At eleven, Sukey finished in Mrs. Pengilly’s rooms and went downstairs to the kitchen.
“Would you like a slice of pie?” Mr. Toogood asked, bland as ever.
She’d brought a hunk of cheese and some stale bread with her, but that pie was far more tempting. “Thank you. Aye, I’d love one.”
He swallowed, his hand spasming on its way to the knife.
She squinted at him. “Be you well, Mr. Toogood?”
“Tolerably well, thank you.” He glanced up at her with a frown, those light brown eyes boring into her. “And you? There was a moment upstairs when I thought you might be overset.”
“There was?”
“When Mrs. Pengilly talked about her silver.”
It had been hours, so it took her a moment to remember. “Oh. I—I worked for her two years afore I heard that story about the coat of arms on the silver. Even a year ago she’d not have told you. She grows forgetful, I think. Careless with age.”
“Maybe she’s only realizing that there’s no longer much need for caution.”
She nodded, seeing no reason to explain that Mrs. Pengilly’s son was also in…shipping. Harry Pengilly junior liked to do more of the sailing, and was gone eleven months in twelve. “Maybe. I know it been’t a grand tragedy for a happy old woman of eighty-five to become a little forgetful, but…”
“You’re fond of her.”
She nodded. “Are you fond of the Dymonds?”
“Of course.” He said it without hesitation, and offered not a syllable more.
She shrugged and took a bite of her pie. Mmm. Roasted potatoes, sliced apples, hardboiled egg, onions and butter in a thick, rich dough. He really did know what he was about in the kitchen.
“Your boots could use a cleaning,” he said.
She nearly choked on the delicious mouthful. “Beg pardon?”
“I could clean them for you, if you like.”
She blinked, too surprised to even say “pardon” again. “Do you miss valeting that much?”
His face went blanker even than ordinary. “Cleaning leather isn’t only for looks. It lasts longer when it’s cared for, and needs less mending.”
“I clean for my living,” she said flatly. “On my day off, I’m not about to clean more.”
“I didn’t ask you to. I asked if you’d let me do it. If you’d prefer that I didn’t—”
She threw up her hands. “I’d be a fool to turn you down.”
“And your mother didn’t raise any fools, or so I’ve heard.” Not waiting for further encouragement, he fetched her boots from the door and set them on the table, going at the mud on them with a wooden scraper the size of a penknife. He made so finicky a job of it that he’d only finished one boot by the time she emptied her plate. As she was washing it, he said, “Would you begin by scrubbing the copper pots with lemons and salt, please?”
She sliced a lemon in two and dipped it in coarse salt, hoping he didn’t notice she was near to mesmerized by his hands. Half the great copper kettle had been restored to a bright, pinkish shine before he’d finished scraping her second boot.
Next he set to brushing the leather with firm, careful strokes. “Were you born in Lively St. Lemeston, Miss Grimes?” He didn’t raise his eyes from the falling particles of dust.
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you any brothers or sisters?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. Do you wish for them?”
Dunnamuch. She couldn’t imagine the difference a sister or brother might have made to her when she was small and felt as if she and her mother could fall off the edge of this town with no one the wiser. She couldn’t imagine the difference it would make now to have someone who shared her blood, who’d be with her through thick and thin, who’d help take care of Mrs. Grimes when she grew old.
“Now and again.” She rinsed her kettle. “But it’s a gamble, right enough. You can’t rid yourself of a sibling, and from what I’ve seen, half of them are lovely and the other half so dreadful as to beggar belief.”
“I suppose so.” He sighed. “I’ve been reflecting that perhaps I would prefer my next situation to be in a house with more than one servant.”
She looked up in surprise from feeling for stray grains of salt. Lonely, was he? Well, she supposed that wasn’t much of a surprise, only that he’d admit to it. “One half-holiday a week isn’t much to cram a life into,” she agreed.
“No. At Tassell Hall, one was never alone.”
