The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [6]
In the light of the moon, under Westminster Bridge, he kissed her again. "Will you marry me?" he asked.
"I'll be with you everywhere," she said. Her eyes were veiled with shimmering stars. "We will never be apart."
"Where have you been?" Jack demanded as soon as Orphan walked in. "Were you at the Rose? Do you have any idea what's going on?" He surveyed Orphan through his dark glasses with a frown. "Have you been out enjoying yourself? I've been worried sick waiting for you!"
"I'm fine," Orphan said. "Couldn't be better," he added. His mouth kept trying to shape itself into a grin, which he was trying to suppress for Jack's benefit. "I was at the Rose, but I wasn't hurt. I was with Lucy."
"He was with Lucy!" Jack said. Orphan's grin fought one last time and was released; Jack, on seeing it, shook his head and muttered, "Well, that's all right then."
"We're getting married."
"Married!"
"Don't look so horrified."
"Delighted for you, my boy! Married!"
"Are you sure you're feeling all right, Jack?"
They sat down together in the back room of Payne's Booksellers. Orphan sprawled on his bed (which sat between AEGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY and ELECKTRONICKA – GENERAL) while Jack took the single chair (beside the small, but choice, selection of technical tomes on the shelf marked STEAM ENGINES – THEORY AND PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS). Jack himself slept in the basement, which was large and filled with old books and which was always damp, embellished by the constant smell of mould and a strange, tangy breeze which had no obvious source.
"Married," Jack said. He seemed to mull the idea over in his head. "Nothing against marriage, me, but… Oh hell. Congratulations, boy! Let's drink."
"I thought you'd never offer."
Jack rose nimbly and reached for a thick bible on one of the shelves. He removed it, carrying it carefully, and laid it on the small side-table. Opened, it revealed a bottle of Old Bushmills. "Would this do? There are a couple of glasses in that Illustrated Mother Goose on the lower shelf next to your bed, if you could trouble yourself to fetching them."
Orphan sighed. Jack constantly worried him; he was afraid to ask what else was hidden in some of the books. More than words, he was sure.
Eventually, they clinked glasses. "To Lucy and yourself! To matrimony – may it make you forever happy and never come near to me!"
"I'll drink to that," Orphan said, and grinned, and he drank the toast. The whiskey, from the first distillery licensed by the Lizard Kings, slid down his throat with almost no resistance.
Heat rose from his feet to his face. "Put scales on your chest," Jack said, and laughed. "To Les Lézards!" Jack said. "We must drink to them too. May they end up on a spit above a fire as the food for drunken sailors."
"One day," Orphan said, "you'll go too far."
"Not far enough," Jack said.
"So the Bookman's back in town," Jack said, a little later, putting his hand on his chin (index finger resting against his cheek) in a faux-thoughtful gesture. "And poor old Irving's career is finally over." He sighed, theatrically. "Everyone's a critic."
"What have you heard?" Orphan said. Jack spread his hands in a shrug. Had he been French, it might have been called a Gallic shrug; as he weren't, it was a decidedly English one. "I heard the police closed off Southwark and are diligently hunting for clues, headed by the admirably efficient Inspector Adler. It must have been chaos there if they let you all go – there's a public appeal going out in the papers first thing in the morning for any witnesses to come forward."
"Irene Adler?" Orphan said, and Jack smiled unpleasantly and said, "The very same who is in charge of the Persons from Porlock investigation."
"Then they could do without my testimony," Orphan said. "What else does your abominable Tesla set say? And by the way," he added, "do we have some wine?"
Orphan coughed, said, "So what else did you hear?" Jack had an illegal Tesla