Sukey made an awful, heartbroken wheezing sound, staring down at the spreading stain. Her hands hung helplessly at her sides. John froze, torn between fetching a napkin and staying to make sure no one did murder.
“You bitch,” Sukey shrieked, and threw herself at Maria. “I’ll kill you!” She went for Maria’s eyes.
Fending her off with one arm, Maria pulled her fist back, clearly about to plow it right into the side of Sukey’s head.
John shoved between them, hoping he wouldn’t be badly damaged. “Maria,” he said, taking her wrists. “You’re drunk. You’re going to be mortified in the morning. Go away.”
“You’re right, I should have spilled my drink on you. Walk me to the punch bowl for another?”
Sukey charged around him. He let Maria go to grab his wife by the waist. Kicking his shins, she struggled and fought. “I can get the stain out if we do it now,” he said in her ear. “We’ll get it out. I promise.”
Maria looked greatly cheered. “This is what you get when you marry a child,” she said smugly, and swanned away.
Sukey yelled curses after her, still struggling in John’s arms—but more, he thought, as an outlet for her feelings than because she really wanted to get free. In a few more moments, she sagged against him. Her friends crowded around her, congratulating her and making nasty remarks about Maria.
“It’s ruined,” she whispered. Raising her fingers to her gown, she looked at them as if they were wet with her own blood. “I ruined it.”
“I’ll get it out,” he said again and kissed her ear. “Come into the kitchen with me.”
There, John introduced himself to the Lost Bell’s cook and gave her a shilling. “Hot and cold water, hard white soap if you have it, distilled vinegar and spirits of wine, and as many good clean rags as you can spare.” Another shilling, and the sink was theirs. “Come here.”
He felt for that first pin at Sukey’s shoulder. Not how he’d imagined the moment, but wishes, alas, were not horses. He drew the pins out quickly, sticking them in his lapel. She stood very still and let him do it. She did look young just now, young and lost and trying not to cry.
“Why did I say that? I’m so stupid. She wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t told her it was new.”
“It wasn’t your fault, any more than you fell out of that apple tree because you were clumsy.” John lifted the stained chemisette over her head. “I should have gone to talk to her before now. I didn’t think. I didn’t think she’d care so much.” He unpinned her sleeves.
“You forgot she existed,” Sukey said sadly, and he winced, thinking of her father. Then her eyes narrowed. “You did forget she existed, right?”
He stepped behind her to undo her buttons. “I did,” he admitted—or reassured her, he wasn’t sure which. “I’m sorry.”
Her outer petticoat was stained too. She slipped it off before it could soak through. “Of course, she doesn’t know you only married me for your career.”
He blotted the stain, careful not to press it into the fabric. Carrying the gown to the sink, he trickled water through the wool from the back. The grated nutmeg would be a difficulty.
“You were supposed to contradict me,” she informed him with an attempt at her usual impudence. He glanced up in surprise and saw her shivering by the fire in her single petticoat, hugging herself for warmth.
Taking off his coat, he tried to help her into it, but she grabbed it and thrust her arms in the sleeves, scowling. “I’m not actually a little girl.”
“I know. A man is supposed to do that for a woman.”
“I’ve got perfectly good arms. I don’t need help with my coat. I’m not useless like some stupid lady’s maid.”
John didn’t say, If you don’t want tender consideration, why take the coat at all? He didn’t say that Maria was a cook. Sukey’s curls brushed the dark blue velvet collar of Lord Lenfield’s old morning coat. With those pale blue ribbons in her cap, it almost looked like an ensemble. He’d have let her keep it, but her pelisse was longer and warmer. He gave a penny to a passing scullery maid to find Sukey’s friends and collect her things.
“I’m sorry,” Sukey said when the girl was gone. “I’ll pay you back.” She fished her purse out of her décolletage.
“Sukey, you don’t have to repay me, but you do have to let me work.” He diluted vinegar and alcohol with water and moistened the stain, rubbing the soap in. Then he folded clean rags, dampened them with the vinegar mixture and laid them over the dress. “That will draw it out. In a few minutes we’ll change them out.”
“I was looking forward to this party. I wanted—” Sukey glanced at him. “I wanted it to go well.”
John’s heart smote him. “I’m sure some of your friends would be happy to keep you company. Shall I fetch them?”
