Listen to the Moon (17 page)

She turned and dipped and came up to take his hand again. Her skirt swirled about her legs, ice blue and fine. She loved dancing, but this was something else again, this flow and eddy of desire. This was the magic of a faerie ring.

The punch she’d drunk warmed her skin, and the room looked friendly and welcoming. The world looked friendly and welcoming, as if tonight she didn’t have to be careful. She didn’t have to watch where she stepped or what she said or how she said it.

Farther down the room, Mrs. Khaleel was dancing with her friends, all of them giggling. It was startling and lovely to see her without the reserve she generally wore at the vicarage. Sukey wondered if she could make John giggle. He laughed sometimes, but she wanted to see him giggle uncontrollably. She’d missed her chance on Boxing Day, when he was bosky on cherry bounce.

“Have you had any punch?” she asked him when next their paths crossed.

“Not yet.”

“Let’s get you some after this set.”

He smiled easily at her, flushed from dancing. “If you like.”

* * *

The punch was well made, sweet and strong, flakes of nutmeg drifting through John’s glass and warming the dark taste of rum.

“John?”

He turned. Blast. “Maria,” he said with a smile. “You look delightful.”

She did, in an olive-green silk with gold beading that brought out the green in her eyes and the gold in her freckled skin. “Thanks. So do you.” She smiled at him, turning her cup round in her hands. Her smile was wonderful, he remembered now. Broad and frank, as if she was about to laugh at some private joke.

He tugged on Sukey’s arm, linked through his. She turned to look at him. “Sukey, I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine from Lenfield. Maria—Miss Granby,” he said, wishing there were some way to soften it, “may I present Mrs. Toogood?”

Maria’s grin faded, her eyebrows going up. Sukey, seeing it, raised her chin.

Maria held out her gloved hand a little unsteadily. John suspected the Lenfield party had begun celebrating before their arrival. “Nice to meet you. I heard John had the banns read.” That was a relief, anyway.

“I own I was surprised,” she continued. Now he could hear the wine in her voice, a touch slower and more tuneless than usual. He would have found it seductive in other circumstances. “I wish you every joy, of course. But John always told me he wasn’t interested in marriage.”

John gritted his teeth. There was no polite way to say,
No, I told you I didn’t want to marry
you.

Sukey shrugged. “I was never interested in marriage either, until I met John.”

Maria laughed. “No, I don’t suppose you were old enough.”

Sukey straightened sharply, and he remembered that she was not precisely sober herself. “I’m twenty-two!”

“You don’t look it.” She snorted and looked at John. “I should have known that when you said you’d marry once you were settled in your career, you didn’t mean a woman of your own age. After all,
you
can wait to have children as long as you like.”

“Maria,” he said, “this isn’t necessary. Let me take you back to your friends.”

She put a hand on Sukey’s shoulder. “Let me give you some advice, dear. He didn’t mind bedding me. He
loved
bedding me. He
married
a provincial little nobody barely out of her teens because he wanted a wife he could browbeat.”

A wash of red filled John’s vision. “That is
not
true.” Sukey was a grown woman. He
hadn’t
taken advantage of her. He hadn’t. And he didn’t browbeat her.

You make me feel small,
she’d told him.

Sukey wrenched away from both of them, her eyes glinting dangerously. “No one browbeats me.”

Maria laughed pityingly. “Don’t they? You’ve got maid-of-all-work written all over you.”

Sukey started forward, and stopped. “If I wasn’t wearing a new gown, I’d make you sorry.”

Maria calmly poured her cup of punch down the front of Sukey’s dress.

Chapter Eleven

Sukey made an awful, heartbroken wheezing sound, staring down at the spreading stain. Her hands hung helplessly at her sides. John froze, torn between fetching a napkin and staying to make sure no one did murder.

“You
bitch
,” Sukey shrieked, and threw herself at Maria. “I’ll kill you!” She went for Maria’s eyes.

Fending her off with one arm, Maria pulled her fist back, clearly about to plow it right into the side of Sukey’s head.