Sukey wondered if she’d be happier in a house with plenty of other maids to gossip with. That was a gamble too, in her opinion. It might be nice, or it might be just more people making her eat carp-pie, more people to get her turned off without a character if they took a dislike to her, and more smiling and listening when she only wanted to put her head down and shut her eyes for half a tick. She was lucky Mrs. Humphrey had hired her, and she couldn’t imagine trying to explain to her mother that she’d left because she was lonely. “I’m sure Mrs. Pengilly will let you hang around her as much as you please.”
She was rewarded by an amused softening of his face as he came to fill a bowl at the sink. “Do your parents live here?” He stood politely at her elbow until she moved, instead of nudging her familiarly aside like an ordinary person.
“My mother lives just that way.” She pointed. “She takes in laundry.” He took that to mean her father must be dead, of course. She could tell by his face that he was puzzling over whether it would be impolite to say how sorry he was.
He went silently back to the table with his bowl, so she didn’t have to decide between a lie and the truth.
“Do you see your parents much?” she asked over her shoulder.
Now he was scrubbing her boot with soapy water, neat round strokes with a little brush. “My mother and I exchange letters most weeks.” He smiled at her boot, almost a whole smile. Her foot hurt with wanting him to hold it like that. “I’ve sent her Mr. Dymond’s pieces in the Intelligencer. She was always fond of him.”
Mr. Dymond had been writing articles for the town newspaper on the terrible hardships of British soldiers in the Peninsula. The Times was sending him to Spain soon to write more of them. “My mum thinks the paper hadn’t ought to print them. Her friend’s son is in Spain, and the poor woman’s been crying herself to sleep since they started.” A thought struck her. “You didn’t have to go with him, did you? When he was in the army?”
He shook his head, setting her boots down to dry. “I worked for his brother Lord Lenfield while he was away. Mr. Dymond is fond of joking that I would have had an apoplexy at the state of his clothes.”
She laughed, relieved he hadn’t been obliged to suffer the horrors Mr. Dymond described, and conversation fell off. Lemon juice stung her fingers as she restored the shine to Mrs. Pengilly’s copper, while Mr. Toogood rubbed down the whitewashed walls.
But vigorous scrubbing, well…it got the blood pumping. Sukey was flushed and breathing hard, and all at once even looking at him seemed indecent. Muscles shifted under his breeches as he rubbed vigorously at a tomato stain that had been on the wall (Sukey reflected guiltily) since Michaelmas.
His big apron hugged half his wool-covered arse, leaving the central seam to her lustful gaze. He had one of the finer arses it had ever been her privilege to gawk at. The small of his back dipped nicely and then flared in a firm, commanding curve. Even my arse is better than yours, it proclaimed truthfully to the world. And the way it moved…
He turned away from the wall to pick up her boots. Face burning, Sukey dropped her eyes to the jelly mold she was cleaning. I’d like a jelly mold in the shape of his arse. She stifled a giggle. When Mrs. Grimes said hard work kept you warm in winter, this wasn’t what she meant!
He opened a small tin, rubbing oil onto her damp boots with a bit of cloth. Catching her watching his hands, and thinking her curious as to his methods, he explained, “Neat’s-foot oil and a bit of tallow.” His voice as good as rasped across her nipples. She wanted him to look up from suckling at her breasts to calmly inform her of something in just that tone.
Examining the boot, he scooped a bit more oil out of the tin. “Don’t use too much, for the leather needs to breathe. And always put it on when the shoe is still half-wet.”
It set up some very peculiar feelings in her chest, the care he took with it. As if her old, ugly boots mattered. As if they were precious. Her merry lust turned wistful and aching. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had taken so much care with anything to do with her.
An old memory surfaced, of her mother combing her wet hair and cutting it carefully to bring out the curl, her fingers gentle in Sukey’s scalp. Her hair had been golden when her mother used to do that. She’d thought Mrs. Grimes stopped because it grew dark, but looking back, her mother must have only been busy, finding herself on her own with a child to feed.
