by Rose Lerner
“That doesn’t mean you can’t be friendly with them,” she said. “I was friendly with Mrs. Dymond, even if you laughed at me for it. But we both remembered she paid me wages, so she didn’t put me in awkward positions and I didn’t tell her aught she could use against me.”
He nodded slowly. “I suppose.” He turned to face her. “Very well, but we ought to spend those dinners talking, and not…” He trailed a finger down her belly. “Sometimes I think we talked more before we married.”
Well, wasn’t that a lovely thing to say? He’d rather talk to her than take his pleasure. She sat up, pushing him down on his back and straddling him. Her heart fizzed like ginger beer. “Lord love you, Johnny,” she scoffed, “I didn’t marry you for your mind.” She settled herself comfortably atop him, chin planted on her folded arms. “I miss talking to you too,” she confided. “I saw you and Mr. Plumtree at Makepeace’s. Do you think you’ll see him again before he goes to London?”
He shifted her so that his stiffening cock lay along the juncture of her thighs. “We made plans to meet again next week.”
“Could I come along?” She squirmed her hips, making him grow until every movement mashed her pearl into him.
“Would you really like to?”
She dropped a kiss on his shoulder. “Not for the whole afternoon, mind. But I wouldn’t object to a cup of coffee before I shake your dust off my feet.”
His happy grin caught on a gasp. “Did I ever tell you about Mr. Notts, the head gardener at Tassell Hall?”
To her surprise, they found it was possible to carry on a conversation and take their pleasure, all at once.
Chapter Fourteen
On Tuesday John’s throat ached, on Wednesday he was sniffling, and on Thursday morning when he tried to get out of bed, he stumbled and fell to one knee, steadying himself on the wall. His head felt stuffed full of cotton wool—and other substances less pleasant. A great exhaustion weighed him down.
“John?” Sukey asked sleepily.
I’m fine, he tried to say, but no sound came from his throat. He cleared it. This time, the words were a croak.
She held the candle Thea had brought them up to his face. “You look awful. Suety. Go back to bed.”
It sounded like a splendid idea. The morning air made him shiver fitfully, though he felt it dully, as if his body and brain had left off communicating with one another. But it was only a cold. He had no wish to indulge himself in malingering. “I’m well enough. I just need to drink some tea, and I can…” He lost the thread of the sentence.
“Go to bed,” she said firmly. “We managed somehow before you got here. We can manage without you for a few days.”
He felt that. It was a sharp pang of mingled humiliation (at his own egotism in supposing anything else) and fear (that he was indeed superfluous). “Sukey—”
“Sleep. You’ll make all of us sick if you try to work.”
That was good sense, wasn’t it? Fuzzily, he decided it was sense and not laziness. Crawling back under the covers, he lay there, grateful for the warmth and wishing he could breathe. He wanted nothing more than to fall back asleep, but he didn’t know if he could.
“Molly,” Sukey called softly at the door, “come and help me with my stays. John’s ill.”
Molly came in. “What’s he got?”
“A cold, I think.” There was a pause. “Had we ought to call the doctor?”
John tried to decide if it was worth the great effort to speak.
“For a cold?” Molly snorted. “Probably not.”
Thank you, he thought.
“It’ll drive him mad not working,” Molly said after a moment.
“Too bad,” Sukey said ruthlessly.
“Where’s his list?”
“His what?”
“You know. His list of things he has to do every day. He must have made one for himself. We’ll go snacks on it between us.”
“Psh, we don’t need to do that,” Sukey said. “It’ll only be a few days.”
“Aye, and the first day he’s on his feet he’ll kill himself trying to finish four days’ worth of work in one,” Molly said bluntly. “He’ll fret less if he knows his work is being done, anyway.”
Sukey sighed. “Sad, but true.” Cloth and paper rustled as she extracted his list from his coat pocket. He half-wanted to snatch it back—none of them knew how to do his work—but instead he pulled the blankets over his head and concentrated very hard on sleeping until, finally, he managed it.
