Midnight

Chapter 11

Nellie drifted through her life like it was a shadow show for months. Her cooking and housekeeping deteriorated at a rapid rate until the shop was deserted but for the sad, shadowy phantom of Nellie.

She had her stillborn baby alone, in an almost silent labor. The child was beautiful, even dead. She wrapped it in Johanna's best silk receiving blanket and threw it in the oven.

She was pale and thin, bruiselike circles carved seemingly permanently beneath her empty eyes. Her cheekbones, collarbone, and ribs stood out prominently behind a thin curtain of alabaster skin. She bruised easily and was given to long nights of nothing but tears.

Then, one day, a customer ambled into her shop.

Nellie assumed he had come by accident, and didn't come out from her dark corner. But he went up to the counter, and with some difficulty, rang the old rusted bell.

"Hello, sir, how are you today? What do you need?" she asked in a voice as rusty as the bell, slipping behind the counter. He seemed very surprised at her appearance, which was no surprise to Nellie. She knew she looked like death.

"I'd just like some gin, if you wouldn't mind, ma'am." His voice had a soft, sweet Irish and Cockney inflection, and the formality of him drew Nellie's attention. She looked at him more closely.

He was a thin slip of a man, but clearly displayed lean, whiplike muscles across his shoulders and down his arms. He was work-tanned, with the rough hands and rough clothes of a laborer, but his manner was anything but. Silken, but not dangerous like Turpin. More like suede.

She leaned down and poured him a glass of gin, her eyes following his unkempt dark hair as it frizzed wildly around his face. He had warm russet eyes.

Acting on impulse, she poured herself a glass of gin and went to sit down across from him. He acknowledged her by raising his glass, but did not speak.

"Are you traveling?" Nellie asked at length. Something about her question made the man laugh.

"Always." Seeing that Nellie didn't get it, he clarified: "I'm part of a gypsy caravan passing through."

Now this was a bit of information that would have, in the old days, intrigued Nellie and she would have turned unbearably nosy. As it was, she just nodded and searched for her smile. She couldn't find it.

"So what's your name, miss?" He finished the last of his gin and pushed the glass away, leaning eagerly across the table. Nellie might have giggled, had this been the old days.

"Mrs.-Miss- I'm Nellie Lovett."

"Marko, Madame Lovett."

Nellie gave up trying to be dignified and slid her tiny self right around the booth so that she was placed right next to Marko. He smiled and leaned nearer to her, already in love with those fine wine-colored lips.

His kiss was like nothing she'd ever experienced before. It was not hard and pressing, like Turpin's, or fumbling and boyish, like Albert's. It was soft and lingering and full of longing; it nearly made her swoon.

It was all she had ever imagined Benjamin's to be.

With this thought, she pushed herself closer to Marko, determined to drown out any errant memory. He submitted to her easily, eagerly, and their arms twined tightly around each other. Without removing his lips, Marko scooped Nellie up bridal-style and twirled around.

"Where's your room?" he whispered into her parted lips. With a loose, floppy hand, she pointed to the door at the top of the stairs. Marko carried her up, laid her down in bad, and undid the ribbon holding her skirt on. She let him, eagerly wriggling out of her bloomers.

That night, there were no tears.