Listen to the Moon (20 page)

She poured herself a cup, sitting in Molly’s vacated chair with a sigh. “I have said the same thing so many times. Of course when a man says it, she believes him.”

John, already unsure and wishing he had said a hundred things differently and better, felt supremely uncomfortable. What could he say to that? Was it true? “She considered herself responsible for a hurt you suffered. I imagine that was part of why she could not allow herself to believe your assurances.”

Mrs. Khaleel wrapped the end of her braid around her finger. “I was too ashamed to speak to her about it. And now I’m ashamed of
that
.”

“Life is full of shame,” John said ruefully. “Would that it were not so.”

Her fidgeting hands stilled. “Could you ask Mr. Summers for me not to have Mr. Bearparke to live here? I don’t think—I think it would be a disaster.”

He nodded, surprised and grateful. He must not have done too badly tonight if she trusted him enough to ask him that. If she believed he had a chance of success. “Of course.”

“What will you say to him?” she said apprehensively.

He rubbed at his temples, wishing for his bed. He had not had any tea himself. “I’ll give it some thought. But I don’t anticipate needing to say more than that I have observed the curate is overpartial to you, and that I believe it extremely unwise for him to live here. Perhaps…perhaps I might add something to the effect that while I have the utmost faith in both your virtues, it is best not to rely solely on one’s fortitude, but to avoid the temptation and opportunity for sin, as far as possible.”

Her eyebrows went up admiringly. “You should have been a vicar yourself. He’ll eat that up.”

He was surprised into a laugh. “Thank you, but I can’t agree that planned hypocrisy is a good recommendation for the surplice.”

She smiled. “That’s a matter for debate.”

He smiled back. “Is there anything else we ought to speak of?”

She shook her head. “Go back to your bed. Thank you again.”

He stood, and then thought that perhaps he ought to say more. A compliment. “I should rather offer you thanks. I am very grateful to have someone on whom I may so completely rely as my partner in managing this house.”

Her face glowed.

When he got back to the butler’s pantry, he found Sukey waiting for him with a lit candle. “What happened?”

“I caught Molly sneaking out.”

“I know. I eavesdropped for a minute or two. You were terribly kind to her.”

He ought to disapprove, but he only felt warm. And it was hard to mind that she had probably known about all of it first, when Molly and Mrs. Khaleel had finally trusted him. Her pointed face was flanked by loose, lopsided braids, and she had acquired an old linsey-woolsey striped bedgown at least twenty years out of fashion that she wore as a sort of dressing gown. All in all she had a charmingly sleepy, havey-cavey air. He leaned down and kissed her. “I’m doing my best. Thank you for teaching me how to pay compliments.”

“Thank you for teaching me how to kiss,” she murmured, her teeth catching at his lower lip.

He tugged at her braid. He’d meant to buy her new hair ribbons, but he liked these old green ones. “I compared her fear for her friend with my fear when work isn’t done properly. And I was shocked when she pointed out that it wasn’t the same. Because it feels the same to me. It feels like averting disaster. Why is that?”

“It seems to me like you generally expect Mr. Summers to leap out from behind an end table and give us the sack.”

“I suppose I do.” It should have been a humiliating observation, but there was no condemnation in her tone. He could think of no one else in the world he could have talked to about this without expiring of embarrassment. The answer to the riddle was obvious, now he thought of it. Perhaps that was most embarrassing of all, that he’d never thought of it. “You may have gathered that my father could be very harsh when things were not done as he liked.”

Her eyebrows said,
You’re a chip off the old block, then.
But her mouth said, “I have gathered that, yes. My mum—well, she could be harsh enough, but she had less rules.”

He took a deep breath, and then another. “I knew how he liked things done, and I had an unfortunate tendency to impart my knowledge to others. It didn’t always make me very popular outside my own circle of friends, as you can imagine. But I really did feel a sense of panic, because I knew that if they made enough mistakes, eventually one would be their last at the Hall.”

She nodded. “I still count the coal when I light the fires, even though I know Mrs. Humphrey isn’t going to check the scuttles.”

He sighed, pinching out the candle and drawing her down into bed with him. “I’m sorry, I’m keeping you awake.”

“I like it when you keep me awake.”

