John’s breath stopped, but somehow he lunged forward and she plummeted into him instead of the ground. His arms locked around her, and her hands went around his neck. His pulse thundered in his ears, the sudden rush of blood making him dizzy. His cheek was hot and raw where her buttons had scraped it. Her breath came and went in heaving, whimpering gasps. Was she shaking, or was he? Or was it only the freezing rain hammering down on them?
Thunder rumbled, recalling him to himself. “Can you stand?”
“Thanks to you.” She wiped water from her eyes with one hand. The other was still tight around his neck.
Reluctantly, he set her on her feet. “We ought to find shelter before the lightning reaches us.” Another bright flash. Already the thunder came sooner, more lightning on its heels.
She drew in a deep breath. “There’s a farm that way.”
He made out the shape, a few hundred yards off but distorted by the heavy rain. His hat had fallen when he caught her. He set it on his head and picked up the basket and folded umbrella. “Take your boots and run.”
His hands full, his broad-brimmed hat blew off again almost at once. He ignored it with a pang, but she turned back. “Leave it,” he called sharply. “Will you be struck down for a hat?”
Heedless, she chased it down for precious seconds, fingertips catching at the brim. She only gave up when a gust of wind sent it soaring into the air. Lightning came again, turning the world colorless.
He stumbled through the rain, praying that nothing tripped them up. The wall of the barn rose up before him, and he was plastered against it before he could think. The door was round the other side; with her help he got it open. They slipped inside, shutting the door behind them just as lightning and thunder crashed simultaneously.
The sudden absence of rain on his skin and in his eyes, the distancing of the sound of it, left him disoriented. Blinking, he made out the barn floor on which he stood, just large enough for a hay wagon. To his left was a hay bay crammed to the rafters, and on the other side, a row of cow stalls, with haymows above.
Sukey appeared before him, plucking the apples out of the basket he still held and examining them for damage. That done, she peered up at John. With her pointed chin and narrowed eyes, she looked like a drowned ferret. “You’d better get out of that coat,” she said, shrugging out of her own.
Her kerchief and shoulders were wet and her skirts waterlogged about the hem, but the rest of her appeared essentially dry. Nevertheless, she was damp and cold enough that her nipples showed clearly through her clothes.
She gave him a little shake, hands on his elbows, and undid the buttons of his greatcoat. “Here now. Say something.”
I can see your nipples, he thought. The greatcoat’s fitted sleeves wouldn’t come off unless he removed his gloves. The soaked leather clung to his fingers.
Sukey was examining her own pelisse. Assessing the damage, he supposed, as she lingered on a dry patch in the lining, but then she lifted it up over his head and rubbed his hair dry. He was so startled that he let her.
When the coat went away and he could see again, she was smiling. “It’s a good thing there aren’t any mirrors here. I think you’d have hysterics.”
He sighed and worked his gloves free, spreading them over a bale of hay with his wet greatcoat. There was a hard object in one pocket. He pulled it free, puzzled, and recognized with dismay the slim second volume of Count Julian. He’d slipped it into the coat on Sunday, in case it rained and he needed to linger in church. The edges were soaked, already rippling. He pressed it flat between his hands for a moment before he could resign himself.
He tried to wipe his coat down with his handkerchief, but the square of linen was quickly soaked and the coat little improved. He knew already that the weave would never look as crisp as it had.
“I’m sorry,” Sukey said quietly.
He wasn’t. If she had fallen, without him—“One ought not to fret over trifles.” He could do nothing now for his possessions. What could he do for their health?
Sukey had sat on a bale of hay and tucked her bare feet into her petticoats. Probably that would suffice to warm them. Probably what he was about to do was entirely unnecessary.
But he crouched down and drew out one damp foot, cupping it in his bare hands. The other peeped out from beneath her hem as she shifted to look at him. They were so small. Fairy feet, meant to dance in the moonlight. He traced her anklebones with his thumbs and pressed his fingers into the arch of her foot.
Calluses lined her sole and ridged her big toe. She was no fairy, but a hardworking woman. That did not lessen his excitement.