John shoved between them, hoping he wouldn’t be badly damaged. “Maria,” he said, taking her wrists. “You’re drunk. You’re going to be mortified in the morning. Go away.”

“You’re right, I should have spilled my drink on
you
.
Walk me to the punch bowl for another?”

Sukey charged around him. He let Maria go to grab his wife by the waist. Kicking his shins, she struggled and fought. “I can get the stain out if we do it now,” he said in her ear. “We’ll get it out. I promise.”

Maria looked greatly cheered. “This is what you get when you marry a child,” she said smugly, and swanned away.

Sukey yelled curses after her, still struggling in John’s arms—but more, he thought, as an outlet for her feelings than because she really wanted to get free. In a few more moments, she sagged against him. Her friends crowded around her, congratulating her and making nasty remarks about Maria.

“It’s ruined,” she whispered. Raising her fingers to her gown, she looked at them as if they were wet with her own blood. “I ruined it.”

“I’ll get it out,” he said again and kissed her ear. “Come into the kitchen with me.”

There, John introduced himself to the Lost Bell’s cook and gave her a shilling. “Hot and cold water, hard white soap if you have it, distilled vinegar and spirits of wine, and as many good clean rags as you can spare.” Another shilling, and the sink was theirs. “Come here.”

He felt for that first pin at Sukey’s shoulder. Not how he’d imagined the moment, but wishes, alas, were not horses. He drew the pins out quickly, sticking them in his lapel. She stood very still and let him do it. She did look young just now, young and lost and trying not to cry.

“Why did I say that? I’m so stupid. She wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t told her it was new.”

“It wasn’t your fault, any more than you fell out of that apple tree because you were clumsy.” John lifted the stained chemisette over her head. “I should have gone to talk to her before now. I didn’t think. I didn’t think she’d care so much.” He unpinned her sleeves.

“You forgot she existed,” Sukey said sadly, and he winced, thinking of her father. Then her eyes narrowed. “You did forget she existed, right?”

He stepped behind her to undo her buttons. “I did,” he admitted—or reassured her, he wasn’t sure which. “I’m sorry.”

Her outer petticoat was stained too. She slipped it off before it could soak through. “Of course, she doesn’t know you only married me for your career.”

He blotted the stain, careful not to press it into the fabric. Carrying the gown to the sink, he trickled water through the wool from the back. The grated nutmeg would be a difficulty.

“You were supposed to contradict me,” she informed him with an attempt at her usual impudence. He glanced up in surprise and saw her shivering by the fire in her single petticoat, hugging herself for warmth.

Taking off his coat, he tried to help her into it, but she grabbed it and thrust her arms in the sleeves, scowling. “I’m not actually a little girl.”

“I know. A man is supposed to do that for a woman.”

“I’ve got perfectly good arms. I don’t need help with my coat. I’m not useless like some stupid lady’s maid.”

John didn’t say,
If you don’t want tender consideration, why take the coat at all?
He didn’t say that Maria was a cook. Sukey’s curls brushed the dark blue velvet collar of Lord Lenfield’s old morning coat. With those pale blue ribbons in her cap, it almost looked like an ensemble. He’d have let her keep it, but her pelisse was longer and warmer. He gave a penny to a passing scullery maid to find Sukey’s friends and collect her things.

“I’m sorry,” Sukey said when the girl was gone. “I’ll pay you back.” She fished her purse out of her décolletage.

“Sukey, you don’t have to repay me, but you do have to let me work.” He diluted vinegar and alcohol with water and moistened the stain, rubbing the soap in. Then he folded clean rags, dampened them with the vinegar mixture and laid them over the dress. “That will draw it out. In a few minutes we’ll change them out.”

“I was looking forward to this party. I wanted—” Sukey glanced at him. “I wanted it to go well.”

John’s heart smote him. “I’m sure some of your friends would be happy to keep you company. Shall I fetch them?”

She gave him an incredulous look, as if he’d said something obtuse. Then she sighed and shook her head. “You should go back. I’ll stay here and change the rags.”

