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{transcribed from email RP}



He is sitting on the front steps, as he frequently does, and although there are three saucers of milk on the ground they are not laid out for the spirits. Taym, despite the pale doe at his side, is not that type. Instead they are being enjoyed by far more corporeal drinkers: several striped kittens are tumbling on the ground or clumsily wetting their chins in the cream.

The town house behind him is a fine old building—too fine for Taym, with his father’s name on the brass rectangle over the door. There is a ridiculously fat black cat reclining in one of the windows, watching the kittens outside with a baleful eye.

The man himself—in shirt sleeves pushed to his elbow with his wiry, scarred, sun-damaged forearms bare, so different than he had looked on that prim and groomed morning with his daughter in tow, now that he is loose in town and playing the bachelor—needs a shave. And a comb. He has a cigarette in one hand and a marmalade-colored kitten in the other. The former is dangling carelessly and causing Maple to wrinkle her nose; the latter is being held gently to his neck, where it is mewling pitifully as it longingly stares at the milk.

He contemplates the governess, her stride, her clothing; for a moment he considers letting her pass. She probably wouldn’t spare a glance for an unkempt man on a step, looking more like a layabout than the occupant of the fine house. He could go unheeded.

But he doesn’t.

“Miss Goodwin,” he says cheerily, as soon as she is near enough that he can greet without shouting. Raising his voice is enough: the kitten-hand goes to one side considerately as the cigarette-hand is raised to stifle a cough. “What a strangely small place Sunderland is.”



Taym’s face flickers with indignation at the term, but it’s quickly stifled and he plants a kiss unabashedly on the kitten’s forehead and scratches its chin with his thumb. It meows pathetically. The lane running in front of his house is, thankfully, largely uninhabited save for the cats: a man at a market stall a few doors away seems to be paying them no heed, snoozing behind his wares with a newspaper over his head, and the occasional carriage or pedestrian barely pays them heed.

“Very perceptive—very insightful. There are, indeed, mice in the kitchen. We felt this might alleviate the problem.” Never mind the black cat in the window. Never mind the four or five others that come and go through the back door that Abbey doesn’t even know about. Taym’s cats are a source of constant scandal to the neighbors. “We could maybe spare one,” he adds, stubbing out the cigarette (Maple, who is fanning her huge ears at Abbey and gazing at her with those soft, worried eyes, whuffs her relief) and picking up another cat, which he extends towards her. “Would the girls like a kitten? And what errand—if I can intrude on your personal business—brings you into town? I’d thought you wouldn’t be able to tear yourself away from your charges for a moment.” He accompanies this with an absent gesture of his hand, and the kitten, perturbed, flattens its ears.



Maple obligingly rests her nose in Abbey’s hand, smooth as velvet and gently sniffing. At the description of her errand Taym’s eyes flit to her shoes appraisingly, but he only says: “And where is Verdain? In the good care of the girls?” He puts the proffered kitten down, and then the other. This latter he places onto Maple’s back, which the doe bears with longsuffering patience. The kitten’s cream-and-gold fur matches its perch perfectly: no wonder Taym had been so drawn to it.



This, too, is interesting: Taym watches her with Maple and is pleased by the easiness of her hands on the doe, pleased by her obvious affection. Equally pleased by Maple’s being pleased, which he feels acutely. The resulting feedback loop leaves him warm-bellied and drowsy as the sated, sleepy kittens. And that won’t do. He coughs into his elbow, dry hard coughs like he is ill, before he answers.

“If your handling of horses is any indication, I’d say Verdain is just confident in your abilities as a rider.” A small compliment, tucked into the conversation, clumsy but sincere. “But now that you are afoot and unaccompanied, would you be offended if I offered my arm on your errands? I have, as it turns out, a need for a new pair of boots.” Flagrantly untrue. He adds immediately, not totally oblivious to the situation: “I am loathe to interfere with your full schedule but I assure you I could be presentable in mere moments. I wouldn’t dream of burdening you with the embarrassment of an escort in my present uncouth state.”



“I am,” he assures her—and his yellow teeth seem to back up his claim, although that may just be the smoking habit, “an expert on all things confectionary.” He begins gathering the kittens in his arms—the marmalade which has finally escaped Maple’s back for the long-coveted saucer lets out a squeak of dismay—and Maple, after bumping her nose fondly against Abbey’s hand, rises to her feet.

With his arms full of cat, Taym somehow juggles them into such a position that he can open his door. “You’re welcome to wait in the sitting room,” he says. The lane is still empty save for the vendor. “But Maple will wait outside, so if you are enjoying the sunshine I won’t prevail upon you to abandon it.” The invitation hangs, neatly allowing her to take either option without fear of offense. He begins depositing cats inside the door, nudging some of the attempted escapees back in with his toes.

The kittens live in the house. Ye gods.