He let go her ankle and chafed her toes briskly between his cold hands for long moments before heat began to build. Relief flared in his chest as she sighed and leaned back on her hands. Her toes relaxed between his fingers. When he was satisfied, he did the same to her other foot.
He didn’t meet her eyes. If he did, this would be seduction and not aid.
When he released her, she hopped up and fished her stockings out of her coat pocket. “Dry as a bone,” she said with satisfaction, thrusting her hand down into the toe of one and rolling it up in preparation for putting it on. She hesitated. “I suppose you’d better turn round.” He obeyed at once, trying not to think of legs exposed or garters being tied. Was there a sound more provocative than rustling?
“All right, I’m fit to be seen.”
Her nipples still showed through her bodice, and while her shivers had subsided and her lips had lost their blue tinge, she was white, her back kept straight only by her stays.
He sat beside her. This is common sense, and not seduction. “We are both thoroughly chilled. As one cannot safely light a fire in a hay barn, our best source of warmth is each other, unless we wish to cuddle with the cows. I give you my word I will be all that is respectful, if you will trust me so far as to…”
“Sit in your lap?” she supplied, amused. “But someone could come in.”
At once he was on fire, thinking of everything he could do to her while she sat in his lap. How he could bare her breasts and warm her nipples with his hands. How he could turn her so she straddled him and warm them with his mouth. How he could enter her.
He deliberately recalled how he had said to her, I brought myself to completion this morning, thinking of taking you. Embarrassment drowned his inconvenient arousal. “The choice is yours. But I should hate for us to catch our deaths through immoderate modesty.”
“Now that’s an improving tale for the ages.” Sukey took off her wet cap. “I’d ought to bring it to Mrs. Dymond’s attention.” (That lady made her money, what there was of it, writing literature with a high moral tone for children.) She hesitated, then pulled a pin from her hair, evidently intending to take it down to dry. It was a good notion, and John supported it wholeheartedly.
Damnation, this was laughable. Either he should fuck her, or he should stop thinking about fucking her, because he was in no position to satisfy himself any time in the near future. He leaned over and took up his book. He found his place without difficulty, but it was an effort to take the words’ meaning in along with their shape when he could hear hairpins clinking together in Sukey’s palm.
“I don’t like being cold.” She dried her own hair in her pelisse.
“Neither do I,” he agreed mildly. Who did?
“It’s one of the things I like least about being a maid. They get to stay in their warm beds until I’ve lit the fire.”
John himself had never minded that. Discomfort was unpleasant by definition, but he hated excessive heat far more than cold. He peeled the page away from the next one and turned it carefully. A scrap of paper came off in his hand. He sighed.
“I won’t be cold when I don’t have to be,” she said, and climbed into his lap.
He spread his legs to accommodate her, thinking she would turn her back to him, but she stayed curled up, resting her cheek on his shoulder and drawing her legs up to her chest, the back of her heels against his outer thigh.
She tugged at her skirts until they flowed straight from her gown’s high waist over her shins. Her knees pulled at the gown, tugging the bodice away from her breasts so he saw the drawstring of her stays and a dark, bottomless gap that showed him nothing but that might, in better light, have revealed the busk of her stays, the swell of her breasts, and her thighs.
Her back was icy where it touched his arm. Unbuttoning his coat, he wrapped it around her as far as it would go. Her unbound hair, imbued with her scent, spread damp tentacles over her shoulder and clung to his arm as he lifted it to continue reading. She smelled of ashes and damp wool, tallow soap and turpentine, clean rain and lemons and sweat and skin. Seductive beyond reason. If he bent his head, he could bury his nose in her hair.
He tried to keep his eyes on his book.
Sukey made believe that Mr. Toogood was a very lumpy pillow. It wasn’t easy, as he kept shifting about, his arms moving as he turned a page, his chest rising and falling under her cheek. It took long, clammy minutes, but at last a comforting heat built between them. It had been so many years since she was a girl sharing a bed with her mother, she’d forgotten how much better another person was than any warming pan or hot bricks or leaning against the chimney.
