by Rose Lerner
It was an overpoweringly handsome offer. “If I might have a moment to speak privately with Mrs. Toogood, my lady?”
She flapped a hand at him like an indulgent mother. “Don’t be silly. Ring for her. I would be delighted to meet the young woman.”
John lacked the courage to flatly contradict a countess, though he knew she had only asked to make it harder for them to plot escape. “She will be grateful for the honor, my lady.”
Larry answered the bell and went to fetch Sukey. The boy was still visibly nervous. John would have to discuss the importance of unblushing aplomb with his staff—if they remained his staff. Sukey’s brow, too, was tight with nerves when she came in. John went to her and took her hand. “My lady, may I present my wife, Susan Toogood?”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Toogood.”
Sukey bobbed a shaky curtsey—deep, but not deep enough. “Thank you, my lady. I’m that sensible of the honor.”
Lady Tassell blinked at the thickness of her accent, and John—he hated it, but his first instinct was to wish she talked properly, so Lady Tassell would have no excuse to sneer, and be obliged to recognize her worth. What did Lady Tassell’s opinion matter?
“Mrs. Toogood, I want your husband to come and work for me again,” the countess said without preamble. Sukey’s eyes flew to John in shock before she fixed them respectfully on the hem of Lady Tassell’s gown. “His father is ill, and I have asked John to come and help him and then, after a little while, if we find it suits us, to take his place.”
“I see, my lady.”
John was unsettled to see his irrepressible wife so awed. Lady Tassell laid out the whole proposition, and Sukey grew stiller and stiller as she went.
“You seem a good girl,” Lady Tassell said finally. “If you wish to better yourself, there is a place for you at the Hall. But as I told John, you would be able to leave off working altogether and start a family, should the two of you so desire.”
Sukey’s eyes were like wary saucers. “I see, my lady,” she said, trying for less of a burr this time. “I suppose I’d need to learn to speak better, to work at a place like Tassell Hall.”
Lady Tassell smiled. “Not by much. Don’t get an inflated idea of our grandeur, I beg you.”
“Do you wish us to go, Mr. Toogood?”
“It is a great opportunity,” he said, “and one which I am grateful to be offered. And my father…” He couldn’t finish the sentence with Lady Tassell listening. “I thought we ought to consider very carefully. But if you feel differently, I am quite willing to be guided by you.” Say no, he thought, knowing himself for an unfilial son.
“Now that is a bettermost sort of husband.” Lady Tassell used the provincialism with a grin and a wink in Sukey’s direction.
Sukey’s sly, crooked smile flashed out a little uncertainly. “Only a fool would say no to a free journey,” she said, meeting his eyes. “My mother didn’t raise any fools.”
As grateful as John was for this feeble attempt to pretend enthusiasm, he was afraid it would strike Lady Tassell as a very frivolous sentiment. But she seemed entirely satisfied. Soon everything was arranged, the money was in John’s pocket, Sukey curtseyed herself out of the room, and John was left with the countess, itching to escort her out and speak with his wife further.
“Mr. Toogood,” she said instead, sounding hesitant. “My son wrote you a letter of reference, I believe?”
He didn’t want to bring her wrath down on Lord Lenfield if she didn’t already know he’d helped John. “Mr. Nicholas did, yes, my lady.”
“Might I see it?”
I wasn’t aware you would require references, John almost said blandly. But he didn’t have the nerve—or the heart. She looked so afraid of his refusal. “Certainly, my lady.” He brought it to her, and waited while she read it—and then while she read it a second time.
John had read it many times himself during the anxious fortnight when he feared never finding another position. The letter had gratified John’s vanity very highly, but he couldn’t imagine there was much in it to satisfy a mother’s craving for news of her son, being filled with He is handy with a razor and statements of that ilk. The most personal thing—indeed, the only personal thing—Mr. Dymond had written was He is undemanding company, and managed a sad change in my circumstances (on the occasion of resigning my commission due to injury) with matter-of-fact delicacy.
“That’s more words than he wrote to me all the time he was in Spain.” She folded it up and handed it briskly back. “Thank you, Mr. Toogood. I do hope you’ll come and work for me.”
John collected her dry things from the laundry room and went to fetch Hal, trying to decide what to tell the rest of the staff. He shrank from informing Mrs. Khaleel and Thea and Molly and Larry that he was thinking of abandoning them.
The next moment he scolded himself for exaggerating his own importance. But if their faces didn’t fall at the news, he didn’t want to see that either.
On entering the kitchen, it was obvious that Sukey had already told them. Four faces of forced good cheer were turned to him—no, five, for Sukey had rather the same expression.
“It’s only a visit,” he said.
“For now,” Molly muttered.
He didn’t even want to go. He wanted to stay and help Molly with her father, make sure Mr. Bearparke didn’t harass Mrs. Khaleel, hear Thea sing disgusting ballads. At least he’d still be able to help Larry refurbish his livery before the footman accompanied Mr. Summers to London.
“Hal, it was good to see you.” He handed the countess’s things to the footman. “Give everyone at Lenfield my good wishes. Her ladyship is ready for you.” And he still had to escort them out and shut the door behind them with a bow before rushing back to the kitchen.
