by Rose Lerner
Miss Grimes looked up from her silver polishing with a sunny smile. “Oh yes, and see that you don’t roll down your sleeves.”
An electrical shock ran through him, his body understanding before his mind did that she meant she wanted to ogle his arms.
Mrs. Pengilly laughed uproariously, and he realized that it was likely she who wanted to ogle, and Sukey was only playing along. “As you wish, madam,” he said, ignoring their amusement. “I’ll fetch another slice of pie. Mind you, it will be better when it’s sat overnight.”
“You know,” Sukey said loudly as he ducked out of the room to fetch his pie, “I’ve been doing an imitation of a grand servant for years, and I never dreamed it would be so true to life.” Was she pitching her voice for her hard-of-hearing mistress, or to tease him?
“Not much of a talker, is he?” the landlady said. “I’ll see if I can get anything out of him.” So when he returned, he answered Mrs. Pengilly’s questions as briefly as possible, hoping to surprise a laugh—or at least a snicker—out of Sukey. But she kept her eyes on the silver.
“So you’re from London, are you?”
Sukey had asked him the same thing. The corners of her mouth twitched, but she clamped down on them and didn’t look up.
“Admiring my silver, eh?”
John started in his chair, and Sukey’s cheeks flushed.
“Those candlesticks were meant for a duchess, you know,” Mrs. Pengilly boasted. “Harry should have melted them down, but he knew how tickled I’d be to have them. Sukey, show him where Harry hammered out the coat of arms.”
The maid was still, blinking hard. Were her eyes too bright?
“Are you well, Miss Grimes?”
She met his gaze. Too bright, without a doubt. “Yes, sir, tol-lol.” She leaned towards him, tilting up the candlestick so a slightly rough patch caught the light. Her pale eyes warned him that if he said anything disapproving about what Mrs. Pengilly had just revealed, she’d cosh him over the head with it.
“Very nice. So your husband worked in…shipping?”
“Precisely.” Mrs. Pengilly’s eyes gleamed.
“That explains the ghost, then.” Everybody he spoke to rushed to tell him about the woman who haunted his rooms with wailing and gnashing of teeth.
“Have you heard her?” his landlady asked.
So far he’d heard nothing but rain on the roof and the ping of water in the pot under the leak. “Not yet, but I’m sure she’s there. Ghosts are very common in the homes of men involved in…shipping.” And in their hidey-holes, and anywhere they didn’t want people going after dark. Like the silver coins at Tassell Hall, it was too convenient to be credible. His eyes returned to Sukey by compulsion. Would she agree, or did she believe in the ghost?
The maid turned her back, rubbing the last of her fingerprints off a silver sauceboat as she settled it on the mantel. There was no way to guess her thoughts.
The row of silver gleamed and winked at him while she squeezed water out of dampened tea leaves, strewing them over the carpet to pick up dust. Tea leaves were entirely wrong for a carpet with so many pale patches; he could see the staining from where he sat. But she was quick and careful with her horsehair broom.
A cynic would say it was calculating and sneaky to do good work only where her mistress could see. But he judged it another sort of economy altogether: she apportioned her work where it would give Mrs. Pengilly most pleasure.
“That is a very handsome carpet, madam. How did your husband acquire it?”
“Aubusson,” she said proudly around a mouthful of pie, not answering his question. Her blithe indiscretion of a moment ago seemed forgotten. “He knew I’d like it.”
Beneath their chairs the carpet was protected by a sturdy green drugget, but she stroked it affectionately with her slipper through the serge.
Smuggling was a brutal business. John didn’t delude himself that the late Mr. Pengilly’s hands would have been anything but crimson, were the blood on them visible. But he and his wife had clearly loved each other dearly. John’s parents, too, despite their differences, were like two pieces of a machine that no longer needed oiling, so smooth had they worn against each other.
When John was years in the ground, who would still think of him every day?
On market day he’d been fanciful, and today he was sentimental. But months cooped up with a silent master would make any man lonely. Perhaps instead of being wistful about a wife, John ought to look for a position in a married establishment, with a full complement of staff.