She gave him an incredulous look, as if he’d said something obtuse. Then she sighed and shook her head. “You should go back. I’ll stay here and change the rags.”
He laughed. “I’m having a much better time in here than I would be out there.”
Her face brightened. She looked at him through her eyelashes. He hid a smile. What an incorrigible flirt he’d married. “Really?”
“It’s noisy and crowded out there.” He started on the chemisette’s stain, though he wasn’t worried about that one. The collar itself was untouched and could be sewn to a new shift if necessary.
The scullery maid brought in Sukey’s pelisse bundled neatly around her everyday gown. Sukey pulled the gray serge over her head with a sigh. “I didn’t have time to go and drop it at home. Turns out it was for the best.”
John accepted his coat back with undeniable regret. “You did nothing wrong,” he said, buttoning her dress for her. “She shouldn’t have behaved as she did. It isn’t your fault when other people are cruel to you.”
“That’s worse,” she said, her voice a little thick. “Then there’s nothing I can do to stop it.” She rubbed the rough serge discontentedly between her finger and thumb. “Why did you marry me, anyway?”
“I was terribly lonely,” he reminded her, the corners of his mouth curving up in spite of himself. “And I badly wanted the job at the vicar’s. You took pity on me.”
“No.” She looked up at him, her tip-tilted blue eyes brimming with tears. “I was terribly lonely, and I wanted the job at the vicar’s, and you took pity on me.”
John felt sick. Was it true? Had he taken advantage of her after all? She’d said she wanted to marry him, that she wanted a helpmeet. A tear slipped down her cheek, and he scrambled for a way to cheer her. “If you like, you could go back to the party and I could stay here and finish with this. Since you have a dress, it seems a shame to waste the occasion.”
She drew back, shocked. “And leave you here alone? I don’t think so.”
“Thank you. But I wouldn’t mind.” He changed the rags, remarking with satisfaction that the punch seemed to be coming out.
“If I leave, you might as well be at work. I’m not going to let you work seven days in the week.”
At least her tears seemed forgotten. He dried his hands carefully on a clean rag and tipped her chin up. “It’s not work when I do it for you.”
She glared at him. “Yes, it is.”
He didn’t know how to explain that it mattered to him, that these skills he’d acquired for pride and coin could comfort her. It sanctified something temporal and mundane. “Don’t you think there’s a difference between doing something for love, and doing it for money?”
When her frowning brows went up and her narrowed eyes rounded, John flushed scarlet. For love or money was a set phrase, and all he’d meant. If he left it there, she might think—well, that was better than hurrying to correct himself.
He’d been quite eager to correct any misconception Maria had had about their connection. Overeager, he supposed. He’d never meant to be unkind, only to have things clear between them. Because while he’d liked her very much, he’d never thought he might want to spend his life with her.
It was too soon to be in love with Sukey, and certainly far too soon to say any such thing. But he could imagine it being true one day. He saw her flaws—more clearly than was any credit to him, sometimes—but none of them seemed untenable.
She’d been silenced by his slip. Now she seemed to be trying to regain her balance. “Would you leave me in a kitchen laundering your clothes while you went to a party?”
He smiled at her. “I suppose not. But—”
“There’s no but,” she said, exasperated. “If you wouldn’t do it, why do you think I would? If it’s not because you think I need your charity. Being a provincial little nobody barely out of her teens.”
John felt as if she’d slapped him. He tried to be kind, and she threw it in his face.
“You don’t think of me as your equal,” she said. “Why should you? I hate how much I want you to take care of me. But you don’t have to do it just because I want it. You can expect more of me.”
His ears rang. So it was his fault he thought she might want his help, and his fault that she did want it? She wished him to—what? Withhold it from her so she could feel independent? Perhaps she should try having some backbone instead. A grievance, carefully suppressed, broke free and leapt from his tongue.
“I can expect more? More what, precisely?” he demanded. “I would love your help in supervising the staff, but as far as I can glean, your chief concern is that none of them ever be annoyed with you.”
“Quarreling doesn’t solve anything.”
“Neither does ignoring problems and hoping they go away on their own.”
Her chin went up. “I’m ignoring less problems than you are. And I am helping supervise the staff. I—” Her mouth snapped shut. “I can’t break confidences, or I’d tell you about it,” she said, clearly aiming to wound. “But I’m doing plenty to help you.”
