John went and gathered her to him.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I can’t believe I’m doing this again.”
“No. Don’t apologize. I should apologize for my stupendous selfishness.”
Sukey snorted. “Selfish? You?”
“Yes, me. Cry as much as you like, please.” John felt awful. Sukey had hurt his feelings last night, and he’d barely spoken to her since. He’d been wounded and self-doubting because he couldn’t make her feel better—but how could he have expected to? Her father had left her and she was sad, and he’d wanted that to be healed in a day, so he could feel proud of himself.
And then he’d wanted her to heal him, to say what he wanted to hear about his parents and thereby make forty years of love and resentment go away.
His parents, this position as butler, Tassell Hall: they were his burdens and—despite his virtuous resolutions never to do so—he’d divided them with her without thinking twice. He’d dragged her somewhere he didn’t even want to be, hoping she’d make it bearable.
Even now, weeping and miserable, she comforted him. The heat and weight of her in his lap, her hair tickling his chin, her long legs arched over his made him feel that something, at least, was right with the world.
His mother knew him better than anyone. She was entirely wrong about Sukey, but she was right about him. He’d married Sukey for his own gratification.
“Will you clean my boots tomorrow?” She sounded uncertain. Surely she couldn’t think he’d refuse her such a small favor.
“Of course. I meant to anyway.”
She tilted her head up. “Will you kiss me?”
He obliged her. “Ask me something harder,” he murmured against her mouth.
She ground her arse into his cock. “I will in a minute.” She twisted round so her back was to his chest. “Hold my breasts.”
“If you insist.” He squeezed them in his hands. They ought to talk, but God, he couldn’t stand it. He wanted to forget everything. He wanted to feel that she wanted him the way he wanted her, that she was his family, that they were one flesh. He wanted to join with her.
She dragged his hand between her legs under her nightdress. When he drew his fingers lightly across her most sensitive place, she moaned and spread her thighs wider, her sharp shoulder blades digging into his chest. “Tell me you want me,” she said.
“I want you.” It wasn’t enough. But everything he thought of was poetic, mannered, nothing to do with this need to be close to her that scorched his throat and stopped his breath. “I want you desperately.” Woefully inadequate.
She pushed him farther back on the bed, following so she sat snugly in his lap, facing away from him.
“I w—” He undid his buttons and drew out his cock—and before he knew what she was about, she pushed herself up and sank down onto it.
He choked on his words.
“John,” she said intently, pushing herself up with her feet and letting herself fall, her hands on the back of his neck holding him close. “John, John.” She speared herself anew each time she said his name, until she was bouncing, chanting furiously. The bed creaked noisily, and there was a bevy of maids just down the hall. He almost stopped her—but he didn’t want to. Let them hear.
“Sukey,” he answered, quietly but not whispering either. “Sukey.” His pleasure was brutal, ripped from him. “I want you.” No, it was all wrong, and he knew what he wanted to say instead. “I love you. I love you, I love you, I adore you, Sukey.”
She gasped for air, arching her back with a keening moan, and he didn’t know what that meant but he didn’t care because it was the truth. The only word that would suffice.
He ran his hands up her arms to where she clasped his neck. Taking hold of her wrists, he held them in place, held her so she couldn’t get away. He turned his head to kiss her forearm. Her movements gentled and shallowed; she rocked insistently against him. “I don’t want to spend. I just want this.”
He struggled to breathe. “I’m sorry. I can’t last much longer.”
“Can we go on afterwards?”
“Anything you want.”
“I want you to tease me until your cock can stand again, and then fuck me again.”
“I can—I can—” The word turned to a gargling noise as he spilled into her. He fucked her through it, going until he started to soften. Then he laid her on the bed, kissing, licking and stroking her everywhere but between her legs. When she squirmed, he held her down, suckling at her tits until she sobbed. He rubbed a thumb over the crease of her inner thigh and kissed her just above her triangle of hair.
“It feels so good,” she whispered. “I’m on fire.”
“You’re so brave,” he said, dipping his tongue into her navel. “I always feel foolish talking about this.”
She smiled, running her fingers through his hair. “You shouldn’t. I like it when you growl at me.”
Growl? John had always thought of his voice as—stentorian, he supposed. Suitable for cutting through a busy servants’ hall or announcing callers in a clear, dignified manner. Animals and sailors growled. But if she liked it… He pressed his open mouth to her belly and made a mortifying, animal noise low in his throat. She giggled and shivered at the same time.