Sukey got on her hands and knees to go over the carpet with a clothes brush. Her bodice gaped, breasts small enough that he’d see her nipples if it gaped another inch. He averted his gaze, but out of the corner of his eye he still saw her turn, presenting her arse for his delectation.
He glanced as briefly as he could.
It was a slender, firm little arse, and her neat ankles were visible, her muddy boots changed for an ancient pair of slippers. He had a sudden vision of kneeling behind her to throw up her skirts and yank her bare buttocks against his hardness, while she shrieked with laughter and pretended to be indignant.
He stood abruptly. “Thank you for the company. I must get back to the kitchen before the beans stick to the pot.” But he didn’t go to the kitchen. It would be another half-hour at least before the beans began to stick.
No, he walked past Sukey’s upturned arse and up the narrow stairs to his rooms, where he shut and latched the door. Mrs. Pengilly’s loud voice carried through the floorboards, though not her words. So did Sukey’s replies, pitched for her mistress to hear. Was he wrong in thinking he could still make out the muffled thuds of her knees on the carpet? Going into his bedchamber, he shut that door too, feeling distressingly visible despite the blanket he’d nailed over the window as a curtain.
Leaning against the wall, he opened his breeches and smallclothes. Too many buttons, damn it, surely they weren’t all necessary.
With a smothered groan of relief, he took himself in hand. God, if she heard him, if she guessed—
Let her guess. Eyes closed, he slid down the wall until he sat on the floor, stroking himself with an insistent rhythm. He pictured the scene again, erasing Mrs. Pengilly without a qualm. Sukey and himself, tidying some room together, her on her hands and knees.
In his imagining they were old bedfellows, with no need to ask permission. When his knees hit the floor between her ankles, she’d glance over her shoulder, puzzled, but she’d only laugh at him when he threw her skirts over her waist, too impatient even to speak. He pulled her to him, his cock at her opening. Someone could come in, she said, her laugh breathless now.
I don’t care. I have to have you. He drove into her.
She gasped and moaned, pushing her hips up higher. Accepting him, urging him on. She reached one hand past her bunched skirts to rub her fingers over her pearl. So eager already. Harder, she pleaded.
John pulled her towards him until she knelt upright, her back to his chest. Holding her tight with an arm around her waist, he pushed her bodice down to release her breast. Her nipple was small and brown and he wanted to taste it, but he couldn’t reach so he rolled it between his fingers instead. She trembled as he fucked her hard and fast. He was so deep in her, so deep, taking her weight when her knees wouldn’t hold her up. Someone could come in, she said again, but she frigged herself, moaning.
They’d see how much you like this, he said in her ear.
Yes, she gasped, yes, I love it—
John spent into his cupped hand.
He slumped, shaking, the wooden floor cold and unforgiving. Then he stood, washed his hands in the basin, and went downstairs to stir his beans.
Chapter Three
At eleven, Sukey finished in Mrs. Pengilly’s rooms and went downstairs to the kitchen.
“Would you like a slice of pie?�
� Mr. Toogood asked, bland as ever.
She’d brought a hunk of cheese and some stale bread with her, but that pie was far more tempting. “Thank you. Aye, I’d love one.”
He swallowed, his hand spasming on its way to the knife.
She squinted at him. “Be you well, Mr. Toogood?”
“Tolerably well, thank you.” He glanced up at her with a frown, those light brown eyes boring into her. “And you? There was a moment upstairs when I thought you might be overset.”
“There was?”
“When Mrs. Pengilly talked about her silver.”
It had been hours, so it took her a moment to remember. “Oh. I—I worked for her two years afore I heard that story about the coat of arms on the silver. Even a year ago she’d not have told you. She grows forgetful, I think. Careless with age.”
“Maybe she’s only realizing that there’s no longer much need for caution.”
