#tpot scissors | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

little-peril-stories · 2 years ago

Text

The Prince of Thieves: As Good as Gold, and Better: Part II

Contains: annoying children; annoying men; social pressure to kiss under the mistletoe

Previous | TPOT Masterlist | Next | Read on Ao3 instead

Word count: 4000 || Approx reading time: 17 mins

Easier to understand if you've read Are You Nobody, Too?

As Good as Gold, and Better: Part II

Teaser: I can feel a gaze burning into my back, but when I turn, Henry is distracted, talking to one of his idiot friends. Sure I’m going to find Colette watching me from over her book, I glance to the corner. It’s not a stare of deep, coffee-coloured brown that’s on me, though, but a hazel-eyed one instead.

Bree

The deal is thus: one more round of preparatory Christmas baking to keep our patrons well-fed and smiling on Christmas Day, and then I am permitted to join the hullabaloo out on the floor, where everyone is busy decorating the tree Will, Jamie, Geoff, and Allan brought inside. (Well, if the way they barrelled through the door is to be believed, the former three did the hauling of the actual tree, and Allan was the one who ended up carrying all their stuff, including Will’s coat that he oh-so-wisely doffed despite the cold wind and the snow.)

I make it out of the kitchen to see Stella loudly warning the children staying at the inn that no one is to put any candles on the tree branches, and just because the fancy trees owned by rich families and royalty bear gleaming, brightly lit flames does not mean that she has to do the same. How would we all like it, she barks, if the entire inn caught fire and we were all thrown out in the snow for our own safety in the dead of night?

Even Celeste doesn’t try to stem Stella’s tirade; none of us, as it turns out, wants to burn to death on Christmas Eve, and no one puts up a fight on the matter.

“Ah, here’s Lucy now,” Celeste says, waving me over. “These lovely little lads and lasses are going to make us some beautiful ornaments to hang upon the tree. Isn’t that right, children?” She points to the table, now strewn with all the coloured paper, scissors, needles and thread, and other decorating paraphernalia.

An excitable chorus of agreement swells around us, making me smile until Celeste finishes, “And Miss Lucy’s here to keep an eye on you and help you, all right?”

Across the room, Victoria, who’s obviously listening, presses her hand to her mouth in genuine pity as mine drops open.

“How wonderful,” I manage to say. The first barrage of little hands is already tugging at my skirt.

Celeste smiles sympathetically—not quite sympathetically enough to take over the task herself, though, of course. I suppose someone does need to ensure things are running smoothly around the inn and she is perhaps a bit old to be minding little ones…but still.

“I’ll be around if you need me,” she says, which does not offer me much comfort. “Don’t let the really young ones touch the scissors or the needles.”

“You’re responsible for wiping their tears and cleaning up the blood if you do,” Stella says, whizzing past with a broom and disappearing again.

Great.

As I’m about to let myself fall into self-pity looking at the crowd of children—every single one vying for my attention—and wonder where all their parents are, I notice that a blue-eyed gaze is watching me from across the room.

“What?” I mouth impatiently. I don’t have time for Henry’s nonsense on a good day—certainly not when I’m going to spend the next two hours stringing dried apples and popcorn into garlands, or folding paper into stars and flowers while being shrieked at by a horde of children.

Instead of trying to answer through all the chaos, he just holds something up into the air.

Oh, he’s lucky I’m not anywhere close to him right now, because I am holding a very sharp pair of scissors and he ought to be very, very grateful I can’t drive them right into his hand.

Dangling from his hand: a bouquet of greenery tied in a red ribbon. Soft green leaves, thin stalks, and brilliant, round berries as white as the snow that coats the ground outside.

“Absolutely not,” I shout across the room, forgetting myself, and he flashes me that asshole grin of his. “Get it out of here!”

Colette, who is pretending to read Dickens while she coolly observes the pandemonium from the corner where she’s sitting with the others, notices me yelling and follows my gaze to Henry Bailey and his goddamn sprigs of mistletoe. Her eyebrows move upwards.