“Mrs. Toogood, if I might speak with you a moment?” He looked round at the rest of them. “It’s merely a visit. My father…” He tried to think how to explain. “It is my father’s wish that I replace him. He isn’t well. I owe it to him to talk to him before I…” Say no was too cavalier. “Make a decision.”
“You don’t have to take the position if you don’t want it, only because your father isn’t well,” Molly said fiercely.
John smiled at her, though he wished it were that simple. “Thank you, Molly. It helps to hear that.”
Mrs. Khaleel swatted her with a towel. “It’s a much better position than this one, goose. If he wants to be rich and important, we’d ought to be understanding.”
“It’s merely a visit,” he said again. If only he knew what to do. “Mrs. Toogood?”
She followed him to their room. “I thought Lady Tassell hated you.”
John sighed. “Maybe she does. But she loves my father. He must have begged her.”
Sukey twisted her hands together. “You told me you never wanted to be a butler.”
“I am a butler.” He fell into the chair, and then stood back up to offer it to her. She rolled her eyes and sat on the edge of the table. Lord, he wanted them to stay here. “I’ll tell her no if you wish it. I only thought we should give it serious consideration before we do anything final. As you said, it’s naught but a free holiday at the moment.”
“How long has it been since you saw your parents?”
“I went home last July.” He could see from her face she thought it a long time, though it had become usual to him.
“Home,” she repeated quietly, and sighed. “Tassell Hall is your home. We should go.”
He regretted his use of the word. This was his home. Their home. Reluctantly, he said, “I’m not only thinking of myself. Lady Tassell said I would make enough money to support you at home. You could leave off working.”
She looked as if she couldn’t quite decide if she’d bitten into a lemon or a cream puff. “So you’d be busy all day and I’d—I’d…” It was clear she couldn’t
conceive of a life without work, that she could think of nothing to fill so many hours. “I’d keep out of the way?”
He’d thought it would be hard to offer her this, but after all it was easy. “Sukey,” he said, taking her rough hand, reddened with work. There was a scar on her right forefinger, where she’d once cut herself chopping beetroots. “You’ve worked ever since you were a child. So have I. My life has been pleasant enough, I don’t say it hasn’t. But sometimes I look back, and I can’t understand where the years went. Day after day of waking, working and sleeping again, and somehow I was forty. You deserve the choice.”
If you want children, you deserve not to wait another ten years until it’s prudent. You could even keep them at home, instead of fostering them out until they were old enough to work with you. He couldn’t say that. She’d said she wouldn’t even think about children with him until a few years had passed. There was no reason yet to think anything had changed.
She took her hand back. “Could you really work for her after what she did to you?”
“It turned out well enough,” he said. “I don’t need to hold a grudge.”
“Tassell Hall is near Chichester, isn’t it?” She said it after a long pause, with an odd note in her voice.
He was taken aback. Did she have nothing to say about the idea? “We’ll take the stagecoach there, and the Hall will send a cart to bring us the rest of the way.” Then he remembered. “Your father lives in Chichester, doesn’t he?”
She didn’t answer.
“Do you know his direction?”
Slowly, she nodded.
“We could visit him, if you like.” He gave her a small smile. “Or not, if you don’t like.”
She took his hand again, holding it tight. “Don’t mention it to my mother. I don’t know—I don’t know how she’d feel about it.”
Chapter Sixteen
The stagecoach was trapped on the road just inside the Chichester city walls, a line of carts and carriages stretching as far as Sukey could see before and behind. And she’d thought there was nothing worse than market day in Lively St. Lemeston.
She was unnerved by the city’s size—thrice as large at least as her home—and by its self-assured modernness. The ancient cathedral soaring above them was hemmed in by brand-new brick and plaster, like a shabby pastor in his pulpit ignored by his well-dressed flock below.
Sukey’d been excited to ride the stage. Pfft. She was never leaving home again. She was never going outdoors again. All that kept her from a cruel death by frostbite was John’s muffler over most of her face, and a fur rug an inside passenger had lent her. Sukey thought this piece of charity would get the woman through the Pearly Gates with never-so-many murders on her conscience.
John had warned her not on any account to fall asleep. As if she could, when she had to clutch the seat and brace her feet to stay upright. After an afternoon and a morning of travel, her legs were good and sore.
And last night they’d had to share a room with three other travelers. She’d been hoping against hope for some privacy on their journey, wanting, just once in her life, to hear John not worry about who might be on the other side of the wall.
If you stay at Tassell Hall, you won’t have to make the return journey.
A home of her own, John had said she could have. Not so long ago, she’d have jumped at the chance: mistress of her own establishment, without even a husband underfoot. Financial security and leisure. Maybe she was a fool, to think drudging away in the Tassells’ palace might be better because John would be there.
But it frightened her that he’d even suggested living apart. That he’d been able to say it so calmly and easily. She thought of the servants’ ball, him telling her to go have fun while he worked. She hadn’t only been angry because he’d treated her like a child, she let herself admit. She’d been hurt that he didn’t want her to stay. She’d been glad to be with him, and he’d told her to go.
