A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) (19 page)

“Don’t knock it till
you’ve tried it, my lord! Bet Wilmot c’d come up with something to say.”

“Wilmot is never at a
loss for words,” Fairmantle said, and there was a noise that sounded remarkably
like a pistol shot from the drawing room behind him, and a smash of splintering
glass.

“Ah, damn it, you
wasn’t fond of that glass, was you?” another voice brayed, one that she didn’t
know.

“I shall have to
learn not to be, won’t I?”

“You paid that slut
off yet? I declare, we’ve more labour for her here – Emmett’s spilled his guts
on the tablecloth –“ and another cackle of raucous hilarity, and a drunken
mumble of outrage from the maligned Emmett.

“Fucking tradesman,”
someone said, very clearly, and she saw Fairmantle flush.

“You see why I am not
at home to lady callers, dear. Now. What errand brings you out on such urgency
– and in God’s name, be brief!”

She handed him the
letter, with a very brief explanation. He expressed a brief, blurred sympathy
for Russell’s indisposition, but no more than that: no surprise. Squinted at
the inscription. “Handwriting’s terrible, dear. Bad this time, is he?”

“He will recover.
With care, and if he is not pressed with stupid cares - like some wretched
butterbox plaguing him about pepper.”

“Well, he normally
manages to come about, so – yes, I’m sure he’ll mend nicely. Very wifely,
dear.”

She took a deep
breath. “Will you deliver it for me? To Master Pepys’s office?”

“
I
?” he
looked, briefly, appalled. “Well, but – but madam, you heard – and I wish you
had not – I have no wish to taint myself with the shop, no offence to Master
Pepys you understand, but – I mean –”

“They will call you
names, if you are seen to be involved with decent working men such as Master
Pepys?” she said with gentle malice, and he raised his eyebrows at her, and
scratched under his wig.

“Madam, if you
consider that smellsmock to be a decent anything, you have yet to have any
acquaintance with his wife. She has a number of stories to tell, and none of
them reflect very well on her husband. Now, speaking of reflecting on your husband,
would you care to do likewise, and bugger off, dearie?”

“But you’ll do it?”

“The very first thing
tomorrow morning, Mistress Russell, I shall send a very discreet footman to
slip a note under Master Pepys’ office door. Now in God’s name, dear, begone,
before Little Sid comes staggering out thinking I’m sampling your wares!”

She withdrew that
primed pistol – that plain, worn, well-handled pistol, that had seen over
twenty years of service under Cromwell and Monck in her husband’s hand – from
her muff. “I am not desperately concerned about Master Sedley, you know. If he
chooses to retain his balls where the Lord placed them, I suggest he treats
women with a little more respect. I am, after all, a respectably married
lady.” 

Fairmantle gave a
great shout of laughter. “Mistress Russell, you are possibly the
least
respectable,
and the most firmly-married, lady I know! Let me call my carriage.”

“I thought we had
agreed on discretion, sir?”

“We had. Only you and
I will know that I am soiling my hands with trade, dear. Will I allow you walk
home through the streets at the peril of your life – I will not. If any harm
befalls you, well- I rather fear the Major would make my life nasty, brutish
and short, as that clever Master Hobbes would put it.”

“Why?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,
dear. Just humour me. There have been a sufficiency of rather grisly murders
enough of late.”

“Oh, will you stop
trying to frighten me, sir, I am not a child!”

“No, well, and no
doubt the poor woman who was strangled, Mistress Russell, a most respectable
lady apparently coming late from church less than a month ago ! – no doubt she
wasn’t a child either, but she was still throttled – aye, madam, and – well, a
thing done to her that you and I will not speak of, now, if you take my meaning.
And if you were a little more in the world you would know all about that, for
‘tis the talk of the town today, that there is a fiend abroad. So yes, you will
take my carriage home, and you may instruct the driver to deliver you to so far
as you please and walk the rest of the way, if you still have a mind to deceive
your husband.”

“Whassmatter, Chas,
paying in kind?” Sedley yelled. “She paying you, or are you paying her? Hey?” 

His lips tightened,
and he looked angry, for the first time. “
Carriage
, Mistress Russell.
And you will oblige me by keeping that pistol to your hand, if you please. You
may not be frightened, but I am. A woman was done to death not a mile from this
house. Cruelly, and, for aught I can tell, purposelessly. It has been the subject
of every clacking tongue for days, and none the nearer to apprehending the
miscreant, dear. I’m sure the lady’s husband is perfectly distracted – for
who’s to say it was even done by human agency, and not by a fiend?”

The idea seemed to
please him, for his cheerful countenance lit like a salacious fishwife’s. “So
we have no idea with what we are dealing, madam, and I would be grateful if you
might take all due precautions, for there are murderers abroad – rogues and
murderers, dear, who would come on us all in our beds. It may even be the
beginning of an invasion by the Dutch, and
then
where would we be?” And
he clapped his hands together, looking purposeful. “Now. For once, mistress, be
obedient, and do as you are bid, and behave like a conventional woman of town.
You are not amongst your friends in Buckinghamshire now. This is London, and
things are done differently here, and you must abide by town rule, not country
ones. Dear God, that I should live so long to be nursemaiding a wench still wet
behind the ears!"

She found herself
smiling at him. “I believe you are an old sweetheart, sir.”

“Less of the old, you
minx. I’ll have you know I am six months younger than your husband.” 

He did not hand her
into the carriage. He sent her down to the kitchens, as befitted her status as
a washerwoman – which she doubted Sedley and his crew believed any more than
she did – to await it. But before she went, there was one final question she
needed to ask.

