A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) (5 page)

Russell handed
the child back to Luce, with an air of one having successfully carried off a
frightening duty, and absented himself to his wife's side. "They don’t
break," she said out of the corner of her mouth, "unless you drop
them on their heads."

"So
small!" he murmured, and there was an edge of marvel to his voice that
made her look at him sharply, and found him still with his hand cupped as if he
were still cradling the child's head. She moved her foot against his and gave
him a shove.

"Russell,
people will think you are a mooncalf. Have you never held a child before?"

"Only you,
tibber," he said, "I didn’t dare any others, after that. You were
sufficient wriggly to frighten the life out of me." He gave a happy sigh.
"We'd not be missed, lass. If you'd care to see our home. Travel light,
we'd be there in - a week? Maybe?"

9

Afterwards, she looked back on that week
as their honeymoon, for all it was spent trailing hock-deep along deep-rutted
muddy lanes in the rain. She learned a number of things: that it was possible
to ride holding hands with a man, if your respective mounts were amicable
enough, and if you were able to slip the disapproving eye of your maid and his
groom for more than an hour at a time. That amongst his many admirable
abilities Russell's ability to command a hot meal and a warm bed in short order
in even the busiest inns, was amongst his finest, and that without even raising
his voice. That he could be remarkably intimidating, if you put his back to the
wall; that he was fierce in his defence of his own, and would brook no
insolence from his subordinates. She wondered if he had always been so, as a
fiery young officer, or if that trick of arrogant command was a thing he'd
learned later.

"Boots,"
he said firmly, and that was something else she had learned about her new
husband. She sat and put her muddy booted foot into his lap obediently, with a
sigh.

"Russell,
do we really have to -"

"Dry boots,
clean stockings." It was something of an obsession of his, this dry boots
and clean stockings, every day. He rolled her stocking down over her foot,
rubbed her frog-cold toes between his hands, and looked up at her. "You
ask my bailiff, my tibber. He was with me in Scotland, and I have never seen
men as miserable as those without good boots. Can’t be warm when your feet are
damp, Zee, no matter how many clothes you have on."

"I'm not a
soldier, Russell," she said patiently, and he'd planted a kiss on his palm
and placed it on her instep.

"Surely.
But you’re my wife, and I have a duty to look after you."

"Oh?
Indeed? So dragging me halfway across the country in midwinter is looking after
me?"

"Character-forming,"
he said sweetly. "Anyway, you’re enjoying it."

And actually,
she was. She had never been so far outside Essex before, crossing the
Chilterns, though she cared little for the chalky taste of the ale. The people
sounded different, the sky looked different, the trees looked different.
Everything was a little wider and paler and colder than it was in Essex.

And then they
were in Buckinghamshire, and it seemed that they would be obliged to call at
every little manor in the county, at Radnage and Walters Ash and Wooburn, that
Major Russell might introduce his draggled bride in company. And she fell to
wondering if perhaps she might not take to her new home after all, for Russell
at his stiffest and coldest was as nothing to the stiffness and the coolness of
the people he claimed as friends and neighbours, moving politely around each
other, offering cakes and wine with a brittle social gloss.

"My new
bride," he said, and his voice had the same pride to it as it had had the
,first time he'd said it, and this had to be the fifth or the sixth.

Mistress Eleanor
Lane, of Everhall manor, inclined her head graciously, and looked at Thomazine
with some curiosity.

A big house,
venerable and - Thomazine sniffed, surreptitiously - not very well kept, for
despite its grandeur, it smelt of mice, and damp. Not as clean as White Notley,
either. She restrained herself from craning her neck to observe the creamy
cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling, that her domestic soul itched to take a
broom to. Almost imperceptible, but distinctly there.  "Indeed, Mistress -
ah - Russell?"

"Indeed," Thomazine
replied, returning her stare for stare, for Mistress Lane evidently fancied she
resembled a blush-rose, in her stiff pink silks. In point of fact, with a roll
of creamy fat over the stiffly-boned shoulders of her fashionable gown, and a
bum roll behind and about, she resembled nothing so much as an undercooked
sausage. Thomazine was a little crumpled, for they had spent the better part of
a week on horseback and the greater part of her baggage was as yet at White
Notley. But her plain steel-blue wool gown was good, for her mother had a taste
for line and colour that was unsurpassed throughout Essex, and Thomazine drew
herself up to her full height and looked down her not-inconsiderable nose at
Mistress Lane as though she was the Queen of England herself. (Possibly
taller.) "We are new-married. A week, no more."

"How
charming. Such pretty hair." With a smile that said, such a shame about
the lamentably prominent nose, dear, and the unfashionable length of your
bones. "You have such a
lot
of it, Mistress Russell. I always find
long hair so difficult to keep tidy, don’t you? Such a relief that the
prevailing fashion is for
en deshabille
, I think. It must make things so
much easier."

"Indeed,"
Thomazine said again, unsure whether or not she ought to give the sausage-lady
tit for tat, or whether perhaps she had misunderstood that last. For, after
all, it wasn't Thomazine who was crouched on a spindly stool like a toad on a
mushroom, with her sagging bubbies thrust up as a kind of ghastly support for
her jowls, simpering at polite company. Perhaps Mistress Lane had only meant
that the prevailing fashion was not to finish putting on a bodice before
receiving guests. She glanced up at Russell, hoping to take her lead from him -
was it meant, perhaps, as a joke, that he might understand?

"Well,
madam, I must not keep you from your journey," the sausage-lady said, and
the rude baggage actually twitched her head aside, tinkling a little bell with
one podgy hand to summon a servant.

