Chapter 6:
Sunday
Betsy did not love Sunday mornings. It might be called a day of rest, but she couldn’t even sleep late, because she had to get up and put on her Sunday best. She had to cram herself into the gallery at St. Leonard’s, everyone shoving and elbowing to the front so they could show the whole church how respectably they were dressed, and then she had to stand through a long sermon.
She didn’t mind the sermon. It was the standing she hated, after a long week on her feet. Mrs. Piper was even shorter than Betsy, and liked to be early to claim a coveted spot crushed against the railing. Betsy spent most Sunday mornings gazing enviously down into the box pews with their benches and cushions.
Sunday afternoons, on the other hand, were usually delightful.
But today everything was backwards. After church Betsy had to hurry back to the Honey Moon instead of lazing about with Jemima, and she was eager to get to St. Leonard’s and maybe smile at Mr. Moon to make up for yesterday’s ill humor.
“Does my hair look all right?” she asked Nan. Their small mirror showed only a few square inches of it at a time, and that distorted.
“What difference can it make?” Nan said. “It’ll be under your hat.”
Betsy sighed, wishing she’d saved her money for that bonnet she’d been eying in Miss Tice’s window, even if Miss Tice was a Tory. It had paper honeysuckle climbing in thick clusters over the hatband and was the prettiest thing Betsy had ever seen.
Of course she spent her spare coins on sweets and coffee as fast as she earned them, instead.
Still, she felt pleased with her appearance. Her dark purple Sunday dress had faded to a lovely shade of lilac, and her kerchief and gloves had no stains even if they weren’t really white any longer. Her bonnet had a new ribbon and she’d bought lovely paste shoe buckles from a peddler at the market, which winked as she walked in a very gratifying way.
“I don’t know why you bother,” Nan said. “He’s always late to church and never stands with us.”
Betsy flushed hot.
But he’d said I hope someday I shall have the right to ask you what you do when you aren’t with me. That had to mean marriage. Maybe…maybe today would be different.
Or maybe he’d be so shamed by what they’d been doing that he’d not come to church at all.
But when the Pipers climbed the stairs to the still nearly empty west gallery, Mr. Moon was waiting by one of the arches, in the center just behind the pulpit. Mrs. Piper’s favorite spot.
Betsy’s heart skipped a beat. Today was different after all!
He gulped and straightened when he saw them, turning his battered tricorne round in his hands. Oh, he was so very handsome! When he smiled, nervous but genuine, her heart pounded like a mortar in a pestle.
She hadn’t ought to think of bed in church, but how could she help it? Those long fingers white on the brim of his hat had…
She swallowed hard herself, trying to forget. “How lovely to see you! Mama, you know Mr. Moon.”
“Of course. How nice to see you again.” Mrs. Piper chatted pleasantly while Betsy tried to contain the happiness bubbling up inside her. Even seeing Mrs. Dymond fussing over her sister’s new son in their pew near the back of the church barely dampened her mood.
“Did you hear the baby was born two months early?” Nan whispered. “That means she was pregnant during the election. Do you suppose that had anything to do with why her sister tried to marry Mr. Moon? I’m glad the father did the right thing in the end.”
“Do you think Mr. Gilchrist is the father?” Betsy whispered back.
Mrs. Dymond’s brother-in-law lifted the boy above his head to play birdie with every evidence of joyful adoration. “Oh, look at him,” said Nan. “He must be.”
Betsy bit her lip. Mr. Piper had been Nan’s undisputed father, but Betsy couldn’t remember him ever holding her like that.
“Girls, don’t gossip in church,” Mrs. Piper said.
Betsy raised her eyebrows at her. “You just wish you could hear what we’re saying.”
Mrs. Piper laughed. “I can guess, and so would they if they looked your way. Leave that child be.”
Looking up at his nephew, Mr. Dymond caught sight of them and waved. Mr. Moon waved back, so he was looking at them too.
Betsy’s hopeful mood crumpled.
She was swept with bitter envy at Mrs. Dymond’s family pew. Her father had been a lawyer, practically a gentleman. Standing up with the Pipers, was Mr. Moon thinking he’d have not one, but three new poor female dependents if he married Betsy?
“I owe them so much money, and they’ve barely got any themselves.” He beat a nervous tattoo on his hat brim. “She looks happy, though, don’t she?”
Just at the moment, Mrs. Dymond was grumping with Jack Sparks about something or other that made them both very indignant, but Betsy knew what Mr. Moon meant. She nodded wordlessly.
He laughed a little. “Happier than she’d have been with me, I don’t doubt.”
“Nick Dymond looks happier than you’d have been with her too.” Oh, of all the shrewish things to say! When she’d meant to be so cheerful.
“I’m glad,” Mr. Moon said. “He were miserable last fall.”
She felt more ashamed than ever. Robert Moon was sweet as ice cream, and she kept acting like curdled milk.
* * *
Robert chewed over that comment of Betsy’s all through the service. Would he have been happy with Mrs. Dymond? He’d been so afraid of losing the Honey Moon that he’d barely thought about it. He’d never thought about it. He’d thought only that he’d never be happy again if he let the shop fail.
