Listen to the Moon (22 page)

That, he acknowledged at last, was the impending disaster he truly feared when he saw something ill done. Not Mr. Summers’s displeasure. Not the loss of his or anyone else’s position. Nothing real. It was only an echo of his terror of his father’s disappointment, established by long force of habit. He always felt as if someone was about to pop out from behind an end table and tell him he had failed.

It angered and humiliated him that he’d left the Hall and his father, that he’d purposely made himself a life where his father’s disappointment had no place and could not touch him, and then had promptly begun where his father had left off, blaming and upbraiding himself for every failing, and blaming and upbraiding others in turn. Why? Why in the name of God was he so perverse and so impressionable?

“I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re as tired of this old tangle as I am. Tell me, how is everyone at the Hall?”

Plumtree’s eyes gleamed. “Well, you’ll be happy to know that Notts has a new light-o’-love.” Notts, the head gardener at Tassell Hall, was something of a Lothario among the local widows despite being now in his seventies. He would fall madly in love, plant the object of his affection a new garden, and then find his enthusiasm unaccountably waning. “A new one? I really thought he might marry Mrs. Fry.”

“Oh, I knew it wouldn’t last. He finished building her trellis and ‘his love, Lord help us, faded like my gredaline petticoat’.”

Anecdote followed anecdote, and then, when John was laughing helplessly at a story about stealing peach stucklings, Plumtree said, “Your father still wants you to succeed him, Johnny.”

John stilled. “
What?
”

“I told you, he’s not well. Even your mother isn’t as young as she was.”

John felt a pang of fear. Mrs. Toogood was seventy-five. Still hale and active, she might live another twenty years, but there was no denying she was old.

“Lady Tassell has asked them to manage the Rye Bay house, but your father won’t go.”

The Rye Bay house stood on a tiny estate on the East Sussex coast, far removed from the Dymonds’ political interest in the western part of the county. It was used purely (and rarely) for pleasure jaunts and would be a charming retirement for his parents.

“That’s not my fault. He knows I never wanted to be the Tassell Hall butler.”

“Yes, but he also knows you never wanted to be a butler at all. And now you are one, aren’t you?”

John rubbed at his eyes. “My mother hasn’t said a word in her letters.”

“Hasn’t she? I daresay she doesn’t want to press you, and I ought not to have brought it up.”

“Sukey would hate Tassell Hall.”

Plumtree winced. “Terribly provincial, is she?”

“That’s not what I meant.” It hadn’t been. He’d meant that Tassell Hall was chilly and full of a sense of its own importance.

Rather like me
, he thought unhappily. “It doesn’t matter. Lady Tassell won’t consider it.” He’d never expected to be glad of that.

Plumtree smiled at John. “It’s funny, really. I always thought you would succeed
me
.”

“As Lord Tassell’s valet?” John asked, startled. “Are you thinking of retiring?”

“Oh, heavens, no. As the
next
earl’s valet.”

John felt warm. He had hoped the same thing, he admitted to himself. That one day Lord Lenfield would succeed to the title and he himself would stand as beloved uncle to the younger servants. But perhaps he wasn’t suited for that. “I hope you aren’t disappointed.”

“In you, my dear boy? Never.”

* * *

Sukey, walking down Cross Street after a delicious penny plate of Scotch collops at the Robin Hood, glanced in the windows of Makepeace’s and saw her husband clasping the hand of an older man. So that was Gil Plumtree, the reason John had become a gentleman’s gentleman. They looked very cozy together, and he probably knew all sorts of darling stories about when John was a kid.

She wished she’d agreed to go along—and didn’t much like that she wished it. Her half-holidays were the only time she had apart from John—nearly all she had apart from him at all, excepting one set of clothes and a few coins. Give them up, and…

She didn’t know what she thought would happen, except that maybe they’d get sick of each other. Was she really still on about
what if he left her?

Well, but he might. Someday. And then she’d better have something left of her own.

Even so, she almost went in. She’d been invited, and she knew John would be glad to see her. But Mr. Plumtree looked even more like a gentleman than John did: dandyish, with gold rings on his fingers. She could tell just by the way he held his face that he spoke beautifully. What if he didn’t think she was good enough for his adoptive nephew?

