“Odd.” He tilted his head and considered me, his eyes doing the same slow travel mine had done on him. It took everything I had not to fidget under his gaze. “Typically women don’t mind when I’m on my knees in front of them.”
My gasp was drowned out by the laughter from a handful of patrons around us, and I dropped character enough to glance around to make sure there weren’t any children who may have heard him. While I was thus flustered he stepped closer, reaching one hand up to catch a lock of my hair that had come loose from its twist.
“Besides . . .” He studied the way my hair curled around his fingers as though it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. “This would be different.”
“Would it?” I tried to maintain my air of nonchalance, but it was harder than usual to take a breath over the pounding of my heart.
“Aye.” He leaned in closer, his eyes searching mine. What was it about that eyeliner that made his eyes look bolder, sexier?
“How so?” We had long since stopped performing for any kind of audience. My voice was little more than a whisper, and I was fascinated with the shape of his mouth, now a scant few inches from mine. I licked my suddenly dry lips and his breath stuttered for a split second.
“Well, love. I’d be fighting for you.” His mouth was so, so close to mine, and his voice was low, almost gravelly, like he was telling me a reluctant secret. “That would be a fight worth winning.”
Then he dropped my hair and straightened up, and with a tip of his hat he was gone.
I blew out a long, slow breath. Yeah. Quite an uneventful afternoon.
Eleven
As the end of the day approached, the crowd thinned out and we let the extra volunteers leave to help close up the ticket office. Stacey grinned at me as we cleared off tables. “Looks like we can make it to pub sing today!”
“Thank God for that.”
My attitude must have shone through in my tone of voice, because Stacey rolled her eyes in response. “I know I won’t shut up about it, but it really is a good time. You’ll see.”
“I’m sure I will.” I was prejudiced against pub sing not because of Stacey’s enthusiasm but because being there would make Simon happy, and apparently we all existed to make Simon happy. All memory of Simon-as-hot-pirate dissolved away as I remembered his diatribe at us the week before, when we’d missed both days. It made me want to skip it for the rest of the summer just to spite him.
But it didn’t matter, because it looked like we were headed for the stage at the front, so I tried to let go of those prickly Simon thoughts. We hadn’t had a customer for fifteen minutes, and Jamie had already locked up the cashbox and started stashing the alcohol away until the next day. We were all but dismissed for the night, so there was nothing left to do but—
I hadn’t even taken a step out of the tavern area, following Stacey, when a banner fell on my head. The swath of fabric covered me like a bad Halloween ghost costume, and I stopped in my tracks because I couldn’t see anything except purple. It took a little thrashing, but I fought my way out from under it, then I crumpled the fabric in my hands and looked up into the trees. It was one of the banners that formed a pseudo-canopy in the trees; I spotted the blank spot immediately. Apparently it had come loose and none of us had noticed it.
“Well, damn.” I craned my neck and tried to figure out exactly how I was going to get it back up there.
“What happened . . . oh, no.” Stacey followed my gaze up into the trees. “What did you do?”
I shot her an incredulous look. “Are you kidding?”
“Here.” Jamie had the cashbox under his arm and he was already halfway out of there, but he stopped and put the box down on one of the tables. “I can get it back up there.”
“No.” I waved him off. “You need to go turn in the cash. I can do it.” I eyed the tables underneath the trees. They seemed solid, and high enough that I could reach the branches without a problem. I could climb up there . . .
“But what about pub sing?” God, Stacey had a one-track mind.
I waved her off too. “You go. As long as one of us shows up it’ll get Simon off our case.” It took a little arguing, but within a few minutes I’d shooed everyone away and had the tavern to myself. After the bustle and chaos of the day, the quietness filled me with a sense of peace. I remembered that first day I’d walked the grounds. The sense of living in not only another place but another time. Now that I was here in costume, in a bodice that changed my posture and long skirts that brushed the ground, that sense was only heightened. Every once in a while it hit me in a wave: I wasn’t Emily when I was here. I was Emma.
So Emma, not Emily, clambered up onto a chair, and from there to the top of the table. The top of my head almost brushed the lower branches of the nearest tree; I’d never felt so tall in my life. Still too short for what I needed to do, though. I stretched up onto my toes as far as I could and started threading the fabric around the branches.
It didn’t take long for me to start cursing myself for my hubris. Would it have killed me to let Jamie help me with this? It was like trying to fold a fitted sheet with my arms over my head. The first attempts were failures, and my swearing intensified. I glanced around guiltily to make sure I was still alone; it probably wouldn’t be good for patrons to hear me swearing like a sailor. Should I learn some period-appropriate curses? Would that be better? Doubtful.
Finally I got the hang of it, and the banner was back up in the trees where it belonged. I jumped down to the ground and walked out to the lane to make sure it looked all right. From my vantage point I surveyed the tavern as a whole. The way the tables were set up tickled at the back of my mind, bothering me again like it had the weekend before. It didn’t look inviting. Drawing in more customers wasn’t an issue, as busy as we were, but the setup looked more like a food court than a tavern. Sure, we were limited by the fact that the clearing was a pretty open area, but I wanted coziness. Seclusion. I thought of smoke-filled rooms, dark and lit by lanterns. Shadowy corners and places to hide. Places to linger.
No, I couldn’t make it dark and shadowy here, under the trees and in the sunshine. But what if the tables were arranged differently? Could I create those cozy hidden corners if I . . . ?
Yes. I could.
The hell with pub sing.
I pushed up my metaphorical sleeves and got to work.
The tables weren’t that big, only made to seat four, and they weren’t particularly heavy, but dragging them across uneven ground was a little awkward. I probably should have waited until the next morning, gotten Jamie or one of the other volunteers to help me. But I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I was authorized to change around the layout of the tavern, and I was a firm believer in asking forgiveness instead of permission.