Unfortunately, the bombardment of, “Miss Lucy! Miss Lucy!” grows to be too much then, and now I have to actually be grateful to be surrounded by all the little Christmas goblins who need to me to do everything for them, because as long as I’m being climbed on by five-year-olds, Henry can’t get anywhere near me with his stupid plant or his stupid mouth.

“All right,” I say, clapping my hands in a weak attempt to look like I know how to command the attention of children. “Shall we begin?”

I can feel a gaze burning into my back, but when I turn, Henry is distracted, talking to one of his idiot friends. Sure I’m going to find Colette watching me from over her book, I glance to the corner. It’s not a stare of deep, coffee-coloured brown that’s on me, though, but a hazel-eyed one instead.

One kid ends up on the floor and makes me yelp when she crawls right under my skirt, between my legs, all rosy-cheeked and giggling.

“Right! No, thank you!” I tug her to her feet and catch Victoria leaning against the wall, giggling helplessly at my plight. She’s supposed to be untangling the existing garlands, I think, and she’s got part of one hanging over her shoulder, but apparently my suffering is an endless well of amusement. Maybe this was her duty last year, before I was hired, and she is sympathetic but relieved to be free of it. Maybe this is some sort of rite of passage I need to survive. Somehow.

I take the little girl by the hand and guide her to the table. “What about a star?” I ask her uncertainly. “Does that sound fun?”

She gives some sort of incoherent babbling in response and reaches for the coloured paper and a pencil. With her attention on that, I can move on to the next squealing child.

There are a few older kids, thank goodness, that I pass some of the duties to, getting them to cut paper snowflakes and stars for the younger ones while I thread needles and fold paper into roses. Well…try to.

“Hey. Let us help.”

It’s so loud in here, I almost miss it. Maybe I did miss the first few times they said it, because Colette just elbows her way in and sits down, directing Will to do the same on the other side of me.

“Let me fold,” she says, not-at-all-subtly biting back a laugh and taking my sorry attempt at paper foliage right out of my hands. “You do the other stuff.”

Well. If she wants to suffer through that, I’m not going to take the opportunity away from her. I’ll happily relinquish that responsibility.

“I can do this,” Will says, picking up one of the threaded needles. He must be able to read the question in my raised eyebrows, because he says, “Hey! It’s not that hard. And I can sew. Sort of. Now. Kind of.”

Next to me, Colette snorts.

“It’s not real sewing, anyway, though, is it?” He’s going a little red, but the look on his face is earnest.

I pluck the needle from his hand. “I think I have a better idea.”

I’ll take care of making the garlands with the “help” of some of the little ones. He can be the one to lift them up and stand them on chairs sturdily enough that they don’t fall and break their necks or knock over anything that might shatter while they add their decorations to the tree.

“Brave,” Colette murmurs once we’ve set him doing that, “but pretty smart.”

“Brave?” I repeat, wincing. How is this needle so dull? This is the eighth time I’ve accidentally stabbed myself trying to string popcorn.

She nods toward Will. “Well, smart to have him do that so you don’t have to do all the heavy lifting.”

She grins conspiratorially, and I can’t help but match it. “Was it that obvious?”

“No. I just know you’re clever. Like me.” She laughs. “And brave to trust him with—well, with anything.”

My answer slips out so fast, I’ve said it before I’ve even thought it through. The words just fall out. “Of course I trust him. I trust him with my—”

The needle bites into my finger again, and I stop, hissing and checking for blood.

Still smiling, she concentrates on her folding and twisting and doesn’t give an answer.

For a few minutes, anyway.

“And Goldilocks?” She nods across the room, and I peer out through the chaos, trying to find who she means. “You trust him?”

It takes me a moment to realize who she’s talking about: a grinning, loud-mouthed figure who’s got Stella’s glare on him as well as mine and Colette’s.

Goldilocks. She’s calling Henry Goldilocks. I almost fall off my chair, giggling and silently resolving to bring the name into our next practice session to see what he says.

“Oh, he’s harmless,” I tell her when I can speak again. “I mean, he’s shameless. A ridiculous flirt.”

“You don’t say,” she says drily.