When he entered her again, her head fell back and she mewled. “Oh, God, it’s too much, it’s—damn, I’m going to, no, I don’t want to—” He slowed, but she wrapped her legs around him. “Harder, harder, I want to feel it—”
A moment later she convulsed around him, her nails scoring his back.
“Should I stop?”
She shook her head. “It’s too tender, it hurts, more…”
Christ. “You don’t know what you do to me,” he told the pillow. It was maddening, her hitches of breath, her little sobs, the way she twitched away from him and curled her dainty feet around his ankles. He was glad he had spent once already, so he could enjoy it a little longer.
* * *
Sukey lay there, tired out with pleasure, and somehow her face still felt tight. For a few moments she’d felt close to him again, so close nothing could come between them.
He’d said he loved her, and she was afraid to say it back even though it was true. That was a false economy, that was. Hearts weren’t meant to be pickled and kept on the shelf for a hard winter. “Remember when I told you I was sick of living at Mrs. Humphrey’s, of everything being weighed and measured?”
She felt his nod in the pillow. “You said you wanted to be where people were generous with one another.”
He remembered. He’d listened to her. That seemed like a good sign. It hurt to swallow, her jaw was so stiff. “I don’t know how to be generous,” she said quietly, tears welling up in her eyes again. “I don’t know how to share.”
“Darling, that isn’t true—”
“It is,” she said fiercely. “Don’t tell me what’s in my heart. You said I never talk to you, and you were right. I don’t know how. I don’t want to. I want to keep my heart for myself, because I feel as if, if I give it away, I’ll—I won’t have it anymore, and I need it.”
“That isn’t how love works,” he said, low and kind. “The more you give, the more you have.”
And she remembered that, how much she’d loved taking care of him, how every time she did something for him or gave him something, she felt strong and rich. She took a deep breath. “When I think about my father…I know he didn’t want me, and no matter what I do, I can’t change that. It doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter, but it’s awful. I feel as if the awfulness could drown me, as if I’m fighting to stay above water.”
“That sounds frightening,” he said, not making any sudden movements.
“Aye.”
He tried to put his arm around her. She twitched away, and he pulled back.
Part of her had hoped, secretly, that he’d know how to make her feel better. But he couldn’t. Nothing anyone said could do that. Still, she thought suddenly of what it would have been like to see her father without him. Of how she’d feel if she were sleeping alone tonight. He was here, and he’d listened, and he wanted her. He loved her.
She turned and buried her face in his chest, curling into him. He was warm and solid and didn’t try to put his arm around her again because he knew she didn’t want it, and all at once she loved him again. Her heart overflowed with it and it felt good, not as if it would drown her at all.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“No, thank you.” His voice was tender and amused.
“No, no, sir,” she said, starting to smile, “it is I who ought to thank you.”
“I really must insist, madam—”
They started giggling, the bed quivering with their relieved laughter. John buried his face in the pillow, but high-pitched sounds emerged at odd intervals.
She’d wanted to make him giggle, at the servants’ ball. She’d finally managed it, here at Tassell Hall where everything seemed to make him frown. She felt very proud.
“I do love you,” she said. “I do. Dunnamuch.”
He pulled her tight against him. “Who cares what our families think? You’re my family now, and I’m yours.”
She nodded. That sounded nice.
* * *
John woke long past his usual hour, feeling cheerful and very hungry. He dressed, took up Sukey’s boots, and made his way to the larder, where he cut himself a slice of bread and slathered it with butter and jam. His mother was in the kitchen, training the kitchenmaids in the proper preparation of consommé.
John did not envy them the orgy of cheesecloth that was to follow. “Good morning, madam. Is there coffee?”
She smiled at him. “Yes, in my sitting room. I’ll pour it for you.” Giving the girls instructions to occupy them in her absence, she let him escort her into the next room, where she poured his coffee and settled herself in a chair. He ate quickly and self-consciously, sensing that she wanted to talk to him on a significant subject.
At last he couldn’t take the silence. “What is it, Mother?”
“I’m sorry if I was slighting to your wife yesterday. She seems a very nice girl, and I should have got to know her better before forming any opinions.”
“Thank you,” he said warily.
“John,” she appealed to him, leaning forward. “I’m not one of those mothers who are always asking their children for things, am I? I don’t earwig you to visit more, or demand you produce grandchildren to suit me? When you decided you wanted to be a valet and not a butler, I supported you, didn’t I, even though it meant I never saw you?”