Even so, she wished they had a blanket.
Light flashed from outside, and though she knew the roar of thunder was coming, it made her jump a bit and burrow closer to him. He shifted again, uneasily. Blood rushed to her face as she became aware of something hard poking at her hip.
He must know she’d felt it. Would he speak? Would he kiss her? She held her breath.
He turned a page in his book.
Oh, it wasn’t fair! He wanted her, and she wanted him, and why shouldn’t they? Why shouldn’t he lay her down on this hard, scratchy bale of hay and stick that cockstand right into her?
But he’d already refused her once. That and the damp chilled her enough that she could remember Mrs. Humphrey’s kindness in giving her the rattle. Her mistress, who didn’t trust her with a twopenny bit, had had faith in her virtue. Her mother had striven to bring her up to be smart and careful. It would be letting them down if she gave away her maidenhead like any featherwit.
How smug Sukey had been when Mrs. Dymond’s sister had found herself with child last month. How sure she’d been that she would never be so foolish. Even after Friday in the kitchen, she’d thought, Well, I’ll be on my guard now. Forewarned was forearmed.
He had lovely forearms.
Didn’t pride go before a fall indeed? Sukey knew she should be ashamed of her weakness. But strength felt like a burden just now. She didn’t want to die a virgin. She didn’t want to go home and lie alone on her cold pallet in the kitchen and hear the moon whispering outside about what fun everyone else was having.
“What are you reading?” she asked, to have something else to think of.
“Count Julian: A Tragedy. It’s a play about medieval Spain and the Moors. Mr. Dymond gave it to me after he’d read it.”
She’d guessed as much from the expensive binding. “Do you like it?”
“I do.” He shifted, the muscles in his legs tensing and relaxing. “It reminds me of Lear: a man who loves his daughter, yet puts his pride above her and so destroys a nation. But the author hasn’t Shakespeare’s gift for a story. I would have found the plot murky if Mr. Dymond hadn’t explained the history of it beforehand.”
She sighed. “There’s been talk of building a theater here. A real theater that real companies would come and perform in. But I don’t suppose it can happen before the next election, and who knows when that will be.” Nearly everything in Lively St. Lemeston was built by elections, Orange-and-Purple Whigs and Pink-and-White Tories buying goodwill and vying to see who could subscribe more generously to the building fund.
He lowered his book, one arm coming to rest at her lower back as he put his hands on his knees. “Don’t give up hope.” His voice hummed through her where her side pressed into his chest. I brought myself to completion, thinking of taking you, he’d said. “I know the project is dear to Lady Tassell’s heart.”
It was dear to Sukey’s too. By rights she ought to spend the next ten minutes sweating him for every last bit of information he possessed. But she couldn’t frame one question. She couldn’t do this. “I’m much warmer. I think I’d better…”
A still, charged moment—and he leaned away, his arms spreading wide to allow her freedom of movement.
She got to her feet, retreating to a nearby bale of hay. The parts of her that had shared his heat were soft and vulnerable. They felt colder than the rest of her, longing to press themselves up against him once more. She darted a glance at him and met his piercing amber eyes as he buttoned his coat, hiding the fall of his breeches. She guessed he was debating whether or not to apologize.
She’d ought to apologize to him. He was only in this barn, soaked through and denied release, because he’d helped her.
Knowing that Mr. Toogood was hard with wanting her and could set it aside and go on being kind—knowing that he was ignoring his own desires the way she’d ignore an aching back or sore knees—every bit of her strained for a way to thank him, to show him he hadn’t offended her. And after a few frustrated moments she remembered that kissing a man wasn’t the only way to tell him you thought he was splendid. I lack the impulse to confide in others, he’d said. Sometimes I regret it.
“Did you see many plays in London?” she asked.
He nodded. “I enjoy the theater. Lord Lenfield was kind enough not to object to my absenting myself of an evening, provided I was home before him.”
That meant more than once a week, then, or he might have gone on his half-holiday. “What was your favorite?”
He hesitated.
“Please. I’ve never been to a real theater.”
“Do you ever think of going to London? There’s always call for a maidservant there.”
