam's room. They were like brother and sister, those two; slept like litter-mates sprawled across each other when Vi was too drunk to pay attention, which was most nights. They understood each other. And Fern had no reason to lie. If the towering redhead said they were only sleeping, well then, they were only sleeping. Real kinship in this business was hard to come by; knowing the two of them had one another warmed her. Vi didn't believe that they weren't fucking, and tended to watch them like a hawk if she was able. Fortunately, that was less and less as the years stretched on.
Stealing away before Vi was up would earn her some sort of passive or not-so-passive retribution, but she was beyond caring and determined not to let it color her day. Dawn and Daphne were already banging around the kitchen and were perfectly capable of handling the Sunday morning crowd. She would be back in time to earn the old cow her money.
The sky was too blue and the trees that still stood were too green to stay inside today. She padded into the back garden, corset-less and barefoot to check on her plants. Something had upset some of the pea starts, but nothing a bit of tamping down of the soil wouldn't fix. She squatted amidst the shoots and leaves and touched small plantlets with the pads of her fingers. Wondering, as she was oft wont to do, if she would see him that night. She hugged her knees. Since refusing the token, he hadn't been as much of a presence. She had only seen him a few times in the two weeks and it concerned her. Despite his insistence that he wasn't offended, she wasn't sure. Not that it mattered after whatever Peace had told him.
Thinking of handing him the coin made her stomach clench. At the time it seemed a way to thank him - that perhaps she could show him what she couldn't say. It had been a bad idea. A selfish idea. He was always so good spirited towards her. And that day particularly she had needed... She paused, mulling over her thoughts. Then she acknowledged what it was that had motivated her and it left her ashamed. She had needed comfort that day. She had been feeling so broken from being present at the death of yet another girl. A girl as dear and wonderfully spirited as Eunice. It was a way to thank him, but really it was a selfish act. She had needed to be held and to feel cared for. Only her Mr. Bates would have closed her fingers back over the token. Only he would so gently refuse her and then hold her and murmur to her anyway a while later when her edges cracked and she started to spill over. She had clung tightly to him in that moment, cherished the strength and comfort she drew from him. Looking back, her actions embarrassed her. She hated to think that she had taken advantage of his kindness, but hadn't she tried to?
There was no way around the notion that she was growing too fond of him and that he had already grown entirely too fond of her. This would not end well, she knew. Shame pricked at her throat that she had let it continue thus far. She needed to be pushing him off, not holding him closer.
It was no easy act to turn away from him. Not when he made her smile. Really made her smile. No one listened to her the way he did. He heard what she said, paid heed to it and remembered. He was sweet and sincere and asked nothing, though she could feel his want like heat, sheeting off of him. She should discourage him. She would bring him nothing but pain. Everything she touched seemed to turn to shit in the end. But she could not help glance for him through the window at times when she knew he was more likely to pass by. Or think of the gentle hunger with which he regarded her, in the quiet of the early morning when no one else was awake and she had a few moments' peace to dip her hand between her thighs and enjoy the possibilities of her own body.
Her desire for him surprised her. She rarely wanted the men she bedded. Desire had little to do with the profession the fates forced her into. Vi had shown her the tricks to finding her own pleasure and she had been shocked at how boundless it could be; she learned to enjoy the mechanics of the act in ways she hadn't known were possible while she was at the other place. She didn't talk about how it was there, or him that Vi had saved her from. It was nothing but violation after violation. Bruises, boot toes, and bite marks, and the acrid smell of piss and fear, mingled with the cloying, burning, floral scent of opium filling her nose and throat. She took a deep breath. It was done. Past. She wasn't there anymore. She had gotten away. Vi had chased him off, paid him off, and locked her in a room to sweat the opium out of her blood.
She had come out of that hazy tunnel of pain into ... not peace, but a better existence than the one she had been living, to be sure. She could never stay too angry with Vi. Not after all the woman had done for her. So she more or less did what was bid of her. Be it scrub vomit off the floor boards, teach methods and specific techniques to the newer girls, or sing bawdy songs in her corset and bloomers thrice a night. The only thing she put her foot down about was turning girls out for showing signs of disease or returning to opium. No amount of cajoling on Vi's part could move her on this. If Vi wanted them gone, Vi could bloody well tell them herself. Annie would not do that bidding.
