Anger singed away the chill in the air.
The report on the wireless that morning had stated over a dozen firefighters had been killed, and over two hundred were injured. Brave men whose families would never welcome them home again, tell them they loved them again.
“How fortunate for you that several people lost their lives fighting the fires last night,” Grace said in a hard tone. “There are now openings for you to fill, as the rest of us are clearly so inept.”
Mrs. Nesbitt’s cheeks went red. “You impudent—”
But Grace was already jogging down the remainder of the stairs, not bothering to listen anymore. Not when it was too tempting to march up to the other woman and slap her bony face.
Steam huffed from Grace’s lips in white puffs, and she walked so fast that the muscles in her legs burned with the effort. Primrose Hill Books appeared before her without her realizing how quickly she’d gone.
She shoved in the door harder than she meant to.
Mr. Evans snapped his head up. “Miss Bennett?”
“That woman,” Grace declared with all the vehemence she’d been swallowing. “That horrid woman.”
“There’s no one in the store at the moment.” He came around the counter, folded his hands and rested them where the swell of his belly had once jutted. “Tell me what’s happened.”
Grace told him what Mrs. Nesbitt had said and relayed what had happened the night before, faltering when she shared Mr. Pritchard’s passing.
Mr. Evans exhaled thickly through his nose, his gaze distant. “He never did see the point in going to a shelter. It’s a pity how many share that opinion.” He shook his head slowly. “The poor bloke. Thank you for caring for Tabby.”
“I think Mrs. Weatherford is glad to have him.”
Mr. Evans gave a ghost of a smile. “He’ll do her good, I think. And as for Mrs. Nesbitt…”
The mere mention of the woman’s name caused Grace to simmer anew with rage.
“I think,” he said slowly, “Mrs. Nesbitt is so wounded by what’s happened to her shop that she’s lashing out at the first person she can.” Mr. Evans tilted his head in apology. “And that happened to be you.”
“She didn’t have to be so cruel.” Grace was being petulant, she knew, but the woman was truly odious.
Mr. Evans adjusted his thick glasses. “You recently read A Christmas Carol as I recall.”
Grace nodded.
“You saw how Ebenezer’s unhappy childhood made him who he was. Imagine how he might feel if his business burned to the ground.”
It was an apt comparison between Ebenezer Scrooge and Mrs. Nesbitt to be sure. One Grace had never thought to put together before that moment. But it was true how anger could be used to mask hurt, especially when hurt was such a very vulnerable emotion.
Even Mr. Evans had used his gruffness to mask his memories of his daughter when Grace had first started to work at the bookshop.
Who knew what Mrs. Nesbitt had experienced in her life to make her so hard and bitter?
It was a fresh understanding Grace had never stopped to examine before.
“Thank you,” she said. “I never thought to consider it in that fashion.”
Mr. Evans patted her cheek affectionately, the way a father might do. “You’ve a good soul, Grace Bennett.”
“And you’re an excellent teacher.”
She thought about that conversation through the day as she worked. It made her reevaluate even her own uncle. Ugliness in a person was not born, but created. Perhaps he had endured a hardship that had made him so cruel.
Suddenly she regarded him in a different light. Not with anger, but compassion. And with the knowledge that his mistreatment had nothing to do with her, and everything to do with him.
She mulled over all of this as she stared at the empty shelf in front of her, which had been cleared out the day before to make way for a new order expected to come in from Simpkin Marshalls. An order that would now no longer be fulfilled.
An idea struck.
“I wonder…” Grace said aloud. “If we might set up a small area of the shop for the booksellers of the Paternoster Row bombing.”
Mr. Evans, who was engrossed in a book some paces away, looked up at her over the rim of his glasses. “How so?”
“We can offer space to any of the shops who have books that weren’t burned and can keep track of whose stock they belong to when sold.” After all, she and Mr. Evans had tailored their recordkeeping into an immaculate art. “Then the owners can still generate a profit from at least some of their stock.”