Stars (Wendy Darling #1)(9)

“That nosy little prat.”

Booth stood and crouched in front of her, his hands resting gently on her knees.

“Wendy, even if they won’t allow it, I feel the right thing would be to tell your parents. I am fond of your family, and I will not sneak around behind their backs. That would be dishonest. I want ours to be a public love, not something we hide in the shadows.” Wendy buried her face in her hands. In her mind, she saw her mother’s reaction to Booth’s advances, the disappointment in her father’s face as he realized that his second-favorite child would fall from her rightful social status. It couldn’t happen, not now. Not until she could figure out a way to raise Booth from his status as a bookseller’s son . . .

“I can see the wheels in your head turning, Wendy. But there is no other way if we want to be together now.”

Wendy found her voice, which had been pressed back against her throat. “Booth, if we can just wait, wait until you become an accountant, wait until you have the chance to . . .”

He stood up. “To what, Wendy? How long should I wait for you? Until I am thirty and you have been betrothed to one of your father’s older colleagues? Or perhaps until you get sent off to a girls’ college? Perhaps I can climb a vine up to your window . . .”

His voice had turned cold. Wendy stood up and reached for him. He pulled her against his warm chest, and Wendy felt herself curling into him, fading into the smell of him, the intoxication of the bookseller’s son being so near. His lips traced her brow.

“I can’t wait that long for you, Wendy. You are going to have to be brave. Can you do that for me?”

Her lips opened just slightly. “I need time, Booth.”

A door slammed from below the attic, and they leapt apart from each other, Booth’s feet skittering on an empty lantern. He looked up at Wendy, annoyed.

“This is what we have to look forward to if we decide not to tell your parents.”

“Booth?” The shopkeeper’s voice echoed sharply up through the attic. “Booth, what are you doing up there? I need you to carry some books for Miss Rochester!”

Booth leapt up, snapping his suspenders and pulling on his pageboy cap. He spun back toward Wendy, putting his hands over her warm cheeks.

“Let me look at you, just as you are now, so that later I can remember the moment you became mine.” Time seemed to slow as she fixed her eyes on his perfect face, golden fragments of dust circling around it, the face that she longed to see above all others. Booth leaned his cheek against hers, and Wendy closed her long eyelashes, taking in the feel and the smell of him. A peace she had hardly known in her life welled up inside of her.

“I will remember always,” she promised. “I will remember for both of us.”

Booth’s blue eyes met hers. “We will finish this conversation later.”

And then he was gone, and she was left alone in his bedroom, her mind a whirling storm, filled with both passion and dread. She brushed off her dress and spent a few minutes straightening her hair bow and her tights and pushing back the stray hairs that had crept forward. Even when picking the woolly lint specks off her tights, Wendy could not keep the smile off her face. Finally satisfied that she looked completely like nothing had happened in Booth’s bedroom, Wendy stepped out from behind his door and made her way to the ladder and back down to the store. Her hands wrapping around the wood, so warped by Booth’s hands that it was smooth, she climbed down, mindful of her dress with each chaste step. She had almost reached the bottom when she heard her name screeched, a sound that made her hairs stand on end.

“Wendy Darling?” Mrs. Tatterley, her mother’s favorite gossip partner, was standing at the register, where Mr. Whitfield was dutifully ringing up cookbooks. She bounced over to Wendy, her large bosom traveling first, followed by the swaying of a dozen pearl necklaces, all real. Wendy knew this because Mrs. Tatterley always made it a point to tell others about her wealth. A buttoned-up silk gray dress flared out in double layers around her feet, and the collar stretched wide over her pink corseted bodice. On her head sat an enormous hat of peach silk roses, greenery, and a black and white striped bow.

“Wendy Darling! I didn’t know you would be here! Is your dear mother here?”

“Mama is not here today. She had a ladies’ meeting after Mass.”

Mrs. Tatterley bustled around her. “Oh, of course, of course, she mentioned that last week. A meeting about the new parchments for the altar, is that correct?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mrs. Tatterley bent over Wendy and squinted. “Good Lord, child, your cheeks are so flushed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so red. Are you sure you are not feverish?” Wendy politely sidestepped her touch, not wanting this woman’s perfume-drenched hands to touch anywhere Booth had kissed. Her mother’s friend eyed the ladder. “Did you come from upstairs? Why on earth would you want to go into that musty attic? I’ve told Mr. Whitfield here several times that if he wants to continue getting my business that he will clean up this store to a more sanitary level! He can’t expect people of our stature to shop amongst such dust. And some of the books he carries! Did you know that I saw a copy of Ibsen’s Ghosts in the back the other day? Obviously someone had been reading it! The filth of that novel! Good Christians truly should not even shop here.”

Wendy knew she should bite her tongue, and yet her defensiveness over Booth and his father rose up instead. “Then why do you?”