He was happy with Betsy. He was happy just standing next to her looking down at a hole in the top of her bonnet. He could hear her voice in among everyone else’s during the responses, soaring shyly during the hymn.
She sang a little off-key. It charmed him terribly. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea that this first bloom of love might ever wear off and one day, as a middle-aged man, he might now and again be irritated by it.
Again he promised himself that as soon as he had his twenty-five pounds in hand, he’d ask her to marry him.
He’d always meant to wait until the Honey Moon regularly turned a profit. But if Mrs. Dymond was happy broke, Betsy could be too, and it was only for a little while, wasn’t it? The shop was doing better now than last year. Next year it would do better still, and one day, he’d pay the Dymonds back and have enough left over to buy Betsy as many new hats as she liked.
* * *
Coming out of church, Robert spied their milkwoman. “Good morning, Mr. Diplock, Mrs. Diplock, how do you do? I’m glad I ran into you, ma’am. I just wanted to be sure you’ll have those twenty gallons of cream for me tomorrow morning.”
She chewed at her lip. “Mr. Moon, might I speak to you apart a moment?”
Mr. Diplock made a worried face. “Oh, Bell, don’t, it’s Sunday.”
She gestured helplessly. “He asked me on Sunday.”
Robert’s heart sank. “What is it, ma’am?”
“It’s a business matter, sir. Maybe…” She looked at Betsy.
He knew it would be bad news. He’d have liked to tell Betsy to wait a little ways off. It would all come right in the end and it was no use her worrying over it. Faith, he could do that enough for both of them.
Or maybe it wouldn’t come right. Maybe Mrs. Diplock wouldn’t give him the cream for the assembly, and he’d never get that twenty-five pounds. Robert’s heart raced.
Betsy glanced up at him, the uneasy tilt of her mouth and one uncertain eye all he could see below the brim of her bonnet. His arm was sweating where she held it, and her skirts were worse than a woolen blanket against his leg. But he didn’t want her any farther away.
He was going to make her his wife. He was. A man hadn’t ought to hide things from his wife. And she’d a way of calming him down when he fretted.
“That’s all right, Mrs. Diplock. What is it?”
“Do you know how many gallons of milk have to be skimmed to make that much cream?”
He did, and the figure was so high he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “Not—not to the gallon, ma’am. But I know it’s a good many.” That’s why it costs so damn much, he added silently.
“A good many indeed.” She sighed. “I’ll have it for you, Mr. Moon. I’ve sorted it out with the dairies already. But after that, there’ll be no more milk or cream or butter on credit until I’m paid in full what you owe me. And after that, I’ll expect you to settle up every fortnight, rain or shine. I’ve got my own family to think of.”
Her husband looked very embarrassed, but Robert sagged with relief. She was giving him the cream. “Of course, Mrs. Diplock. That’s no more or less than fair. Thank you. You’ve been very patient, and I’m that grateful.”
“You needn’t worry,” Betsy said cheerfully. “When he’s paid for the assembly, he’ll have the money.”
His hopes felt less flimsy, to hear her echo them. Robert took a long, steadying breath.
The milkwoman sighed again. “I hope so, Miss Piper. I do hope so.”
When they were almost past the churchyard, Betsy said timidly, “I wouldn’t…I wouldn’t mind dealing with some of the tradespeople. If you wanted me to. Since you…”
Since it makes you wriggle like a hooked worm. She was too kind to say it, but shame ate at him, sharp as vinegar. “I hadn’t ought to get so wrought up about it. It doesn’t help anything.”
She leaned her head on his arm, just for a moment. “It’s harder to change how you feel than it is to change who talks to the milkwoman.” There was a little silence. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”
“No, it is,” he said. “I…” But he couldn’t finish the sentence, even though she looked pleased by it. He meant to make all his business her business, and what shabby business it was!
She would calm him when he fretted, and take on responsibility for his debts, and talk to the tradespeople and make him eat breakfast when he’d forgot to, and what would he give her, exactly? Would he ever really be able to buy her those hats?
What if her mother had to go on the parish one day because he hadn’t provided?
Luckily, she was distracted by her friend Jemima rushing up. “Richard Ralph was found not guilty.”
Betsy’s jaw dropped. “No.”
Jemima was frowning even more deeply than usual. “The defense managed to convince those fools that his wife might have died of an apoplexy.”
A great deal of heated chatter about witnesses, surgeons, and blood followed, which left Robert not much to do except feel vaguely unsettled at how many murders seemed to go on all the time, and specifically unsettled about his finances.
A gaily unhappy voice stopped him in his tracks. “Mr. Moon! Were you going to go by without saying good morning?”
He tried to smile. Betsy and Jemima went quiet as mice. “Good morning, Mrs. Lovejoy. I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You weren’t avoiding me, were you?”
“Of course he was avoiding you,” her husband said with a snort. “He looks like a man with somewhere to be and no time to listen to you jabber.”
