Listen to the Moon (9 page)

He felt disposed to linger in the chilly kitchen-yard, but Sukey still lacked an overcoat. “If I may see you Saturday, I will buy you a new pelisse,” he said, and then was embarrassed by this small attempt at bribery.

“Bribing me with gifts, it’s as if we’re already married. I could use a good set of stays too.” There was a forced note in Sukey’s teasing, and he realized that while he returned to his quiet lodgings, he was leaving her in a new home alone.

“You’ll do splendidly. And I would be glad to buy you stays. New ones sewn to your measurements, if you like.” It would be the most intimate gift he’d ever given anyone.

For a second, he could see her talking herself round, and then she gave him a twinkling smile almost as bright as her usual. “Look at you throwing money about! Mrs. Humphrey was right about you. Tell my mum I won’t be coming home and not to take that extra work, will you? I’ll see you Saturday.”

He didn’t want to go. “If that curate bothers you at all, you must get word to me at once. Mrs. Khaleel did not like the idea of him living here.”

She nodded. “I hope you know what you’ve got us into.”

So did he.

Chapter Seven

“Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law…” Mr. Summers’s voice brought Sukey awake with a start, thinking he was asking her to fetch his tea or stir the fire. There was a special terror to nodding off in church when the parson was your master.

It was strange to be back in church with her mother, like every Sunday since she was a girl, when for nearly two weeks she hadn’t left her new household. A servant’s home was her world, and at the vicarage Sukey didn’t even have the running of errands or going to market as an excuse to leave the house, for Thea, Larry and Mrs. Khaleel did all that. Except for her half-holidays and Sunday morning services, she’d spoken to no one but Mr. Summers and his servants. Sometimes she felt as far from her old life as if she’d gone to live on the moon, so it was a shock to see Mrs. Humphrey and the boarding-house ladies in the gallery opposite, and to remember she’d been less than half a mile from them all the while.

Below them, Mrs. Dymond and her family sat in their pew. She was relieved to see Mrs. Pengilly with them, looking well. John had promised he’d try to at least find her a new lodger before he left, but Sukey fretted.

“I used to think Nick Dymond was the handsomest man in the world,” her friend Jenny whispered to her. “Now look how slocksey he is, with his hair in his face and his coat huddled on. It was all your man’s doing after all.”

“Shh. I can’t talk in church anymore.”
Your man.
She wished he were here, bad luck notwithstanding. She felt less and less certain she was making the right choice. True, she liked it tol-lol at the vicarage, though she was run off her feet learning the ways of a new house. Everyone was nice, the food was the best she’d ever had, and she and Mr. Summers got along fine. But marriage? If Mr. Toogood were here, she’d feel safe about it again. She’d felt sure yesterday afternoon, when he was buying her new linen to match the brand-new stays that fit her like a dream. Sukey Grimes with a nightgown of her own with fine long sleeves to keep out the chill, imagine that! Now, without his quiet, sure presence, she thought,
It was only so I don’t disgrace him before Mr. Summers.

“I publish the banns of marriage,” Mr. Summers read, “between Lydia Reeve of Lively St. Lemeston and Ashford Cahill of Blight’s Penryth. If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony, you are to declare it. This is the second time of asking.”

Sukey peered down at Lydia Reeve, the Tory patroness, sitting smugly in her pew with her betrothed.
She
looked sure. Radiant. Everyone said it’d been love at first sight with the two of them. But for an heiress to marry a stranger and give him her money? How could she know it was safe so quickly?

“Don’t they know he shouldn’t hear himself church-bawled?” Jenny whispered. “Asking for trouble, that is.”

“Funny how rich folk never worry about luck,” Sukey whispered back. “Born with a surplus, I expect.”

Fancying Mr. Summers was looking at her, she straightened hurriedly—and as he began to read her banns, she realized his eye
had
been on her. Drat. When would she learn to behave herself?

She looked around, proud in spite of herself to hear her name read out with John’s and to have everyone know she was marrying him. Her gaze met her Aunt Kate’s in the gallery across the way, and her heart gave a jolt.

She could still remember crying as Mrs. Grimes turned Kate away at the door after Mr. Grimes left. Sukey had liked her father’s sister dunnamuch. Thinking herself very crafty, she’d said maybe Aunt Kate would give them money if they let her visit. Her mum had made her sorry for that.

Every week in church, Sukey wished she could talk to her.