She drifted closer to Mr. Toogood, as if he could somehow make her feel like that again, safe and cherished and ignorant.
When she reached his elbow, he turned to look at her. Her mouth went dry. “How old are you?” he asked abruptly.
She froze. Why did he ask? How old was old enough for kissing?
She didn’t want him to kiss her. Or, she did want it, but if she really did it, it’d make her a fool, and her mother a raiser of fools after all. “Two-and-twenty.” She tried to sound unaware of any implications. Hopping up to sit on the edge of the table brought her a few inches closer to his mouth. Fool. “I made pickled carrots yesterday. The ladies devoured them.”
He gave her that near-half-smile of his. A third-smile, maybe. “Did they?”
“Mrs. Peachey was the only one who didn’t take any, and she won’t eat anything that crunches.”
He set her boot on the table, lips parting.
Please please, Sukey Grimes you’re a fool, I don’t care please, she thought.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was about half again as deep as usual, and half again as gravelly. “My oil’s to the other side of you.” He might have said You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in the same tone and it wouldn’t have been out of place.
“My afternoon off starts at three,” she said, handing him his oil. “What would you like to do until then?” Her heart hammered in her ears.
He oiled one last dry patch and turned away. “They’ll need to sit for a quarter-hour before I wipe away the excess. Then I can rub them with tallow.” The front of his waistcoat was dark-patterned quilted cotton, but it was plain linen in back. She could see his shoulder blades bunch. “I think I’ve some sandpaper in my things. Why don’t we clear off this table so we can sand away the knife-marks and oil it?”
A moment ago she’d been sure he wanted to kiss her too. He must. He’d—well, if he wanted it, he’d better self-command than she had, and she’d ought to be grateful for it.
Sukey was tired of being grateful. Of pulling back from boldness at the last moment. She was tired of keeping herself shut tight like a book no one wanted to read.
She’d seen some traveling players put on The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, as a girl. She still remembered the princess’s hand reaching for the spindle, enchanted and unknowing, while every child in Market Square shouted at her not to do it.
Sukey’s hand came up ever so slowly and laid itself flat on Mr. Toogood’s back, her palm just to the right of his spine. Her thumb touched one of the knobs in his backbone; she circled it, curious.
His muscles went rigid under her hand. Her sharply indrawn breath was the echo of his. “I’m old enough to be your father,” he said.
She almost yanked her hand away.
But that wasn’t a no. It was only an I hadn’t ought to, and at the moment the difference between those two things was very clear to Sukey.
This was so stupid. She’d liked men before. She’d been slippery between her legs. But she’d kept her wits about her. Why couldn’t she today?
It was those boots. He’d got her all soft and pliant with his hands on her boots, even if it was only because he liked things to be done properly and nothing to do with her at all, and now she didn’t need any sweet words or petting to seduce her.
“I’m sure between the two of us we can contrive to make your cock stand, even so.” She slid her hand down to the small of his back, eenamost to that flare she’d admired earlier. She hadn’t quite the nerve to touch that.
When he’s inside me, she thought. When he’s inside me I’ll pull him closer with both hands. God, she was on fire.
He turned towards her, cock obviously standing. She smiled, suddenly happy as well as eager, but he covered the smile with his mouth before she could finish it. His hand was flat on the table beside her, because he was too tall and had to bend to reach her. The other hand was steel around her upper arm. He growled, low and quiet like a dog giving warning, and she could feel him trembling.
So this was kissing. Real kissing, not just a peck on the lips. He tasted her upper lip, then her lower, the inside of his mouth scalding. She didn’t know what she was doing, not really, but despite that growl he went slow enough to let her catch up. She shaped her mouth to his.
Somehow she’d never realized before what it meant, that their mouths would be touching, that she’d be so close to him. It was like last week’s newspaper used for kindling, the past scorched over and gone in a blink, nothing left but bright blazing heat.