“You’ve supported me in everything.” Fear and love struck John’s heart together. Was she sick? “I’ve never met anyone with a better mother. Mama, what is it? What’s wrong?”
Her face set. “You must take over your father’s position. You must.”
John went numb with shock, pins and needles as if his heart had stopped pumping blood to his extremities. On the one hand, he’d been plagued by a growing sense of inevitability ever since speaking to Lady Tassell. On the other, he’d almost made up his mind to tell his father to stop showing him notebooks, because he wasn’t staying. He’d thought of them as the ones it would be hard to tell, not his mother.
“I know you made up your mind not to want it when you were a little boy, but you’re a grown man now. Johnny, I want to retire. I’m seventy-five, I’ve worked my whole life, and I deserve to retire. So does your father. He’s given his life to this house, and he deserves some peace and rest.”
“Mother, I’m going to be honest with you. Sukey and I came because Lady Tassell agreed to pay our way, and I wanted to see you. I didn’t wish to reject the position out of hand. But I don’t—”
He didn’t know what to say. The idea of the position makes me feel as if I’m made of lead? Would he really give his mother pain only because he wanted to enjoy his work? “Besides, I’m married now, and I ought to consider my wife’s comfort. I don’t think Sukey would be very happy here.”
“I knew it,” she said bitterly. “I knew she’d poisoned you against the idea. You listen to her, when you’ve never listened to me about anything.”
“That’s entirely unfair,” he said, losing patience. “You know I’ve always had the highest respect for your opinion.”
“You don’t. You’re just like your father. Neither of you listen to me.” Her mouth trembled. “I’ve begged him to leave, but he won’t, not until you take his place. He’s always been so proud of giving you a good start in life, and a sure future, one you didn’t have to fight and sacrifice for the way he did. The work he does is an honor! Lady Tassell and the Whigs rely on him. Why don’t you want it? I know you, John. You might be enjoying an easy, idle position now, but you’ll be bored in a twelvemonth and wishing you’d listened to me. And by then it will be too late. Your father will be dead.”
“He’ll be what? Why?”
Her answer was forestalled by his father’s shouts echoing through the house. It was a familiar sound, but Mrs. Toogood was up and racing through the kitchen. John followed, soon outpacing her. He found Mr. Toogood in the great hall, red-faced and screaming obscenities at a cowering maid who was mopping up a spilled bucket of soapy water. The sound of his father’s anger still made John’s hair stand on end—but he’d never heard his father curse in the presence of a woman before.
“What happened?” his mother demanded, coming up behind him, breathing hard. “Are you all right?”
“This stupid slut left her pail in the middle of the floor where anyone could trip over it, that’s what happened. Think before you do things, for Christ’s sake. If you’ve got a brain rattling around in there. I’ll be black-and-blue tomorrow.” There was a great wet stain all along the old man’s side.
“I’m that sorry, Mrs. Toogood,” the maid said, tears in her eyes. “I tried to warn him of it, but he was going so fast. He took the fall with his body to save the decanters, madam. I’m that sorry. Let me see your arm, sir, please, I—”
Even through John’s horror, part of him noticed that she was just spreading the water around.
“Why would I trust you to see to my injuries when you can’t even see to a floor? Look at this mess. The whole thing will warp.” Mr. Toogood snatched the mop out of her shaking hand and set to efficiently containing the spill.
“Let me, sir.” John reached for the mop, afraid his father would slip a second time on the wet floor.
“I can do it. I’m not in my dotage yet, thank God.”
John would have liked to wrest the damned thing out of his hands.
“Don’t worry about it, dear. That will be all, thank you,” his mother told the maid, who darted from the room.
“You always coddle them,” Mr. Toogood said. “Just like you coddled John all these years. I might have smashed every decanter we own.” He wrung the mop out fiercely—and dropped it, cursing viciously and clutching at his shoulder.
“You should have let them smash,” Mrs. Toogood said shrilly. “It’s just money, John. The Tassells can buy new ones. But you can’t buy another shoulder. You aren’t twenty-five anymore.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. Johnny, he’s not. He’s going to kill himself. He’s going to kill himself, and what will I do without him?” She began to cry.
