Listen to the Moon (12 page)

That night, John came to bed prompt as anything. He left the candle lit while he made love to her. At first Sukey thought it was because he wanted to see her body—but he got up after and went out of the room, checking the doors and windows again, and then sat down with his blighted notebook and pencil!

“It’s bedtime.” Was it her wifely duty to drag him to bed, just as she’d had to force breakfast down his throat? No, one must draw the line somewhere. “What are you even about?”

He smiled at her. “I’m creating a list of tasks for everyone on the staff, so that things may be done more efficiently.”

Her heart sank. It would be nothing but quarrels and chidings as far as the eye could see. “It’s your first week. Can’t you let well enough alone for now?”

He put down his pencil. “I don’t set much store by well enough, I’m afraid.”

“Of course you don’t.” She flopped back against the pillow. She didn’t like that after one night of being married, she already missed having him beside her in the bed. “Don’t blame me when you fall asleep and drop the tea tray on Mr. Summers’s foot.”

He smiled tiredly, the gray in his beard catching the candlelight. She’d kissed that stubble just a minute ago. “I won’t. Good night, Mrs. Toogood.”

She rolled away from the light, tucking the blankets so snug around her that when he did at last come to bed, it woke her. He curled up on his side of the bed, and his hand—she fancied his hand hovered between them, the blankets lifting as if he would place it on her hip. But a moment later it landed heavily on the pallet and stayed there.

* * *

“I can’t read this,” Molly said flatly, looking at the list of tasks, arranged by hour of the day, that John had neatly written for her. Sukey read her own, feeling cold and small. It began,

Half past 5 a.m. Clean fire irons and black-lead fireplaces in rms. not used in morning.

Clean all marble hearths.*

A note was written at the bottom of the sheet:
(*) denotes tasks to be performed once per week.

They each held like papers, with faces that bespoke a like dismay. John seemed unfazed. “Can you read at all?”

Molly flushed. “Print, a bit. Not flourishy writing like this.”

“I can make you another, writ in block letters, with sketches to help you make it out,” he said calmly. “When you’ve followed it a week or two, you won’t need the paper anyway.”

Sukey was grateful he didn’t make a fuss; for a moment she’d been afeared it hadn’t occurred to him how many working folk never learned to write. Nor read, for that matter. As a child she’d hated her mother sitting her down with a slate to copy out the alphabet, and later the Psalms, for an hour at a time, boxing her ears when she got it wrong, but she was grateful now.

Molly dug her heels in. “You’ve given Thea too much, sir. She can’t do all that and fetch and carry for the rest of us. We do well enough as we are, sir, don’t we? Why the change?”

“Because I think we can aspire to better than ‘well enough’.”

Sukey sighed inwardly.

“I have remarked over the last week that many important tasks are regularly forgotten or omitted because you have no time for them or have not been in the habit of doing them. With increased efficiency, more could be accomplished. Of course I hope you will let me know how you find your lists, and in a month’s time we may change them should they prove really impossible.”

“Has Mr. Summers complained?” Molly demanded, voice rising. Sukey winced.

John regarded her steadily.

“Sir,” Molly added, bowing her head mutinously.

“If you like, we may go to Mr. Summers and ask him whether I have the authority to set you household tasks.”

The girl’s mouth set.

“In fact,” he said, “I believe that as under-housemaid, you are obliged to obey myself, Mrs. Khaleel and Mrs. Toogood.”

“Yes, sir.” Molly gave Sukey a glare. She writhed inwardly.
Don’t drag me into this, John.

“I have no wish to set myself up as a tyrant,” he said to them. “The alteration will be difficult at first, but I think that if you will try to follow the course I have laid out, you yourselves will find that your work becomes easier. I hope we may all treat each other with courtesy and respect in the meantime. If you have no questions, you may go, and if you wish to stay and discuss your list with me, you may do so.”

Everyone hurried out of the butler’s pantry but Larry, who filled the next half-hour with anxious requests for explanations. John gave them patiently, feeling more and more discouraged. When the footman was satisfied and John could get back to work, his spirits sank further to see his wife and Mrs. Khaleel talking quietly in the kitchen doorway, heads bent over their lists.
Talking sedition,
John thought. When Sukey saw him, she stepped back with a guilty flush.