Confidences? What did she know? Who Molly had been meeting? Whatever it was Thea insisted he wouldn’t understand? How much better might he manage the house, if he knew what she knew!
Of course she had a right to her own counsel, just as he did, and she would hardly be the recipient of confidences long if it was realized they were being repeated. But it was easy enough for her to make friends with everyone if he was obliged to give all the reprimands.
“Whatever you may think, I have never expected you to spy for me,” he said. “But as you seem to have no difficulty leaving the unpleasant part of our work to me at home, you cannot blame me for thinking you might wish to do the same here.”
For a moment he wondered how his father felt, seeing his wife universally adored. And he hated that he wondered it. There was no comparison; there could not be.
Her hands fisted at her sides. “Well, I told you I didn’t! I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yes, and see how much my evening is improved thereby.”
He heard her sharp intake of breath. Her eyes slitted, shooting cold blue sparks. “I do believe you’d be happier slaving away alone in here. I think that’s pathetic.”
“You’ve made that very plain,” he clipped out. Even as he said it, he knew it was pathetic, that he liked her so much and couldn’t seem to be agreeable to her. It was pathetic how wistfully he imagined working in here alone, quiet and steadfast. A man ought not to long to express his affection to his wife without the inconvenience of her actual presence.
She crossed her arms. “You asked me to marry you,” she said. “I suppose you’d never have blushed for Maria before Mr. Summers, or had to tell her how to make a bed. So elegant and worldly she is—ha! She started a fight, not me. Well, she’d have married you. But you picked me. I suppose you thought with me around, you’d always have someone to feel superior to. And now I expect you’re sorry and wish you’d picked someone better. Someone you’d like spending a quiet evening with.”
It felt like something heavy had smacked into his chest. “You don’t have any idea how I feel.”
“No? Then tell me, Mr. Upper Servant!”
He knew she was right. It was like making the bed or polishing the silver; he told her the bad and expected her to guess the good on her own. He expected it to be obvious. How could it not be obvious?
He could not manage to tell her more plainly how much he liked and admired her, because that required him to believe she’d be pleased to hear it.
Maybe she would be. Maybe she wanted desperately for him to say he loved her. Somehow that idea was worse. Because he’d picked her, just like she said. He’d looked all over England, he’d had more lovers than he could count on both hands, and he’d never found anyone he liked so well.
Nearly every man she knew was in the next room.
She’d been lonely and afraid, young and inexperienced, and he’d used it to talk her into a marriage that she’d turned down when she had a job.
The more he wanted her, the more he needed her, the more he asked her for—the less chance she would have to be the woman she’d wanted to be, who stood on her own two feet, who had nothing between her and the sun. The less chance she’d have to discover what she really wanted. He’d been collecting his burdens for forty years. Even if they’d grown heavy for him, she was too young to be asked to shoulder half.
If he hadn’t married her, she’d be out there enjoying herself instead of trapped in here, miserable.
“Faith, it’s like being married to a rock,” his wife muttered as she turned her back on him, stubbornly staying even though there was nothing to stay for.
* * *
“Is everything all right?” Larry asked Molly at breakfast.
Molly frowned sharply, looking up from the sandwich she was making out of a slice of plum pudding, a goose’s wing and a stale dinner roll. “Why?”
Larry shrugged. “I didn’t see you dancing at the ball last night.”
John felt guilty. He’d spent most of the ball in the kitchen with Sukey and hadn’t looked in on his staff at all.
“At least I went,” Molly said. “Thea, you promised to meet me there.”
Thea shrugged. “I fell asleep.”
Molly frowned again, this time in concern. “Do you think you ought to see a doctor?”
Thea rolled her eyes. “I’m a growing girl. I need my rest.”
“I don’t know, Thea, you’ve been sleeping dunnamuch.”
John noticed that this had successfully turned the conversation from her own behavior at the ball. He tried to meet Sukey’s eyes, but she was staring at her plate.
“You’d ought to find better friends, Molly,” Mrs. Khaleel said. “They all look like watering pots to me.”
“They’re having trouble,” Molly flared up. “They need me.”
“Yes, but do you need them?” the cook asked.
Molly pressed her mouth into a tight line. “Of course I do. They’re my friends.”
“A friend is a joy, not a burden.”
“Everybody’s a burden sometimes,” Molly snapped.
Sukey sighed heavily. I hate how much I want you to take care of me, she’d said.