Sukey knew girls who had left Lively St. Lemeston for London. She’d heard no news of them after. Maybe they were living lives much like her own, except that on their half-holiday they could go to the Opera. But maybe they were standing on some street corner with their breasts out, or they’d died of cholera or had their throats slit by thieves and were nothing but bones now.
“You hear stories about what happens to good girls like me in London,” she said flippantly. “I’d like a theater, but for music and lectures and the like, here’s as good as anywhere. There’s a servants’ ball most months, and the fair comes twice a year. I don’t know when I’d have time for more diversions than that.”
He smiled, startled and a little amused, as if he’d assumed she saw her home as a noplace too. Why, she knew a dozen girls who’d come up to Lively St. Lemeston from the countryside, and opened their eyes as wide to see a ball at the Assembly Rooms as Sukey would at ships sailing up the Thames.
“You’re a snob,” she said. “But I forgive you. You couldn’t help it, growing up in a grand house like Tassell Hall.”
“Likely not,” he agreed. “Very well, last month I saw an English opera about fairies, adapted from one of Shakespeare’s plays.” It wasn’t easy, but she did get him to talk, at length with genuine enjoyment. Lightning flared outside, the thunder lagging behind by several seconds now. For the first time today, Sukey felt only the excitement of a thunderstorm when you were safe inside, the small thrill of uncontrollable power, no different than the blacksmiths firing their anvils.
* * *
John hadn’t forgotten Sukey’s story about the clinker through Mrs. Humphrey’s window. When he heard drunken caterwauling in the back garden that evening, and drunken pounding on the kitchen door, he hurried downstairs to make sure there was nothing dangerous about this little St. Clement’s Day procession. It would be easy enough to find an excuse for crossing the street and ensuring no one offered Sukey any disrespect.
But what he saw reassured him. The two blacksmiths—one of whom was a stout widow woman of fifty—and their journeymen, children, apprentices, and assorted grubby assistants appeared boisterously drunk but well disposed towards their fellow men, not inclined to take liberties with person or property.
Therefore, after they trooped out of the kitchen, John went to a nearby cookshop and purchased two bottles of wine. These and a glass he carried upstairs, intending to get drunk—and perhaps imagine a more agreeable sequel to Sukey in his lap than her taking refuge across the barn from his awkward erection. He hoped he hadn’t frightened her.
Surely not. For the space of a moment last Friday, she’d thought to give him her virginity in the kitchen. Christ, he wanted to take it. He wanted her to trust him with it, when she’d trusted no one else.
She wasn’t careless or fearless; he’d learned that today. She was only full of bravado, and if she talked him out of his objections with a saucy tilt of her head, it would mean she’d weighed the risk and thought it worth her while. He yearned to bring her to such a pitch of desire that she demanded he deflower her, that she swore never to regret it.
She hadn’t thought him worth the risk yet. Why should she ever? John drove in the corkscrew with a savage twist, yanking the cork free and pouring himself a glass with such haste that wine spattered his cuff.
Abashed, he set the glass down without tasting it. Wine should be allowed to take flavor from the air. He could wait a quarter of an hour to be drunk.
Suddenly he was annoyed, that in lieu of such cheerfully bawdy imaginings as filled engravings discreetly bought in printing offices—the sort he had entertained about Miss Grimes just a week ago—she had somehow inspired in him this brutal yearning. The moon gazed in the window, pale and sad and very, very far away.
He gulped a mouthful of wine and shut his eyes, resolutely conjuring the memory of her slight, maddening body curled against his. He reached down for his already stirring cock, ready to make believe his own hand was hers.
Footsteps rang on the stairs. Heavy, booted footsteps. What the devil? And damn, damn, damn.
John crossed to the door and opened it, shocked when the boots turned a corner and revealed themselves to be carrying Stephen Dymond, Lord Lenfield, up the stairs two at a time.
His lordship broke into a smile. “It’s good to clap eyes on you, Toogood. I hope I’m not in the way.” His pause was no stratagem. If John said he was, he would turn and leave again with no hard feelings.