He laughed. “I’m having a much better time in here than I would be out there.”

Her face brightened. She looked at him through her eyelashes. He hid a smile. What an incorrigible flirt he’d married. “Really?”

“It’s noisy and crowded out there.” He started on the chemisette’s stain, though he wasn’t worried about that one. The collar itself was untouched and could be sewn to a new shift if necessary.

The scullery maid brought in Sukey’s pelisse bundled neatly around her everyday gown. Sukey pulled the gray serge over her head with a sigh. “I didn’t have time to go and drop it at home. Turns out it was for the best.”

John accepted his coat back with undeniable regret. “You did nothing wrong,” he said, buttoning her dress for her. “She shouldn’t have behaved as she did. It isn’t your fault when other people are cruel to you.”

“That’s worse,” she said, her voice a little thick. “Then there’s nothing I can do to stop it.” She rubbed the rough serge discontentedly between her finger and thumb. “Why did you marry me, anyway?”

“I was terribly lonely,” he reminded her, the corners of his mouth curving up in spite of himself. “And I badly wanted the job at the vicar’s. You took pity on me.”

“No.” She looked up at him, her tip-tilted blue eyes brimming with tears. “
I
was terribly lonely, and
I
wanted the job at the vicar’s, and
you
took pity on
me
.”

John felt sick. Was it true? Had he taken advantage of her after all? She’d said she wanted to marry him, that she wanted a helpmeet. A tear slipped down her cheek, and he scrambled for a way to cheer her. “If you like, you could go back to the party and I could stay here and finish with this. Since you have a dress, it seems a shame to waste the occasion.”

She drew back, shocked. “And leave you here alone? I don’t think so.”

“Thank you. But I wouldn’t mind.” He changed the rags, remarking with satisfaction that the punch seemed to be coming out.

“If I leave, you might as well be at work. I’m not going to let you work seven days in the week.”

At least her tears seemed forgotten. He dried his hands carefully on a clean rag and tipped her chin up. “It’s not work when I do it for you.”

She glared at him. “
Yes
, it is.”

He didn’t know how to explain that it mattered to him, that these skills he’d acquired for pride and coin could comfort her. It sanctified something temporal and mundane. “Don’t you think there’s a difference between doing something for love, and doing it for money?”

When her frowning brows went up and her narrowed eyes rounded, John flushed scarlet.
For love or money
was a set phrase, and all he’d meant. If he left it there, she might think—well, that was better than hurrying to correct himself.

He’d been quite eager to correct any misconception Maria had had about their connection. Overeager, he supposed. He’d never meant to be unkind, only to have things clear between them. Because while he’d liked her very much, he’d never thought he might want to spend his life with her.

It was too soon to be in love with Sukey, and certainly far too soon to say any such thing. But he could imagine it being true one day. He saw her flaws—more clearly than was any credit to him, sometimes—but none of them seemed untenable.

She’d been silenced by his slip. Now she seemed to be trying to regain her balance. “Would you leave me
in a kitchen laundering your clothes while you went to a party?”

He smiled at her. “I suppose not. But—”

“There’s no but,” she said, exasperated. “If you wouldn’t do it, why do you think I would? If it’s not because you think I need your charity. Being a provincial little nobody barely out of her teens.”

John felt as if she’d slapped him. He tried to be kind, and she threw it in his face.

“You
don’t
think of me as your equal,” she said. “Why should you? I hate how much I want you to take care of me. But you don’t have to do it just because I want it. You can expect more of me.”

His ears rang. So it was his fault he thought she might want his help,
and
his fault that she did want it? She wished him to—what? Withhold it from her so she could feel independent? Perhaps she should try having some backbone instead. A grievance, carefully suppressed, broke free and leapt from his tongue.

“I can expect more? More what, precisely?” he demanded. “I would love your help in supervising the staff, but as far as I can glean, your chief concern is that none of them ever be annoyed with you.”

“Quarreling doesn’t solve anything.”

