She was drooling.
The train car jolted, flapping his newspaper and giving him a clear view of the sleeping figure. Cress was opposite of him, curled up in a tight ball.
He smirked at how feeble she looked. Her mouth hung open, eyelashes fluttering with every creak and whistle in the compartment. With every bump of the train, wisps of hair fell out of her loose bun. It was a muddy sort of color, and with her button nose and huge eyes, combined with her thick, ugly black dress, she resembled a tiny bird.
Carswell sighed at the coincidence, then snapped his paper back into form.
The third page, middle column read;
Mayor announces large-scale plans for New Years Eve, December 31st this year. Past celebrations in Times Square "have been nothing compared to what is to come." Walter E. Palmer, who joined in the interview, stated that there is to be a grand "sphere" dropped at midnight. More on the details in page 7.
(*Everything the newspaper described actually happened in 1904, and this is the same year that subway trains were first constructed in New York, for anyone who's interested. I wanted everything to be historically accurate.)
He was about to turn the page when a cough echoed through the room. Carswell sniffed and looked up.
A female attendant was smiling at him, a cart beside her.
"Any refreshments for you today, sir?" The brunette's husky voice filtered in, and Cress mumbled something in her sleep. They both ignored her.
He was busy lazily dragging his eyes up and down the lady's figure. She was curvy and beautiful, with fair skin and full maroon lips.
Thorne cleared his throat. "Ma'am, I have the feeling that sight is all the refreshment a gentleman can handle."
She put her hand on her hip and batted her eyelashes. Inwardly, Thorne was laughing at how terrible she was at this. She wasn't even trying.
"Who said anything about you being a gentleman?..." That was more like it. He grinned his signature smile on her, watching as her expression faltered.
"Do you have...anything else to offer?" He whispered.
"Of course, sir, if you'll just follow me." She answered, clearly very proud of herself. Thorne slid out of the velvet seat and followed her through the car door, both leaving the cart behind.
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The nightmares were getting worse.
Since she was five, the monsters started appearing, whispering things to her until she woke up in a cold sweat.
In the years before adolescence, they'd morphed into dreams of running from something she never saw the face of.
During her teens, they were images of her parents disappointed in her. Punishing her.
Now, the nightmares didn't even need to make something up in order to terrify her. They just brought memories back to the surface.
"We have some news, my darling, may we speak to you in private?" Her mother cooed, eyeing the butler disdainfully. He wasn't fooled by her act. None of the servants were, or had ever been. But he simply nodded and left the room.
Her father turned from his papers, nudging gold-rimmed glasses off his considerably large nose and dropping them to the table.
"Have a seat, Crescent." She grimaced, hating her name. They'd once told her it would give the impression of her being wealthy and abundant in all qualities, which would serve her well in finding a husband, but to her, a crescent moon was only a sliver of what it should be, and she secretly suspected that was the true reasoning behind the dreadful name.
YOU ARE READING
New Wings
Fanfiction-Cresswell AU- New York, 1904 A broken girl has the chance of a lifetime; an escape from what she despises. But the man she took it from is not who she comes to know. Has Cress fallen into more than she bargained for? *Not a one shot, I still have l...
