Listen to the Moon (4 page)

He broke the kiss, breathing hard. His light brown eyes stared into hers from too close. She had a dizzy fancy that he wasn’t looking at her so much as letting her see right into him. She tightened her fingers on his neck for balance.

He ducked his head, leaned in and growled—there was just no other word for it—in her ear, “I brought myself to completion this morning, thinking of taking you.”

She gasped. He’d
what
? Really? But there was nothing he could mean but frigging himself, was there? So when he’d gone upstairs after he left Mrs. Pengilly’s, he’d… It was hard to imagine him doing anything so undignified, but of course he must. He
had
. Thinking of
her
.

And now he was telling her about it. She’d never felt anything like this wild pounding of her blood, spreading from her heart down her arms and into the soles of her feet and
there
, there between her legs.

“Do you understand me?”

She laughed a little wildly. “I may be a virgin, but I’m not
ignorant
.”

He drew back, her fingers sliding from his hair and falling into her lap. “You’re a virgin?”

Sukey glared at him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

John ran a hand through his hair. It was a mistake; his scalp was still sensitized. He spent half his life with his hands in other men’s hair, but he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched his. His skin had hummed and prickled delightfully under her fingertips.

Her virginal fingertips. “I don’t—I just—I’m not taking a girl’s maidenhead in a
kitchen
, for Christ’s sake.” His voice rose alarmingly.

She glared harder, those tip-tilted eyes narrowing. “I’m sorry I didn’t bed half a dozen strapping young lads to make this moment more convenient for you,” she hissed. “How inconsiderate of me!”

She might remind him of a spitting kitten, but she was two-and-twenty. A grown woman, and a strikingly appealing one. And now to find she’d waited all this time, for
him
? She’d made no bones about thinking John a square-toed stick-in-the-mud. “Why me?” he asked. “A girl like you—”

“And what kind of girl am I, pray?” She crossed her arms over her chest.

So square-toed that she assumed he must be calling her a trollop. “A very pretty one,” he snapped. “I presume you’ve had offers. Christ, I can’t believe I told you I’d—” He couldn’t repeat it. This was the trouble with lust. It was worse than aqua vitae for loosening the tongue, and a man did and said things he’d never have dreamed of in a less fuzzy-headed state.

Reluctantly, her mouth curved. She tossed her head a little. “So what you’re saying is I could have any man I like.”

Their mouths were linked now. His curved in sympathy. “Well, I don’t say
any
. That would be hyperbole.”

It was plain on her face she didn’t know what the word meant. But she said, “You’re not so bad yourself.” She hooked a foot around his legs, pulling him towards her, and Lord, he wanted to go.

He tilted her head up. It was a mistake. The underside of her pointed chin was sinfully soft. The ruffle of her cap lifted and settled, wisps of hair at her temple moving as if someone had blown on them. He wanted to blow on every inch of her. If he wasn’t careful he’d say
that
too, and she’d die laughing at him.

“Miss Grimes, I’m sorry. I’m not saying this because you’re a virgin. That only startled me, and gave me a moment to think of what we’d be doing. You work in a respectable house, and I am seeking a position, perhaps in a household with maidservants. Neither of us could afford the damage to our reputations if somebody walked in and saw us.”

She sighed, letting go of him with a sad little nod. “I expect you’re right.”

John took up one of her boots and wiped away the streaks of excess oil gleaming on the surface, feeling a self-indulgent pang of disappointment. It was fortunate that virtue was its own reward, as few other rewards seemed to accompany it.

But he was only sulking. Virtue had many rewards. Take, for instance, the virtue of caring properly for one’s boots: warm, dry feet, and money in one’s pocket that one was not obliged to spend on new boots. The rewards of not dallying with the neighbor’s housemaid were likewise self-evident and innumerable.

No, the proverb had it backwards.
Sin
was its own reward, its
only
reward. Its dreadful consequences lasted longer than any momentary satisfaction. He began to apply tallow to her boots, to keep off the water. It would have to dry for two hours.

Two hours he was trapped here with her, polishing this bloody kitchen to a shine. Perhaps it would be kinder to leave her to polish alone. But he’d been born into service; he could not idle while others worked.

