Chapter Eight: Esselle

"I'll be damned…" Chester held the topaz gemstone at eye level—the rays of midday light sneaking past the shop's half-barred windows to make it twinkle. "It almost looks like some sort of heirloom." I winced at the word before he added, "Quite the find. Imma scrub it up right quick."

And he did—scrubbed and rinsed the silver lemon-drop pendant, sticking it at the fore of the glass display before locking up and giving the top his signature taps for good sales.

I made a habit of avoiding family heirlooms for two reasons. One being cutpurse savvy. Nobs were more than willing to lose sight of petty jewels, but not so much the ones passed from kin to kin for millenia.

But it was also guilt. For had my grandfather given me anything of value, I'd stop at nothing to avenge the fool who dared part me from it.

I hoped Chester was wrong for once. If the pendant was an heirloom, it was unlike one I'd ever seen. It was the jewel's novelty that encouraged me to snag the honeyed silver in the first place. Unique… just like its owner.

Lyewkin Coates was the name I had scribbled into the ledgers, the name he'd given to Willow when I mixed his House Ablaze. Coates was such an unusual surname, and one I'd never come across in serving the nobles of East Pale.

Perhaps he was a foreigner. It would explain the mannerisms, and the way his drawl was unlike one I'd ever heard before.

Somehow, he reeked of charm but managed to irk me at the same time. I could sense a dishonesty about him and abhorred the way he smirked at me, like he knew I'd subject myself to hair-twirling and giggles. Like he waited on it.

I could tell when men fished for more self-pride, and from the looks of last night, he didn't need more of any such thing. He was fishing for something, but one could easily tell, it wasn't me he was fishing for.

I had seen too many ladies cry over such men, and I would be taken for no such fool to fall in line with the rest of them.

"What is it swimming in your head?" Chester prodded, withdrawing my thoughts from the chocolate hair and sage green.

"Nothing," I lied, a bit too hastily to be believable, before silently reprimanding myself, and shaking all images of the cad from view.

➸

I strolled into Port around noontide.

The burg was Pale's hub—Pale's capital burg—and the only place one could find both high-and-mighty nobles and lowest-of-low beggars in equal numbers. I had come to stock up on cocktail materials for the theater—garnishes, spices, juices, the whole caboodle apart from the bitters.

The Port Markets consisted of aisles between shops, restaurants, and tenement dwellings. They consisted of over-crowded stalls 'neath awning windows, each cranked open to shade the side-streets from blazing sunlight. The flamboyant lizards and birds that rested in that shade matched the array of dyed garments worn atop vivid nobs and bourgeois barters. Their dresses and tunics spanned every inch of the color wheel, ranging from smooth silks to ratty wool.

But Port was an experience beyond sights. It was an abundance of smells, too—sounds also. It was street music and traveling minstrels over the top of heeled shoes that ceaselessly clicked atop the cobble paths. It was vending merchants, distant church-bells, and too many conversations burgeoning at once.

It smelled like freshly baked bread, and steaming milk, and the earthy notes permeating from aged beef hanging about the butcher's stall.

And if you dared to look up, you'd feel even smaller against the rows extending skyward of tenement balconies—garments draped over the edges of them, cats jumping from one to another, folks sipping on spirits and teas whilst basking in the sunlight.

The midweek day was mine for stocking. It was my day to use the theater's excessive coin, and pocket even more as a reward for offering myself up for the task of re-loading its shelves. It felt like play rather than work, rummaging through the stalls and secretly purchasing Chester and my groceries at the theater's expense. If I were lucky, I'd spot a nob with a good book.

"Esselle!" A powerful grip wrapped around my wrist, and I turned to meet Mogul's beaming face. Same as me, he used the midweek day to purchase bitters for The Rusty Beaker. His mammoth wicker basket and stout arms came in handy.

"Mogul!" I returned his grin, leaning forward and enfolding myself in his solid embrace. Mogul wasn't tall—taller than me, not that it meant much. But he was sweet, never not casting kind eyes upon me or making me feel special in the many ways he did.

He held out the basket, nodding for me to drop in my armful of produce. "There's still so much to fetch," I admitted, letting the spices I'd gathered fill the bottom layer of its woven inside.

"And I've nothing but time," he replied, the beam not leaving his face. I think he enjoyed these weekly afternoons. And I knew he had a thing for me, but nothing would come of it—ever.

He was too pure, and I was too broken. He craved what everyone else craved, and I wanted nothing to do with it. He spent shillings on things. I saved mine, so that I could run far, far away in due course.

Pale was the dungeon, and I—a lass awaiting liberation. I wished men like Mogul could understand.

