Listen to the Moon (31 page)

“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.