Annie was one of only two of Vi's girls who could read and write and the only one who knew how to do the books, which Vi hated. As soon as she had that figured, she understood her value within the house, and made damn sure that Vi needed her. Which pissed Vi off even more when Annie stood up to her. Still. The woman was usually fair with wages and hours worked, and she had Séamus throw any tricks who were acting up out on their ear. The girls were allowed to refuse jacks they didn't like, and Vi stood behind all of them when it came to that. Vi ran the bath-house next door, and she herself made the rule that any men as wanted service, personal service, that is, needed to visit the bath-house, or if they were saving their money - the creek out back.
Annie remembered the gratitude she felt, the pure, overwhelming gratitude at being able to bathe whenever she wished. After the dark, (and it was always dark there, without windows, or choices, or fresh air) to be clean and free to move about was like being made new, like being born all over again - such a blessing. Add the rule that the men had to wash before helping themselves to her and that she had final say on who actually did help themselves to her and she would have done nearly anything for the woman from then on. She did do nearly anything for Vi from then on. Regardless of the fact that the only difference in her life was that Vi owned her and not him. She knew she was still a thrall and had no real say over whether she sold her body or not. That fact — and time — had worn her gratitude thin, but a strange sort of love had grown from her heart to tangle itself about the bitter madam.
Vi was a cheerful, wicked-tongued inebriate until she wasn't anymore and then it was best to just lock her in her room until she passed out. When she got like that she couldn't hold her hand still enough to unlock the door even if she could find the key. She was a crotchety old bitch, to be sure, (not quite old exactly - more time worn and world weary) but she usually meant well. Bless her; for all her faults, nothing could bring Annie to hate her, even though a fair amount of the time she wanted to.
She let the swaying of leaves focus the wanderings of her mind. Swatting a mosquito on her arm, she stood from her crouch in the back garden and stretched her back. The air was somewhat fresh, the breeze thinned out the overwhelming smell of livestock and woodsmoke, sawdust and unwashed lumberjacks all pressed tight together. The calm was shattered by a dynamite blast from up the mountainside. The blasts came regular all day long and well into the night, from the quarry up past the lime works. They were disconcerting to be sure, but she barely jumped at all anymore. The day was sunny and cool. It was still too chilly outside at night to sow summer vegetables, but Annie had her peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, tomatoes, and squash started in tin cans on Vi's window sill. She needed to talk to Miss Minnie about how to convince her carrots and beets to grow so very plump; Annie's were always scrawny. Vi was happy to let her muck about in the dirt out back, especially if it meant fresh, free vegetables for the kitchen and flowers in empty whiskey bottles on the bar. She never said so, but Annie could tell that it tickled the dark-haired woman that the Garden had an actual garden.
Annie suddenly wanted Mr. Bates to see it and know it was the work of her hands. She would walk him round back when it was later in the season and there was more growing than cabbage, chard, miner's lettuce, peas, and dandelion greens. It struck her as odd that this was important to her. She felt it in a warm place in her chest. Maybe he would sit and chat with her while she dug and planted. Then she shook her head. Inviting him back here would be the furthest thing from pushing him away. She sighed, brushed off her hands, and went inside to don her going-to-town frock.
When she'd first risen, she washed her face clean of eye black and rouge in Fern's room. She had stared at her bloodshot eyes and sallow skin in the milky reflection. Sighing, she faced the looking glass again and thrust her chin forward. Vi's increased inebriation was forcing her to cut down on her own, which was nothing but good. Annie always looked and felt terrible after she drank more than two shots in a night. Examining her face from one angle and then another, she decided that she looked old. She felt old, she wasn't yet twenty-seven, but she may as well have been fifty-seven.