“Sir Charles – did
you, did your coachman, um, did anyone find a ribbon in that carriage? It was
an embroidered one – I – um – it was a wedding favour, and we – I embroidered
it,” she could feel a flush rising from her collar, “I think Thankful lost it
from his hair, when we were – when we – um, when –“

He blinked at her,
and shook his head thoughtfully. “No, dear, not that I know. But I imagine it’s
quite distinctive, if anyone were to find it.”

36

They’d
asked the carriage to stop at St Gabriel’s, and walked home. It was cold, but
not so cold, now. Deb said her feet were hurting, and Thomazine said it wasn’t
far now, and they’d walked on at a snail’s halting pace through streets that
were suddenly kinder, now that tomorrow all would be well. Slipped gratefully
into bed, and put her head on his beating heart, and slept. 

She did not know at first what
woke her.

And then she sat up, flipping her
braid over her shoulder, knuckling the sleep out of her eyes.

She needed to pee. That was not
so frightening. Russell was breathing beside her, a little shaky, a little too
fast, but steady. He was still, not restless. (He was asleep. That was a
relief, because married or not she did not like to pee in front of him, and she
really
needed to.) She slipped out of bed and padded across the
dark-cold boards to use the pot, wincing as her sleep-warm skin met night-cold
air.

“Thomazine.”

She stood up abruptly, shaking
her shift down. “Er - Thankful? Are you awake?”

A long sigh, and then he sat up.
“Thomazine, take your shift off.”

“I- what?”

“Take it off. I want to see you.”

“You want to
what
?”
Outside in the street she heard the rumble of the night soil cart and entirely
by reflex she clapped a hand to hide herself from its driver, though unless he
could see into shuttered attics her modesty was safe. “Thankful it’s freezing,
you can’t mean it!”

“Then come back to bed. And let
me warm you.”

“You’re ill! You can’t -”

“Sick of love,” he said, and he
sounded so much like his old, dry self that she smiled and shook her head and
slid back under the covers. And he rolled over, as quick as a hunting falcon,
and pinned her to the mattress with the whole burning weight of him, kissing
her throat and her jaw with barely-leashed ferocity -

She should tell him to stop. (His
whiskers tickled, on her suddenly-very-hot skin, and she wanted him to kiss her
harder, to take the tickle out of it -)

His hand closed on her hip.
Caught a handful of linen. Pushed the crumpled linen up to her waist.

She made a noise of protest - no:
more of this marvellous fevered kissing before -

He pushed the folds of her shift
up further, up over her tingling cold-tight breasts, and he dipped his head and
kissed the salt-cellar of her throat. “Darkness is no friend to lovers,” he
said conversationally. “I want to see you, tibber.
All
of you.”

She wanted to argue,
and then his teeth closed, very gently, on her nipple and she found herself
saying something else altogether without having the faintest idea what it was.
But she had his shirt over his head and she felt him laugh as the collar gave
under her tugging, and then it was his hot skin against her coolness, warming
her, melting her -

“
Thankful you can’t do that
!”
she yelped, struggling bolt upright, and he lifted his head and he kissed her
belly, with intent.

“I
bloody can, sweet girl.”

He
could not. Must not. It was -

“I
haven’t - I’m not clean - I -”

His
tongue was investigating the fold of her navel. “You taste sweet enough to me.
Be still, and let me -”

His
loose hair grazed her hipbone, and she caught her breath on a little sob. “Let
me taste all of you,” he said, and his voice was shaky. “No secrets, Thomazine.
Not between you and I.”

She
did not know what to say, what to do - could do nothing, in the end but gasp
and tangle her hand in his hair so that he could not pull away until she was
utterly spent. And afterwards she lay, trembling and panting with her heart
thumping so hard she thought it must burst her chest, feeling as if all her
bones had turned to warm honey.

“Was
that so very wrong?” she said drowsily. “For anything that felt so nice -”

“Mm?”
He turned his head where it rested on her thigh, and his whiskers tickled, but
her limbs were too heavy for her to care.

“Thank
you,” she said. Which seemed a foolish thing to say in gratitude for such fire
and exaltation, but-

He
said nothing, and he must be uncomfortable, poor lamb, sprawled there untidily
half on and half off the bed with his head in her lap. “Thankful?”

He
did not open his eyes, but slid back up the bed, dragging the blankets with him
and folding her into his arms. He was shivering, and she tucked her head under
his chin so that they lay belly to belly, breast to breast.

Not
shivering. Shaking, his skin twitching like a fly-bothered horse under her
hand.

“Tibber,”
he said, and his breath caught in his throat as she moved her hand in query,
“would it - would you serve me - likewise?”

She
thought he slept, afterwards. She surely did, drugged by loving and weariness,
rolled safe in his arms with a lullaby of boots and curfews and watchmen in the
cold, starry night outside.

Only
once, she woke, at the sound of his voice. Quite clear, as lucid as if he were
talking to her, or to another in the room with them.

“I
know loving, you filthy-souled bitch,” he said. “I know what it is, now. You
could not steal it from me wholly, and I pray God you burn for your trying.”

But when she sat up, they were alone, and he was asleep.

She remembered it, afterwards, as
the last bright day before the storm. For one day he lay still and quiescent in
bed and sat up, propped with pillows, to have his good healing invalid food
spooned into his mouth - and to share it with the Bartholomew-baby, who liked
to cuddle up catwise on the bed with him, it being the warmest room in the
house.

(It left you somewhat disinclined
to romance, having a little round baby rolling around the bed endeavouring to
suck his toes and sharing your husband’s meals. But it seemed to give both of
them pleasure.)

And then the next morning she
awoke to a faint pale sun the colour of primroses shining in slats across the
attic floor, and Russell up and half-dressed in his plain wool breeches and his
plainest shirt, a little shaky but recognisably himself.