His father snorted. “So you’re after the ungrateful brat to stop shilly-shallying and let me end my days in peace? I wish you luck. We could have been living by the sea for ten years now if he weren’t determined to spite me. He doesn’t care two pins for you, me or the Tassells. He’d like to behave like Mr. Nicholas and cut us off completely, I don’t doubt.” He sighed. “There, there, Amanda, don’t cry. I’m not hurt.” He put his arm around her, wincing at the movement.
Part of John would have liked to walk out and leave them there, would have welcomed never speaking to his father again. His own cold selfishness appalled him. A Dymond could indulge himself that way. John could not, and did not want to. “Father, please let me finish this. Your coat is frizzing.”
His father looked down in surprise. “So it is. I’d better see to that. Bring the decanters to the pantry when you come, would you?”
Finally his parents left. John would have liked to sit and put his head in his hands, but the inlay would be damaged. He cleaned the mop water doggedly, trying to calm his racing pulse.
He couldn’t stop hearing his father say, I nearly tumbled off the stepladder. His mother had not exaggerated. His father would break his neck, and there was no reasoning with him. There never had been, and there certainly wasn’t now.
John would have to take the position.
It won’t be so bad, he told himself. Looking about the empty room, he imagined himself announcing a glittering assembly of guests, stationed between hall and saloon with bright silks and a hundred wax candles to either side of him. He tried to drum up some enthusiasm for it. But his heart was in his boots, and all he could think was, I can’t make Sukey do this. I won’t let her do this.
* * *
Sukey, looking about for someone to do up her stays, at last admitted nobody was left in this part of the house. She’d slept far too late. Lucky I brought my old self-lacing corset, she thought, more pleased with herself than the little thing warranted. She felt very hopeful as she squirmed and contorted to fasten her dress buttons.
Her boots were missing, which meant John must be cleaning them. Sukey made her way to the kitchen, where she found most of the staff at their elevenses. Stomach rumbling, she helped herself to a fresh roll.
“Good morning,” she said to the crowd, astonished anew at how many people worked at the Hall. She’d introduced herself to them yesterday and ought to know their names, but she barely remembered a one.
There was a chorus of answering good mornings. “Try the pickled tongue,” a freckle-faced girl told her. Her name started with a C, Sukey thought. Camilla, that was it. She obeyed, glad to find that not everything at the Hall was cream sauce. The pickled tongue was indeed delicious.
“It’s too good, isn’t it?” Camilla said in a friendly way. Sukey faltered, remembering John had told her that people said that to make fun of his father. Hadn’t she ought to discourage it somehow? But a circle of girls whose aprons were finer than Sukey’s gown clustered around her, smiling, and she didn’t want to ruin it, even if they were just currying favor with the wife of a man who might be set above them. Lady Tassell had been right, they didn’t speak much better than she did.
“Is it true you were Mrs. Nicholas Dymond’s maid?”
Sukey nodded, and then, not wishing to be a liar, she explained, “Not a lady’s maid. A maid-of-all-work.”
Their eyes went round with horror. “Mrs. Dymond had naught but a maid-of-all-work?”
Sukey wished she’d kept her clapper still. Now she’d lowered poor Mrs. Dymond’s consequence in their eyes.
A brown-complexioned girl with a dreamy smile said, “She must be very beautiful, to have captured Mr. Dymond anyway.” She had a biblical name, one of the unfortunate ones—Tamar.
“If he wanted a poor girl, he might have chosen me,” Camilla mourned, putting a hand to her bosom in the best dramatic style. They all giggled.
“Did she seduce him?” a girl asked eagerly.
“Yes, is she in the family way?”
“No, and it would be wrong of me to gossip,” Sukey said firmly.
Disappointment was plain. A stout redhead crossed her arms and said bluntly, “I wouldn’t have thought a maid-of-all-work would be so nice in her views.”
The other girls shushed her furiously, but one or two hid nasty smiles. Sukey would have liked to give them a piece of her mind—but if Mrs. Toogood caught her at it, she’d die of shame. She set down her plate with what she hoped was a queenly smile. “Thank you for a lovely breakfast,” she said, and swept past them.
* * *
John gently rubbed tallow into Sukey’s boots. This was what he enjoyed in service: watching things take on the shine they were meant to have, dulled for a time but brought forth with a little labor and a little love. He loved providing small comforts that eased someone’s path through life. Mr. Summers’s dinner was hotter since his arrival. That was something he could be proud of.
Here at Tassell Hall, he’d spend his day mediating quarrels, scribbling in notebooks, keeping accounts, sorting out difficulties and finding things that were lost. Struggling to hold on to his temper.