Her hair felt dry; maybe Vi would let her use her perfumed almond oil. If there was one thing Vi was vain about it was her hair. It was thick and wavy and it shone in the sun. That was one task that Annie never minded - taming and oiling Vi's fresh washed hair. Her own hair annoyed her. It had no life, lay flat and smooth and slipped out of pins and ties like water. It felt nice, when it was fresh combed and clean, but mostly it seemed to argue with her and fight everything she tried to do with it. She sighed several times as she brushed and braided and twisted and pinned it up and then secured the hat in place over that. Little wisps fought their way nearly immediately free. The fabric of her dress was worn beneath her hands as she smoothed them down the bodice and over her hips. She looked like she barely had two quarters to rub together, but she was modest and presentable. She needed to sit down with this dress and really work it over. It had too many poorly executed repairs.
The walk to the Felton train depot was short. Less than a mile. And it hadn't rained for a few weeks, so she walked on dirt, not dust or sucking mud. Sunday mornings tended to roll quietly in on the town. Those whose shifts let them enjoy Saturday night were passed out in their bunks or scattered in nooks and crannies throughout the main stretch of town. Those who were just ending their day (for while the blasting didn't continue all night, the kiln fires did) dragged themselves into waiting saloons with kitchens and coffee, like the Garden. Dawn was likely barking at Daphne to get the damn coffee served. That poor girl got it from all sides. Annie stretched her shoulders and neck as she walked, and sighed happily when maligned bones popped and settled into place. The sun warmed her in the most delightful of ways. Days like this it was easy to forget the mess of her life, at least for a little while.
She queued up with a handful of jacks, two of whom actually tipped their hats to her, and three rather affluent looking gentlemen, who did not, and she paid fifty cents for the round-trip train ride. That left her with thirty cents that she had skimmed off of the top of her tips for the occasion. She would buy a bite to eat or some fish from Lit. She hated spending any of her money, squirreled away almost everything she earned. But she also needed to breathe from time to time. If the occasional train ride into Santa Cruz kept her sane while she saved money to pay off Vi, so be it.
She looked at her reflection on the inside of the train window. The dark blue printed calico scattered with paler blue flowers was old but it was the one dress she owned that covered her from ankle to neck. She wore her good straw hat with the pale blue paper flowers that she had managed to keep dry and intact through the winter rainy season. Crossing her ankles beneath her skirt, she imagined the fabric was crisp and new, that she was posh: a governess or a music teacher on her way to educate her charges for the day. She sat primly and let her eyes fall on the line of the ridge, covered in the stubble of giant tree stumps and rode silently, and thankfully unmolested, to the depot near the mouth of the San Lorenzo River. Some tycoon had built a public bathhouse and there was usually a buzzing turnout of bathers and men with fishing poles attending the river. In the time she had lived in the county she had watched it grow and swell to include little shops and curios and many local people hawking their wares to wealthy tourists from San Jose and San Francisco. There was enough commerce out of this strip of beach to necessitate three wharves. Lit inhabited the mouth of the middle one. He always complained about the Italian families that had the more desirable positions further down. He hated the Stagnaro brothers with a quiet passion.
It was days like this she was grateful to have made it all the way to coastal California. The winters were warmer than she had been accustomed, and the heat in summer was blown away by the chill of the Pacific Ocean all but a week or so a year. The summer nights were always pleasant, sometimes downright cold. Alice had liked it. Especially when the sun was warm and the breeze cool. Thoughts drifted like shoals of fish through Annie's mind. Some swam past her, some darted off when she tried to look at them closely. She had managed to keep her money making activities limited to what she could do with her hands in the dark of an alley or under the pier for the time before Alice was gone. She had gone out during the day to "work at the laundry" and then snuck back out again at night after Alice had fallen asleep. She managed to keep what she did hidden from both their landlady and Alice. Managed to keep Alice away from it and blissfully ignorant. She did what she had to do to take care of her sister. And she took good care of Alice, until she couldn't anymore.