"No,"
Russell said, equally curtly, and he had that old, slightly wide-eyed, rigid
look about him, as if by holding himself very stiff he might also hold his
temper in. (It was not a look she had often seen, at White Notley, and she put
her hand out and touched his wrist. He smiled down at her, but he stayed rigid.
That angry, then. Sausage-woman had meant to be rude.) "No, we have a way
to travel, before we reach home."

She was not
surprised that Russell was as slight as he was, if the only refreshment anyone
ever offered guests in these parts was thin, sugary wine, well-watered, and
stale cake, and even that grudgingly. At White Notley any guest who arrived at
the supper hour would have had a place made for them at table, and be expected
to do service to Williams's good food. "Perhaps you would do the honour of
calling on us when we are settled at Four Ashes, Mistress Lane," Russell
said icily.

"Perhaps.
Although it will be a while and a while before the house is fit to live in, so
I believe. I understand the house to be gutted, sir. Wholly gutted."

"It
was," he said. "My bailiff has had men working on it this six months
and more."

"No expense
spared, indeed."

"None."

She inclined her
head again, dismissively. "How very fortunate that Mistress Coventry's
untimely death should leave you so well provided-for, Major Russell. My
congratulations on your - most unexpected - marriage, sir. And my husband's,
also, were he here to offer them. I bid you a good day."

10

"Well.
That
went well."
He sniffed, and hunched his shoulders, and looked so remarkably uncomforted
that she nudged the black mare up close to his big grey horse and took his
hand.

“I imagine we
are going to get any number of odd looks for a while. It
is
a little
unexpected of you to turn up with a new wife, when you’ve been the county’s
most eligible bachelor for years. She's probably been secretly in love with you
for years herself.”

Which startled a
laugh out of him. “Thank you, Thomazine, for that piece of shameless flattery.
A patent untruth, but thank you. They’ve not set eyes on me for the better part
of twenty years, tibber. I could have had
six
wives, for all they know.”

“All at once?” she said delicately.
“That would have kept you busy.”

“If they were
all like you, mistress, I should be even greyer than I already am.” The corner
of his mouth lifted in a reluctant smile. “Unexpected. Aye. You might say so. I
had thought – well, I was a regular guest at their table, before the wars. Am I
so changed? No, don’t answer that, Thomazine. A regicide, a most notorious
Roundhead, and now I’m turned up out of nowhere with a beautiful young woman to
wife, after twenty years missing. They probably think I’ve spent the last
twenty years smuggling fleeing Malig- King’s men to France, at an enormous
profit. Or selling arms to the Dutch. Or something.”

Thomazine’s mare
heaved a blubbery sigh and shifted her weight onto one back foot. “I’ll not
have them be rude to you, Zee,” he said, and she looked up expecting her watery
husband to be blinking back tears. Instead he looked rather frighteningly
purposeful. “I’ll tell you one thing straight off, mistress. They rent a farm
at Walter’s Ash off my estate, and that lease is terminated. As of now. I will
be instructing my bailiff to write and put an end to that agreement, and they
can have till the end of the quarter to find new grazing for their benighted
stock. She wants to play silly buggers, and I intend to play silly buggers
right back. And I bet Henry Lane won’t thank her for that, when they’re put to
the trouble of finding new pasture.”

“There’s no need
for –“

“She was
discourteous to you, Thomazine. And I will not tolerate insolence, from an aged
parasite in, in borrowed finery!”

“
Borrowed
?”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Well, unless Lane’s been spending the rent money
on those god-awful gowns of hers, I’m fairly sure they’re not paid for, tibber.
Since I’ve not had a penny off ‘em since the turn of the year.”

Thomazine looked
down at her gloved hands on the mare’s reins. Neatly gloved, as well they might
be, since they’d been made by Uncle Luce’s father, and he’d been a member of
the Guild of Glovers. Very neat, and well-made, and well-kept, in plain russet
leather. But plain, and a little worn, and neatly mended in places.

Looked at the
lace on her husband’s cuff, which was narrow, and discreet, and hellish
expensive. “Dear,” she said, carefully, “I had always assumed you were, well,
you were. Ah. I don’t really know how to say this. I had assumed you were like
us.” He was looking amused, now, that long, slow, cat’s blink that was the
closest he could get to a smug grin. “Would I be right in guessing that you
are... significantly better placed than I had assumed?”

“Tibber, you
behold the last of the noble Russell household.” He gave her a sly sidelong
glance. “I don’t take much feeding. I am, I would argue, cheap to keep.”

She took another
deep breath. “Your," she swallowed, "land. Lands. Which bits are
yours? I mean, did the King – did His Majesty – does he not
mind
, with
you being a, a, you know -?”

“If you are
asking do I own half of Buckinghamshire, mistress, I may assure you, I do not.
And does the King mind that I do happen to own a proportion of it, well, as I
have no objection to his mistresses being my next-door neighbour, then I trust
he has no objection to a notorious regicide living next door to Radnage Manor.
Why, Thomazine, I do believe you are shocked!”

“You live
next
door
to one of His Majesty’s mistresses?” she squeaked.

“There is a
respectable distance between us, madam, I guarantee. I have yet to see the lady
in question, but I am assured she is in no way remarkable, and nor does she
live as to excite comment in the neighbourhood. Although my bailiff assures me
that she is frequently visited by a plain country gentleman who goes by the
name of Rowley. That being why he gave her the wretched place in the first
place.” He turned his head, and looked at her solemnly. “That’s the King, dear.
Though I’ve only met him the once, in a – civilian – capacity.”

“Goodness,” she
said faintly.

“Goodness had
very little to do with it, tibber. Although I’m told His Majesty is a very nice
man, and very kind to his, ah, friends. And madam,” he looked down at her, and
there was a smile lurking in his eyes, “I have been involved in regicide once
already, and if
Master Rowley
thinks he’s going to make frolic with my
wife, I may be moved to become so again.”

“Why, Russell. I
do believe you’re jealous!”