A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) (2 page)

"You were
expecting someone else?" she said, and he ducked his head and grinned,
which was neither pretty nor seemly in this house of God.

But which was
reassuring.

His hand was
cold on hers, and his fingers squeezed hers much too tight, but she braced
herself and said nothing because she suspected that her betrothed, who had been
a soldier and a rebel and a leader of men, was depending on her to get through
this day unscathed.

Thankful had
managed to get through his entire marriage vows without taking a breath, so far
as she could tell, and was now staring at her as if he'd forgotten how to do it
and swaying slightly.

"I,
Thomazine Dorcas Babbitt, do take thee, Thankful -" she couldn't say it,
she was going to laugh, and she heard her father, who hadn't known either,
choke slightly at her elbow - "
Thankful-for-his-Deliverance
Russell, to my wedded husband - and
breathe
, Russell - to have and to
hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in
sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part,
according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth."

And then his
hands were shaking so much he dropped the ring, and it went rolling away under
the feet of most of the great and the good of White Notley. It was so still in
the church she heard it tinkle – well, save for Joyeux’s exasperated intake of
breath at her sister’s clumsiness - but by then it was funny, and she forgot
herself sufficient to stoop to pick it up at the same time as he did, and they
almost bumped noses, and the ring came to rest quite neatly under Uncle Luce’s
foot, at the front of the congregation. And that was almost funny, too, until she
met his eyes and then neither of them could look away from each other, and the
rest of the world ceased to exist. His eyes were intent, and oddly shy, for a
man who had been so confident in the commission of his duties but was still so
uncertain of himself as a lover.

She wanted to
take his other hand, but she could not, of course, not here, not now. To put
her head against his chest, and have him hold her against his steady beating
heart, and for them to take comfort one from another.

She couldn't do
it, but he knew. The unscarred corner of his mouth lifted in a tiny smile of
understanding, and he dropped his eyes briefly. He knew.

3

It was not the most ostentatious of
bridal feasts, but then it would have been somewhat of a mockery, in the dark
days of a sodden October, with so plain a family and so unromantic a
bridegroom, and so it was a quiet affair, and no one minded that Thomazine sat
with her feet in Thankful's lap and he absently rubbed her toes while he was
talking because her elegant slippers had let in the damp in the church and her
feet were frozen.

It was, very
much, a family affair.

Uncle Luce, who
had been her father's junior officer in the wars, and was now a mildly
successful surgeon in his own right and not a junior anything, had brought his
sprawling brood of children, and they were careering about the house chasing
the striped kitchen-cat (who was used to it, and bore no grudges, having met
the Pettitts
en famille
on a regular basis.)

His wife was
expecting her fifth, any day now, and so she was saying very little, but
looking somewhat white about the mouth and holding very tight to her husband's
hand. Uncle Luce himself was uncharacteristically quiet, but not in any way to
give concern: just, as he said himself, the quiet of a man who finds himself
kicked in the softer parts every hour of the night by his wife's precious
cargo, and who is enjoying a rare moment of respite.

Her father had
got changed from his own finery, a deep smoke-blue silk suit that you only ever
saw him wearing on high days and holidays, and which he claimed made him
nervous every hour of the day for fear he might spill something on it. He
claimed that he wasn't going to do any work with his horses today, but his eyes
kept straying to the window, watching what there was of the light fading and
the rain streak the glass, and you could see he was thinking about putting in
another hour gentling the new colt.

Joyeux and her
equally-fashionable husband had made their excuses and left as soon as it was
polite, claiming a long way to travel.

And so it was
just the people she loved, on her wedding night, at the last. It had been a day
of courteous, smiling busyness, of many kind wishes and many blessings and
congratulations, but at the last, as the dusk came down, there was no air of
wild festival about it, and that was right, that was as it should be. There was
only a quiet joy, a settling at peace, like the rose-gold ember at the heart of
a flame. There was a rightness about it, because neither she nor Thankful were
ostentatious in their loving, but quiet - and faithful, for they had loved one
another, all unspoken, for almost six years before this day. Marriage set a
crown on their happiness, but it was only a recognition of a thing both of them
had known already.

The parlour was
not a room that was often used, a room full of mam’s precious things, her
embroidered seat-cushions and the odd trinket that her father had remembered to
bring back from travels about the country in the wars. Old, now, for the most
part, but comfortable, and sweet, and it had a scent of home and cleanliness
about it, and Thomazine closed her eyes and sat smiling with the warmth of the
fire on her face while her husband poked her cold toes and made little fond but
irritable noises reminiscent of a man who thought his wife wanted for common
sense. (He’d told her that already. Twice.) Frannie Pettitt leaned with
difficulty from her chair by the fireside and lifted a fold of Thomazine's
heavy woollen skirts. "There," she said, "I'm that glad you didn't
end up wearing that lovely silk today after all, Thomazine. You would have been
perished, in that church."

- and Thomazine
opened her eyes and gave Thankful a secret, happy glance, sharing the little
conspiracy. She had been relieved to see that he'd come to his wedding as his
own plain, unpretentious, Sunday-best self: but he had been equally relieved to
see her in her good wool gown and her lace collar. She had a suspicion that he
might yet have broken and run at the last, had he faced a fashionable stranger
in silks and satins at the altar.

Frannie smiled,
and took a pin from her kerchief. "I'd not have liked to put pin-holes in
your taffety," she said, and pinned a silk ribbon bow to Thomazine's
skirt, and straightened up with a little huff. "There you go, my dear. I
wouldn't have you go without a little frivolity." 

"Not
altogether without," Thankful said, with that shadow of a smile that was
always more in the eyes than the lips, if you knew to look for it.
"Zee?"