Something wasn’t quite the way Sukey liked it. His mouth was open too far, she thought. So soon she discovered preferences! She held him still with a hand on the back of his neck so she could fix it. She kissed him, and he let her. His hair was soft. When she stroked the short bristling hairs at the nape of his neck, he moaned right into her mouth. That shocked her. She couldn’t breathe for the thrill of it. She wanted—could she?—did she dare?—she tried to lick his lip. Catching the edge of his teeth, she faltered, feeling silly.
He broke the kiss, breathing hard. His light brown eyes stared into hers from too close. She had a dizzy fancy that he wasn’t looking at her so much as letting her see right into him. She tightened her fingers on his neck for balance.
He ducked his head, leaned in and growled—there was just no other word for it—in her ear, “I brought myself to completion this morning, thinking of taking you.”
She gasped. He’d what? Really? But there was nothing he could mean but frigging himself, was there? So when he’d gone upstairs after he left Mrs. Pengilly’s, he’d… It was hard to imagine him doing anything so undignified, but of course he must. He had. Thinking of her.
And now he was telling her about it. She’d never felt anything like this wild pounding of her blood, spreading from her heart down her arms and into the soles of her feet and there, there between her legs.
“Do you understand me?”
She laughed a little wildly. “I may be a virgin, but I’m not ignorant.”
He drew back, her fingers sliding from his hair and falling into her lap. “You’re a virgin?”
Sukey glared at him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
John ran a hand through his hair. It was a mistake; his scalp was still sensitized. He spent half his life with his hands in other men’s hair, but he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched his. His skin had hummed and prickled delightfully under her fingertips.
Her virginal fingertips. “I don’t—I just—I’m not taking a girl’s maidenhead in a kitchen, for Christ’s sake.” His voice rose alarmingly.
She glared harder, those tip-tilted eyes narrowing. “I’m sorry I didn’t bed half a dozen strapping young lads to make this moment more convenient for you,” she hissed. “How inconsiderate of me!”
She might remind him of a spitting kitten, but she was two-and-twenty. A grown woman, and a strikingly appealing one. And now to find she’d waited all this time, for him? She’d made no bones about thinking John a square-toed stick-in-the-mud. “Why me?” he asked. “A girl like you—”
“And what kind of girl am I, pray?” She crossed her arms over her chest.
So square-toed that she assumed he must be calling her a trollop. “A very pretty one,” he snapped. “I presume you’ve had offers. Christ, I can’t believe I told you I’d—” He couldn’t repeat it. This was the trouble with lust. It was worse than aqua vitae for loosening the tongue, and a man did and said things he’d never have dreamed of in a less fuzzy-headed state.
Reluctantly, her mouth curved. She tossed her head a little. “So what you’re saying is I could have any man I like.”
Their mouths were linked now. His curved in sympathy. “Well, I don’t say any. That would be hyperbole.”
It was plain on her face she didn’t know what the word meant. But she said, “You’re not so bad yourself.” She hooked a foot around his legs, pulling him towards her, and Lord, he wanted to go.
He tilted her head up. It was a mistake. The underside of her pointed chin was sinfully soft. The ruffle of her cap lifted and settled, wisps of hair at her temple moving as if someone had blown on them. He wanted to blow on every inch of her. If he wasn’t careful he’d say that too, and she’d die laughing at him.
“Miss Grimes, I’m sorry. I’m not saying this because you’re a virgin. That only startled me, and gave me a moment to think of what we’d be doing. You work in a respectable house, and I am seeking a position, perhaps in a household with maidservants. Neither of us could afford the damage to our reputations if somebody walked in and saw us.”
She sighed, letting go of him with a sad little nod. “I expect you’re right.”
John took up one of her boots and wiped away the streaks of excess oil gleaming on the surface, feeling a self-indulgent pang of disappointment. It was fortunate that virtue was its own reward, as few other rewards seemed to accompany it.