He hesitates—in truth he’s trying to figure out exactly that, whether she is teasing him or not—but he decides not to press it, and with further assurances of his speed and gratitude for her graciousness in letting him burden her with his company, he disappears. There is a muffled sound of someone taking the stairs two-at-a-time.

Maple is an affectionate thing—rather like a slightly stand-offish cat herself, honestly—and seems quite happy to wait at Abbey’s side, her ears constantly alert and swinging at every sound, her eyes moving forever up and down the road. She starts a little, a nervous bounce, when Taym returns a few minutes later. He looked much worse but far more at home in his bare arms: his clothes, fine and clearly kept by a man or maid with more care for appearances than the wearer, sport starched cuffs and the proper sort of pocket square, and he has managed to hastily shave and to shove his hair across his forehead in what attempts to be rakish stylishness and misses. The bareness of his jaw and the fine fabric of his coat only offset the shaking of his hands and the deep circles beneath his hooded eyes, and he has refused to properly tighten his cravat, which hangs a little too loosely, like a sailor’s scarf. He rolls a shoulder as he descends the steps and locks the door, apparently still finding it choking.

Out of respect for her—her looks at the cats did not go unnoticed—he does not arrive in the street with a dog. This is apparently unusual, because there is a flurry of frustrated barking behind the door, which he has the good sense to look embarrassed about. “I hope that you find my appearance tolerable,” he says, flashing another yellow-toothed grin. “And I hope you didn’t find the wait too long.” Probably should have waited longer. Might have done a more even job with the sideburns, or at least found the time to do something about that thing around his neck. He offers her his arm, regardless. Polite, not too assuming. It is a gesture with far too much practice behind it, and the whole nonchalance of it, the easy distance, is suspect. Taym is too good at pretending that he doesn’t care about being seen with a woman on his arm. Good enough, maybe, to give it away to a girl shrewd enough.



The pause makes him grin, although he waits until it's over, until she's stiff and proper at his side. It has been a morning of bacon, cigarettes, kittens, and Maple, and Taym is in a mood to find anything at all more charming than disappointing. He sets off measuring his stride, a little stiff himself, but with the stiffness of a hard-worked body. He manages to make even this seem like a sort of slink; an aging wolf loping along after his prey. Maple's feet make pretty sounds on the cobbles next to them.

He again glances at her feet, eyeing the pragmatic shoes thereupon. "I suppose the business of chasing three young girls and an energetic deer around precludes a woman from satin slippers with embroidered ribbons," he observes--in an undertone, as a gauzy-dressed lady flits across a crosswalk some distance before them in exactly that, the pastel toes peeping from her skirts with each step. Not to mention that it would clash with the well-groomed, straight-laced nature of the rest of her wardrobe.



He did notice. He grins again and gives her arm on his elbow a little "shh, you'll blow my cover" shake, without saying anything, and turns his head to cough before he answers.

"Well of course I agree that a woman ought to wear whatever impractical thing she desires--far be it from me--but I thought, perhaps, you didn't desire that. You don't strike me as having the same tastes in shoes as Eliza. But maybe I'm mistaken?" He raises his eyebrows, all innocence, and Maple shakes her head as if shooing a fly.

"All art is useless," quotes Taym, apparently from the future and another dimension. "Does Mr. Dahlby not give you time for social pursuits? Or do you simply spend that time in buying sensible boots and graciously tolerating the company of decrepit old men?" His voice completely lacks judgment--he is not teasing her this time, or even criticizing her. It's pure curiosity, polite if a little forward, eased up with self-deprecation.

Taym does a good if somewhat hyperbolic impression of a prim gentleman shocked by the conduct of a supposed lady, and he deploys it here, hand on his chest. “Threats!” he accuses. “Unfinished ones, at that. To let the imagination do what it will, I suppose, and supply a suitably ominous ending. Very skillful. Very subtle.”

He steps up to the door of the shop, and just before he holds it for her in the accepted fashion, he says: “Accordingly frightened to decency, I swear I will be a perfect gentleman. Best behavior. Not a single joke, nor a single suggestion that your money might be better spent on—oh, say, those.” He indicates, innocently, a blush-colored pair of silk slippers in the window, beaded with flowers and looking like they would come apart at the first suggestion of rain. The sort of impractical, hyper-embellished frippery a shoemaker uses to advertise his finest work, even if most of his business comes from stolid riding boots. “Not a single suggestion,” he repeats. But he grins. And then he opens the door for her.

Taym, who has totally forgotten the fib that landed him here, simply looks back at her for a moment in a state of great confusion. He has been absently fingering a sample spool of fine grey silk laces set out to tempt customers less savvy than Abbey into upgrading, and the end dangles from his trembling fingers.

"I'm sorry, I--" he says, and then he remembers. But he doesn't say anything. He just grins, as the shopkeeper returns with his tally, an infuriating cocky grin because it's too late for her to do anything about it now.

Transcribed from email.