He looks at me, equal parts annoyed and confused. “Nothing affectionate at all?”
“Well, my mother thinks nicknames are superfluous and a waste of time,” I tell him with a quick smile. Also I suspect there’s some element of a lack of care at play, but I can neither conclusively confirm nor deny that. I clear my throat. “So she named me something that you can’t really shorten.”
His face pulls in a curious sort of discomfort, then he lifts an eyebrow. “Daphne Belle Beemont-Darling. Wee bit long, d?nnae you thi—”
“It’s Beau! Pronounced ‘bow,’ as in tie a bow, Beaumont,” I interrupt him with a growl. “Bow!”
“Bow, is it?” He tilts his head, smirking. “Sure, but that’ll do.”
Our eyes catch, and he swallows, and the sun feels like it’s kissing my cheek, and I feel a strange, new kind of warmth fall upon me as his eyes flicker over me.
“Jam!” says that pirate from the other day, Orson Calhoun. He grabs his shoulder. “We’ve go’ trouble.”
Jamison rolls his eyes. “What now?”
Rye appears behind Calhoun, a little frown on his brow.
“One of the wee bairns stole a loaf o’ bread from the bleeding prick baker, and he’s demanding his hand fer it.”
“Oh, fuck.” Jem rolls his eyes and moves past me quickly.
“You okay?” Rye asks, shoving his hands through his hair as we walk quickly after Hook.
“Fine, yes.” I nod. “Where did you go?”
He shrugs. “Just lost you for a minute.”
Actually, he lost me for a little more than twenty, but I didn’t mind it (all things considered*), so I don’t say anything.
Jamison’s pace picks up as though he feels the urgency of the moment, and the way people move out of his way, it’s almost as if he’s the mayor of this odd town.
There’s a crowd gathering at the other end, a bunch of kids yelling and screaming, and Hook pushes his way through them all, and then I see it—this horrible-looking man with greasy hair and about nineteen chins, one hand raised in the air, clutching a butcher’s knife, the other holding down the arm of a sweet, little blond angel boy.
He’s squirming and crying, and I gasp at the sight of it. Jem looks over his shoulder at me as though he’s just remembered I’m there. It’s just for a second before he looks back at the unfolding situation.
“Redvers,” Jamison says in a calm voice. “Put that cleaver down. Yer bread’s not thon good.”
The man glares over at Jamison. “Wee bastard stole a loaf from me.”
“I wasn’t stealing it!” the boy cries. “I knocked it over. I was picking it up!”
“Fibbing scunner!” the baker yells and grips his cleaver tighter. I see him pull back a bit, so I cover my eyes for a moment, then peek out my fingers.
“Aye.” Jem nods and gives him a tight smile. “But I wudnae think it’s worth dying over.”
The baker glances over at Jem, then gives him a sinister smile. “I’m not going to kill him. Just a hand.”
Jamison shrugs. “Aye, but see, then I’d have to kill ye, so…”
The baker peers over at Hook right as he takes out his pistol and points it straight at the baker’s horrible head.
But then something happens that I don’t think Jamison was prepared for.
Another boy—older than the sweet, little blond one, maybe thirteen or fourteen—appears with a gun of his own, pointing it at Jamison.
“Put your gun down,” he tells Hook, voice shaking as he does. He’s got the same pinkish skin, the same greasy sheen as the baker. It’s his son, for certain.
I inhale sharply, nervous. A teensy bit because I don’t want Jamison to kill yet another person but a lot because I definitely don’t want another person killing Jamison.
“Milton!” the baker growls, looking scared himself now. “No, put it away.”
The boy shakes his head. “Fair is fair,” the boy says, trying to sound braver. “We just want his hand.”
The baker shakes his head quickly, staring at Hook. “I’m just down a shilling. I’m not after trouble.”
I hear Hook breathe out his nose loudly. He’s annoyed, but he’s calm.
“Daphne?” he calls, not moving a muscle, eyes still on the cleaver, hands still on the pistol. “Come here, would ye, please?”
Rye shoves me wordlessly forwards, and I take a few nervous steps towards him. The baker and the son are staring at me, frowning as I approach them cautiously.
“Here,” Jem says, catching my eyes and nodding me closer to him. “Reach into my pocket now.”
I stare at Hook and he gives me a somewhat pleasant and indifferent look.
“Get this man a couple o’ shillings fer his bother.”
I stare from Jamison to the baker to the little boy, and then Jem rolls his eyes. “Come on, Bow. We d?nnae have all day.”
I give him an unimpressed look and move directly in front of him. I glance over at the baker’s son nervously, but Hook ducks his head to catch my eye, and he does this clever thing where he tells me we’re fine without saying a word.
I reach my hands into his coat and pat down Jem’s body. His eyes catch mine, amused, and I don’t ask for a few seconds where I’m meant to be feeling.
He presses his tongue into his bottom lip. “Front left pocket,” he tells me without looking away.
I swallow heavy.
“Ye watch those hands,” he says so quietly no one but us could hear it.
I pull out a handful of coins—gold, silver, and bronze, just as you’d expect—but none of them look like our shillings from back home.
I hold them out in my hands and stare up at Jamison, waiting.
He glances down at my hand and then past me back to the baker, monitoring it all.
“Two of the silver ones with the lass who has flowers in her hair,” he tells me without looking at me.
I pick out two of those and then put the rest back in his pocket. And though you might have missed it if you blinked, Jamison winks at me as I do it, and my heart skips a little beat.
“Thonder to Redvers, Daphne, if ye d?nnae mind.” Hook nods his head, still not lowering his gun. “On the table in front of him.”
I nod and do it, staring at the little boy with his arm pinned, wondering when the baker will let him go.
The baker looks at the coins on the table, then over to his son. He nods his head, telling him to lower the gun. And then, finally, he lowers the cleaver.
Hook sighs pleasantly and lowers his pistol, tucking it away. He walks over to the little boy and picks him up with a great and wonderful ease and then walks over to the butcher.
I’m still standing there, a little paralysed by all of it, of what I nearly just saw—
Jamison leans in close to the baker and whispers to him, “Ye even look as though y’are about to hurt a bairn again, I’m gonna take a cleaver to yer fucking face.”
I don’t even have a chance to gasp at that (though it did deserve one) before Jem reaches over and grabs my hand, pulling me away and through the crowd.
Once we’re through the crowd, he lowers the little boy to the ground.
“Farley.” Jem gives him a look. “I’ve told ye before, if ye need something, just tell me.”