by Rose Lerner
She hesitated, an expression he couldn’t read flitting across her face. “Now you’ve finished writing the lists, will you stay in bed instead of jumping up as soon as…as soon as you’re satisfied?”
John was startled. He had been sure she was busily wishing she’d found a quiet position somewhere else instead of marrying him. For the first time this morning, he felt his mouth curve up. “Does it really matter to you?”
She beamed back, looking immensely relieved. It came to him that perhaps she wasn’t afraid of him. Perhaps she only wanted him to like her as much as he wanted her to like him. “Oh, I only want to know if you’ll be out of the way when I receive my lovers,” she said, drawing away an inch—but only an inch. Still within easy reach.
He glanced at the door, then leaned down to whisper in her ear. “How many lovers?”
“Oh, not above half a dozen. One doesn’t like to be greedy.”
His eyes flickered to the door again. “I think Molly is leaving the house at night. That’s why I’ve been staying up. I heard Thea answer Mr. Summers’s bell again last night.”
Every night, though, he wished he were in bed with his wife instead. If Molly wasn’t sneaking out, he was losing sleep for nothing, and if she was, catching her would force him to decide if he could conceal it from his employer.
After all, what did he care if Molly had taken a lover? She looked terribly young to him, but at her age he’d lost his virginity to a chambermaid at a house party. Though it had always been a fact of life that if a servant was caught engaging in an affair, he or she—and more especially she—would likely find herself out on her ear, John had never yet made it his business to carry tales.
Blast these small households where they kept the maids walled up like nuns! In a large establishment, with plenty of menservants and visiting back and forth with other large establishments, it was easy enough for a girl to find a lover without filching keys or shirking work.
Perhaps they would all be better served if he asked Sukey to whisper a discreet word in Molly’s ear about the virtues of pennyroyal tea.
He should have stayed a valet.
Sukey’s heart sank again. She’d been feeling so cheerful for a moment there! All week she’d been worrying that John regretted marrying her, as it became clearer and clearer that she was not in the least what he was used to in an upper housemaid.
A minute ago, she’d read in his face everything he’d have liked to say—about how ignorant she was, and lazy, and how the word “efficiency” shouldn’t be mocked. Her idle worries had grown to an awful lump just below her ribcage. If she could have blurted out You still like me, don’t you? without sounding clinging and whinging, and not the sort of wife men liked at all, she would have.
And then he’d said, Does it really matter to you? and she’d realized he wanted to ask her the same thing.
Now what should she do? Say he was mistaken about Molly? “Why did you not go up and catch her gone?”
“Thea would only make up a plausible excuse for her, and besides…” He hesitated. “When I went to wake them the first day, they were frightened to have me in their room. I had rather catch her coming or going. I waited until three this morning for her to return.”
She looked at him. Good Lord, he’d barely slept. He was worried indeed. And, she guessed, he hoped to keep this from their master. If he had gone up and spoken to Thea, Mr. Summers would have heard him.
“Then it’s no use staying up again,” she said. “You’ll get circles under your eyes, and all Mr. Summers’s guests will remark upon it.”
He lowered his voice even further. “If she gets herself with child…”
If Molly got herself with child, there would be nothing either of them could do to keep it from Mr. Summers for long. And Sukey was getting fond of the girl. She reminded her of Mrs. Dymond a little, always crossing her arms and glaring, and she drew good-luck talismans on scraps of paper. Sukey had a sketch of a holly leaf tucked into her shift right now.
“Do you really think she’s meeting a man?” She could come up with no better explanation herself. “She’s so hardheaded.”
He shrugged.
Oh, why should Sukey fret herself into an early grave for a girl who’d never thank her for it? Molly’s job is Molly’s lookout, she told herself, and no reason for John to stay up at night when he could be in his warm bed.
“I suppose sometimes it’s difficult to be hardheaded,” she said mournfully. “When a gentleman is very handsome.”
His mouth twitched. “Is it?”