She’d forgotten all about it. But in the cold and snow and jostling, she suddenly couldn’t stop turning it over in her mind.
She wanted to go home to the vicarage and eat Mrs. Khaleel’s dinner and talk to her friends, and sleep in her own hard bed with John.
She shivered and told herself it was the cold. She dwelled on the cold in loving detail, because it was better than remembering that she might never go home and that soon she’d see her father. For Mr. Grimes had replied to her letter and promised to be home. He’d said he couldn’t wait to see her.
He’d waited a good long time without noticeable complaints.
People acted as if they loved you—they drew you baths, for God’s sake, baths that smelled like roses—but maybe it never really meant anything.
What would Mr. Grimes look like? What would she talk to him about? Did his new wife even know he had another? Sukey’d go along with her father, she decided for the thousandth time. If he’d lied, she’d be silent. She’d gain nothing by cutting up the poor woman’s peace.
Poor woman? Who was she to deserve Sukey’s pity when her children had been looked after by Sukey’s father all these years?
What did she look like? And would it be better if she was prettier than Sukey’s mum, or better if she wasn’t?
A snowflake whirled past the brim of her bonnet and stung her forehead. Sukey made a sorrowing little noise no one could hear over the wind, and went over every bit of her body and how cold it was.
When her feet and hands had gone good and numb and the clock had struck half past eleven, the coach pulled off the street into an innyard. Sukey was afeared to stand. Her legs might not hold her, and then she’d fall to her death and they’d have to fish her out of a snowdrift and bury her in this strange town, away from all her people.
But John helped her up, holding her elbows until she found her balance. He clambered down into the unsteady snow and caught her when she jumped, his hands strong and familiar at her waist.
Leaving their luggage at the inn, they made their way to Mr. Grimes’s lodging-house, a blindingly white building not far from the North Gate. Even the stairwell was brilliantly whitewashed. Sukey took in a deep breath, and another, and before John could say something kind, she gave him a wry shrug and rapped briskly on the door.
It was flung open at once by a pretty, dark-haired girl in her early teens. “It’s Susan, Dad,” she called excitedly over her shoulder. “Come!” She took Sukey by the arm and dragged her into the house. “I always wanted a big sister,” she confided. “I hate that you live so far away.”
Sukey blinked about at the charming family scene. The room was small and bare, but the fire was big enough to be cheerful. A woman rose from darning socks by the window, nervesomely checking the ribbons on her cap, and four rosy-cheeked children disported themselves about the place, besides the excited girl. Big sister. She’d never thought of these children as her sisters and brothers.
“Susan’s aunt would miss her very much,” a shockingly familiar voice said. “We hadn’t ought to be selfish.” She was engulfed in a hug before she had time to look at him.
She leaned instinctively into his well-known scent, but when he pulled away, it was more like wracking your brains—Don’t I know him from somewhere?—than it was like seeing your father. She recognized his cobbler’s bench and tools in the corner, though, the only messy thing in the room.
No one calls me Susan, she thought. No one ever called me Susan but you. She’d missed it when he left, but at some point it had stopped being her name; instead of something special they shared, it was a sign he didn’t know her. “My aunt?”
“I mean Lizzy, who took you in after your mother died. But I’m sure my sister Kate would miss you as well.” Mr. Grimes’s smile…she hoped hers didn’t look like that. Twinkly and false. She could feel her breathing go strange and shallow. Aunt Lizzy had died of typhus ten years ago. And every week in church she wished she could
speak to Aunt Kate.
He’d told them her mother was dead. Her mum, who’d loved her and brought her up with no help from anyone.
Sukey had friends whose mothers put them in the workhouse a few times a year when things got bad. She’d been sure Mrs. Grimes would do the same, sooner or later, but she never had. Sukey was fiercely grateful for that, because going hungry or barefoot had never scared her as much as the idea of her mother leaving too.
She was ashamed of every uncharitable thought she’d ever had about her mother. Of how angry she’d been about Aunt Kate. Of wishing her mother would smile more or be kinder. Mr. Grimes’s kind smile was awful. He’d said her mother was dead. He’d probably wished she would die and leave him free.
Sukey looked at the new Mrs. Grimes, who wasn’t Mrs. Grimes at all. By the pleading way she was looking back, she knew the truth and her children didn’t.
John stepped closer, his hand on the small of her back. She could feel the tension in his arm. He was angry for her, she thought, but he was waiting to see what she wanted to do.
“I’m sorry, I think I ate something that disagreed with me.” Sukey bolted from the room. John followed without stopping to be polite.
Mr. Grimes followed as well. “Wait, Susan, please!”
Sukey didn’t want to, but she stopped. She turned round, hating the horrible hope in her heart that maybe he would say something to make it better.
“I had to say that about your mother,” he said earnestly. “It was that or say you were a bastard.”
“I think this was a mistake.” John was looking at her father, but his gentle voice was meant for Sukey. “Let’s go.”
Her father darted around them to block the street door. “Please don’t go. Susan, you can’t know how I’ve missed you. Tell me how you’ve been. I want to get to know this new man of yours.” The way he said new man, it was as if they’d seen each other just a bit ago. As if only John was a stranger to him.