“You’ve put thorough cleaning days on Wednesday, sir,” the cook said.

“Yes, Mrs. Khaleel?”

“That’s market day, sir.”

His shoulders sagged a little. “Ah, yes. Thank you for bringing the matter to my attention. Will Friday do?”

Mrs. Khaleel looked at Sukey, who looked back as if to say,
Don’t drag me into this.

“On Friday, I make refreshments for the parish vestry meeting,” the cook said, “and Thea goes with Mr. Summers to serve them. They only didn’t meet last week because of Advent.”

“Of course,” John said, feeling a fool. He could not help thinking that Sukey might have spared him this. There she went, scurrying out of the room while he was occupied. “I remember now. Mondays, then?”

“I think Mondays would serve admirably, sir, thank you.”

“Wonderful. Thank you, Mrs. Khaleel.” John went to find his wife. He could not decide whether he was irritated or hurt that she hadn’t been willing to talk to him herself. He was hardly a Judge Jeffreys—or a Mrs. Humphrey.

He found her at once, airing and dusting the upstairs bedrooms in compliance with her list.
Are you afraid of me?
He couldn’t ask that. “Mrs. Khaleel and I have agreed to change general cleaning days to Monday,” he told her. “Is there anything else on your list that must be altered directly?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“I did not mean them to be an unalterable proclamation,” he told her. “I said I welcomed suggestions.”

“But you didn’t, when Molly—”

“I objected to Molly’s tone, not her opinions.”

“She’s worried about Thea.”

“So am I.”

She came closer and put a hand to his lapel, trying to coax a smile from him. “You worry more’n you ought. We all know Mr. Summers didn’t complain. I don’t know what the countess expected at Tassell Hall, but you can relax a fraction here.”

His face stiffened until it felt like a mask. She just wanted everyone to relax and be friends, but sometimes things needed to actually be
accomplished
. “A master who is made to suffer for indulgence soon learns to be harsh.”

She threw up her hands. “Maybe Mr. Summers rates charity and mutual goodwill above efficiency.” She spat out “efficiency” like a curse, and then looked appalled at having done it.

I see no reason to assume Mr. Summers’s priorities align with your own.
John struggled with his temper. “A month isn’t so long. If you all still hate it in a month, I’ll come up with something else.”

She hesitated, an expression he couldn’t read flitting across her face. “Now you’ve finished writing the lists, will you stay in bed instead of jumping up as soon as…as soon as you’re satisfied?”

John was startled. He had been sure she was busily wishing she’d found a quiet position somewhere else instead of marrying him. For the first time this morning, he felt his mouth curve up. “Does it really matter to you?”

She beamed back, looking immensely relieved. It came to him that perhaps she wasn’t afraid of him. Perhaps she only wanted him to like her as much as he wanted her to like him. “Oh, I only want to know if you’ll be out of the way when I receive my lovers,” she said, drawing away an inch—but only an inch. Still within easy reach.

He glanced at the door, then leaned down to whisper in her ear. “How many lovers?”

“Oh, not above half a dozen. One doesn’t like to be greedy.”

His eyes flickered to the door again. “I think Molly is leaving the house at night. That’s why I’ve been staying up. I heard Thea answer Mr. Summers’s bell again last night.”

Every night, though, he wished he were in bed with his wife instead. If Molly wasn’t sneaking out, he was losing sleep for nothing, and if she was, catching her would force him to decide if he could conceal it from his employer.

After all, what did he care if Molly had taken a lover? She looked terribly young to him, but at her age he’d lost his virginity to a chambermaid at a house party. Though it had always been a fact of life that if a servant was caught engaging in an affair, he or she—and more especially she—would likely find herself out on her ear, John had never yet made it his business to carry tales.

Blast these small households where they kept the maids walled up like nuns! In a large establishment, with plenty of menservants and visiting back and forth with other large establishments, it was easy enough for a girl to find a lover without filching keys or shirking work.

Perhaps they would all be better served if he asked Sukey to whisper a discreet word in Molly’s ear about the virtues of pennyroyal tea.

He should have stayed a valet.