When the sun began bending west and our basket was filled to the brim, I knew our time in Port had just about met its end. The theater would beckon again, soon. It was Mogul's idea to grab a bite from 'neath an inn—a quaint bistro wedged between a seaside cliff and another crowded aisle streaming through Port.

The view was marvelous, meaning the food would be overpriced. Still, Mogul insisted he pay the levy.

"Esselle?"

"Yes?" I looked up from my plate to meet his gaze. There was hesitation in the way his lips pursed.

After a stutter or two, he said, "I so enjoy spending these afternoons with you."

"As do I, Mogul." I smiled to assure him that I meant every word. "Even if the nobs take up too much of the roadways with their mammoth petticoats," I jested, returning my eyes to the platter of food I'd all but scarfed down.

Mogul paused and nervously chortled at my attempt to ease whatever tension seemed to weigh in his mind.

"I'm approaching my mid-thirtieth birthday," he sputtered.

"And everyone's eager to celebrate." It wasn't a lie, the Devonites were planning to swarm his alehouse with fresh cake and kegs. I, myself, was in charge of the banners.

"Yes," Mogul murmured hastily, dismissing my words, an indication that he'd mentioned his birthday for another reason entirely, "I've just been thinking so much lately… of how old I am becoming—"

"Mid-thirty is hardly yet middle aged," I exclaimed, "It isn't like you're becoming a codger."

"I know," again, he dismissed, "But there were so many things I expected to do before reaching even my thirties."

"Like what?" I considered Mogul an accomplished man. With a profitable business, good health, and an entire burgh that adored him, what could the lad possibly have yet to do?

"Like marriage." Oh. Oh. He loosed a nervous sigh, and I wanted the floorboards to eat me. No—surely Mogul wasn't planning to ask for my hand. Was he? "What are your thoughts on the subject?"

"Marriage?"

"Yes, marriage." Perhaps I should have been grateful he didn't ask me of my thoughts on marriage to him in particular.

I thought long and hard of the right words to say. "I don't believe I'll ever marry."

"How could you be so resolute?"

Apart from Mogul being the only man remotely close to my age with whom I shared respect for, I never had that sort of connection. Most men made it clear that their only interest toward me was that of my body. It made me feel like a lump of skin, hair, and teeth whose only purpose was to look prettier than the next.

And was it not always the man that dictated the household, that held the neighbor's respect, that made decisions for his wife? I couldn't live such a way—I wouldn't.

"Because if I intend to be lonely, I'd rather it just be that… and not loneliness in the company of another, who somehow makes me feel more alone."

"And if they don't? If you were to truly enjoy another's company, and they were to truly enjoy yours—then what? You'd change your mind?"

I clicked my tongue, my head reeling, not quite knowing how to express my doubts that anyone ever would. Even Mogul, in all his infatuation, would be knocked sideways if he learned that I was a thief.

"If one claims to enjoy my company, they have yet to meet the real me."

Just as he opened his mouth to retort, the corner of the bistro broke out into shouting, fists slamming against table-wood, and forks clanking against dishware. It had to be an arm-wrestling event arousing the lot.

I thanked my lucky stars for the distraction. Then slyly grinned at Mogul, but he shook his head. "My days to rough-and-tumble are long past."

In his prime, I'd seen Mogul take out a house-full of strappers. But East Port men—whose bistro wrestling contests were the closest they'd come to dealing actual blows—were low-hanging fruit… He'd have them pinned, elbow to fingertip, faster than a priest could shout "Amen!"

I knew part of him wanted to wrestle. I knew most of him wanted our conversation of marriage to go on. But I needed the distraction.

I rose from my seat, stood atop my chair, and chuckled when Mogul hissed for me to get down. But the makeshift vantage point allowed me to see over the barrier of men that extended in a ring around the two that went at it. My eyes caught sight of leather and twine, and when I followed his command, hopping down from the seat, my sly grin grew to a devilish smile. Teeth and all.

"They're wagering three pouch-fulls," I coaxed. It had to be thirty shillings—possibly more. It was a generous bounty, indeed. "Come now, that's more than you spent on bitters today—and lunch—and my lunch. You'd actually profit from all of your shopping." I realized I was now wagging my eyebrows up and down. I may as well have been tempting a drunk with a bottle of booze. But he dared another peek, so I dealt the fatal blow. "Don't tell me you've grown timid… at the sight of nobs."

He lifted himself from the table with haste—the sawdust and resin shrieking at the force of it. Before I could bat my eyelashes thrice, he was one with the crowd of chanters.

I pulled my newly-acquired novel from our wicker basket 'neath the table. And sighed out some of the tension from our talk of matrimony.

A book and view accompanied the remainder of my stay in the quaint Port bistro.