She nodded, seeing no reason to explain that Mrs. Pengilly’s son was also in…shipping. Harry Pengilly junior liked to do more of the sailing, and was gone eleven months in twelve. “Maybe. I know it been’t a grand tragedy for a happy old woman of eighty-five to become a little forgetful, but…”
“You’re fond of her.”
She nodded. “Are you fond of the Dymonds?”
“Of course.” He said it without hesitation, and offered not a syllable more.
She shrugged and took a bite of her pie. Mmm. Roasted potatoes, sliced apples, hardboiled egg, onions and butter in a thick, rich dough. He really did know what he was about in the kitchen.
“Your boots could use a cleaning,” he said.
She nearly choked on the delicious mouthful. “Beg pardon?”
“I could clean them for you, if you like.”
She blinked, too surprised to even say “pardon” again. “Do you miss valeting that much?”
His face went blanker even than ordinary. “Cleaning leather isn’t only for looks. It lasts longer when it’s cared for, and needs less mending.”
“I clean for my living,” she said flatly. “On my day off, I’m not about to clean more.”
“I didn’t ask you to. I asked if you’d let me do it. If you’d prefer that I didn’t—”
She threw up her hands. “I’d be a fool to turn you down.”
“And your mother didn’t raise any fools, or so I’ve heard.” Not waiting for further encouragement, he fetched her boots from the door and set them on the table, going at the mud on them with a wooden scraper the size of a penknife. He made so finicky a job of it that he’d only finished one boot by the time she emptied her plate. As she was washing it, he said, “Would you begin by scrubbing the copper pots with lemons and salt, please?”
She sliced a lemon in two and dipped it in coarse salt, hoping he didn’t notice she was near to mesmerized by his hands. Half the great copper kettle had been restored to a bright, pinkish shine before he’d finished scraping her second boot.
Next he set to brushing the leather with firm, careful strokes. “Were you born in Lively St. Lemeston, Miss Grimes?” He didn’t raise his eyes from the falling particles of dust.
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you any brothers or sisters?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. Do you wish for them?”
Dunnamuch. She couldn’t imagine the difference a sister or brother might have made to her when she was small and felt as if she and her mother could fall off the edge of this town with no one the wiser. She couldn’t imagine the difference it would make now to have someone who shared her blood, who’d be with her through thick and thin, who’d help take care of Mrs. Grimes when she grew old.
“Now and again.” She rinsed her kettle. “But it’s a gamble, right enough. You can’t rid yourself of a sibling, and from what I’ve seen, half of them are lovely and the other half so dreadful as to beggar belief.”
“I suppose so.” He sighed. “I’ve been reflecting that perhaps I would prefer my next situation to be in a house with more than one servant.”
She looked up in surprise from feeling for stray grains of salt. Lonely, was he? Well, she supposed that wasn’t much of a surprise, only that he’d admit to it. “One half-holiday a week isn’t much to cram a life into,” she agreed.
“No. At Tassell Hall, one was never alone.”
Sukey wondered if she’d be happier in a house with plenty of other maids to gossip with. That was a gamble too, in her opinion. It might be nice, or it might be just more people making her eat carp-pie, more people to get her turned off without a character if they took a dislike to her, and more smiling and listening when she only wanted to put her head down and shut her eyes for half a tick. She was lucky Mrs. Humphrey had hired her, and she couldn’t imagine trying to explain to her mother that she’d left because she was lonely. “I’m sure Mrs. Pengilly will let you hang around her as much as you please.”
She was rewarded by an amused softening of his face as he came to fill a bowl at the sink. “Do your parents live here?” He stood politely at her elbow until she moved, instead of nudging her familiarly aside like an ordinary person.
“My mother lives just that way.” She pointed. “She takes in laundry.” He took that to mean her father must be dead, of course. She could tell by his face that he was puzzling over whether it would be impolite to say how sorry he was.
He went silently back to the table with his bowl, so she didn’t have to decide between a lie and the truth.
“Do you see your parents much?” she asked over her shoulder.