But he was only sulking. Virtue had many rewards. Take, for instance, the virtue of caring properly for one’s boots: warm, dry feet, and money in one’s pocket that one was not obliged to spend on new boots. The rewards of not dallying with the neighbor’s housemaid were likewise self-evident and innumerable.
No, the proverb had it backwards. Sin was its own reward, its only reward. Its dreadful consequences lasted longer than any momentary satisfaction. He began to apply tallow to her boots, to keep off the water. It would have to dry for two hours.
Two hours he was trapped here with her, polishing this bloody kitchen to a shine. Perhaps it would be kinder to leave her to polish alone. But he’d been born into service; he could not idle while others worked.
She hopped off the table, not looking at him. “I suppose I’d better get to scouring.”
“I think that would be best,” he said quietly.
* * *
Storm clouds were rolling in. John sighed. Thus ended a few glorious drizzling hours during which water had dripped into the bucket in his parlor no more than once or twice a minute. This morning’s unseasonal thunder had sounded like cannon, as if the Channel had overflowed its banks all the way to Lively St. Lemeston, and the French fleet were firing upon the town.
He pressed his face to the damp, chilly pane of his bedroom window, eying the rapidly approaching dark clouds. It was too early to begin dinner, but John couldn’t bring himself to write one more polite note of thanks. His little table was littered with replies from Lord Lenfield’s friends. Every letter said, I’d feel uneasy, hiring a man the Tassells have turned off. Not always in so many words, but the meaning was clear.
Some of those gentlemen had tried to bribe John from his place, once upon a time, but he’d been satisfied where he was and refused every offer with a virtuous pride that embarrassed him now.
A flicker of movement in the street below caught his eye. Sukey Grimes with an empty basket, gazing apprehensively up at the sky and walking towards the edge of town as quickly as she could without running. What in blazes was she doing out in this weather?
He ought to leave her alone. He’d expended the cunning of a Machiavel in not crossing her path since that disastrous Friday afternoon. But surely no errand could justify going out when such a storm threatened, unless it was to fetch a doctor. He threw on his greatcoat and hat and raced down the stairs with his umbrella.
Once in the street, he was conscious of several pairs of respectable female eyes in the boarding-house window. He waited to catch Sukey up until they were out of sight. “Good day to you, Miss Grimes.”
She turned in disbelief. “Mr. Toogood? You’d better get back inside before the heavens open. Your lovely wool coat will swell.”
“I had been trying not to think of that.”
“What are you doing out of doors?”
“I saw you from my window. What errand could possibly be important enough to go out in such weather? You’ll catch your death.”
She shook her head. “It’s St. Clement’s Day. Didn’t you hear them firing the anvils this morning? I’ve got to fetch apples for the blacksmiths.”
St. Clement was the patron saint of blacksmiths, who celebrated their saint’s day with zealous carousing and “clemmening”, or parading from house to house collecting gifts of apples and beer. A bowl of apples had been waiting on Mrs. Pengilly’s kitchen table for three days. “Firing the anvils?”
“Don’t they do that at Tassell? The smiths put gunpowder in their anvils and set it off to frighten evil spirits.” She smiled. “The horses hate it, but I always liked the noise.”
Such quaint, pastoral customs. He wondered how many fingers had been lost in honoring them. “Give me your money and wait here. I’ll buy the apples.”
She snorted. “Am I going towards town? I haven’t a penny. I’m to pick the apples.”
“Pick them?” he demanded in disbelief.
She tied her bonnet on tighter and put her head down. “Mrs. Humphrey doesn’t spend a farthing she been’t obliged to.”
“Surely she wishes to avoid the expense of calling the doctor for you.”
“She don’t think so far ahead. Miss Starling told me the first year she opened the house, Mrs. Humphrey didn’t give out apples or beer at all. Said the blacksmiths weren’t entitled to take food from the mouths of her lodgers simply because they’d decided to have a holiday. She was sorry when a clinker came through the front window and she’d new glass to buy.”