She widened her eyes. “I hope you don’t think I meant you!”
He laughed. Feeling very daring, she took his hand and placed it on her breast. John glanced at the door and moved towards her, turning as if to push her against the wall—and then he stepped away. “You win, Mrs. Toogood. Tonight I’ll stay in bed with you.”
They’d been married a week already, and they’d be married many more, and yet all that day Sukey counted down the hours to nighttime, skin crawling with eager frustration. The novelty hadn’t worn off of lovemaking, but that wasn’t all. He’d promised to stay with her. She’d convinced him. She was a siren.
She daydreamed through supper about falling asleep with his strong arms around her, safe and cherished, instead of trying to nod off to the pencil-scritching sound of him thinking hard about nothing to do with her.
“What are you doing on Saturday, Molly?” Mrs. Khaleel asked.
She tried to listen to the conversation. If she ignored the other servants, they’d think she was getting above herself. John was off serving Mr. Summers’s tea and answering the bell so the rest of them might eat in peace, having taken his own hasty meal during Mr. Summers’s dessert. He did that every day, and every day his kindness sweetened Sukey’s supper.
“After the mummers’ play, I have to help my friend Sarah with her washing,” Molly said glumly. “She’s been ill and not able to keep up with the work.” Groans of commiseration went up around the table. She sighed. “All our other friends are going nutting. I asked them to help us, but…”
“I’ll help,” Larry said. Sukey was impressed. You’d never catch her making an offer like that.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Molly said, taken aback. “It’s your holiday.”
Larry shrugged, helping himself to some more rice pudding. “I don’t mind.”
“What about you, Thea?” Sukey said before Molly, who looked about to break down in tears of gratitude, could nobly insist she didn’t need him.
Thea shrugged. “Dunno.”
Sukey remembered being Thea’s age and hating to be asked about anything, so she didn’t press her. “And you, ma’am?”
Mrs. Khaleel smiled. “Imogen Makepeace’s mother always makes soup from the remains of her goose, and I’m to make the dumplings.” She looked happy about it, so Sukey didn’t say it didn’t seem like much of a holiday to her.
John walked in. Sukey felt as scalded as a biscuit dipped in coffee, even though he’d only come to fetch a taper.
He scowled at a candle-end, no doubt weighing if it was a candle-end now and his perquisite. She’d seen him fussing over this question a time or two already, afeared both to take a candle not his by right, and to give Mr. Summers one that would burn out during use.
“Mrs. Toogood?” the cook said.
“Beg pardon? I’m sorry, I was sowing gapeseed.”
Mrs. Khaleel shot an amused glance between Sukey and the object of her gaping, who was slipping the candle-end into his pocket. Maybe tonight he’d light it while they— “I asked what your plans are for Saturday.”
Sukey dragged her eyes back to the table. “Going to the mummers’ play, but after that, I’m not telling. That’s my time to be free of all of you.”
* * *
She’d barely closed the shutters when he shut their
door and pressed against her from behind, his arms making a cage when he set his hands on the table. “Don’t move,” he whispered, taking his lit candle-end to the iron chest that held the silver. Then he was snug at her back once more, already hard.
“You’d better check the locks,” she said.
“I checked them all twice.”
“Even the windows?”
He faltered, and she cursed her heedless tongue. But he undid her buttons, holding her gently but firmly in place when she tried to turn towards him. He pushed her gown off her shoulders and had her step out of it, pausing to lay it carefully by. Then her flannel petticoat, and her linen one.
For a moment Sukey wished she hadn’t been working since half past five, and smelled sweeter. But he must have not minded it, for his hands shook on her corset laces. At last he lifted her stays over her head and set them aside.
She drew in a glorious gulp of air. The first breath after unlacing was always free and heady, a small perfect moment, and when his hands cupped her bosom through her shift, the first thing to touch her so close all day, she gasped a second time and arched her stiff back. He teased her through the linen, pinching her nipples until she was whimpering.