She hopped off the table, not looking at him. “I suppose I’d better get to scouring.”

“I think that would be best,” he said quietly.

* * *

Storm clouds were rolling in. John sighed. Thus ended a few glorious drizzling hours during which water had dripped into the bucket in his parlor no more than once or twice a minute. This morning’s unseasonal thunder had sounded like cannon, as if the Channel had overflowed its banks all the way to Lively St. Lemeston, and the French fleet were firing upon the town.

He pressed his face to the damp, chilly pane of his bedroom window, eying the rapidly approaching dark clouds. It was too early to begin dinner, but John couldn’t bring himself to write one more polite note of thanks. His little table was littered with replies from Lord Lenfield’s friends. Every letter said,
I’d feel uneasy, hiring a man the Tassells have turned off.
Not always in so many words, but the meaning was clear.

Some of those gentlemen had tried to bribe John from his place, once upon a time, but he’d been satisfied where he was and refused every offer with a virtuous pride that embarrassed him now.

A flicker of movement in the street below caught his eye. Sukey Grimes with an empty basket, gazing apprehensively up at the sky and walking towards the edge of town as quickly as she could without running. What in blazes was she doing out in this weather?

He ought to leave her alone. He’d expended the cunning of a Machiavel in not crossing her path since that disastrous Friday afternoon. But surely no errand could justify going out when such a storm threatened, unless it was to fetch a doctor. He threw on his greatcoat and hat and raced down the stairs with his umbrella.

Once in the street, he was conscious of several pairs of respectable female eyes in the boarding-house window. He waited to catch Sukey up until they were out of sight. “Good day to you, Miss Grimes.”

She turned in disbelief. “Mr. Toogood? You’d better get back inside before the heavens open. Your lovely wool coat will swell.”

“I had been trying not to think of that.”

“What are you doing out of doors?”

“I saw you from my window. What errand could possibly be important enough to go out in such weather? You’ll catch your death.”

She shook her head. “It’s St. Clement’s Day. Didn’t you hear them firing the anvils this morning? I’ve got to fetch apples for the blacksmiths.”

St. Clement was the patron saint of blacksmiths, who celebrated their saint’s day with zealous carousing and “clemmening”, or parading from house to house collecting gifts of apples and beer. A bowl of apples had been waiting on Mrs. Pengilly’s kitchen table for three days. “Firing the anvils?”

“Don’t they do that at Tassell? The smiths put gunpowder in their anvils and set it off to frighten evil spirits.” She smiled. “The horses hate it, but I always liked the noise.”

Such quaint, pastoral customs. He wondered how many fingers had been lost in honoring them. “Give me your money and wait here. I’ll buy the apples.”

She snorted. “Am I going towards town? I haven’t a penny. I’m to pick the apples.”

“Pick them?” he demanded in disbelief.

She tied her bonnet on tighter and put her head down. “Mrs. Humphrey doesn’t spend a farthing she been’t obliged to.”

“Surely she wishes to avoid the expense of calling the doctor for you.”

“She don’t think so far ahead. Miss Starling told me the first year she opened the house, Mrs. Humphrey didn’t give out apples or beer at all. Said the blacksmiths weren’t entitled to take food from the mouths of her lodgers simply because they’d decided to have a holiday. She was sorry when a clinker came through the front window and she’d new glass to buy.”

“A clinker?”

She blinked. “Is that a Sussex word too?”

He pressed his lips together and didn’t remind her that he was from Sussex.

“It’s these sort of paving stones.” She pointed at the small, hard bricks beneath their feet. “There’s an apple tree a mile down the road. It’s a favorite with little boys, but I’m taller than they are, praises be. I can generally reach a few they can’t.”

She meant to climb a tree in this weather?

“And your mistress knows you are on your way to go clambering about the upper regions of a tree in the blinding rain?”

Sukey nodded. “She were hoping the sun would come out, but it hasn’t, and if I don’t go now, it will be dark.”

“This is madness. I’ll buy you apples.”

“I’d get the sack if I let you buy me apples,” she said flatly. “No one would believe I didn’t give you something for them.”

“Then tell me where the tree is, and how many apples you require, and I will fetch them.”

