After basking in the brotherly warmth of Pettigrew's hug for a minute or two, Brendan started getting very sleepy indeed. Luckily Pettigrew offered his bed. "Bed is nice." Brendan rose and found his way over to the bedroom, mumbling, "Miss Bridget is nice too. Miss Bridget. I miss Bridget."

He tugged off his boots, slipped out of his suspenders, and tumbled into bed, not bothering to turn down the covers. It was just five minutes, after all. With a yawn, he closed his eyes, turned on his side, and began to doze off.

In his muddled head, Pettigrew and Bridget combined to make a single person, chubby and waifish at the same time, with long red hair that grew lushly everywhere but on the top of the head. Brendan frowned in his near-sleep, rubbed a fist across his eyes, and focused on the Bridget part of the person in his head. There...that was better. His lips parted in a small smile.

The pain of a hangover headache made Brendan's eyes squeeze closed as he woke up. But when he opened them, he opened them wide. He almost sat up and shot out of the bed, but his headache, the cold air, and the realization that he was naked kept him from it.

"Whaddya know about last night?" he grumped, massaging his temples and turning away from Arabella to curl up under the covers again. Not that she cared about seeing him, but he cared. At least Arabella wasn't naked, too. But even if she had been, he figured he was pretty safe, unless she'd indulged as much as he had. But surely, even drunk, Arabella wouldn't...No, there had to be another explanation.

Apparently Arabella knew a great deal about what had happened last night.

Brendan groaned as a slight wave of nausea roiled through his stomach. "Again?" he groaned. "Whaddya mean, again?" The previous night was fuzzy after a certain point. He certainly didn't want to be sick again, if in fact he had already been.

He'd already asked two questions and more were continually popping into his head. Where was Pettigrew? Why was Arabella here? And what the devil had happened to his clothes?

Brendan glared over his shoulder at Arabella. She was just the sort of person who would have taken his clothes just so she could complain about his "thing." And what was she doing in the bed anyhow? If it bothered her so much, she should have left.

But one thing was for sure, he wasn't going to be sick in front of Arabella again. "No, I'm fine." He clamped his lips together, taking a deep breath through his nose. He was fine. He watched as Arabella bustled around the room, recounting her involvement in the last night's events. So far. Lord knew she was probably even more involved than she'd let on so far. She was even trying to get involved in his personal business, like whose names he'd called out the night before. 

It made sense he would have called for Maggie...sort of. Breda would have made more sense, being closer in age to him. But both his sisters had a deeply ingrained sense of caring and mothering in them that would have set him calling for them in a time of sickness.

"Maggie's my sister," he muttered, knowing how ridiculous it sounded. That was the sort of thing you said when a girl wasn't your sister.

Although Arabella was concerned with getting Brendan ready to head to work, work was the very last place Brendan wanted to be at the moment. The idea of smelling meat wasn't appealing to his stomach, and the idea of hearing customers' voices wasn't appealing to his head. All he wanted to do was go back to sleep and wake up next to Bridget. Or even Caroline.

"Look, I'll get there when I get there." He sat up slowly, keeping the blankets bunched around his waist. "Either shut up or get me some coffee. Can't think with you talkin' so much." There was no excuse for talking like that to Arabella, who was just trying to help. But between the headache and his spotty memory, his temper was fraying.

Now that his mind was working better he vaguely remembered being sick, or at least the horrible feeling right before and the cold sweat he'd been in after. Well, that was something. So what else did he remember?

"The last thing I remember is...drinking with Pettigrew," he said after thinking, but not very hard. That was true, although not very specific. That's pretty much all he and Pettigrew did until Brendan had asked to rest his eyes for a few minutes. A few minutes, that's all Brendan had intended it to be. Poor Pettigrew hadn't gotten to sleep in his own bed (Brendan assumed). But where was he, then? Brendan looked around the room -- too quickly. Pain jangled behind his eye sockets.

He leaned back against the headboard and closed his eyes, tilting his chin up so Arabella could lather him up whenever she was ready. If he'd been thinking more clearly, he would have flat out refused to let Arabella shave him. Where Pettigrew's hands might shake, Arabella's were prone to large gestures that might leave him with a chunk out of his face or neck if she wasn't paying attention or got too carried away with a subject.

"Where is Pettigrew? And how'd you get here?" He popped one eye open and squinted at her.

Brendan's fingers twitched as Arabella ruffled his hair. Part of him wanted to snatch off her hand and throw it across the room. But another part of him was enjoying the attention. Arabella was a lot like Maggie, now that he thought about it. They both talked their heads off. That was how he knew so much about Arabella and she knew so little about him.

Finally Arabella mentioned that Pettigrew had slept at the refuge. Well, this was a mystery. Why wouldn't Pettigrew have stayed at his own house during the night? Why'd he have to go to the women's refuge? Instead of asking more questions, Brendan puffed out his cheeks as ordered and sat very still while Arabella shaved him. She actually did a decent job of it. More than a decent job, if he was being honest.

"It ain't demon booze," he scoffed. It was just like a woman to say things like that. "We just had a few drinks after he took my measurements." That brought a flood of memory back. Well, maybe not a flood, but he at least remembered why he'd been drinking with Pettigrew. "Arabella, he's gonna tailor me one of Mr. Orr's old suits! That way I can look respectable when I go see Bridget at the Wentworths.'"

"Listen Mississippi..." she suddenly said, still sitting next to him on the bed "When you was a boy, did your Pappy ever sit you down and explain to you all about the Birds and the Bees and the Wasps?"

Brendan frowned, puzzled by the sudden topic. Arabella ought to know that he knew about the birds and the bees after sleeping on the other side of Caroline's room at the saloon. But he humored her and shrugged, rubbing his newly-shaven cheek.

"Well, yeah. Took me out to see the cows one day." He grinned a little. "I still had to figure things out from there. Girls isn't cows. They like to be able to look at you while--" he broke off, narrowing his eyes. "What's that have to do with Pettigrew?"

"Well...You know like Bulls always like Cows and Cows always like Bulls? Uh-huh?"

"Uh-huh." Despite his muddled head, Brendan was following along with Arabella's conversation so far. The smart girl was putting it in animal terms; terms she knew he'd understand.

"Well, did you ever meet a Bull what liked other Bulls? Or a Cow what liked other Cows? You know... that way??"

"You're askin' if there's cows like...like you?" This was probably the most directly he'd acknowledged Arabella's "oddity," most times just taking it as a part of who Arabella was and not mentioning it. After that brain fever where she'd admitted to doing "things" with Caroline, he'd tried not to think about it and tried to avoid conversations where it might come up. Arabella already felt badly enough about herself.

But his moment of treading lightly vanished as he answered Arabella's question. "'Course not! Animals don't do that. It ain't in their nature."

Nature. Nature. Where'd he heard that word recently? He squeezed his eyes shut, slogging through his conversation with Pettigrew the night before. There it was. "A freak of nature." "I'm in love with you."

Finally all the dots connected in Brendan's brain, and his eyes popped open. He leaned forward, the blanket dipping dangerously low around his hips as he grabbed Arabella's arm. "You're tellin' me that Pettigrew's a bull who likes bulls?" It was still easier to stick to the bull analogy. Until he was sure, really sure what Arabella was saying, he wasn't sure how to react. But little by little everything about last night was starting to make sense -- everything except what had actually happened after he got in the bed.