I bite my lip. Sounds like he’s tried at least a little to get her attention, too, albeit unsuccessfully. “Yeah. He’s an idiot. But he knows it, at least. And he’s all right when you get to know him. Just…irritating.”

“Are you actually friends with him?” she asks, incredulous.

“I suppose so,” I say, thinking of a bruise I’ve got on my hip from our last morning session that I still need to pay him back for.

“So you trust him, too.”

Trust him? I must, considering all the times I’ve put my bodily well-being in his hands. “Well, I suppose I trust him enough.” I shoot a dirty look his way, though, at the reminder of what new instrument of annoyance he’s brought into the inn. “I wasn’t expecting the mistletoe, though.”

“Want me to set him straight for you?”

A funny thing happens deep behind my ribcage at her words. “No…no, I can handle him. I promise.” At this, I almost want to cry, although I expect it would look strange to see me weeping into a bowl of dried oranges and popcorn just because she offered to get Henry to lay off and quit bothering me. Because maybe Colette, even just a bit, sort of cares. “But I appreciate it. Really.”

“Just say the word,” she says, leaning over a paper carnation. “He looks like he’d be fun to smack around if he stepped out of line.”

“He is,” I joke back without thinking.

Colette’s head snaps back up.

“I mean…” Shit. “You know. Telling him to back off. And stuff.”

I don’t know why I’m keeping the lessons a secret from her. I’m pretty sure she knows how to fight. She probably wouldn’t think it strange. But I find my gaze pulled to another figure in the room, all freckles and flailing elbows and big grins, and I have to wonder what he’d think if she went and told him. Not that it matters, of course. It doesn’t. But still. I wonder. Just a little.

Colette gives me a look that says she knows very well what it looks like when people are keeping secrets, but she doesn’t press the matter.

After a cursory look at the little ones to make sure no one has a sharp tool who shouldn’t have one, and no one’s crying, fighting, or making more of a mess than expected, I put my attention back on Will. I didn’t really know what I was doing when I told him to help the children put their ornaments on the tree, but he’s doing a splendid job, so much that I almost want to let my hands fall still so I can keep watching him. He’s got this great silly smile on his face every time he kneels down to talk to one of them, and even though they’re so much smaller, none of them seem the slightest bit frightened. One of the little girls—of course, it’s the one with personal space issues, the one who crawled under my legs earlier—even leaps into his arms out of sheer excitement to put her messily drawn star as high upon the tree as she can reach.

As she stretches her arm and hangs it near the top, Will looks over here too, and I’m caught staring.

Stupidly, I wave at him, not sure what else to do since it’s too late to look away, and he grins, holding my gaze with those sparkling eyes for a few extra moments before he has to bring the girl back down to the ground.

“You all right?” Colette asks lightly, and I realize one of my hands has come to rest over my heart, which is pounding in a most unseemly and ridiculous way.

“Yes,” I say quickly, reaching for another slice of dried orange. “I’m just getting tired. It’s been a busy day.”

She gives me that look again.

“I didn’t know Will liked kids,” I say.

She glances over at him, a little smile on her lips. “Why wouldn’t he? He’s nothing but a big kid himself.”

And to be fair, he seems to be having the time of his life, bouncing around and making them “fly” a little when they ask for it and laughing at the same silly things they all find amusing. “I guess you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right,” she says, and she winks.

I don’t expect there will be any Christmas gifts under that tree for me tomorrow, but, even so, it sure feels like I’ve got something else, something that can’t be wrapped up in a box and ribbon. Something I didn’t have before.

And like mulled wine, warm and comforting and steeped in spices that taste like home, gratitude spills over me—for smiles and company and maybe, just maybe, newly forged friendship.

***

The other three have been hiding out in the corner for through most of the decorating, but when it comes time to crown the tree with the star, Stella takes one look around the room and lands a stare on Geoff. “You. Get over here.”

There’s only a split second of him staring back at her in surprise, and then, at the sound of Colette bursting into laughter, and at the unbudging resolution in Stella’s voice, he rises and crosses the room.

“Wow,” says one of the children, practically bug-eyed. “He’s tall.”