“Tomorrow morning I have to talk to Mr. Summers.”

“What about?”

“About Mr. Bearparke coming to live with us.”

She didn’t ask why. So Mrs. Khaleel had confided in her. At the moment, he didn’t mind it. “Take this with you for luck.” She sat up and felt through her clothing, pressing a scrap of paper into his hands.

He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was one of the little talismans Molly was always drawing, pencil-drawn flowers and twopenny bits and cups of tea with steam rising out of them. The maid had never offered him one.

He didn’t believe in talismans. But he believed in gifts, and he believed in good wishes. “Thank you,” he said, and got up to tuck it into his coat pocket so it wouldn’t be lost.

* * *

He said it just as he had told Mrs. Khaleel he would. “It is best not to rely solely on one’s fortitude, but to avoid the temptation and opportunity for sin, as far as possible,” he finished, looking at Mr. Summers’ blotter so he wouldn’t have to see the vicar’s face grow grave.

“I see.” There was a world of disappointment in the words.

John waited, tense and hopeful, to see what he would say next.

The vicar toyed with his pen. “Are you sure?” he said at last. “I know him to be fond of her, but I have always thought it because she reminds him of his childhood. He was born in India, you know.”

John kept his face blank. “As far as I know, there is nothing to reproach him with. But perhaps he has been less guarded around me, or perhaps his thoughts tend more towards the mundane. I thought the nature of his interest quite unmistakable. I’m sorry, sir.”

Mr. Summers’s long sigh was silent, but John could see his thin chest collapse slowly and his shoulders hunch. “Well then. It would be a sin on my own part to put him in the way of further temptation. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.”

“Thank you, sir.” He hesitated. “If I might be so bold, sir…”

“Please do.” Mr. Summers now sounded resigned rather than amused.

“I apologize if I do either you or Mr. Bearparke less than justice. I wish only to say that I would be sorry to see Mr. Bearparke blame Mrs. Khaleel for his disappointment.”

Mr. Summers’s eyebrows shot up. “I believe you do do us less than justice. You have placed the matter in my hands. Rest assured I will deal with it.”

John nodded. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“You may go, Toogood.”

John bowed. His hand was on the doorknob when the vicar called him back.

“How is Thea?” the old man asked quietly.

John hesitated. Thea was at least reliably where she should be when he went to check on her, but he regularly caught her sowing gapeseed out of the window, or else working at a glacial pace. It had been too much to hope that the vicar could remain blind to it. “She is unhappy, sir,” he said, hoping his delay in answering had not been obvious. “There is no mistaking it. But time is said to heal all wounds.”

Mr. Summers rapped his knuckles on the desk, his mouth turning down.

“Will that be all, sir?” John said, trying to behave as if there was nothing more to be said—as if talk of hiring a new laundry maid had no place here and had not so much as crossed his mind.

“She used to sing while she worked. It brightened up the place, even if most of her songs were gruesome in the extreme.”

John remembered that he had chided Sukey for singing and felt ashamed.

“Thank you for your patience with her,” Mr. Summers said at last. “Pray continue it. That reminds me, Mrs. Toogood is said to know a wide selection of local ballads. I’m told she was much in demand when Mrs. Humphrey’s lodgers had a musical evening.”

John hadn’t known that. He couldn’t suppress a pang of jealousy that the vicar did.

“I fancy myself something of a local historian,” the vicar said. “I should like to try to write some of her songs down, if she might sometimes sew in the living room by the spinet.”

The pang of jealousy turned to a dull ache. John would like hours of the week to sit quietly and listen to his wife sing, but such luxury belonged to their master, not to him. “Yes, sir. I shall inform her.”

“That is very obliging of you,” the vicar said, an amused twist to his mouth. “It is not a command, however, but a request.”

“Yes, sir.” John felt embarrassed and in the wrong, and even more resentful at having been made to feel that way.

“Thank you.” The vicar nodded, dismissing him. But he called out once more, just as John was at the threshold. “Toogood! The temperature of my dinner has increased remarkably since you came to work for me.”

“I’m glad to hear it, sir.”

“Thank you for your dedication to your work. That will be all.”

John was embarrassed by his rush of emotion, but tears pricked his eyes all the same. “You are very welcome, sir. Very welcome indeed.”