There were times, in the other place that she was grateful that Alice had died, because they would have taken her, too. She could hear girls crying through the walls that sounded so much younger. The opium had helped drown that out. She had been grateful for the opium too, for the hazy oblivion it brought after they had first forced it on her to keep her subdued and quiet. But that was another thing best not dwelt upon. She didn't like how pensive she was feeling, didn't like the thoughts that kept swimming past her field of vision. Wasn't sure what brought it all on.
Her shoes clicked over the cobbled streets. She let her eyes go lazy and take in the bustle of the fish market. She enjoyed the throng, though it made her a touch nervous too. She stayed away from it at first, stepped down into the sand, closer to Cowell Wharf. That was the one that the lime works owned, on the northwestern-most part of the beach. She hadn't thought to bring her button hook. She would have liked to walk to the edge of the sand and put her toes in the cold surf. She missed her sister. Blinking her eyes fast, she smiled at the sea. Squinting at the glittering expanse of blue, she sighed. As beautiful as it was, the sea always made her melancholy. She always managed to forget this until she was faced with it. She found a boulder and sat on it for a while, breathed the salt air blowing off the water.
When she was ready to face the bustle, she meandered down through the fish market near the railroad wharf and looked at the day's catch. A few down here knew her from Felton. For the most part she enjoyed as much anonymity as any other woman whose only presentable dress had so many mended tears — and a few questionable stains that stubbornly refused to be removed — which was most of the fisherman's wives. Her other dresses earned her more money and as such were much more dutifully tended. There was no denying who she was, but she could pretend while she went from catch to catch.
The fishermen never seemed quite comfortable in the company of women, even those whose wives helped them sell their catch, but this only amused her and made her try harder to put them at ease. One particularly shy older man proved to be so thrown by her that the first handful of times she visited his catch he was as silent as the fish he'd netted. Finally she prised him open like a mussel or an oyster and once he started to talk, she was hard pressed to silence him. He slipped her treats, like her uncle — her mother's younger brother — used to. He never asked anything in return from her but her company and her stories and she loved him for it.
His catch on the first day he spoke to her was bushels and bushels of sardines and he sold them with hand signals and grunts. It wasn't that he couldn't talk, he had explained, it was that people never listened anyway. He sent her with enough sardines that day that the other girls and Vi and Séamus besides could have a sardine or two with their supper if they wished.
She always told him about the train ride, conversations she overheard. She took the the rails down most Sunday mornings. It was usually the day when Vi slept latest. Over the years she told him nearly everything. About her sister. About Vi on her good days and her bad. About parts of her life she didn't know she remembered in the rolling Yorkshire countryside. She asked him once if she could go fishing with him.
He had laughed. "Anytime you like. But, you'll have to get up damn early to join me, mija."
He told her the ocean's mood on any given day, the animals he encountered; big and small birds, whales, dolphins, giant sharks. When her garden was producing full bore, she brought him baskets of vegetables.
He told her a story once about a huge shark with a mouth big enough to swallow two men whole. It swam near them. Its dorsal and tail fins cut the surface of the water to the height of a man sitting in a row boat; which was to say, as tall as he was. Then other fins started to lift out of the water and they were surrounded by slow moving whale-sized fish. If any of the sharks had so much as bumped into the boat it would have capsized. They didn't, though. They swam with slow grace, mouths like gaping funnels, gill-slits wide, through that northern corner of the Monterey Bay. They formed a lazy, arcing line of sharks, nose to tail, that went on and on. His eyes were wide as he painted the story and moved his hands through the air to punctuate his statements. His friends called him Paulo. His mother and sister called him Paulito. She took to calling him Lito, which she then shortened to Lit. Didn't seem right to take the name his mother and sister used, and she was far too fond of him to use his proper given name.
He wasn't in his usual spot. That worried her a bit. She hoped it was because he sold all of his catch and returned to his home with money in his pocket and a bit of fish offal wrapped in yesterday's paper for his cat, Gatito. It wouldn't be the first time. The wife of the fisherman in the spot next to Lit's eyed her with open distaste.