He could hear the murmur of Sukey’s voice now among the chatter of elevenses. He hoped she would linger over her meal, so he could put off telling her. But the door to the sitting room opened, and there she stood. He wanted to strew her path with rose petals—not by proxy, but with his own two hands.
She had pasted another bright smile on her face. She could not even get through breakfast here without something happening to distress her. He had no doubt the other servants had been snobs.
The false smile dimmed—what did she see on his face? But she recovered it with an effort and sauntered into the room. “Good morning.” Her eyes fixed on her boots in his hands.
“I’ve got to stay here,” he said without preamble. “My mother—I can’t tell her no.”
The smile vanished altogether. “All right,” she said at once, leaning her hip against the table. “I don’t suppose I can go straight to upper housemaid here, but I don’t mind working my way up.”
No, he tried to say, but his voice cracked. He swallowed to wet his dry throat. “You don’t have to do that.”
She frowned. “John—”
“We’ll find lodgings for you in the village.” He nodded, trying to believe she’d agree, that at least he’d get to see her on his half-holiday. “You can even hire a maid-of-all-work of your own.”
Her lips parted. “What?”
“I know you couldn’t be happy here.” He set down her boots, fully sealed. “I know you hate it. I can’t ask you to stay.”
She stared at him. “You don’t have to ask. I’ve already said yes.”
He could not answer her. He let his silence speak for him.
She crossed her arms. “You said we were family. You said you were my family now, and I was yours. And now you’re putting me out of the house?”
John wiped his hands, not looking at her. His chest was hollow, his heart a small hard thing rattling around inside it. “I’m not putting you out of the house. The village is only a little ways off. Even if you were here, I’d barely see you. It’s a demanding position, and—I just want you to be happy.”
“I’m happy with you! I’ve been happy with you.”
“And I’ve been happy with you,” he said with finality. “But this house would eat you alive.”
She went white. “You really do think I’m a child. Plucky little Sukey from the boarding house—isn’t she pert? God! Flirting and a humorous accent are not the sum of me. I could do this. I could work my fingers to the bone, learn to speak, make friends with a gaggle of snooty chambermaids who can’t even bake a pie or darn a sock. I could be housekeeper here someday if I’d a mind to. I’d do it for you, because I love you. And you said you loved me, but you don’t.”
He met her eyes, steadfast. “I do love you. I’ve been wanting to say it for weeks.”
“What good is love, then?” she demanded. “You promised me last night that you’d be my family. I want to have a family for more than one half-holiday a week!”
So do I. At least you’d get to live with our children. But she hadn’t even agreed to have children with him yet. “It would be more than that,” he argued hopelessly. She was going to leave, he could see it. “We could write to one another as often as we wished, and dine together sometimes, and when the family isn’t in residence, I could—”
Her jaw dropped. “Bugger you! You’ll ask me for that, but you won’t ask me to stay?”
“Sukey, for God’s sake. I’m just trying to salvage a bright spot in this damned mess.”
She pressed her lips tightly together. “The bright spot’s not having me around to embarrass you, I expect.”
He refused to rave like his father—but his anger flared. He could not bear to lose her, and yet he was so angry with her. “You don’t embarrass me.”
“Oh, no?”
He flushed, knowing it wasn’t entirely true, and even angrier, that she would twist his small, unwilling, carefully concealed betrayal into something monstrous and throw it in his face. “No.”
“Liar,” she hissed. “Just admit you don’t want me anymore.”
His calm began to crack like fine china, just a spiderweb of lines, and soon it would be smashed to powder. “I will miss you every day,” he said as steadily as he could. It was an understatement so vast it confounded him. He could not bear the thought of her going. She must know that. He had made no secret of it. “But it would be selfish of me to ask you to stay.”
Sukey felt ready to vomit blood. “You think I should be grateful for this, don’t you? Yes, you’re a regular martyr, for taking a position that pays a king’s ransom and getting your common little wife out of the way. It was a kindness to marry me and now it’s a kindness to kick me out. I’m sick of your kindnesses. Tell the truth for once in your mealymouthed life. Do you think I haven’t seen you caressing the wallpaper? Just say you want to stay, and you want me out of the way because I’d spoil the pretty picture.”
He laid his hands flat on the table by her boots. “You know how much I admire you,” he said through stiff lips.