And he put his
hand to the breast of his coat, and handed hr a little package. He'd bought her
pearls, a string of them, probably better ones than he should afford, in all
conscience, and there was a little outcry of admiration from the party as they
were passed about. "Every pearl a tear, they say," he said.
"Your mother reckons if you have them for your bridal you might never know
sadness. You – like them?"

"Tears are
for joy, as well as sorrow," she said gently, and then, because they were
at home, and amongst friends, and none might laugh, she touched her fingertips
to his wet lashes, because Thankful was the biggest watering-pot she knew, for
all his austere demeanour. "Are they not?"

And quite
unselfconsciously, and quite gravely, he took her hand and touched his lips to
her fingers. "Happiest day of my life, my tibber. Bless you."

4

She’d come through the day with absolute
serenity, and he’d taken much of his lead from her, because he would have been
lost, else. Surrounded by old comrades gone respectable, and he felt a little
awkward, being the last bachelor of their old company at forty-two. Forty-two
and missing in action for the better part of twenty years, in Scotland and in
one place and another afterwards. Never quite settling, never quite at ease,
never quite finding his own place, and he'd thought he never would, actually. Not
till he'd had news of Fly's death and even then he’d always assumed if he lived
at Four Ashes at all, it would be alone.

He'd never
dreamed that he might have a hearth of his own, one day, and a girl of his own
to sit at it.

(Thomazine
Babbitt, sitting by the hearth and placidly spinning? Aye, right. Thomazine
Babbitt in one of her father's scruffy old coats walking the chalk hills with
him and muttering darkly about sheep, more like. She might be his dear love but
she was her own self first. That was fine. He suspected if he wished his hearth
to be populated by placid spinners, he might have to learn to use a distaff
himself.)

His old
comrades, come for the day to see him married, that he'd not seen since the
wars. Young Luce, who had been skinny as a barn cat when Russell had last set
eyes on him - not so quite so little, now. Prosperous and sleek and not quite
as lithe or as golden as he had been, despite the elegant silver buttons on his
lovely embroidered waistcoat: still with most of his own hair, a little greyer,
a little faded, somewhat thicker in the waist and definitely more tired about
the eyes, with a sprawling brood of fair-haired babies tagging onto the skirts
of his coat.

His new father
in law, half a head taller than just about anyone else in the room and for once
in his conspicuously russet-haired life wearing something other than grey or
black. Judging by the mutinous look on his old commander’s face, the slate-blue
silk was a source of some contention between Hollie Babbitt and his wife.
Russell would have given a good deal to overhear what Het was saying to her
notoriously-scruffy husband, but he was definitely being told off for
something. And Het - well, Het was what you'd expect, from any lady who had had
the misfortune to have been married to that engine of domestic destruction for
over twenty years - plump and placid and imperturbable, regardless of what
disasters and surprises her beloved husband dumped in her lap. Sturdy and round
and freckled as an egg, and since he doubted that Het had ever suffered much in
the way of the storms of passion, as comfortably devoted to her Hollie as she
had been when they married. Wearing a stubbornly-unfashionable gown, and
blissfully unaware that her husband had positioned himself in such a way behind
her that he could look straight down the front of her bodice, with an
expression of great personal satisfaction on his uncompromising features.

None of that
mattered, of course, set against the glowing fire that was Thomazine Babbitt -
Thomazine
Russell,
now, with her amber hair glowing loose on her
shoulders and her rosemary-grey skirts kilted above her knee as he sat with her
poor little cold feet in his lap, scowling at her damp stockings and trying to
rub the feeling back into her toes after that cold, raw morning in the damp
stone church. In those daft, impractical, modish, high-heeled silk slippers, a
gift from her fashion-crazed sister, no doubt. "Those wretched
shoes," he muttered, " -
must
you suffer in the name of
vanity, sweeting?"

And she lifted
her eyes and smiled up at him, brimful of joy and mischief and radiance.
"But I do like to be pretty for you, lamb. And," she leaned a little
forwards and whispered, "in heels, I am almost of a height to kiss
you."

It wasn’t what
you'd expect a gently-reared nineteen-year-old virgin to say, but then his
bride had always had the trick of reducing him to helpless giggles in company.
He’d intended to say that Thomazine was as lovely and as warm as cream, and
needed no trinkets and baubles to make her lovelier; that he was still amazed
that this beautiful young woman was in love with – wanted to spend the rest of
her life with, in his bed and at his board – a scarred, disillusioned Puritan.
He’d started to say it. She’d looked up at him with those big green eyes,
sighed meltingly, and said, “Shut up, Thankful.” 

And Russell, who
might have been an officer and accustomed to the unquestioning obedience of
men, once, but who knew his new place in the world and rather liked it, had
shut up, meekly.

He’d tried
again, later – Zee with one elbow propped on his knee and her hair tickling his
nose, working her way industriously through his plate from the wedding supper,
marvellously, wondrously unladylike. “What?” she said indistinctly, delicately
dabbing pastry crumbs from her lips.

He still
expected that one of these mornings she’d wake up and look at him and change
her mind, but she hadn’t so far, and since he’d been Thomazine Babbitt’s
plaything since she was two years old, he was a fool for her, he always was,
and he always would be. And now here she was, twenty-one, beautiful, very
slightly drunk – he was not going to meet her father’s sardonic gaze across the
table, because if Hollie even
suspected
that his eldest daughter was
tipsy, he was more than capable of up-ending her under the stable-yard pump,
big as she was.

Actually, take
that back, because Hollie was nuzzling his stout, middle-aged lady’s ear in a
way that Russell suspected might be the result of a comfortable degree of
inebriation on his own part, and Het was squirming without much conviction.
“She’ll end up in his lap before long,” Zee said happily, following her
husband’s gaze. “How old is mama, d’you know?”