She walked on, he would be there the following Sunday, and if he wasn't she would ask on him then. The oyster-monger was her weakness. His wife, Marjorie, was always sweet to her, to the degree that sometimes Annie wondered what she had done before she became a oyster-monger's wife. She ordered her usual two oysters, raw with a bit of lemon juice. Marjorie was wicked with an oyster knife and had them open, loose, and resting in their shells before Annie could fish out her dime. She jumped as an arm reached past her to drop a quarter in Marjorie's hand. She immediately relaxed and smiled at the familiar burr near her ear.
"Three more, please."
She did nothing to hide her smile as she took her two oysters and turned to him. "Mr. Bates! Thank you!"
He took his oysters raw as well and naked, as it were, with nothing but the liquor they floated in.
They both nodded their thanks to Marjorie, who smiled a bit too sweetly and busied herself with another customer. He swallowed one of his oysters right away, to better hold the other two and indicated an empty bench a short ways away. "Care to join me?"
She found herself nodding and following him before she could think. His limp was a bit more pronounced than it had been.
"Have you ever had Whitby oysters?" he asked when they had settled side by side on the bench with a respectable distance between them. If Peace had said vengeful things about her, Mr. Bates didn't seem to be taking them to heart.
"I have," she chirped with surprising pride. "My father dragged us out there in our cart the one time. We piled together under blankets inside of it that night when he couldn't find us a room. It was some event, some festival. I don't even remember what they were celebrating. Mum was enormous with Alice and it was just us three. And the next day he and I ate all the oysters we could. At three different stalls." She giggled, and then laughed out loud. "Poor Mum had to take the reins all the way home, Da was so sick that afternoon. Of course, he had had more than his share of cider with his oysters."
They laughed together. He sipped at a shell and raised his eyebrows at her. She wasn't sure of his age exactly. She guessed he was easily thirteen or fourteen years her senior, likely more. But when he looked at her like that, with that little half smile, he looked like one of the boys who came to her before their beards had fully grown in. She wanted to stand behind him and put her hands on his shoulders. To touch the close cut hair at the nape of his neck. He was coiffed and pomaded, looking a proper valet gone to run respectable errands. It made her smile. She loved how easy it was to smile and laugh and even to fall companionably silent with him.
The delicate oyster brine opened and burst with lemon juice on her tongue. Closing her eyes, she enjoyed it. Few other things tasted so perfectly of the ocean. She relished this splurge when it was one of the months for shellfish. Remembering it had been his splurge, not hers, she stopped. She wiped her fingers on her handkerchief and made sure they were clean before she touched his sleeve. Let her hand fall with just enough pressure that she could feel him beneath the cloth.
"Thank you again. You didn't need to buy mine."
"Nonsense." His eyes brightened. He winked at her. "It's how one treats a lady."
She rolled her eyes at him, gave him a smirk. Let him smile a bit, really took it in and enjoyed it before she dropped her eyes to her hands and murmured, "Cheeky."
"I think I'll have a few more, fancy another round?
She looked at him, tried to decide if his eyes were grey or green, shook her head, "No. But thank you."
He came back with more for them both. Balancing two oysters in each hand, he smiled, offered one pair to her. "Do me a favor and eat these anyway. I'm my mother's boy; got to make sure everyone is well fed. Humor me."
She nipped at the corner of her mouth and accepted the shellfish graciously. She took her time downing first one, then the other. He had remembered the lemon juice. Must have overheard her order from Marjorie. They ate in silence. She listened to the waves and the gulls, one was eyeing their oyster shells murderously.
Mr. Bates had a strong nose. She had noticed it before, but enjoyed it out of the corner of her eye regardless. It gave him a striking profile. She smiled.
When he finished his oysters, he wiped his own hands clean with a pristine looking pocket square and pulled on first one glove, then the other.
"I have two more errands to run, on my way back to the train. Will you perchance be returning to Felton on the 11:45?"
She was planning on staying away from the Garden longer, but found herself nodding.
He smiled. "Well, then. I hope you will save me a seat."
She felt the heat rising in her ears and could only smile and nod. Her eyes followed him as he walked unevenly away. Until he slipped into the throng of people. Then she dropped her head and sighed. This would not end well for either of them.