John set down his own toast and marmalade, unable to take another bite. He didn’t see her as a burden. He needed her as well. He did. If she knew how much—if she knew how false his appearance of calm, competent certitude could be—
His stomach turned over. She wasn’t much older than Molly, really. They both should be enjoying themselves, not worrying about anyone else.
After breakfast, he caught her as she was leaving the kitchen. “Mrs. Toogood?”
She squared her shoulders, clasped her hands behind her back and fixed her eyes firmly on the middle distance. “Yes, Mr. Toogood?”
He blinked. “Might I see you in the butler’s pantry for a moment?”
It was also their bedroom, though the pallet was rolled up in the corner now and the room was his place of business. Last night had been the first night since their wedding they hadn’t coupled on that pallet.
He didn’t mention that. “I wish to apologize for my sharpness last night. It was unfair to reproach you for not taking more responsibility here at the vicarage.”
Her mouth twisted like she’d bitten a lemon—but then it smoothed out. She still didn’t look at him. “No matter, Mr. Toogood.”
“I’ve been thinking about when I was your age. I was fourth footman at Tassell Hall.” He’d been ambitious, his eye on valeting and escape, but quietly so. “My days were long and my work demanding, but it was not a position of responsibility. I worked under more experienced men and gave orders to no one. It was a pleasant time in my life, if rather devoid of sleep.”
She didn’t look at him. He could feel the point he was trying to make slipping away. If she would only smile! “Young people sharing living quarters—well, I can tell you that the amount of wine I consumed on an average evening would probably kill me now.”
Her lips didn’t so much as twitch.
“My point is that it is Mrs. Khaleel’s task to manage the female staff. I should not have reproached you for not doing what is not yours to do. I want you to be happy, not give yourself gray hairs.” He rubbed at his chin. He had no gray hairs on his head yet, thank goodness, but his beard was slowly but surely frosting over.
Her mouth compressed. “Yes, Mr. Toogood.”
“Sukey, what are you doing?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Toogood.”
He felt like a mouse talking to a brick wall. “Is there something you would like to say to me?”
“No, Mr. Toogood.”
“Stop saying my name,” he said in exasperation. “What have I done to offend you?”
“Nothing, Mr. Toogood.”
He threw up his hands and went to the silver chest to begin his midmorning work.
“May I go, sir?” she said behind him.
He glanced at her in surprise. “Of course.”
She bobbed a curtsey, actually bobbed a curtsey at him, and enlightenment dawned. She wasn’t just standing stiffly and refusing to look at him. She was mocking him by pretending to be the sort of highly trained, impassive servant she imagined he wanted her to be.
“Is this about Maria?” he said, relieved to think that her anger was only jealousy, after all. “I assure you, I would not rather be married to her.”
Now she did look at him, a contemptuous, pitying look. “I don’t think you listen when I talk,” she said, and walked out.
John stared after her, a frightened, sorrowful, empty place in the center of his chest. But anger quickly rushed in and filled it. She punished him for not guessing what she wanted? She parodied him to his face? Was that how she thought he spoke? He knew that anger towards her served no purpose, but the more he tried to crush it, the harder and denser and hotter it became, a stone inside his ribcage.
By dinnertime his jaw ached, he had compiled a list of approximately four hundred counterarguments and he was quite incapable of being civil to her across the table. He kept his eyes on his bowl as he filled it. “I’ll take my dinner in the cellar, thank you, Mrs. Khaleel.”
* * *
Sukey had been fuming all morning. The gall of him, the pigheaded blindness, to give her a speech about how young she was and how she’d ought to be gamboling about like a little lamb, when just yesterday she’d told him she wanted to be treated as an equal.
She was angry because last night he had just stared woodenly at her when she asked him to tell her how he felt about her, and he thought she was jealous? Of a woman he’d thrown over and forgotten?
But a pit opened in her stomach as she watched him disappear through the door with his bowl of stew. He was avoiding her?
If she made him hate her, he could leave town and go anywhere. Would she have to leave town? Lively St. Lemeston was her home. But would an abandoned wife dismissed without a character by the town vicar be hired anywhere respectable?
And that would be it. Her one chance at marriage, because she was no bigamist. She twisted her ring on her finger. Let us share in joy and care.
She’d never have anyone to share in her joy and care again.
“Are you well, Mrs. Toogood?” Mrs. Khaleel asked. Everyone looked at her.