“Neither does ignoring problems and hoping they go away on their own.”

Her chin went up. “I’m ignoring less problems than you are. And I am helping supervise the staff. I—” Her mouth snapped shut. “I can’t break confidences, or I’d tell you about it,” she said, clearly aiming to wound. “But I’m doing plenty to help you.”

Confidences? What did she know? Who Molly had been meeting? Whatever it was Thea insisted he wouldn’t understand? How much better might he manage the house, if he knew what she knew!

Of course she had a right to her own counsel, just as he did, and she would hardly be the recipient of confidences long if it was realized they were being repeated. But it was easy enough for her to make friends with everyone if he was obliged to give all the reprimands.

“Whatever you may think, I have never expected you to spy for me,” he said. “But as you seem to have no difficulty leaving the unpleasant part of our work to me at home, you cannot blame me for thinking you might wish to do the same here.”

For a moment he wondered how his father felt, seeing his wife universally adored. And he
hated
that he wondered it. There was no comparison; there could not be.

Her hands fisted at her sides. “Well, I told you I didn’t! I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yes, and see how much my evening is improved thereby.”

He heard her sharp intake of breath. Her eyes slitted, shooting cold blue sparks. “I do believe you’d be happier slaving away alone in here. I think that’s pathetic.”

“You’ve made that very plain,” he clipped out. Even as he said it, he knew it
was
pathetic, that he liked her so much and couldn’t seem to be agreeable to her. It was pathetic how wistfully he imagined working in here alone, quiet and steadfast. A man ought not to long to express his affection to his wife without the inconvenience of her actual presence.

She crossed her arms. “You asked me to marry you,” she said. “I suppose you’d never have blushed for
Maria
before Mr. Summers, or had to tell her how to make a bed. So elegant and worldly she is—ha!
She
started a fight, not me. Well, she’d have married you. But you picked me. I suppose you thought with me around, you’d always have someone to feel superior to. And now I expect you’re sorry and wish you’d picked someone better. Someone you’d like spending a quiet evening with.”

It felt like something heavy had smacked into his chest. “You don’t have any idea how I feel.”

“No? Then tell me, Mr. Upper Servant!”

He knew she was right. It was like making the bed or polishing the silver; he told her the bad and expected her to guess the good on her own. He expected it to be obvious. How could it not be obvious?

He could not manage to tell her more plainly how much he liked and admired her, because that required him to believe she’d be pleased to hear it.

Maybe she would be. Maybe she wanted desperately for him to say he loved her. Somehow that idea was worse. Because he’d picked her, just like she said. He’d looked all over England, he’d had more lovers than he could count on both hands, and he’d never found anyone he liked so well.

Nearly every man she knew was in the next room.

She’d been lonely and afraid, young and inexperienced, and he’d used it to talk her into a marriage that she’d turned down when she had a job.

The more he wanted her, the more he needed her, the more he asked her for—the less chance she would have to be the woman she’d wanted to be, who stood on her own two feet, who had nothing between her and the sun. The less chance she’d have to discover what she really wanted. He’d been collecting his burdens for forty years. Even if they’d grown heavy for him, she was too young to be asked to shoulder half.

If he hadn’t married her, she’d be out there enjoying herself instead of trapped in here, miserable.

“Faith, it’s like being married to a rock,” his wife muttered as she turned her back on him, stubbornly staying even though there was nothing to stay for.

* * *

“Is everything all right?” Larry asked Molly at breakfast.

Molly frowned sharply, looking up from the sandwich she was making out of a slice of plum pudding, a goose’s wing and a stale dinner roll. “Why?”

Larry shrugged. “I didn’t see you dancing at the ball last night.”

John felt guilty. He’d spent most of the ball in the kitchen with Sukey and hadn’t looked in on his staff at all.

“At least I went,” Molly said. “Thea, you promised to meet me there.”

Thea shrugged. “I fell asleep.”

Molly frowned again, this time in concern. “Do you think you ought to see a doctor?”