“A clinker?”
She blinked. “Is that a Sussex word too?”
He pressed his lips together and didn’t remind her that he was from Sussex.
“It’s these sort of paving stones.” She pointed at the small, hard bricks beneath their feet. “There’s an apple tree a mile down the road. It’s a favorite with little boys, but I’m taller than they are, praises be. I can generally reach a few they can’t.”
She meant to climb a tree in this weather?
“And your mistress knows you are on your way to go clambering about the upper regions of a tree in the blinding rain?”
Sukey nodded. “She were hoping the sun would come out, but it hasn’t, and if I don’t go now, it will be dark.”
“This is madness. I’ll buy you apples.”
“I’d get the sack if I let you buy me apples,” she said flatly. “No one would believe I didn’t give you something for them.”
“Then tell me where the tree is, and how many apples you require, and I will fetch them.”
She gave him a pitying look. “When’s the last time you climbed a tree?”
He’d been fourteen or fifteen. It didn’t feel so very long ago, but looking at her smooth, youthful face, it struck him with great force that it had been. “I shall manage.”
Her laugh had a nasty edge. “The branches would break under your great weight.”
So she meant to go out on slender, slippery branches. “This is rank folly.”
“No, rank folly would be losing my place by giving Mrs. Humphrey a piece of my mind,” she said grimly. The wicker handle of her basket creaked under the pressure of her fingers, and he realized that she was not foolhardy in the least. She was frightened and putting on a brave face because she saw no alternative. “She wouldn’t even give me an umbrella. Said I would let it turn inside out.”
He held his over her head, silently.
“Thank you.” She hunched her narrow shoulders. “But you should go back. You can leave me the umbrella, if you like.” Her pelisse was too large, its upturned collar tailored to frame a profusion of linen ruffles she didn’t possess. He could see water dripping down the back of her neck, plastering stray tendrils of hair to her cool, clean skin. He wanted to taste it.
“I like storms,” he said calmly. “I find them picturesque.”
“Do you now?”
“I’m a very poetical fellow.”
“It shows,” she said wryly, and let him take the basket. She stuffed her fingers into her sleeves, shivering, and for a mad moment he thought of taking off his greatcoat to serve as a muff for her. But the day was too wet and cold to do anything of the kind, so he merely kept pace with her—she was in such a hurry that he barely had to slow his longer legs—and waited to see how far she could go in silence.
A hundred yards, as it turned out. “Last year Mrs. Dymond came with me to pick apples,” she said, a little sadly. “Mr. Dymond will take good care of her, won’t he?”
“I have no doubt she is indoors at the moment, if that’s what you mean.”
She gave him an irritated look, her wet eyebrows small dark slashes in her white face. “It isn’t.”
He didn’t know why her worrying over Mr. Dymond’s wife should annoy him so much. “You would do better to save your tender concern for yourself. You are far more in need of it than Mrs. Dymond.”
“I don’t suppose anyone is in need of my concern,” she said, heartily offended. “I can still bestow it where I like, I hope. You needn’t behave as if I’m a loyal family retainer like you. Mrs. Dymond was a friend, of sorts. Someone to talk to, anyway.”
John set his jaw, comprehending now why he was so annoyed. He had never wanted to be a loyal family retainer. He had liked and respected the Dymond family, certainly, and hoped to like and respect his next master. He hoped to achieve excellence in his field. He wanted his talents recognized and made use of to their full extent. But those were entirely different things.
His parents, on the other hand…they had always behaved as if they were the Dymonds’ tender guardians and not their upper servants.
“You can’t understand how rare it is for a girl who talks as much as I do to meet someone who holds her own in conversation,” Sukey said ruefully.
John looked at her in surprise. “I didn’t think Mrs. Dymond talked as much as all that.”