“Oh, Mr. Toogood and I had a little quarrel, that’s all,” she said with a nervesome laugh.
Mrs. Khaleel put a hand briefly to her shoulder. “Married people quarrel. Don’t take it to heart.”
Molly frowned. “He’s not kind to you. I don’t know how you put up with it.”
“Shh.” Sukey glanced at the kitchen door.
Molly’s frown deepened. “You shouldn’t be afraid of your own husband.”
Sukey threw her hands up. “I’m not. You’ll hurt his feelings terribly if he hears you. And he’s very kind to me.”
“Not that I’ve noticed,” Thea muttered.
“He’s been kind to me,” Larry said, but very quietly. Molly gave him a withering look.
Sukey stabbed at a piece of beef with her spoon. “He is. That’s what we quarreled about. I told him…” It was so stupid. “He’s just so much older than me.”
“Too old,” Thea agreed in an undertone.
Sukey ignored her. “He behaves like I’m a child who needs taking care of. He doesn’t listen to me.”
“Uch,” Molly agreed. “I hate it when men don’t take me seriously.”
“Why did you marry him?” Thea asked.
Because he made me feel safe. As if I didn’t have to do everything on my own. “I think I wanted someone to take care of me,” she admitted miserably. She could remember being small and feeling safe and warm and loved. She remembered her mother’s hands in her hair, her father lifting her onto his shoulders. She missed it with a howling, childish grief.
She felt sick and disgusted with herself. Had she wanted a father all along, and not a husband? How could she be angry with John for giving her what she’d wanted?
“Don’t we all?” Mrs. Khaleel said wryly. But Sukey knew that she’d been strong. She’d sent Mr. Bearparke away and stood on her own two feet. A friend should be a joy, not a burden, she’d told Molly. Surely that was doubly true of a wife.
Molly snorted. “Women need to stop expecting men to take care of us, because they won’t. We need to take care of each other instead.”
Sukey was a little overwhelmed. At Mrs. Humphrey’s, she’d seen her friends at the servants’ balls, and now and then on Friday afternoons. She wasn’t used to having women about, whom she could talk to whenever she liked.
She hadn’t ought to have confided in them about John, not when he already thought she was making friends with them at his expense. But she’d done it anyway, because she craved their kindness so much. Just as she’d been unable to resist those two brandy-sprinkled raisins. She was weak—and contrary besides, because the more they sympathized, the more in the wrong she felt.
At a sign from the cook, Thea fetched a pan of baked dried apples out of the oven. Later they’d be piled in a pretty china bowl with whipped cream, nutmeg and toasted almonds for Mr. Summers’s own dinner. There was none of that at the servants’ table, but Sukey still marveled at the luxury of soft, sugary apples spooned onto her plate, bubbling from the oven. There were a dozen plump rum-soaked currants just in her portion.
This was exactly what she’d craved and imagined when she left Mrs. Humphrey’s. She’d imagined generosity in practical terms, rich food and people giving each other things, doing things for each other. But she hadn’t done these women any favors, and they hadn’t done any for her. They’d listened to each other, that was all. And it mattered more than the apples.
Meanwhile, John had tried to do something for her yesterday, and it had made her angry. Because that sort of kindness was a parent’s kindness for a small child. It went all one way. She’d thought that would make her feel safe, but it didn’t. She wanted a husband, not a father.
Maybe generosity wasn’t about giving or receiving. Maybe it was just about the sharing. In joy and care, whichever happened to be in the offing.
John had arranged it again so she was with her friends and he was working alone somewhere. Could be that was what he wanted, but she didn’t believe it. He’d been the one who wanted to work in a house with staff.
“I’ll take some down to Mr. Toogood, Thea.” Sukey stood up to fetch a bowl.
“Eat yours first,” Mrs. Khaleel chided, pushing her plate towards her. “They’ll get cold.”
Gratitude closed Sukey’s throat. “Yes, ma’am,” she mumbled. “Thank you.”
Stomach comfortably full, she made her way down the cellar stairs. She felt like an intruder as she eased the door open. Was it too late to turn back? The wine cellar was the menservants’ domain. It was surprisingly cozy. Brick arched overhead and a fresh carpet of sawdust held in heat from the big covered brazier, set in a brick circle at the center of the room. Casks sat in scalloped wooden racks along the wall.