“Oh, aye, I’m beautiful and perfect and time with me is never wasted. Tell that to the marines,” she rudely mimicked his father. “But I ate it up, didn’t I? How did you know all you had to do was polish my boots and I’d follow you about like a duckling? Was it just that I’m poor and young, or was there something about me that—”
“I cleaned your boots because they were dirty,” he burst out. “And I wouldn’t describe your behavior as having much in common with that of a duckling, either. Be reasonable, Sukey. Are you going to tell me you want to live here?”
“Yes,” she shouted. “Yes, if you’re here, I want to be here. So send me away if you like, but don’t try to pretend it’s because you’re so damn good.”
“I never said that.” John screwed the lid onto his jar of tallow, tightening it with a jerk. “I am not good, nor is this position likely to bring out the best in me. You mayn’t think asking you to leave is a kindness, but it is almost certainly kinder treatment than you’d receive if you stayed.”
“When have you ever been unkind to anyone?”
He slammed the lid shut on his box of brushes and polish. “I’ve been unkind to you,” he said, bite in his words. “And you know it.”
“You’ve been angry! Everybody’s angry sometimes, for pity’s sakes. I’m so angry right now I could spit. But taking your father’s job isn’t going to magically transform you into him. This is ridiculous.”
He pressed two fingers into his temple. “Perhaps you can agree I am best qualified to know my own heart. If you could understand how angry I am at you, only for disagreeing with me—this morning my father was bellowing filth at an unfortunate maidservant and I was actually annoyed with her because it caused her to clean inefficiently.”
“Your father was what?”
He sat down. “He tripped over her bucket of water and chose to injure himself rather than drop some crystal decanters. I have to take the position, Sukey. My mother begged me. I have to.”
“All right,” she said. “Then you have to. But if we’re family, then they’re my family too, and I also have to.”
“I won’t ask you to do that. If I let myself, I’d ask you for everything, and you’d let me do it.”
Sukey looked at her boots, shining side by side on an old newspaper, and wanted to throw his coffee cup at the spotless wall. “So now you’re best qualified to know my own heart too? At least my father didn’t pretend he was leaving for my own good. He just went clean away. You say you don’t want to live together anymore, that you want me to idle about in lodgings, listening for your step on the stair, and I’m to believe it’s because you love me? Why, because you say so?”
“Yes. Yes, because I say so.”
She shrugged. “Then I suppose you love me, and I was right all along and love’s just a stupid word that doesn’t mean anything.” She pulled her ring off her finger. “You like to polish things so much? Polish this.” And she threw it at him.
He went on his knees to pick it up, examining it for scratches.
The room blurred. She blinked back the tears so he wouldn’t see them. Crying just hurried men out the door that much faster. “Give me my boots. I’m going home.”
“They’re not ready.” He came around the table, taking her by the shoulders. “Please, Sukey—”
She stood stiffly in his grasp, unable to look at him. “Bring the boots when they’re ready, then. And tell Mr. Tomkin I want to go back to Chichester. Now.” She said the cruelest thing she could think of. “I’ll spend the night at my father’s and catch the coach in the morning.” And she stomped out.
The crowd of servants was gathered around, watching the door. She wondered what they’d heard. Although once again, she’d been the only one being loud. “Don’t bother toadying,” she said, raising her voice so John could hear. “I’m not staying.”
* * *
John sat without moving, waiting for the tallow to dry on Sukey’s boots. Perhaps if he moved them farther from the fire, it would take longer.
That was it, then. The end of his independence and his happiness. He had thought he’d neatly escaped the lot planned for him by his father, but here he was.
She just wants you to ask her to stay at the Hall. You might see her, and dine with her, and sleep with her at night. You might even be happy here, if she were here with you.
Yes, he might be happy. He might squeeze from her whatever happiness she had to give him, with no regard for her own. He might behave like his father, considering it his wife’s duty to care for and comfort and cheer him, and when she said, You never have time for me, we never talk to each other, I’m unhappy, you aren’t kind—then he would say, Can’t you see the strain I’m under in my work?
He could do all that, but he wouldn’t. He refused to. Servants at Tassell Hall didn’t sing while they worked. He wanted to know that she was somewhere, singing.
He went to the stables to find Abe. “I’m very sorry to bother you again so soon, and on such short notice, but would you harness the carthorses? Mrs. Toogood wishes to return to Chichester.”
Abe frowned. “What’s the matter? Has she had bad news from home?”
John turned away. “She can tell you all about it on the journey.”