by Rose Lerner
“Yessir.”
“If you ever wish to talk to me about any difficulties you have in this house, I will listen.”
“Yessir, thank you, sir.”
There was nothing else to be said. “If the alarm is not enough to wake you, you might try setting it at the opposite end of the room from yourself. Thank you, Thea, that will be all.”
He went out of the room, unsure where to go. He was unfamiliar with everything, unable to simply do what needed doing himself to make up for that lost hour.
More than an hour. An hour for Thea, plus half an hour for each of the other servants, plus the time he was obliged to waste in chastising the girls. He went to find Molly, deciding to help Mrs. Khaleel in the kitchen afterwards, as that required no independent knowledge of anything.
His wife and Molly were in the study, so intent in whispered conversation that they didn’t hear him coming. “I didn’t tell him a thing,” Sukey hissed, “but he isn’t stupid.”
Could this morning get any worse? He was sorely tempted to eavesdrop further, but that was no way to gain the girls’ trust. He let his shoes click loudly on the floor.
They sprang apart. Molly gave him a wary look, but Sukey just tossed her head and hastened from the room. He had felt so close to her a quarter of an hour ago. He wanted that feeling back.
“Thea overslept this morning because she was doing your work in the night,” he said plainly. “Why is that?”
“I must have been sound asleep. It’s hard to wake me.”
What on earth was the secret? Was she bullying Thea into doing her work? Could she have found a means of leaving the locked house at night? Or was she trysting with the footman? A terrible suspicion struck him—but surely Mr. Summers himself could not be molesting Thea. “Did Mr. Summers request that Thea attend him?”
He could see that she took his meaning at once. “No, sir,” she said firmly. “It were my fault. I was sleeping too sound.”
“It had better not happen again, or you will be getting up at five to light the fires yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I hope you will speak to Thea and give her leave to wake you in the night if necessary.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You may work through breakfast today, to make up for lost time.”
“Yes, sir,” Molly said. “But Thea shouldn’t have to miss breakfast, she didn’t do anything wrong.”
First Sukey trying to shield everyone from his terrible wrath, and now Molly? “As it happens, I did not ask her to. But if you wish to protect her, you would do better to encourage her to do her job, and not yours.”
She hung her head. “Yes, sir.”
“Thank you, Molly, that will be all.” Before going to the kitchen, he glanced in at Thea. She was staring blankly at the full ashpan, not moving. How tired was the poor girl? He itched to take the ashpan from her, get her on her feet again with a quiet word. The room would not clean itself. But he refrained with an effort.
* * *
“You didn’t eat breakfast, Mr. Toogood,” Sukey sang out as John carried the breakfast silver past the kitchen door. She stood at the sink, washing Mr. Summers’s plate and cup.
Relieved she wasn’t holding a grudge, John quashed the urge to snap, When would I have done that? He’d been run off his feet ever since his conversation with Molly—first laying out Mr. Summers’s clothes and shaving things with Larry, Molly underfoot emptying the chamberpot and bringing up water when that ought to have been done first. Then he’d helped Thea finish preparing the morning rooms for use, then shaved himself in the near dark before waking the vicar and dressing him. He’d laid the breakfast things, some of which had had to be returned to the kitchen because there were bits of yesterday’s butter and marmalade on them. Now if he could just polish this damn silver, he could finally consult with Mrs. Khaleel about the day’s remaining meals and what wines to bring up from the cellar…
“Shh,” he said, coming closer, and not dulling the edge in his voice as much as he’d hoped to. The tray was heavy. “Mr. Summers has a visitor, and very likely neither of them are fascinated by my eating habits.”
Her teasing smile faded. “Oh, I see,” she said drily. “Well, I’ve got an urge to start singing. Aye, there’s a very bawdy song rattling around in my head trying to get out.”
He regarded her impassively, inwardly mystified and vaguely hurt. Was she holding a grudge after all?