* * *
Later, John remembered little of that first day. He woke only to relieve himself and blow his nose. The second day, he rose at one, very weak and hungry. He went into the kitchen to find the servants at dinner, arguing over the location of Mount Parnassus.
Thankfully, Mrs. Khaleel caught sight of him before he could enlighten them. “Stand back,” she said. “I don’t mean to catch cold.”
Sukey took up a plate that sat beside her and brought it to him. Instead of the nice hot stew he could nearly smell simmering over the fire, it held a cold and faintly jiggling sheet of calf’s-foot jelly.
“Can’t I have some curry?”
She shook her head. “You’re an invalid. This will give you strength and not upset your digestion. Besides, it’s delicious.”
John made a sad, defeated noise.
“Me and Thea already ate some for breakfast, and Mr. Summers will have it with whipped cream for his dessert at dinner,” she said cheerfully. “Mrs. Khaleel uses dunnamuch lemon and sugar. Just the thing for a winter cold.” She handed him a spoon. “Now go back to bed and I’ll bring you in some tea. If you’re good, later you can have beef broth.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
She patted his cheek. “Only a little.”
He glanced past her. “Larry, have you repaired the lining of Mr. Summers’s hat? I meant to—”
Sukey gave him a gentle shove, shaking her head.
“This will only take a moment—”
The shove was less gentle this time.
When she brought him the beef broth a few hours later, he was sitting up in bed reading. “I could work,” he said, setting down the book guiltily. “I’m not so very sick anymore.”
“Is dat so?” she said, imitating his stuffy-nosed croaking. “You’re dot so berry sick eddybore?” She laughed. “I can’t possibly make my voice that deep but you get the idea. Mr. Summers asked us to bring you these, with his compliments.” She set a stack of clean handkerchiefs by him.
“You really don’t mind that I’m spending days in bed with a book?”
Sukey looked at him as if he’d gone mad. “It’s been a day and a half. I’m not jealous, if that’s what you mean. I hate being sick. Ugh.” She crouched down to pass him the bowl of broth.
“You should go. I wouldn’t want to make you ill. Maybe you could share a bed with Mrs. Khaleel tonight.”
Her forehead wrinkled, her mouth going more lopsided than usual. “My mother never kept clear of me when I was sick. I thought it over, and I reckon the same thing holds for married people.” She leaned in to kiss his forehead. “Good, still no fever.”
That was a relief, because John felt pretty damn warm.
“Here are some lozenges for your cough.” She set them on the chair.
The broth was good, salty and rich, but his energy was exhausted after a few sips. He fell back on the pillow. “I hate being fussed over.” As a valet, when he was too sick to work, he’d been allowed to mope in peace and solitude.
“Make the best of it.” Sukey took the broth out of his shaky hands.
“No, I—I like it from you.”
She preened a little. “That’s because I’m your wife.”
Lord, he liked everything from her. “My father always wanted me to succeed him as butler at Tassell H
all.” John had told her so many things, but somehow never that. He’d spent his whole life distancing himself from the possibility. But nothing, not even Lady Tassell’s disfavor, could make his father forget about it.
She blinked. “You didn’t want to?”
“At six years old I evidently informed my mother that butlers didn’t have any fun.”
Sukey laughed—no doubt at the incongruous idea that John Toogood, gentleman’s gentleman, had once wanted to have fun. Now here he was, a butler. And he liked it. Was suited to it, even. I never saw such a bossy child, Plumtree had said.
“He didn’t want it said I was his favorite, or that I received any special treatment. As I was to one day lead them, it was vital the other servants be given no excuse to resent me. I was ten when Lord Lenfield was born. I always knew I was too old to envy him and his brothers. But I did. If they came into the kitchen, my mother fussed over them and gave them treats. If my father came upon them roughhousing, if they scratched the marble of the fireplace, he only laughed and said that boys would be boys.”