“Naturally not, Lord Lenfield. May I offer you a glass of wine?”
Lenfield’s eyes lingered on the two bottles, unfortunately the one thing in the room clearly illuminated by the candle beside them. “You’re sure you’re not expecting guests?”
John kept his face blank. Of all the people he would have preferred not to see him preparing for maudlin drunkenness, Lord Lenfield topped the list. “I only just returned from the Full Pot, my lord.”
Lenfield sprawled into the only chair. “In that case, I could use a drink.” He ran a hand through his hair. It was a habit John deplored, the primary reason he had always kept his master’s hair cropped short, so it could not be too far disarranged. His hands itched to fetch a comb and bring order out of chaos, but he wasn’t Lord Lenfield’s valet any longer.
He fetched a clean mug instead and poured wine into it. “It is not quite orthodox, my lord, but it will do for this vintage.”
Lord Lenfield swirled the mug anyway, sniffing it absentmindedly. Then he gulped it down without tasting it. “Thank you, Toogood. How do you do?” His eyes bored into John’s, full of the concentrated Dymond concern that, liberally aided by their wealth, had made his family patrons of a good part of West Sussex.
“Very well, my lord. And yourself?”
He leaned back in the chair, helping himself to another mug of wine. “Oh, Mama’s on a rampage. Not that I blame her. I’ve spent all day trying to make Nick see that you can’t simply stop speaking to your mother because she vexes you, and he—well, he’s being Nick.”
John was glad he was not expected to express an opinion. While he himself would certainly never give his father—who could rival Lady Tassell for vexatiousness—the cut direct, he was disturbed at his own lack of censure for Mr. Dymond’s behavior. He detected, even, a hint of envious admiration within his breast of which he was decidedly not proud.
“It’s going to be a grim Christmas without Nick or Tony. I thought this year, with Nick back from Spain…” Lenfield sighed, his blue eyes fixing on John again. “I’m damned sorry you’ve been caught up in this mess. I’d hire you back if she were merely angry, but her heart’s broken. I want her to know I’ll stand by her. It’s hard on you. Hard on me too. I was looking forward to having beautiful linen again when Nick was back on his feet.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. John knew he was conscience stricken. Dymond concern, as far as it went, was genuine.
“I was not wholly surprised by this turn of events,” John said gently. “I shall manage.”
Lenfield’s mouth formed a thin, tight line. “Once again, Nick considers no one but himself.”
“Perhaps he was considering Mrs. Dymond.”
Lenfield tapped his fingers on his mug and then, unexpectedly, laughed. “I never took you for a romantic, Toogood.”
Mere silence, when being teased, would be interpreted as affront. John made a slight show of amusement. What an incongruous notion! I, a romantic!
“You might have saved yourself a lot of trouble by writing to my mother to warn her of Nick’s infatuation.”
John nearly asked, Would you have? He honestly didn’t know. The way Lord Lenfield managed his mother was complex. But a lifetime’s habit prevailed, of silence whenever possible before a Dymond.
“Whatever Mother says, it does your loyalty credit.” Lord Lenfield’s mouth quirked up. “If not your common sense.”
John did not quite like the idea of his actions being taken for those of a—loyal retainer, as Sukey called it. He had merely kept his own counsel, as was every man’s right. Growing up as the butler’s son at Tassell Hall and finding his friends among his father’s underlings, John had learned early to shrink from any appearance of tale-telling.
As a young footman, he had worked closely with his parents, as Lord Lenfield did with his, and been continually obliged to weigh his loyalties and what he ought to divulge to whom. His father had wanted him to continue on at home and one day succeed him as butler, but unlike Lord Lenfield, John had declined to fall in with his parents’ wishes for his future. Now his loyalties were his own affair, and he liked it that way. Lady Tassell controlled his wages, but that did not make his conscience her property.