“I know,” Celeste says with a laugh. “That’s why we need him.”

The little girl from before, who seems to have finally found her harried-looking mother, bursts away and darts toward Geoff. “Can I do it? Please? Please? Please?”

Geoff stands helplessly, clearly not knowing what to do while she dances around him, pleading to be the one to put the star on the top of the tree. A glance at Will shows that he’s almost toppled to the floor, shaking with silent laughter, and another at Jamie shows that he has his arms crossed and is merely watching with a smile. He doesn’t notice me staring, but gives Geoff an encouraging nod.

“That okay?” Geoff asks the girl’s mother, voice low but uncertain, almost nervous.

She looks him up and down, obviously wary of his gruffness and his ridiculous height, but the daughter is clinging to his hands now, jumping up and down, and the mother has no choice but to say, “Well, all right then. If you’ll—um—if you’ll be careful.”

The girl squeals with delight as Celeste hands her the star and Geoff lifts her into the air, no step-ladder needed.

“Perfect,” Celeste says when the star is glinting atop the tree, and after Geoff has taken a moment to straighten it from the slightly drunken posture it was left in by the girl. Even Stella looks genuinely happy. She doesn’t bat Celeste’s hands away when they come to rest upon her—one on her shoulder, the other with fingers entwined with hers.

I peek back at the others, curious to see their reactions to the loveliness of the tree they chose, adorned and glittering. Will’s grinning, although for some reason he glances a few times at the clock; Jamie looks content; Allan is distracted by tending to someone’s kid who got a pine needle stick under his fingernail; Geoff is trying to slink back to Jamie’s side without being noticed; and Colette’s given up her reading ruse entirely, now openly watching Stella and Celeste with undisguised interest. It’s clear from how she’s always watching everything that goes on around here that her old habits from being IA’s information-gatherer are taking their sweet time to fade away.

“Hey, Miss Lucy.”

And, of course, now there’s this voice interrupting my thoughts.

“Yes, Mr. Bailey? What can I do for you?” Turning around brings me face to face with his red waistcoat, and I tilt my head up to frown at him, suspicious. “Where is it?”

“Where’s what?” he asked, all innocence.

“You know what.” I cross my arms. “Your damn mistletoe.”

“What damn mistletoe?”

“Henry.”

He flashes me that stupid, stupid grin. “You mean this?”

All around us, the older kids burst into cries, giggles, and oohs when he pulls it from behind his back and dangles it over my head. The younger ones don’t seem to know what it means, but buoyed by the infuriating enthusiasm of their older siblings, they join in on the excited squalling.

“We had a deal,” I say, trying to keep smiling for the sake of these goddamn children and no one else.

“Ah, yeah. We did. I recall.” But he’s still smirking. “This, though. It’s a Christmas tradition! Nothing more. And you don’t want to spit in the face of tradition, do you?”

“I hate you,” I say through gritted teeth.

He laughs, damn him. “No, you don’t.”

The kids are all shrieking now, like they’ve never seen mistletoe before, which cannot possibly be true. With my face burning, I step a little closer, aiming for his foot with mine. He dodges at the last second.

“You gotta try a little harder than that,” he says with a wink.

“Is that a challenge?”

I can’t control the way my eyes peer back, just for a second. It’s Colette who catches my eye; she has somehow commandeered Geoff away from Jamie, but she’s not looking at him while she talks. Like everyone else in this stupid inn, she’s watching Henry taunt me with those stupid fucking berries over my head.

With a sigh, I step forward and plant the most chaste kiss I can possibly manage on Henry’s cheek, this time landing a stomp on his toes.

“I’m going to make you pay for this,” I hiss in his ear.

Even though I’m sure his foot hurts, his eyes are still sparkling. “Darling, I’m counting on it.”

No one notices me trampling his toes or whispering threats, of course; the kids are all too busy losing their minds, along with someone else. Throwing his head back, laughing his ass off, Henry lets out a victorious whoop, then kisses me in matching chasteness on my cheek, and it’s only because he doesn’t try to steal a real kiss that I don’t sock him right in the stomach and show off all he’s taught me in front of everyone.