Aunt Kate smiled at her. Jerking her gaze away before her mother saw, she caught Mrs. Humphrey glaring at her.

She checked her instinctive flinch, straightening to show off her new pelisse. It was finer than anything she’d ever owned, rust colored, with a high velvet collar and stylish frogging down the front. It was secondhand, but Mr. Toogood had paid for it to be altered, and Sukey looked fine as fivepence if she did say so herself. She could almost hear the
harrumph
from across the church.

* * *

The two and a half weeks before John’s wedding passed with painful slowness. The exceptions were Saturday afternoons, which passed far too quickly. But Monday the fourteenth of December dawned at last. John presented himself at the church half an hour early, and read in an empty box pew until Mr. Summers and Sukey arrived promptly at nine, with the curate and Molly to serve as witnesses. John looked between them, trying to discern whether matters at the vicarage had been going as well as Sukey said, and how happy Mr. Summers was with his new upper housemaid.

“Have you a ring, Mr. Toogood?” Mr. Summers asked.

“Oh, I brought a napkin ring with me, sir,” Sukey said.

John reached in his pocket and brought out the ring he’d purchased at the pawnshop. “I hope you like it.” It looked improbably small lying in his palm, and he was suddenly afraid it would not fit and he had wasted his money.

“A posy ring? My, my. I thought those had entirely gone out of fashion since my boyhood,” Mr. Summers said. Mr. Bearparke laughed, though without any malice, and John felt another pang of uncertainty.

Sukey gingerly took the narrow band of shining brass, with letters inscribed on its inward face. “
Let us share in joy and care
,” she read. “How sweet!” She tried it on each finger in turn until it fit snugly on her left middle finger. She held out her hand, fingers spread, with growing satisfaction. “Thanks. I think I’m the first girl in my family to be married with a real ring.”

As she took it off and handed it back, their eyes met. Enough heat flared between them that John knew he wasn’t the only one thinking of their wedding night.

He kept the ring in his hand throughout the ceremony so as to have it ready. He was glad he’d coated it in a fine layer of beeswax to protect Sukey’s skin, for otherwise his sweating palm would have been entirely green.

After the wedding, they all walked back to the vicarage together—Sukey dropping his arm every few steps to feel the ring through her glove—and then John was obliged to throw himself at once into work. The house had lacked a butler for weeks now, and something needed his attention everywhere he looked. He went slowly through the house, making notes.

He tried not to be appalled at his list’s length. These were surely sins of ignorance and not malice. Larry was not overwaxing the mahogany and scratching the mirrors on purpose. Perhaps the lad was nearsighted, and at least his mediocrity distracted John from thoughts of the coming night.

He glanced at the grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs to see how many hours remained in the day. Its painted face was so lovely and so begrimed that John went directly to the kitchen for a piece of white bread and a soft-bristle brush.

He heard Mr. Bearparke’s low, happy voice before he opened the door. “…used to let me help in harvesting the mangoes. I can’t really remember what they tasted like, but I know I thought it ambrosia at the time. I’ve toyed with the notion of begging the new Lord Wheatcroft to cultivate them in his hothouses. Do you think I ought?” The curate sat at a deal table in the corner of the kitchen, a sandwich and a stack of books before him.

Mrs. Khaleel gave John a nervous look from where she was cutting up a couple of chickens. “It’s not my place to say, sir.”

Mr. Bearparke’s frown and glance in John’s direction suggested it was not the sort of answer he had expected—or perhaps was used to getting—though he took it with a good grace, bowing his head over his books. John’s heart sank. He liked the cook and hoped very much that she was not acting imprudently.

The painted hurrying ship, pink roses and gilt accents of the clock face were considerably brightened after an application of bread. John brushed the crumbs away with a smile and headed for the kitchen.

Through the open door to the kitchen-yard, he could clearly hear Sukey singing outside.

’Twas out of those roses she made a bed,

A stony pillow for her head;

She laid her down, no word she spoke,

Until this fair maid’s heart was broke.

He went to the door. She was taking yesterday’s ashes to the bin, skirts swaying jauntily with the motion of her hips. She was his wife now, part of him until Judgment Day. Tonight, and every night after, he could touch her to his heart’s content.

Listening to her clear voice, John remembered with a sick jolt how much more energy he’d had at twenty-two. It struck him how gladly he fell into bed, how difficult it had become to open his eyes and clear the cobwebs from his brain after five or six hours’ sleep. At her age he had stayed up until the small hours talking or drinking, and got up again before dawn and thought nothing of it.