Now he was scrubbing her boot with soapy water, neat round strokes with a little brush. “My mother and I exchange letters most weeks.” He smiled at her boot, almost a whole smile. Her foot hurt with wanting him to hold it like that. “I’ve sent her Mr. Dymond’s pieces in the Intelligencer. She was always fond of him.”
Mr. Dymond had been writing articles for the town newspaper on the terrible hardships of British soldiers in the Peninsula. The Times was sending him to Spain soon to write more of them. “My mum thinks the paper hadn’t ought to print them. Her friend’s son is in Spain, and the poor woman’s been crying herself to sleep since they started.” A thought struck her. “You didn’t have to go with him, did you? When he was in the army?”
He shook his head, setting her boots down to dry. “I worked for his brother Lord Lenfield while he was away. Mr. Dymond is fond of joking that I would have had an apoplexy at the state of his clothes.”
She laughed, relieved he hadn’t been obliged to suffer the horrors Mr. Dymond described, and conversation fell off. Lemon juice stung her fingers as she restored the shine to Mrs. Pengilly’s copper, while Mr. Toogood rubbed down the whitewashed walls.
But vigorous scrubbing, well…it got the blood pumping. Sukey was flushed and breathing hard, and all at once even looking at him seemed indecent. Muscles shifted under his breeches as he rubbed vigorously at a tomato stain that had been on the wall (Sukey reflected guiltily) since Michaelmas.
His big apron hugged half his wool-covered arse, leaving the central seam to her lustful gaze. He had one of the finer arses it had ever been her privilege to gawk at. The small of his back dipped nicely and then flared in a firm, commanding curve. Even my arse is better than yours, it proclaimed truthfully to the world. And the way it moved…
He turned away from the wall to pick up her boots. Face burning, Sukey dropped her eyes to the jelly mold she was cleaning. I’d like a jelly mold in the shape of his arse. She stifled a giggle. When Mrs. Grimes said hard work kept you warm in winter, this wasn’t what she meant!
He opened a small tin, rubbing oil onto her damp boots with a bit of cloth. Catching her watching his hands, and thinking her curious as to his methods, he explained, “Neat’s-foot oil and a bit of tallow.” His voice as good as rasped across her nipples. She wanted him to look up from
suckling at her breasts to calmly inform her of something in just that tone.
Examining the boot, he scooped a bit more oil out of the tin. “Don’t use too much, for the leather needs to breathe. And always put it on when the shoe is still half-wet.”
It set up some very peculiar feelings in her chest, the care he took with it. As if her old, ugly boots mattered. As if they were precious. Her merry lust turned wistful and aching. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had taken so much care with anything to do with her.
An old memory surfaced, of her mother combing her wet hair and cutting it carefully to bring out the curl, her fingers gentle in Sukey’s scalp. Her hair had been golden when her mother used to do that. She’d thought Mrs. Grimes stopped because it grew dark, but looking back, her mother must have only been busy, finding herself on her own with a child to feed.
She drifted closer to Mr. Toogood, as if he could somehow make her feel like that again, safe and cherished and ignorant.
When she reached his elbow, he turned to look at her. Her mouth went dry. “How old are you?” he asked abruptly.
She froze. Why did he ask? How old was old enough for kissing?
She didn’t want him to kiss her. Or, she did want it, but if she really did it, it’d make her a fool, and her mother a raiser of fools after all. “Two-and-twenty.” She tried to sound unaware of any implications. Hopping up to sit on the edge of the table brought her a few inches closer to his mouth. Fool. “I made pickled carrots yesterday. The ladies devoured them.”
He gave her that near-half-smile of his. A third-smile, maybe. “Did they?”
“Mrs. Peachey was the only one who didn’t take any, and she won’t eat anything that crunches.”
He set her boot on the table, lips parting.
Please please, Sukey Grimes you’re a fool, I don’t care please, she thought.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was about half again as deep as usual, and half again as gravelly. “My oil’s to the other side of you.” He might have said You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in the same tone and it wouldn’t have been out of place.