Then he teased her between her legs, unbuttoning his breeches with his other hand. She was so excited, so eager for him—she reached up and pinched at her own breasts, because she had to and because she’d learned he liked it.
But he set his hands on her hips, hefting her off her feet and pitching her forward until she clutched at the table for balance. She fetched up flat on her belly, breasts crushed against the pine.
She cried out when he pushed up her shift and slipped a finger into her, testing her wetness, and cried out once more when he drove into her. It wasn’t what you’d call a comfortable position, but maybe that was why she liked it. She liked the way her legs dangled, her arse in the air. She liked how the table slid when he thrust. She liked feeling small and helpless under his onslaught, under the onslaught of pleasure. He surged into her over and over, and just as she thought he’d spend, he stopped, thighs trembling between hers. She wriggled, but he put a hand on her back to stop her. “Don’t move or I’ll come.”
“Why don’t I want that?”
He breathed in and out, lodged deep within her, and—this was nice too. Being joined, and aching, and not so urgent. When his fingers slid firmly up the back of her neck, her shiver made him shiver in answer. Untying the strings of her cap, he set it aside. The easing of that slight pressure on her scalp was near as glorious as taking off her stays—and then he began feeling for her hairpins.
She moaned in surprise and sank forward, resting her cheek on the wood as he skimmed his fingers over her hair and burrowed in, until every last pin was out. He combed through her hair, loosening and fluffing it, and fanned it out on the table. She stretched and shifted like a cat, striking sparks of pleasure where his hard length was still buried inside her.
“You filched this pin from Mrs. Dymond’s sister, didn’t you?” He dragged the twin tips of the curved hairpin down the left side of her spine and up the right, tickling and tingling and better than any backscratcher.
“Does it have a little red rosette?”
“It does, yes.”
“I did indeed. Are you going to punish me?”
There was silence behind her. He continued to trace whorls and lines lightly across her back with the hairpin. She shook with pleasant chills, crying out at the way it pushed her up against him. “Please,” she begged.
“Please punish you? Or please have mercy?”
“Either.”
His big hand spread flat on her lower back. He dragged it up her spine and into her hair, where he clenched his fist, pulling her head up so her back arched and her breasts jutted out. It changed how he entered her, every thrust suddenly unbearably delicious. She moaned, words gone, and he leaned down and cupped one breast, closing and opening his fist in time with his thrusts so her breast squeezed through his fingers, her nipple catching at the last with a painful, wonderful tug.
“Ahhhh,” she cried, out of her mind with pleasure. His hand twisted tighter in her hair as he bent over her, curving his body around hers and crushing her to the table. He made that bitten-off growling sound right in her ear and then—oh—he bit her ear, his teeth trembling as he spent.
Every part of her throbbed. Every part of her wanted him. When he softened and began to slip out of her, she moaned with disappointment. When he stood, she felt his effort in the table beneath her.
His hand smoothed over her arse and delivered a light, stinging slap. “That doesn’t look very comfortable for you,” he said, breathing heavy. “I’ll roll out our bed if you fetch the pillows.”
Her cunny squelched emptily as she obeyed him. He moved the candle-end to the table and knelt on the bed. “Lie here.” She did it.
“Touch yourself,” he said. “Bring yourself to completion.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d asked to watch her do this. It still embarrassed her to take a pleasure in which he had no part, but she liked it too. She pulled up the hem of her shift, exposing her wet cunny to him. He watched without expression as she trailed a hand over her belly, sliding her fingers between her legs, down and up. Teasing herself and making a show.
How quickly this luxury of pleasure had become familiar, almost a necessity. How quickly he’d made her hunger for his cock, his hands, his voice, his gaze. Well, so did he hunger. Look how he watched her. Here, he never thought she ought to do things different or better.
“Put your mouth on my breasts,” she said impulsively. He ducked his head with a sharp breath, mouthing her aching nipples through her shift. So hot, his mouth was.