“Or you can eat that.” She pointed with her elbow, almost knocking Mr. Summers’s teacup against the side of the sink as she set it on the drying board. “Won’t take but a minute.” John glanced in the direction indicated, and saw two fat slices of toast dripping with butter and marmalade.
He opened his mouth to tell her he was busy—but he couldn’t. Something wobbled in his chest, and probably in his face too. Sukey ducked her head, blushing and trying to say with every line of her body that it was nothing and why was he making such a fuss?
John set the tray on a nearby table and took a slice of toast. He caught the edge of Sukey’s smile as she turned away to check the rising of a bowl of dough. Her apron pulled against her curves, and suddenly John was thinking of last night. And this morning. He blushed too.
Tonight he’d leave the candle lit so he could see her breasts and hipbones and crooked mouth.
But an hour later, watching her through the open door as he cleaned Mr. Summers’s dressing room, he thought, She won’t even let me into bed tonight. She and Molly were making a hash of the bed. What did they imagine was the purpose of making a bed with two people, if not to pull the sheet quite tight and straight? Reluctantly, he went to explain it to them, hoping against hope they would be glad of the knowledge.
“I’ve made a bed before,” Sukey said, frustrated, the third time he had her pull the sheet out because she absolutely refused to use her entire arm, held perfectly straight, to tuck the corner under.
“Yes, but likely not such a big one, and you were on your own in a boarding house. A man of Mr. Summers’s stature expects to get into a smooth bed and have his corners stay securely tucked through the night.” Besides, what was the pleasure in making a bed if it was wrinkled and uneven after? But she would undoubtedly mock him if he said so.
She flushed, and Molly said, “There’s no need to be unkind.”
Sukey froze, and John flinched inwardly. He hadn’t meant to be unkind, only state the obvious. But he couldn’t allow Molly to think she could dictate how he spoke. He raised one eyebrow, not very far, and regarded her until she slitted her eyes at him and went back to her work.
Sukey let out a breath at having avoided a quarrel. He heard her whisper as he went back to the dressing room, “I didn’t mind. Don’t get yourself in trouble on my account.”
Tomorrow is another day, he told himself as he finished his hasty cleaning of Mr. Summers’s shaving things, wishing he could spare a full day for the vicar’s wardrobe, which was peppered with stray bits of dirt and old meals, particularly at the cuffs and knees. As he wrote it down in his notebook, he passed Sukey dusting another figurine.
She held it carefully in her apron to get at the back and beneath the folds of the girl’s skirt. The vicar must be fond of them—there was one in each room in the house—and she was taking care that they would gleam for him, just as she had polished Mrs. Pengilly’s silver.
“They’re all part of the same set,” he said—an uninspired observation. He hoped she wouldn’t think he was trying to condescend to her, when he only hoped to worm his way back into her good graces.
She glanced at him warily. “I like them, they’re bright.”
“Lady Tassell has a set. They’re from Bavaria.” He drew nearer to her. “Characters from the commedia dell’arte.”
Wrapping a corner of apron around her pinky finger, she wedged it between the figurine’s arm and body. “
What’s that?”
“What Italians have instead of our harlequinade. You’re holding Columbine.” He ran a dust cloth over the empty mantel for her, and she replaced the little china girl on it, turning her to find the prettiest angle and stepping back to admire her.
“I don’t know what a harlequinade is either.”
Of course. Lively St. Lemeston had no theater. “It’s a kind of play using the same characters over and over in new situations.” He took his courage in his hands. “I didn’t mean to be unkind earlier.”
“Oh, Molly’s a mother hen, that’s all. You were right, I’m not used to anything so grand.” She sighed, looking about the modest bedroom, plainer and smaller than anything at Tassell Hall. “If you’d tried, you probably could have got one of the housemaids at Lenfield House to marry you.”
John knew several beautiful and accomplished women who worked at the nearby Tassell estate. “I had no wish to try,” he said quietly.