Not wanting them to catch sight of her, she quickened her steps until she was before the broad stairs of the boarding house next door. A well-dressed lady leaving the circulating library on the ground floor ran smack into her. She looked Sukey up and down with a sniff. “Mind where you’re going.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sukey muttered, and then wished she hadn’t. But she couldn’t be rude. What if the lady recognized her at church and complained to Mr. Summers? Maybe she’d ought to have begged her pardon too. The Scotch collops stirred queasily in her stomach.

The woman went her unmerry way, but Sukey stood there, struck by a thought. John liked to read. He used to borrow books from Mr. Dymond, but now…

How much did a subscription cost? She’d never inquired, knowing she didn’t want one. A friend of hers split a single subscription with a dozen other girls, so it must be expensive. On the other hand, she still had most of her Christmas money burning a hole in her shift, and on Lady Day she’d have three whole pounds coming to her.

But she couldn’t make herself walk up those steps. She wasn’t rich enough or clever enough. Everyone inside would turn up their noses as soon as they saw her boots. And that was before she opened her mouth and broad Sussex came out.

So she trudged on to the Gilchrists’, where she gave back the necklace, ribbons, and two neat pin-papers, counted over three times on the pavement outside. “Thanks so much for letting me borrow them. And thank you again for the dress.”

“You’re very welcome,” Mrs. Gilchrist said. “So, did he swoon at your feet?”

Sukey flushed. “I—”

The girl’s face fell. “He didn’t?” She patted the blue beads as if to soothe their wounded feelings.

Sukey thought back to before the disaster. “No, he did,” she said, surprised to remember it.
You look as if you’d wandered out of a faerie ring
. “Right at my feet.”

Mrs. Gilchrist looked very relieved. “As he should have.”

He’d swooned at her feet, and he’d cleaned her dress, and he’d told her he’d been wrong and that she ought to enjoy herself because he wanted her to be happy. He asked her every week to spend Saturday afternoon with him.

She’d been worrying and worrying that he’d leave her, that she’d make him not want her. But she’d started every quarrel.
She
was angry with
him
.
She
was dissatisfied with their marriage.
She
wanted something different from what they had. How had she got it so backwards?

And what on God’s green earth did she want?

“Ma’am, you used to work at the circulating library, didn’t you?”

Mrs. Gilchrist put a worried hand to her belly. “I still do.” Once a lady grew round, she wasn’t supposed to go about much. Just another way the gentry had of making their own lives difficult. “I wonder if Mrs. Potticary will still give me the first look at the fashion magazines when I’m only a subscriber.”

“I’m sure she will,” Sukey said. “Can I ask you how much a subscription costs?”

The girl sniffed. “Surely Mr. Summers isn’t going to subscribe after all his preaching against novels.”

Mr. Summers was indeed severe on the subject, fond of jokes about the soggy tipsy-cake a girl’s brain came to resemble when she read them. “No, I think my husband might like to become a member.”

“Oh, of course, I’m sorry. It’s fifteen shillings and sixpence per annum.” Mrs. Gilchrist tried bravely to sound as if she thought maybe Sukey could afford that.

Sukey tried to sound as if she thought so too. “I see. Thanks!” Too bright by half.

“It’s only a crown for two months, though,” Mrs. Gilchrist said hopefully.

That was almost twice as much yearly—but Sukey had a crown.

She’d been screwing up her courage to open a bank account, so she’d have something to fall back on if John left her. But for God’s sake, she hadn’t been married a month yet. It was too soon to plan for John leaving.

No, it’s too soon to
stop
planning for it,
she thought. But she’d
wanted
to go with him today when he asked her, and she hadn’t let herself. She’d told herself she couldn’t have what she wanted, and that it was for her own good. In fact, she’d been miserly with herself, and miserly with him, and she was sick of it.

Maybe that was why she’d been so discontented, why she never quite felt as she ought. It wasn’t John’s fault after all. It was hers, for keeping her heart in a locked cupboard instead of sharing it with him.

She was going to put her money on them.

Walking back down Cross Street, her dirty boots stood out against the smooth flagstone sidewalk. Once, she’d have taken no notice, but now they’d been clean, it ate at her to see them caked with mud and water.

John would clean them for her if she asked him.

