Being patient at Scrivenshaft's had been the right thing to do, because no one had noticed him yet and this was now becoming a very productive trip. He'd meant to only stay at the window a moment but he'd been immediately distracted by Saffron when he caught sight of her through the window. She moved differently inside, where she didn't have to worry about warding off the cold. Most of the occasions he'd had to watch her were out-of-doors and veering more and more towards winter with each passing day. The times he'd seen her in the Atrium were mostly on her way in to work in the morning, which were much better. Of course she was still bundled up, but there was a liquidity to her movements that seemed absent on the street. She liked being here, he could tell. As he continued watching her he began to understand why. It was quiet yet academic, cozy and homely while still... well, he saw the tortoiseshell quill she picked up. She liked pretty things. Not pretty like a set of jewels was; not untouchable in its elegance. Pretty yet functional; beautiful because of how it worked.

She put the quill back. Calvin was going to buy it for her. She wouldn't know that he'd bought it for her, because he'd never say, but he'd buy it and he'd put it on a desk in his house when he had a house, and someday she would be invited in to his house and she would feel immediately that this was a place where she belonged. Someday she would live there and be surrounded by beautiful, useful things.

He realized he'd been at the window too long and moved on. He didn't go far. The shop next door was a cobbler's and he went inside, then struck up a conversation with the clerk about prices for having a set of boots re-heeled. He had no such boots, but it served to fill the time until he caught sight of Saffron Whitby on the High Street again, at which point he stopped coming up with more questions for the cobbler, took the quote and promised to bring the boots, and went back to the street. He had already thought earlier that he shouldn't follow her in to any stores at this point, but the next one she went in to was a bakery, and — well, he couldn't let that go. He'd already been wondering about her favorite foods. This had to be some kind of a sign. She went in ahead of him, since she'd had a healthy lead on the street, and by the time he entered the Ivy Leaf Cafe there was one person in line behind her already. He slipped into the queue.

He could have stood listening to her talk with the baker for hours. She was saying so much — did she realize how much she said? Probably not; so terribly unguarded, and it would have been so easy for someone to have listened in and taken advantage if they'd been of a mind to — figured out when the print shop might be empty based on what she said of the assistant printer's cold and the big delivery coming up, for example. He could talk to her about it, maybe, except that he was also charmed by it. He didn't want to change her, to make her wary of the world. She just needed someone to protect her from it.

Someone else had come in behind him. The bell over the door had gotten her attention, and now she seemed in a rush to order. Calvin didn't turn to look at who had entered, but for a moment he hated them, whoever they were. But there was too much happening to hold on to a frivolous emotion like that: Saffron was ordering an apple tart, but not her usual, she was expanding her horizons, and saying keep the change and all of this was knowledge he would have died for an hour ago. He was too distracted to get out of her way when she turned. His breath caught as she moved to the side, fearful that she was going to fall, but she recovered.

"No trouble," he assured her. His voice was steady and casual but he could hardly hear it over the way his heart was pounding in his ears. These were the first words he'd said to her — but this wasn't their first meeting, he wasn't ready to really meet her yet. He was unremarkable today — forgettable. She would forget this. "I hope I didn't crush your tart?"

---