She gave him a pitying look. “When’s the last time
you
climbed a tree?”

He’d been fourteen or fifteen. It didn’t feel so very long ago, but looking at her smooth, youthful face, it struck him with great force that it
had
been. “I shall manage.”

Her laugh had a nasty edge. “The branches would break under your great weight.”

So she meant to go out on slender, slippery branches. “This is rank folly.”

“No, rank folly would be losing my place by giving Mrs. Humphrey a piece of my mind,” she said grimly. The wicker handle of her basket creaked under the pressure of her fingers, and he realized that she was not foolhardy in the least. She was frightened and putting on a brave face because she saw no alternative. “She wouldn’t even give me an umbrella. Said I would let it turn inside out.”

He held his over her head, silently.

“Thank you.” She hunched her narrow shoulders. “But you should go back. You can leave me the umbrella, if you like.” Her pelisse was too large, its upturned collar tailored to frame a profusion of linen ruffles she didn’t possess. He could see water dripping down the back of her neck, plastering stray tendrils of hair to her cool, clean skin. He wanted to taste it.

“I like storms,” he said calmly. “I find them picturesque.”

“Do you now?”

“I’m a very poetical fellow.”

“It shows,” she said wryly, and let him take the basket. She stuffed her fingers into her sleeves, shivering, and for a mad moment he thought of taking off his greatcoat to serve as a muff for her. But the day was too wet and cold to do anything of the kind, so he merely kept pace with her—she was in such a hurry that he barely had to slow his longer legs—and waited to see how far she could go in silence.

A hundred yards, as it turned out. “Last year Mrs. Dymond came with me to pick apples,” she said, a little sadly. “Mr. Dymond will take good care of her, won’t he?”

“I have no doubt she is indoors at the moment, if that’s what you mean.”

She gave him an irritated look, her wet eyebrows small dark slashes in her white face. “It isn’t.”

He didn’t know why her worrying over Mr. Dymond’s wife should annoy him so much. “You would do better to save your tender concern for yourself. You are far more in need of it than Mrs. Dymond.”

“I don’t suppose anyone is in
need
of my concern,” she said, heartily offended. “I can still bestow it where I like, I hope. You needn’t behave as if I’m a loyal family retainer like you. Mrs. Dymond was a friend, of sorts. Someone to talk to, anyway.”

John set his jaw, comprehending now why he was so annoyed. He had
never
wanted to be a loyal family retainer. He had liked and respected the Dymond family, certainly, and hoped to like and respect his next master. He hoped to achieve excellence in his field. He wanted his talents recognized and made use of to their full extent. But those were entirely different things.

His parents, on the other hand…they had always behaved as if they were the Dymonds’ tender guardians and not their upper servants.

“You can’t understand how rare it is for a girl who talks as much as I do to meet someone who holds her own in conversation,” Sukey said ruefully.

John looked at her in surprise. “I didn’t think Mrs. Dymond talked as much as all that.”

She laughed. “Not if she don’t know you.”

Suddenly, he remembered catching sight of Mr. Dymond and his wife walking down the street not long before their marriage, heads together, lost in conversation. It had struck John peculiarly at the time, for he’d known Mr. Dymond since his birth and would not have described him as talkative either. But they had seemed to have a great deal to say to one another.

“I don’t talk much…” But more than that, he rarely said anything of consequence. He and his mother filled pages with their letters, but it was all news and gossip. That was how they liked it. So now he trailed off, not really knowing how to continue.

“I noticed.”

He sighed. What was the use in trying? He’d always be silent witness to others’ conversations, like a statue in a bustling public garden.

“Was that all?” she asked.

“I seem to lack the impulse to confide in others. Sometimes I regret that.”

She didn’t know what to make of that. “You’re lucky,” she said finally. “Talking only gets you in trouble.”

Another memory, this one much older yet more vivid: the Dymond boys begging food from his mother in the Tassell kitchen, early one morning before breakfast. Young Lenfield had been eloquently persuasive, while little Master Anthony, the baby of the family, had been confidently demanding. Even Mr. Dymond, at seven or eight, had chimed in with a winsome smile and a playful question of some kind.