So many words brought on a fit of coughing. He took the bowl from her, gulping down broth to soothe his throat.
“Surely your parents only did it to please the Tassells,” she offered.
“I know. Even then I knew. It didn’t help.”
“You’re taller than the Dymond boys.”
He nearly choked. “So I am,” he said when he could speak again, thankful he hadn’t spat broth on the bedclothes. Grease was the very devil to get out of linen. “Thank you.”
“And handsomer.”
“Now that is a very kind lie.”
She huffed a laugh. “Lie about so serious a subject as male beauty? God would strike me down.”
He fell back into his pillows, wheezing. “Stop joking.” It was hard to feel handsome in a sickbed. But she obviously didn’t mind his appearance or the repulsive sounds he was making. He’d barely felt self-conscious about them himself.
She waved a hand. “They’re good-looking enough, and I didn’t object to seeing Nick Dymond in his shirtsleeves, but they’ve got ice-cream faces. No character. Nothing to stick in the mind.”
“They have character,” John said, curiously affronted. And when did you see Nick Dymond in his shirtsleeves? Then he remembered drying Mr. Dymond’s coat after he’d soaked it helping the present Mrs. Dymond with her laundry at their first meeting. It unsettled him to realize that Sukey must have been there, and to remember they had been nothing to each other then.
“I never said they didn’t. I thought we were talking about their faces.”
John’s face, and its effect on women, had never been a particular source of dissatisfaction to him. But the Dymonds—they were golden. Even when he remembered them as boys in the kitchen at Tassell Hall, there was a shaft of light limning their blond heads, like little angels.
“I was only coddled when I was ill,” he said, coming to the point at last. “As a small boy I enjoyed it, but when I was older…I had ceased to want their favoritism. I was ashamed to be indulged above my fellow servants. My mother would make delicacies to tempt my appetite, and I’d push them away and say I didn’t need them.”
His throat was painfully sore. Why had he suddenly been compelled to tell her all that? It was strange how one came upon memories of childhood unexpectedly, as if the mind were a closet one could lose things at the back of.
“When I was eight, measles swept the town,” Sukey said. “I was taken bad. I actually—I refused to eat. I thought if I was ill enough my father would have to come home and see me.”
John caught his breath in sympathy. “But he didn’t?” he asked through the resultant coughing fit.
She shook her head. “I almost died, though.” Eyes averted, she pushed the cough lozenges towards him. “When you’re ill, take care of yourself as best you can. It’s the only sensible thing to do. No matter what.”
He caught her hand. “I’m sorry. I will.”
She kissed his temple again. “Please do.”
* * *
By the third day he was restless. Everyone insisted he needed fresh air, but he was only permitted to walk in circles in the kitchen-yard, and hustled back inside after a quarter-hour. The truth was, by then he was tired and light-headed enough to be grateful to go. But his book no longer held his interest, and he felt wronged that he was to miss his half-holiday that afternoon. The only bright spot was Mrs. Khaleel’s milky, buttery gruel, delicately flavored with cardamom and treacle.
A knock came at the door. “Come.” He sat up and tried to look dignified in case it was Mr. Summers.
It was Molly, with a bundle of paper. “May I speak to you, sir?”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry I can’t speak to your father today, but next week I certainly shall.”
“I don’t blame you for being sick,” she said with a little smile. “You can’t be everywhere at once.”
“Thank you.” They shared a moment of mutual understanding—but she looked nervous as she sat in the chair by his bed. He wondered if he ought to rise, himself, but there was no other chair and his legs were bare beneath his nightshirt.
“We made new lists,” she said.
“Yes, to cover my work while I was sick. The thought showed both kindness and an instinct for authority. I thank and commend you.”