She laughed. “Not if she don’t know you.”
Suddenly, he remembered catching sight of Mr. Dymond and his wife walking down the street not long before their marriage, heads together, lost in conversation. It had struck John peculiarly at the time, for he’d known Mr. Dymond since his birth and would not have described him as talkative either. But they had seemed to have a great deal to say to one another.
“I don’t talk much…” But more than that, he rarely said anything of consequence. He and his mother filled pages with their letters, but it was all news and gossip. That was how they liked it. So now he trailed off, not really knowing how to continue.
“I noticed.”
He sighed. What was the use in trying? He’d always be silent witness to others’ conversations, like a statue in a bustling public garden.
“Was that all?” she asked.
“I seem to lack the impulse to confide in others. Sometimes I regret that.”
She didn’t know what to make of that. “You’re lucky,” she said finally. “Talking only gets you in trouble.”
Another memory, this one much older yet more vivid: the Dymond boys begging food from his mother in the Tassell kitchen, early one morning before breakfast. Young Lenfield had been eloquently persuasive, while little Master Anthony, the baby of the family, had been confidently demanding. Even Mr. Dymond, at seven or eight, had chimed in with a winsome smile and a playful question of some kind.
Where had John been? In the pantry, to judge by the angle of sight. Polishing something, no doubt, while his mother smiled at the Dymond boys and sliced into a warm jam tart. He must have been almost twenty, too old to envy children, so he had told himself he was annoyed by the noise, and by the disruption of his mother’s orderly kitchen at the only time of day when the servants could hope to work without interruption.
“Has it got you in trouble?” he asked.
She looked away. “I’ve lost a couple of places for talking too much,” she said softly.
Every good servant deplored a chattering maid, and yet he felt hot anger on her behalf.
“I suppose you think I deserved it.”
“No. I was merely thinking that when one works as closely with one’s employer as a servant does, it is as necessary for one’s personality to please, as one’s work.”
She gave him a sharp look. He was sure she was thinking he had solved that problem by not having a personality, but he hadn’t provoked her enough to make her say it.
Somehow, he wanted her to say it. He wanted to hear the arch note in her voice that would take the sting from the words. He wanted to hear it even if she left the sting in. “Perhaps one day you’ll find a mistress who is glad to have you fill the silence in her life.”
She stopped walking abruptly. “Here we are.”
The unleaved tree was beautiful, wide and rambling and perhaps thrice his height. High above them, a few twisted, gleaming branches were yet bowed with clusters of bright yellow-and-red apples.
Having taken the tree’s measure, John glanced down at Sukey, who was pulling off her stockings. Her boots stood empty—and, he was touched to notice, she had set her bonnet atop them to protect them from rain.
That flash of bare foot and ankle was a shock. It took several seconds for his thoughts to flow again. “Miss Grimes—”
“It’s going to start pouring any second. You stand below and catch the apples so they don’t bruise.” She clambered barefoot onto a low branch and very carefully pulled herself up to sit on a higher one. He wanted to tell her to come down, but she was right. He was far too heavy to climb in her stead.
Unreasonable commands were part of their profession.
Her bare feet dangled, shivering. He wanted to warm them in his hands. In the fraught, idle silence, that desire grew into a daydream of kissing her ankles, gently sliding up her skirts to expose white, slender calves downed with dark hair.
“Catch.” She tossed him an apple. The distance was small enough that he caught it with ease. Two more followed. The black clouds were nearly overhead, and the wind was picking up.
“How many blacksmiths does Lively St. Lemeston possess?”
Sukey strained for a particularly fat apple hanging just out of reach. “Two, but they bring their apprentices and boys with them. What they don’t take, I’ll make into stucklings.” Sliding along the branch, she levered herself up and yanked the apple free just as the skies burst open with a deluge of rain, a fierce gust of wind and a blinding flash of lightning.
She lost her balance and fell, screaming and clawing at nothing.