She moved her fingers with more purpose as he pushed her shift up roughly to suckle one breast and then the other. He rolled her nipple carefully between his teeth, and it drove her mad to know he did it with the single-minded purpose of helping her spend, because she’d demanded it and he wanted to obey. She curled a possessive hand over his skull. “Good boy.”
Joy racked her at last. Her nipple stretched through his teeth one last time, and he kissed her. “I’m going to check the locks once more, but I’ll be back directly.”
True to his word, he crawled into bed before she’d even dozed off. She’d thought maybe they’d talk quietly for a bit, but she snuggled up to his big, warm chest and fell asleep at once.
* * *
On Christmas morning, Sukey awoke in darkness. She listened carefully but could hear no one. John didn’t stir as she buttoned her pelisse over her nightgown, took his house key from his pocket, and went into the hallway, cracking open the shutter to read the tall clock at the foot of the stairs. Four o’clock.
Sukey grinned to herself. She was the first awake, and the luck of welcoming Christmas into the house and sweeping trouble out the door would be hers. She’d been afeared that she’d lose the privilege she’d always had as maid-of-all-work.
She thought of John in their bed, his tall, commanding form relaxed in sleep. She wanted that luck for herself. She wanted to be happy this year. She tiptoed into the kitchen to fetch the broom.
A door within the room eased open. Instinctively, Sukey flattened herself along the wall, and Mrs. Khaleel—it must be her, as she slept in a closet by the pantry—padded right past her in the dark and into the hallway, not quite shutting the kitchen door behind her. Stealing my luck, Sukey thought. But Mrs. Khaleel had no house key. How would she open the door?
Sukey heard the door open.
“Mr. Bearparke,” Mrs. Khaleel said, yawning. Sukey’s eyes widened, and she peered through the crack of the door. The cook wore her flannel night-rail, her hair in a thick braid over one shoulder. She leaned sleepily against the doorjamb, bathed in the pale light of the waning moon. Meeting him in her bare feet, no less! “Is everything all right?”
&n
bsp; Chapter Nine
Mr. Bearparke was a tall, slender shadow in trousers and a man’s hat. “I’ve asked you to call me Ned.”
Mrs. Khaleel was silent.
“It’s Christmas morning,” he said softly. “I thought I’d give you the luck. Where’s your broom?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Toogood are just there,” she answered softer yet, pointing towards the butler’s pantry. “If anyone sees us, they’ll think—” She hadn’t planned on meeting him, then. But she’d come to the door when he scratched at her window.
Of course, he had a key to the house. He could have walked right in and pulled her out of bed if she hadn’t come. Sukey shivered.
“Nora,” he interrupted her.
She went entirely still.
“Nora, don’t.” He stepped towards her, moonlight flashing on his pale, sincere profile, and Mrs. Khaleel retreated until she hit the kitchen door. Sukey drew back. Now all she could see was the cook’s hand on the knob. “Nora, you must know I love you.”
“I can’t. You know I can’t. My position—”
Sukey dithered over whether interrupting would be welcome or otherwise, and just how much Mr. Bearparke would resent her for it.
He laughed. “Oh, of course, you don’t know. Nora, among my people that’s a declaration. I mean, a proposal of marriage.”
Mrs. Khaleel drew in a sharp breath. Sukey’s own jaw dropped. Marriage? To a gentleman? “No,” Mrs. Khaleel whispered. “No, I can’t.”
“Of course you can, darling.” Mr. Bearparke laughed again, rather shakily, as if his own uncertainty was absurd. “You can. I’ll even take you home if you like. They’re saying the East India Company will have to give up its monopoly to convince Parliament to renew its charter this year. Missionaries will be allowed into India at last.”
“Missionaries?”
Sukey heard a kiss and, screwing up her courage, inched closer to the door, hoping she’d still be in darkness. Only the cook’s hand was pressed to his lips, her face turned away—from Sukey too, praises be.