Sukey’s heart sank again. She’d been feeling so cheerful for a moment there! All week she’d been worrying that John regretted marrying her, as it became clearer and clearer that she was not in the least what he was used to in an upper housemaid.

A minute ago, she’d read in his face everything he’d have liked to say—about how ignorant she was, and lazy, and how the word “efficiency” shouldn’t be mocked. Her idle worries had grown to an awful lump just below her ribcage. If she could have blurted out
You still like me, don’t you?
without sounding clinging and whinging, and not the sort of wife men liked at all, she would have.

And then he’d said,
Does it really matter to you?
and she’d realized he wanted to ask her the same thing.

Now what should she do? Say he was mistaken about Molly? “Why did you not go up and catch her gone?”

“Thea would only make up a plausible excuse for her, and besides…” He hesitated. “When I went to wake them the first day, they were frightened to have me in their room. I had rather catch her coming or going. I waited until three this morning for her to return.”

She looked at him. Good Lord, he’d barely slept. He was worried indeed. And, she guessed, he hoped to keep this from their master. If he had gone up and spoken to Thea, Mr. Summers would have heard him.

“Then it’s no use staying up again,” she said. “You’ll get circles under your eyes, and all Mr. Summers’s guests will remark upon it.”

He lowered his voice even further. “If she gets herself with child…”

If Molly got herself with child, there would be nothing either of them could do to keep it from Mr. Summers for long. And Sukey was getting fond of the girl. She reminded her of Mrs. Dymond a little, always crossing her arms and glaring, and she drew good-luck talismans on scraps of paper. Sukey had a sketch of a holly leaf tucked into her shift right now.

“Do you really think she’s meeting a man?” She could come up with no better explanation herself. “She’s so hardheaded.”

He shrugged.

Oh, why should Sukey fret herself into an early grave for a girl who’d never thank her for it?
Molly’s job is Molly’s lookout,
she told herself,
and no reason for John to stay up at night when he could be in his warm bed.

“I suppose sometimes it’s difficult to be hardheaded,” she said mournfully. “When a gentleman is very handsome.”

His mouth twitched. “Is it?”

She widened her eyes. “I hope you don’t think I meant you!”

He laughed. Feeling very daring, she took his hand and placed it on her breast. John glanced at the door and moved towards her, turning as if to push her against the wall—and then he stepped away. “You win, Mrs. Toogood. Tonight I’ll stay in bed with you.”

They’d been married a week already, and they’d be married many more, and yet all that day Sukey counted down the hours to nighttime, skin crawling with eager frustration. The novelty hadn’t worn off of lovemaking, but that wasn’t all. He’d promised to stay with her. She’d convinced him. She was a siren.

She daydreamed through supper about falling asleep with his strong arms around her, safe and cherished, instead of trying to nod off to the pencil-scritching sound of him thinking hard about nothing to do with her.

“What are you doing on Saturday, Molly?” Mrs. Khaleel asked.

She tried to listen to the conversation. If she ignored the other servants, they’d think she was getting above herself. John was off serving Mr. Summers’s tea and answering the bell so the rest of them might eat in peace, having taken his own hasty meal during Mr. Summers’s dessert. He did that every day, and every day his kindness sweetened Sukey’s supper.

“After the mummers’ play, I have to help my friend Sarah with her washing,” Molly said glumly. “She’s been ill and not able to keep up with the work.” Groans of commiseration went up around the table. She sighed. “All our other friends are going nutting. I asked them to help us, but…”

“I’ll help,” Larry said. Sukey was impressed. You’d never catch her making an offer like that.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Molly said, taken aback. “It’s your holiday.”

Larry shrugged, helping himself to some more rice pudding. “I don’t mind.”

“What about you, Thea?” Sukey said before Molly, who looked about to break down in tears of gratitude, could nobly insist she didn’t need him.

Thea shrugged. “Dunno.”

Sukey remembered being Thea’s age and hating to be asked about anything, so she didn’t press her. “And you, ma’am?”

Mrs. Khaleel smiled. “Imogen Makepeace’s mother always makes soup from the remains of her goose, and I’m to make the dumplings.” She looked happy about it, so Sukey didn’t say it didn’t seem like much of a holiday to her.