Mr. Todd found it an inconvenience to sleep that night. He knew he and Mrs. Lovett would have to find some way of repairing the wall below his shop. Thankfully there was no structural damage, but it would still cost a pretty penny nevertheless to make things clean again. He sat at the foot of the bed, staring towards the floor. His eyes followed the grain of the boards under his feet, thinking them to resemble millions of roads stretching across a barren landscape; means of escape, perhaps, though only physical. He wasn't ready for that kind of escape. He had only come in contact once with that pious vulture since his return. Things had not gone as he expected.
He stood up, boards screeching below his feet. He looked back at Mrs. Lovett. Like stone, he thought to himself, how she sleeps. He could moan loud enough to rouse the demons from Hell and still she would not rise. Not like her. Not like Lucy.
Footsteps, that's all it took. A light touch on her shoulder or her neck. Her blue eyes would open, first with trepidation, then with gentility. Then he would stay still; staring. That would be all. They would just stare at each other, gazing into each others eyes; that unmentionable emotion passing between their souls. And how she slept, Sweeney recalled. Whispers were louder than the quiet music of her breathing. Her head of gold curls strewn across the pillow in an arrangement as flawless as rays of sun across the clouds. Her limbs always seemed weightless on the soft down. So soft…
Of course what he felt for Lucy, that deep affection he felt was mentionable now, but not without pain. Not without a fierce crack of fury and an inhalation of sorrow deep enough to fill the immense void in his heart.
Sweeney walked slowly towards the side of the bed.. He found Mrs. Lovett there as usual, lying on her side with her hair half covering her face. One arm slung off the side, the other nestled under her chin. Nellie Lovett broke all precedents for sleeping in positions that seemed to derive discomfort for normal humanity. And for himself more often than her, it seemed. Too often he had been interrupted from his thoughts from a tug on his sheets, or a leg tossed across his like a wet rag. Worse still were those moments before sleep, when she would decide either to lay back in exhaustion or put one of her greasy hands between his thighs. But he could never pry away. He felt it useless to waste his energy resisting, even after his so called business partnership with woman downstairs had gone far beyond the boundaries expected. It may have been that lying with Nellie was the only means of escape available to him. Perhaps if he hadn't taken her to bed that first night then he would no longer be so disturbed during his rest the many weeks after. Maybe then he could start his workdays earlier. Who knows, maybe the Judge prefers a nice, early morning shave.