Unlike valeting, this position did not allow for catnaps.

If Sukey wanted long nights of passion, he was unlikely to be able to oblige her. He was unsure, even, if he could satisfy her more than once in a night.

It occurred to him with a sort of panic that they had never discussed the possibility of children.

There is a man on yonder hill;

He has a heart so harder still.

He has two hearts instead of one…

Something else occurred to John. He stepped into the yard and waved her over.

She came readily. “How d’you do, Mr. Toogood?”

He couldn’t help smiling. “Quite well, Mrs. Toogood, and yourself?”

“Oh, tol-lol.”

John pointed at the neighboring window, fortunately closed. “That is Mr. Summers’s study.”

“I know.”

“You had better not sing on this side of the house when Mr. Summers is at home. It might disturb him in his work.”

Her face drained of friendliness. “Yes, sir.”

John fought the urge to apologize. He was butler, and she was a housemaid, and however matters might be between them privately, he was responsible for running the house to Mr. Summers’s satisfaction. Besides, it would put him in a damnable position if Mr. Summers took a dislike to his wife. “Thank you, Sukey.”

She nodded and went quietly in, the spring gone from her step. John could not help going over the conversation as he continued his inspection of the hallway, searching for a more tactful way to give the same command.

He hadn’t missed this particular dilemma of authority when he became a valet. Or any dilemmas of authority, for that matter. What had he got himself into?

He opened the narrow cupboard under the stairs, and thoughts of Sukey flew entirely out of his mind. Thea was curled up inside, fast asleep.

He cleared his throat once, then twice. She didn’t stir. Her cheek was pressed to her knees, her mouth open and drooling. She looked heartbreakingly young and tired. Service was a difficult life for a young adolescent; later, it was easier to accept that one’s life was mostly drudgery and always would be, and one grew more adept at fitting in enjoyment around the edges. But at thirteen, it still sometimes seemed monstrously unfair that one could not simply finish one’s book when one was near the end, or—well, hide in a cupboard and sleep when one was tired. He glanced towards the closed study door.

“Thea,” he said as loudly as he dared. Nothing. He laid his hand on her shoulder.

She jerked awake, trembling, and hit her head on the underside of the stairs in trying to get away.

John stepped smartly back from the cupboard door. She clambered past him, stopping as far off as she could without seeming disrespectful.

“Thea, you know you ought not to be sleeping during the day,” he said gently.

“Yes, sir. It won’t happen again, sir,” she said almost inaudibly. A cobweb clung to her cap.

John jotted the cupboard down in his notebook as needing greater attention from the maids. “I will not mention this to Mr. Summers.”

She gave him a darting, apprehensive glance. “Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”

Not knowing what would calm her fear of him, and not wishing to distress her further, John said, “You may go back to your work.”

“Thank you, sir.” She fled, giving him a wide berth.

When the time neared for the servants’ dinner, he repaired to the kitchen early, glad not to find Mr. Bearparke there. “Have you an inventory of your larder and pantry, Mrs. Khaleel?”

“I believe Mr. Summers has one of the pots and things.”

“But none of the stores?”

“No, sir. I know how much of everything we have.”

“Should you object to my taking one?”

She raised her eyebrows. “I’m not stealing, if that’s what you mean.”

“I did not mean to suggest any such thing.” John felt exhausted. “I promise you I did not. I merely like to have things written down.” He didn’t point out the obvious, that in her absence or illness it would help the rest of them, for fear she would take offense at that as well.

She nodded, setting a large loaf of bread and a kettle of stew on the table. Curry wafted towards him.

“That smells delicious,” John said honestly, hoping to please her.

“Thank you. It would be better if you English folk could tolerate cayenne.” She said it drily, but he thought she meant it in a friendly way.

“Mr. Bearparke was brought up in India, I take it,” John said delicately, coming round to his true purpose. “Does he enjoy cayenne?”

She didn’t look at him. “Yes, sir, his father worked for the East India Company. I keep pepper sauce on hand for when he dines here.”

There was a silence as John debated with himself. “If you like, I could speak to Mr. Summers about Mr. Bearparke coming to live here. I thought perhaps you might not like the idea.”

She met his eyes then, defiantly. “I
don’t
like the idea.” She sounded hopeless of being believed.

He nodded mildly.

“He’s a very nice young man, and a rich one, but I don’t want a man to court me because I remind him of his ayah.”