She remembered that first time in Mrs. Pengilly’s kitchen, how she’d been seduced by his hands on her shoes before he ever touched her. It still frightened her, how soft and open she’d felt.

She’d liked it though, hadn’t she? So maybe instead of insisting he’d ought to stop taking care of her, she should give her all to taking care of him back.

* * *

Sukey went home early, a pasty in hand for her supper, not surprised to find John reading by the banked fire in the empty kitchen. She’d been slowly coming to understand she liked doing other people’s kindnesses: polishing Mrs. Pengilly’s silver and making John eat his breakfast and comforting Mrs. Khaleel. But today felt even better than that, because she’d chosen and planned it. Her anticipation of John’s happiness was a lantern burning in her chest.

“How was your afternoon?”

“Molly’s father was insensible with drink when I went to speak to him about his health,” John said. “I’ll have to go again next week.”

Oh dear. Poor Molly. “What are you reading?”

He wrinkled his nose, turning the book over. “A history of the Anglo-Saxons. Mr. Summers has generously allowed me the use of his library, but I’m afraid his taste runs to…histories of the Anglo-Saxons.”

She beamed, drawing the little card from her bodice and handing it to him.

“This card entitles the bearer, John Toogood, to withdraw two books at a time from the Lively Library,” he read slowly.

“It’s good until Lady Day. They have more than a thousand books.”

He turned the card over. “Thank you, but…you bought it for the quarter? Libraries charge twice as much that way.”

Her smile wobbled. “I know, but I didn’t want to spend more than seven and six.”

He looked sick. “You spent seven and six on this?”

The light in her chest guttered. “Yes, because I thought you would like it!”

He looked at her, and his face cleared. “I do. I do like it.” Standing, he took her in his arms. “I hadn’t even thought of a circulating library.”

“You thought we were too small.”

“
You’re
too small,” he teased, leaning very far down to kiss her. “I’m sorry, I only—the difference in our wages—you ought not to be buying me presents.”

“With the difference in our
ages
, you ought not to strain your back carrying me to bed, but I don’t try to stop you,” she retorted.

He took the hint.

Afterwards, she said, “When you asked me to marry you, I told you I didn’t want to get married only to have some man take care of me.”

“That wasn’t when I asked you to marry me,” he said. “That was when you said yes. There were some intervening hours.”

“Which I’m sure you spent nursing your broken heart.”

He sighed. “No, I suppose not. But I was disappointed.”

Pleased, she nestled closer to his side. “The point is,
you
said that it wasn’t weak to want a helpmeet. That you wanted one yourself.”

He nodded.

“I want to be a helpmeet to you. You were right at the servants’ ball; I’ve been asking you to treat me equal, but I haven’t taken equal responsibility.” She put a hand over his mouth when he tried to interrupt. “Not at the vicarage. In our marriage. Well, I mean to try. And you’ve got to let me. You can’t scold me for buying you a present.”

He bit her palm. “If you insist.”

“I do.” She wiped her hand on his shirt. “And I think—I think we should take our dinner alone two or three days in the week. I think it would be nice for us, and nice for the rest of the staff.”

He sighed. “Plumtree told me today that I can’t expect to be their friend, any more than Mr. Summers can expect to be mine.” He sounded sad.
I was lonely, and I wanted the job at the vicarage, and you took pity on me,
he’d said. There was at least a little truth in it.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t be
friendly
with them,” she said. “I was friendly with Mrs. Dymond, even if you laughed at me for it. But we both remembered she paid me wages, so she didn’t put me in awkward positions and I didn’t tell her aught she could use against me.”

He nodded slowly. “I suppose.” He turned to face her. “Very well, but we ought to spend those dinners talking, and not…” He trailed a finger down her belly. “Sometimes I think we talked more before we married.”

Well, wasn’t that a lovely thing to say? He’d rather talk to her than take his pleasure. She sat up, pushing him down on his back and straddling him. Her heart fizzed like ginger beer. “Lord love you, Johnny,” she scoffed, “I didn’t marry you for your mind.” She settled herself comfortably atop him, chin planted on her folded arms. “I miss talking to you too,” she confided. “I saw you and Mr. Plumtree at Makepeace’s. Do you think you’ll see him again before he goes to London?”