Her face brightened with one of her confident smiles that was half-bravado. Impulsively, he put his hands round her waist and lifted her onto the nearby footstool (intended for the more pedestrian purpose of dusting the ceilings). When he kissed her, she kissed back, her mouth soft and hot. The anxiety of the day curled into a ball and settled at the bottom of his stomach, out of the way.
Her hands curved over his shoulders. “I can’t half wait for tonight,” she whispered, and nipped at his jaw. “Please don’t dawdle locking up.”
The door swung open. “Now, now,” Mr. Summers said, dry amusement in his voice. “I know you’re new wed, but there are impressionable young women in the house.”
The ball of anxiety stretched and clawed at him. Of all the people to catch them! John stepped away, resisting the urge to look down at his apron for any telltale bulge in his trousers. “I beg your par—” His voice cracked.
Mr. Summers chuckled.
“It’s not his fault, sir.” Sukey bobbed her head with a hopefully sly smile. “I’m irresistible.”
John cringed. He hated that her insouciance charmed him so much when they were alone, and mortified him so before their master. It was bitterly unkind to wish her quiet—especially when she was a better judge of the situation than he, for Mr. Summers cackled.
“So you are, my dear. Perhaps you had better remove yourself from her orbit, Mr. Toogood. Accompany me to my study, as I wish to discuss the Christmas brandy with you.”
In the study, Pantaloon leered at him from the mantel, a ridiculous old lecher.
* * *
That night, John came to bed prompt as anything. He left the candle lit while he made love to her. At first Sukey thought it was because he wanted to see her body—but he got up after and went out of the room, checking the doors and windows again, and then sat down with his blighted notebook and pencil!
“It’s bedtime.” Was it her wifely duty to drag him to bed, just as she’d had to force breakfast down his throat? No, one must draw the line somewhere. “What are you even about?”
He smiled at her. “I’m creating a list of tasks for everyone on the staff, so that things may be done more efficiently.”
Her heart sank. It would be nothing but quarrels and chidings as far as the eye could see. “It’s your first week. Can’t you let well enough alone for now?”
He put down his pencil. “I don’t set much store by well enough, I’m afraid.”
“Of course you don’t.” She flopped back against the pillow. She didn’t like that after one night of being married, she already missed having him beside her in the bed. “Don’t blame me when you fall asleep and drop the tea tray on Mr. Summers’s foot.”
He smiled tiredly, the gray in his beard catching the candlelight. She’d kissed that stubble just a minute ago. “I won’t. Good night, Mrs. Toogood.”
She rolled away from the light, tucking the blankets so snug around her that when he did at last come to bed, it woke her. He curled up on his side of the bed, and his hand—she fancied his hand hovered between them, the blankets lifting as if he would place it on her hip. But a moment later it landed heavily on the pallet and stayed there.
* * *
“I can’t read this,” Molly said flatly, looking at the list of tasks, arranged by hour of the day, that John had neatly written for her. Sukey read her own, feeling cold and small. It began,
Half past 5 a.m. Clean fire irons and black-lead fireplaces in rms. not used in morning.
Clean all marble hearths.*
A note was written at the bottom of the sheet: (*) denotes tasks to be performed once per week.
They each held like papers, with faces that bespoke a like dismay. John seemed unfazed. “Can you read at all?”
Molly flushed. “Print, a bit. Not flourishy writing like this.”
“I can make you another, writ in block letters, with sketches to help you make it out,” he said calmly. “When you’ve followed it a week or two, you won’t need the paper anyway.”
Sukey was grateful he didn’t make a fuss; for a moment she’d been afeared it hadn’t occurred to him how many working folk never learned to write. Nor read, for that matter. As a child she’d hated her mother sitting her down with a slate to copy out the alphabet, and later the Psalms, for an hour at a time, boxing her ears when she got it wrong, but she was grateful now.
Molly dug her heels in. “You’ve given Thea too much, sir. She can’t do all that and fetch and carry for the rest of us. We do well enough as we are, sir, don’t we? Why the change?”