Lady Tassell hadn’t lived with Mr. Dymond in London. She hadn’t woken her son, cooked his breakfast and placed it within easy reach when he could barely summon the will to sit up in bed and read a book. She hadn’t made sure to leave the lid off the chocolate pot so the smell wafted to him. She hadn’t coaxed him to shave, changed his dressings, or laid hot and cold compresses on his wounded thigh. She hadn’t taken off his boots, pretending not to notice it was an agony to him because the poor boy’s pride couldn’t have borne that. Neither had Lord Lenfield, for that matter. John had.
For months Mr. Dymond hadn’t wanted anything but to be left alone. Until he met that impoverished widow.
“Thank you, sir,” he said at last, and left it there.
“I did ask around the town after employment for you. Unfortunately I don’t think many people leave their posts this time of year. The vicar is in need of a new butler, but he was adamant that only a married man would do.”
“Mr. Summers, my lord? I was not aware he supported the Tassell interest.”
“No, he’s been a Tory all his life. But I think he’s softened in his old age. He was loyal as a rock to Lord Wheatcroft, but now that Wheatcroft’s in the ground, he was quite ready to be friendly.”
The vicarage was a handsome, modern house of brick with white trim, and John had always liked Mr. Summers despite his Toryism. His sermons, while making little effort to be profound, were consistently both entertaining and full of good sense, which rendered them remarkable in John’s experience.
Mr. Summers was old, and when the living fell, a new vicar might want new servants, but until then the position would likely be a secure one. A steady, quiet one too, with a modest staff and no traveling. No more sleeping on cots in dressing rooms or pallets on hotel floors.
John had never wanted to be a butler, but a small house was different from a great one. There could not be more than five or six servants in all. How much more difficult than valeting could it be?
He was seized with a desire to manage that neat brick house, akin to the senseless but overwhelming lust inspired by a beautiful object in a shop window. “I take it he requires a new housekeeper as well? I could inquire among my own acquaintance.”
Lord Lenfield shook his head. “No, he specifically wants a married fellow. I gathered the previous incumbent was turned off for persecuting the poor maidservants, and he hopes a staid paterfamilias will suit better.”
“Did he say how much the position pays, my lord?”
His lordship frowned. “Forty pounds per annum, I believe. Why, Toogood? Have you been hiding a wife?”
John smiled. “No, my lord.”
Lord Lenfield chewed at his lip, hesitating. As John had refrained for four years from remarking on his master’s uncharacteristic dithering at the mirror before a certain political salon—a connection, by the by, of which Lady Tassell would decidedly disapprove—it was only justice when his lordship did not pry. “Well, you might pay the Reverend Mr. Summers a visit and have a go at talking him round yourself. Meeting you ought to make further recommendation superfluous, but I’ve written you a reference. If you really want the position, you may tell Summers I should be grateful to him for considering you.”
This, from one of the acknowledged patrons of the town, was a promise of great practical value. John bowed his thanks. Lenfield fished two sealed letters out of his pocket and laid them on the table. “The other is from your mother.”
“Thank you, my lord. Was she well when last you saw her?”
“Quite well.” Lord Lenfield pushed himself to his feet. “Your father…”
John’s heart raced unpleasantly. He knew his father must be ashamed and angry at John’s disgrace. “Yes, my lord?”
“He’s growing forgetful and irritable,” Lenfield said at last, reluctantly.
John swallowed. Such a decline would be so hard on his father’s pride. “I see.”
Lord Lenfield paid minute attention to the fall of his greatcoat sleeves over his gloves. “I thought you ought to know.” A button on one cuff dangled loose. John shut his mouth tight and said nothing.
He didn’t see what he could do. He couldn’t make his father younger—or make him do anything else, for that matter.
“If you wished to visit him, I would help you to arrange it when my mother is from home.”
Oh. Of course. Visit him.
He could imagine his father’s mortified fury at having to sneak his son in and out of his beloved mistress’s house when her back was turned. “Thank you, my lord. That is very kind of you.”
“Well, I shan’t impose on you any longer.” The loose button wobbled as Lord Lenfield held out his hand. “You know where to find me. Should you be looking for a position again in future, please write. Mother’s too fair-minded to hold a grudge forever.”
John thought the odds were even on that question. But he gave a small, warm smile back and shook his former employer’s hand.