My heart’s pounding, I realize when he pulls away, but it has nothing to do with Henry’s lips against my cheek.

Victoria, looking sulkier than she did before, tries to nudge through the crowd, and I grab her hand. “Hey! Look!” I cry dramatically. “Mistletoe!”

And I switch places with her, so she’s now standing with Henry instead of me, and she’s giving me a look of pure joy, all sullenness instantly banished, and Henry’s rolling his eyes but also seeming to say, Well, may as well, and he kisses her, too, making her squeal and eliciting a round of cheers from his friends.

“Merry Christmas, you annoying bastard,” I say, quietly enough that no one can hear me—it wouldn’t do to scandalize the children, after all—but maybe, with any luck, he’ll read my lips and get the hint.

I glance at the corner, where Colette is clutching Geoff’s arm and suppressing a laugh with her lips squeezed together. Jamie’s stone faced. Allan looks confused.

Will is gone.

***

I don’t think my feet have ever hurt so much. This is the thought that keeps repeating in my head as I stumble upstairs to mine and Victoria’s room. Actually, it’s just my room tonight, because after she finished work, she departed to spend the night with her family so she can wake up with them on Christmas morning. I asked her once why she lives here with Stella and Celeste if her family’s not that far away, and she just said they lived too far out of town that the journey every day wouldn’t have been worthwhile. I figured I’d just take her word for it, but if I had a choice between living with Stella and not, well…

I’m almost up the stairs when a familiar voice breaks through the quiet.

“Will, are you even listening?”

Seems that when he disappeared earlier, he just came straight back up here.

“Mmm hmm,” he responds, or that’s what it sounds like, anyway. It’s quiet, almost inaudible, and unmistakably the voice of a man who is not listening at all.

Another voice. Jamie’s. Faintly concerned and quieter than Colette’s. “I guess none of us are getting any sleep tonight, huh?”

“You can do whatever you want,” Will mumbles back. “It’s not finished.”

“Looks finished.” That one’s Geoff, all rumble and thinly disguised amusement.

“Well, it’s not.”

Eavesdropping is wrong, but my curiosity burns a little. Well, a lot. Not finished what? Is “it” the reason he ran off, away from the mistletoe and the tree and the Henry Bailey debacle? Did he even see any of that?

Not that I care, of course.

“I still think you should listen,” says Colette. “I’m going to keep going now.”

“Okay,” he grumbles. “Hurry up, then.”

A soft grunt and the faintest thud make me wonder if she didn’t throw a pillow right at his head.

“‘And yet I should have dearly liked, I own,’” Colette reads after Will’s cursing has died down, “‘to have touched her lips; to have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value.’”

There’s a moment of silence as she pauses, a silence that seems to contain every possible emotion, breathless and urgent, as it rolls through the air.

Then…

“You’re a goddamn busybody, Colette.” It’s not Will who tells her off, even though he was the one whose attention was being requested; it’s Jamie. “I know what you’re—”

But someone’s laughing—no, more than one person. At least two. Colette, for sure, and if my ears don’t deceive me, Geoff.

“What are you so worked up about? I’m just reading. It’s right here! Look.” I can only assume she’s pointing to her page. “He didn’t hear a damn word, anyway.”

And it certainly seems like it; there’s not even a hint of a reaction from Will, except for, “The hell is so funny?”

“If it’s worth anything,” Allan’s voice says, “I’m not sure I’m comprehending, either.”

Colette says, “Oh, you’re both hopeless. Never let it be said that I didn’t at least try,” and then she’s back to reading A Christmas Carol and there’s nothing interesting left to listen in on except for Dickens’ beautiful prose.

I back away from their door, guilt already swarming all over me about the eavesdropping but warring with the strangest feeling, fuzzy and muddled to say the least, that there were two people meant to hear that passage, and while one of them did not, the other, quite possibly, heard it loud and clear as the tolling bells of midnight, heralding the arrival of Christmas Day.

Previous | TPOT Masterlist | Next

#lps the prince of thieves #lps-christmas #christmas #christmas story

10 notes · View notes