John was trickling a bottle of white wine through a cambric-lined strainer and a funnel into a crystal decanter, arms rigid and eyes fixed on the sediment in the bottle as if trying to set it ablaze. “Shut the door, please. The heat’s going up the stairs.”
She did as he asked. The heavy door and the brick overhead seemed to cut off all sound from upstairs. “It’s nice down here.”
He made a disgusted sound. “I need to overhaul the whole mess. My predecessor was a lazy idiot as well as an abuser of defenseless women. When I started here, the claret wasn’t properly insulated, the sawdust was ancient, the casks months overdue for reracking, and the red wine so badly pricked I’ve almost given up hope of recovering it.”
The tension in his deep voice set her to vibrating with it, the way one guitar string set off another. He was furious with her, even if he was trying not to say so.
Maybe she should leave and let him come to her. But—he hadn’t even asked her to. She refused to behave like a servant hiding from her master. Yes, he was angry. What was so terrible in that? So had she been angry. Married people quarreled, like Mrs. Khaleel said. She was sure by now he wouldn’t hurt her, and he couldn’t sack her without losing his own post. She’d spent enough of her life backing down and begging for forgiveness. He was more miserable than she was, looked like, and she was going to fix it.
She ventured closer. His dinner bowl had been emptied, at least. “I brought you some dessert.”
“Put it there, on that keg. I can’t set this down until it’s finished.”
She pricked up her ears. “Really?”
“The sediment is already disturbed. If I set the bottle upright, it will slosh about and mix with the good wine.”
She slipped behind him. “So if I wanted to do…say…this, you couldn’t stop me?” She ran her hands over his thighs. They were nice thighs, and he’d be a sight more relaxed after, that was certain.
She couldn’t feel him jerk, but she heard the trickle of wine falter and begin again. “Stop that at once,” he said through his teeth. “For God’s sake. Can’t you understand this is delicate work?”
She resisted the urge to give him a hard poke. “I don’t know why you always do delicate work when you’re angry.”
“Because it requires my entire attention,” he said pointedly.
She came round to his front again so he could see her rolling her eyes. “Pouring wine, even very slowly, doesn’t require your entire attention. Maybe you should smash a few things instead.”
He snorted like an outraged bull. “And who would clean them up after I’d smashed them?”
“I could.”
His breath caught with a sound almost like a laugh. “And then Mr. Summers would take it out of my pay. I find it hard to believe it would be worth it.” At last he set the bottle down, peering at the cambric with a shake of his head and at the decanted wine with grudging satisfaction.
He needed this. They both did. She cocked her head and tried to sound sure of herself. “I can think of something that would require your entire attention.”
His jaw clenched.
“You’d feel better after.” She stepped closer, though her stomach plummeted an inch for each second of his silence. “Shut your eyes if you like.” She thought of something she’d done twice now that he seemed to like very much. Her mouth watered with eagerness, her nipples tightening. Don’t let him refuse me. She knelt in the sawdust.
Ah yes, the front of his trousers moved a little at that.
She licked her lips and winked at him. “If you don’t want me to, now’s the time to say so.”
He was holding his breath, by the looks of him. His amber eyes were hot. Maybe with anger, maybe with lust, maybe with both at once. The bulge in his breeches was growing. “Take out your kerchief,” he bit out at last.
She’d been holding her breath too, she realized. She let it out and tugged the kerchief out of the neck of her dress.
He leaned down, his hand burrowing under petticoats and stays in one quick, efficient movement, yanking her left breast up to balance on the shelf of her bodice. Her right breast followed it, and there they sat, high and exposed. He didn’t touch them. He only looked.
“Go ahead,” he said, his voice rough and deep with anger. And it didn’t frighten her at all. It excited her.
She undid his buttons, not making any particular show of it. Pushing aside his smallclothes, she took hold of his cock and sucked the head into her mouth.
He gasped, hips jerking. She hadn’t learned to take him in as far as she wanted to yet. But when she rubbed her tongue against the flat tip of him, he inhaled so sharply it echoed off the curved brick ceiling.
“Harder,” he said. “Faster.”
She obliged him, though it made her dizzy. She’d taken to this at once. It was like plain speaking, somehow; you couldn’t make it pretty or decorous. His animal part twitched against the back of her throat, and his scent filled her nostrils.