“Because I think we can aspire to better than ‘well enough’.”
Sukey sighed inwardly.
“I have remarked over the last week that many important tasks are regularly forgotten or omitted because you have no time for them or have not been in the habit of doing them. With increased efficiency, more could be accomplished. Of course I hope you will let me know how you find your lists, and in a month’s time we may change them should they prove really impossible.”
“Has Mr. Summers complained?” Molly demanded, voice rising. Sukey winced.
John regarded her steadily.
“Sir,” Molly added, bowing her head mutinously.
“If you like, we may go to Mr. Summers and ask him whether I have the authority to set you household tasks.”
The girl’s mouth set.
“In fact,” he said, “I believe that as under-housemaid, you are obliged to obey myself, Mrs. Khaleel and Mrs. Toogood.”
“Yes, sir.” Molly gave Sukey a glare. She writhed inwardly. Don’t drag me into this, John.
“I have no wish to set myself up as a tyrant,” he said to them. “The alteration will be difficult at first, but I think that if you will try to follow the course I have laid out, you yourselves will find that your work becomes easier. I hope we may all treat each other with courtesy and respect in the meantime. If you have no questions, you may go, and if you wish to stay and discuss your list with me, you may do so.”
Everyone hurried out of the butler’s pantry but Larry, who filled the next half-hour with anxious requests for explanations. John gave them patiently, feeling more and more discouraged. When the footman was satisfied and John could get back to work, his spirits sank further to see his wife and Mrs. Khaleel talking quietly in the kitchen doorway, heads bent over their lists. Talking sedition, John thought. When Sukey saw him, she stepped back with a guilty flush.
“You’ve put thorough cleaning days on Wednesday, sir,” the cook said.
“Yes, Mrs. Khaleel?”
“That’s market day, sir.”
His shoulders sagged a little. “Ah, yes. Thank you for bringing the matter to my attention. Will Friday do?”
Mrs. Khaleel looked at Sukey, who looked back as if to say, Don’t drag me into this.
“On Friday, I make refreshments for the parish vestry meeting,” the cook said, �
��and Thea goes with Mr. Summers to serve them. They only didn’t meet last week because of Advent.”
“Of course,” John said, feeling a fool. He could not help thinking that Sukey might have spared him this. There she went, scurrying out of the room while he was occupied. “I remember now. Mondays, then?”
“I think Mondays would serve admirably, sir, thank you.”
“Wonderful. Thank you, Mrs. Khaleel.” John went to find his wife. He could not decide whether he was irritated or hurt that she hadn’t been willing to talk to him herself. He was hardly a Judge Jeffreys—or a Mrs. Humphrey.
He found her at once, airing and dusting the upstairs bedrooms in compliance with her list. Are you afraid of me? He couldn’t ask that. “Mrs. Khaleel and I have agreed to change general cleaning days to Monday,” he told her. “Is there anything else on your list that must be altered directly?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“I did not mean them to be an unalterable proclamation,” he told her. “I said I welcomed suggestions.”
“But you didn’t, when Molly—”
“I objected to Molly’s tone, not her opinions.”
“She’s worried about Thea.”
“So am I.”
She came closer and put a hand to his lapel, trying to coax a smile from him. “You worry more’n you ought. We all know Mr. Summers didn’t complain. I don’t know what the countess expected at Tassell Hall, but you can relax a fraction here.”
His face stiffened until it felt like a mask. She just wanted everyone to relax and be friends, but sometimes things needed to actually be accomplished. “A master who is made to suffer for indulgence soon learns to be harsh.”
She threw up her hands. “Maybe Mr. Summers rates charity and mutual goodwill above efficiency.” She spat out “efficiency” like a curse, and then looked appalled at having done it.
I see no reason to assume Mr. Summers’s priorities align with your own. John struggled with his temper. “A month isn’t so long. If you all still hate it in a month, I’ll come up with something else.”