He shut the door behind him and leaned against it. It was foolish to be so affected by a simple compliment. It felt like relief, an intense relief belonging to something greater than the temperature of dinner. He headed for the kitchen to give Mrs. Khaleel the good news, but as he neared it, the side door opened and Sukey came in, a large pineapple cradled like a babe in one arm and mud caked on her boots. Stamping her feet on the mat did little to remove it.

And there the anger was, his father’s anger, hot and sure of itself. “There’s a boot scraper in the courtyard,” he said, trying not to sound short. “Scrubbing this floor is the one real task I’ve seen Thea undertake this week, and she was proud of it when it was done.” He’d even caught her smiling at the damp, smooth stonework.

“I used the scraper.”

Why did she argue instead of even looking at her boots? “I couldn’t tell.”

She raised her eyebrows. “It’s lovely to see you too.”

He took a deep breath, and then another, trying to calm his instinctive irritation. It receded obediently, like the sea at low tide—baring, to his surprise, a sad uncertainty that clung like seaweed to his ribcage. Ugh. Anger was a deal more pleasant.
I was terribly lonely, and you took pity on me:
it had seemed a flirtatious falsehood once.

Even at Tassell Hall, servants had not lost their places so easily as all that. What was he so afraid of?

“I’m sorry,” he said, wanting to take her in his arms and feel her warmth. “Please don’t be angry with me.”

“I thought you were angry with
me
.”

He shook his head.

She smiled at him, always more ready than he to let a grudge go. “I brought you these.” She held out a fistful of—of flowers, many-petaled and opulent, rose-pink and startling white. At first he could only be dazzled; after a moment he recognized hothouse camellias.

“Where did you get them?”

She hefted the pineapple. “Mrs. Khaleel sent me to Wheatcroft for this. His lordship showed me about. I’d never seen a pineapple growing. Did you know they grow one to a plant?” Her eyes shone. “It was the drollest thing I ever saw, a spray of leaves peeping out of a pot with a pineapple plumped atop them.”

As Tassell Hall had a pineapple stove, he had seen it many times. But he was overwhelmed by her charm. He could imagine how gratifying her pleasure and amazement must have been to the new Lord Wheatcroft, an enthusiastic hothouse gardener. She should have hurried home, of course, but Mr. Summers could hardly fault her for politeness to a peer of the realm.

There he went again, creating excuses and explanations for a calling to account that would never come. He had not been required to explain anything to Mr. Summers in all the time he’d worked here. It was Mr. Toogood senior before whom he had constantly had to defend himself and his friends.

He took the flowers she had brought him. She had thought of him. He felt again that foolish, disproportionate gratitude, throat closing and eyes stinging.

She removed her bonnet with her free hand. “They’re called camellias, his lordship said. The pink one is new to England and supposed to be very fine.”

John put the flowers to his nose, though he knew camellias had little scent. To hide his face, perhaps.

“Do you like them?” A hint of uncertainty crept into her voice, a mild plea for reassurance.

“Thank you.” That wasn’t enough. “I was feeling rather melancholy, and they cheered me.” There. That didn’t sound like the enormous confession it felt like, did it?

She smiled sunnily, going on tiptoe and turning her face up for a kiss. He picked her up and kissed her, breathing in the fresh air that clung to her. He set her down in a moment, knowing anyone might see them. “Thank you. I’ll put these in water. Please—don’t forget to clean the mud off your boots.”

Sadness was more unpleasant that anger, but it occurred to him that it might be easier soothed.

* * *

Sukey slipped into the kitchen. “Here’s your pineapple, ma’am.”

Mrs. Khaleel looked up. “Oh, it’s not mine. It’s Mr. Summers’s contribution to the Twelfth Day dinner he’s going to later. You might bring it to him, if you please.”

Sukey nodded, hovering a moment, unsure if she ought to say anything or not. The cook looked calm enough, making cakes for the wassailers who would come tonight to howl Mr. Summers’s apple trees, but…she kept glancing out the window at the churchyard to see if anyone was approaching that way.

“He said he’d ask you again on Epiphany.”

Mrs. Khaleel pressed her lips together. “Maybe he’ll forget.”