But after a minute or two he put a hand on her head and moved her away, taking his cock in his own fist and pleasuring himself with fast, brutal strokes.
Unsure what to do, she stayed on her knees watching him. Her bare breasts should have been chilled, but instead they felt hot where his gaze touched them.
His lips pressed tightly together and he panted harshly through his nostrils. “Show yourself to me.”
She gave him an inquiring look.
“Lift your skirts.”
“Yes, sir,” she said with a complete lack of deference, and maybe that annoyed him, but he liked it too. She could see his fingers tighten on his cock as she followed orders, reclining on her elbows and hiking her skirts above her waist.
“Spread your legs.” She did it, face so hot she must be scarlet. Would he fuck her? But he didn’t, only looked her over like a naughty French engraving.
Sukey glanced at the door—but no one would come in. Why should they? They’d ring the bell if they wanted anything. Still, she liked how sinful and daring this felt. Like that first time in Mrs. Pengilly’s kitchen. She shifted lazily, watching his breath catch.
“You’re wet,” he said.
She flushed hotter, that he could see that. “That’s because I like having your cock in my mouth,” she said crudely.
He spent, seed dripping down over his fingers. Grimacing, he pulled out his handkerchief with his clean hand. Sukey rose to her knees. “No need to launder anything,” she said, and licked his seed off his thumb.
His cock fell from his startled fingers. Catching it, she licked it clean, then did the same for his hand. He twitched, ticklish, as her tongue flicked between his thumb and forefinger. She glanced up at him. His shoulders weren’t vibrating anymore.
“Why did you push me away? I could have kept on.”
He sighed. “I would have used you roughly.”
Oh, he was too sweet. She bit his thumb. “I’d not have minded.”
He gave one of her nipples a friendly tweak, mouth curving tiredly. “Evidently not.” He handed her the wineglass he’d been using to test the wine. Swallowing the remaining mouthful, she stood, tucking her bosom and kerchief back into her dress.
He looked embarrassed now, buttoning his trousers with unnecessary care and fidgeting with his cuffs. He always seemed to feel he’d made a fool of himself after bedding her.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed.” He was too tall for a quick kiss, so she kissed her fingertips and pressed them to his lips. “Not even you can be dignified all the time.”
He covered his eyes with the back of his hand. “Did I look very silly?”
She laughed. “No more than I did, I’m sure.” She smoothed her bodice and shook out her petticoats.
“You did not look foolish.”
“Only because I didn’t spend.”
He looked remorseful. “I’m sorry. Come here.”
She shook her head. “Dinnertime is over.” She patted her stomach, reminding him what she’d recently swallowed. “Half past one is needlework.” And she swept out of the room and up the stairs, carefully shutting the door behind her.
* * *
John knew they’d resolved nothing of their quarrel. But how could it be resolved? She was young, and he was old and stuffy. He’d try to be less stuffy, and she’d be older by and by, and there was no profit in talking of it. His relief that she wasn’t angry—hell, his relief that he wasn’t angry—was a tangible thing, sitting at the bottom of his breastbone and wanting to—to move. Shout, sprint, jump, weep, something.
He hated being angry at her. He hated, also, that he’d needed her help to stop, and that it had been no dictate of reason that swayed him, but only an animal relaxation, as if he’d resorted to drink.
It felt splendid nevertheless.
It was a long afternoon, but when night came he finally understood why people said there was nothing like falling into bed after making up a quarrel. Every kiss was a revelation, every inch of her skin a benediction. Each time she spent was a miracle.
* * *
John’s unusual lack of exhaustion on Twelfth Night was likely why the noise woke him. Mr. Summers had gone to a celebration a little ways out of town and, as there was barely any moon to travel by, meant to stay the night. John and Sukey spent most of their evening in bed, dozing off shamefully early.
John lay blinking in the dark, unsure what he’d heard. Nothing, perhaps. He hoped it was nothing, so he could go back to sleep.
But there it was: a creaking stair. He’d been meaning to tighten those treads for weeks. John slipped out of bed, finding his greatcoat by feel and fumbling it on over his nightshirt. Tiptoeing to the door, he cracked it half an inch and waited, eye to the crack though it was too dark to see. It might only be someone looking for a snack. He heard footsteps creeping down the corridor. A shadow paused between the doors to the kitchen and the kitchen-yard.
John heard the tumblers of a lock turn. He flung open his own door and sprang.