She clutched the papers tighter. “You’re welcome. But I mean we made new lists for after you come back as well. I hate cleaning the coal scuttles, and Thea likes it, and Sukey detests sweeping up cobwebs and I don’t mind it. The looking glasses had better be cleaned on Wednesday when Mrs. Khaleel is at market, because the smell makes her ill…”
She spoke from memory, not referring to the lists in her hand, which she couldn’t read. John didn’t doubt that they had been her idea, nor that she had insisted on bringing them to him herself to spare her fellow servants any resulting wrath.
He listened gravely, feeling both ashamed and proud. “It sounds as if you have done an excellent job,” he said when she was finished. “Thank you. I ought to have made up the lists from the start with assistance from all of you. You know the house and each other better than I do. I will look these over, and if I see a need to alter them, I’ll discuss the matter with you first.”
She handed him the lists. It threw him curiously off-balance to see they were in Sukey’s handwriting. She hadn’t breathed a word of this conference among the servants to him. She’d given him no warning. She had never voiced a single complaint about her list—and here Molly was, telling him his wife hated sweeping up cobwebs.
“You did say all along we could give suggestions. But we didn’t know yet if…” She trailed off, flushing.
“I’m glad that, being better acquainted with me, you found me worthy to be trusted with your ideas.” John smothered his momentary frustration with his wife—his secret wish that she had come in to see him herself, instead of hiding behind Molly’s more forceful will.
“The lists are a good notion, though,” she said, with an unprecedented desire to conciliate him. “It’s good to think about things, and not only do them the way you always have.”
John remembered what he’d said to Sukey, so long ago now, about a well-run home being like a clock. He’d tried to manage the vicarage as if the other servants were cogs and wheels he could rearrange to improve its workings. But Sukey was right. A home wasn’t a clock—and neither was a marriage. They grew and blossomed at their own pace, in their own manner, and he must be patient and allow it.
He smiled at Molly. “My sentiments exactly.”
“And I’ve thought it over,” she said. “I think I’d like to be a housekeeper some day. Did you mean it, about Sunday school and learning to do figures?”
* * *
Sukey came into the laundry to fetch John’s handkerchiefs. Thea had wiped a clear patch on the fogg
ed windows and pressed her forehead to the glass, staring out the window at the snowy garden.
“Good morning.”
Thea spun round and tried to look as if she’d been working, but it was more or less impossible.
They had all been trying to ignore Thea’s sadness. A week ago, Sukey wouldn’t have dared to bring it up. But nursing John this week—such a little thing, but she felt different. She saw that she was a grown woman and Thea was a child, and it was foolish to demand the girl speak first. Cruel, even.
She thought of John confiding his jealousy of the Dymond boys, even though on St. Clement’s Day—the memory was almost distant now—he’d said he lacked the impulse to confide in anyone. Even the most standoffish people sometimes wanted someone to listen to them.
“Thea, may I speak to you for a moment on a personal matter?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Let’s sit down.” Sukey found a dry spot of floor and lowered herself to it. “You’ve been unhappy, I think.”
Thea shrugged, sitting down and fussing at a bit of dirt on her apron.
“I haven’t wanted to speak to you about this, because I didn’t want to embarrass you. But I know that Mr. Perkins, who held Mr. Toogood’s position before he did—he hurt you, didn’t he?”
Thea looked at her lap, acutely uncomfortable. Sukey almost stopped talking. But what could be worse than this silence? Tact was a fine thing, no doubt, but she’d never had a gift for it.
“You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” she said. “It weren’t your fault. ’Tweren’t any of your faults, excepting his. My last mistress, she wasn’t very kind to me. And I never wanted to talk about it, because I felt…I felt as if I deserved it. Sometimes I thought she didn’t treat me any worse than I deserved, so what did I have to complain about? And sometimes I thought I deserved it because I didn’t complain, I didn’t do anything to stop it. It’s easy to feel small and stupid and ashamed and as if you should have known what to do. But it’s never your fault when people are cruel to you. It’s always theirs.” John had said that to her, and she believed him. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