Mrs. Lovejoy flushed bright red.
Robert’s skin crawled with sympathetic humiliation. “I promise I wasn’t avoiding you, ma’am. I was only lost in thought. We’re on our way now to juice the pineapples for your ices.”
“But it’s the day of rest!”
That brought Robert up short. They had to work today, or they wouldn’t be done in time. What should he say?
Mr. Lovejoy snorted again, trying to meet Robert’s eye in a hearty man-to-man way, which didn’t help. Urgency filled up his brain, pushing out all the words.
“We haven’t that much to do, Mrs. Lovejoy,” Betsy said brightly. “We’ll rest as soon as we’re able. I feel rested enough for a week already, though. Wasn’t it an uplifting sermon?”
Mrs. Lovejoy glared at her. “Don’t take that flippant tone with me, young woman. You’re always so polite to everyone else. Isn’t my money as good as theirs?”
Betsy’s hand tightened on his arm. Robert hoped very much that Jemima wouldn’t say anything cutting. For the moment, she merely kept her stony gaze fixed on Mrs. Lovejoy in what Robert knew was silent condemnation, but to strangers might be indistinguishable from indifference.
Mr. Lovejoy rolled his eyes. “Christ, not this again.”
Mrs. Lovejoy flinched. “Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain,” she said without conviction.
Robert felt a headache coming on. “She wasn’t being flippant, ma’am.”
“I meant no disrespect,” Betsy said nervously. “I swear I didn’t, ma’am. I’m that sorry if I seemed flippant.”
Mrs. Lovejoy ignored her, her face softening as she looked at Robert. “Oh, you always see the best in people, don’t you? That reminds me, do you think we could have a few bowls of pastilles and candies scattered—”
“You’re embarrassing yourself. Let’s leave these people to their business.” Mr. Lovejoy stalked off, leaving his wife alone.
The three members of the lower orders stared at their feet, unwilling to say anything that might make matters even worse.
Mrs. Lovejoy drew herself up. “I accept your apology, Betsy. I suppose you don’t know any better. You ought to improve your mind instead of reading about those grisly crimes.” Betsy stiffened and Jemima audibly set her teeth. “I’ve got a book of sermons, really edifying ones, that I think would help you to lift yourself up a little. I’ll bring it with me next time I come to the shop.”
It was so unfair when Betsy had spent dunnamany hours of her life being kind to Mrs. Lovejoy! “Thank you, ma’am, but please don’t,” Robert said.
But Betsy murmured, “It’s very good of you to take the trouble, ma’am. I’d be that grateful. Thank you.”
Mrs. Lovejoy hesitated for a moment, glancing after her husband. Then she nodded regally, bid them good day, and swept off.
Robert offered up a silent prayer of thanks for her forgetting about the bowls of pastilles and candies. A Sunday miracle, that was. Did she think sugar was free?
“What an awful man,” Betsy said.
“She’s worse,” Jemima opined. “Not that that would be an excuse if he strangled her.”
Betsy gave a nervous bark of laughter. “Oh, well,” she said noncommittally. “I’ll talk to you later, Jemima, all right? Maybe we can find a transcript.”
Jemima hugged her, nodded at Robert with a look he was painfully aware was also silent condemnation, and stalked off.
Betsy sighed. “I didn’t sound flippant, did I?”
“No.”
“I should have stopped my clapper. I’m such a busybody.”
Robert felt low as dirt. “Please don’t,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault. I couldn’t think of a thing to say.”
“I don’t know what I ever did to make her dislike me.”
“Oh, she’s just particular.” He couldn’t quite voice his suspicion that Mrs. Lovejoy disliked Betsy precisely because he, Robert, liked her. It would sound like puffing himself up, and maybe Betsy would laugh and tell him he flattered himself.
The Lovejoys were still visible on the path ahead of them, the husband violently shaking his wife’s hand off his arm. Betsy shook her head. “Jemima’s right. It don’t end well, staying with a man like that. She’d ought to leave him.”
He blinked. “Maybe you have been reading about too many murders.”
She pursed her lips. “Maybe. But when a woman’s murdered, half the time it’s her husband.” Her bonnet tilted slightly in his direction. “Or her lover. Read the papers if you don’t believe me.”
“I’m not going to murder you!”
She sighed. “I know that.”
He hadn’t been her first lover. Was he her only lover now? When would she have time for another? “There isn’t—there isn’t anyone you are afraid of, is there?”
What would Robert do if there was? He’d never been one for fights, but he supposed he’d have to protect her. He’d sort it out. He’d talk to Lady Tassell, if he had to.
She didn’t answer right away. They reached the Honey Moon, and he let them into the kitchen.
“Lock it behind you,” she reminded him. She hung her bonnet on the peg, and stood there smoothing the ribbons for long moments before turning to face him.
“Please don’t be angry with me. I—I didn’t lie! You weren’t my first. But my first was a long time ago. And you are, well, you’re my second. I’m not really any kind of woman of the world.”
For a moment he was glad. This must mean something then, mustn’t it?
Maybe she’d only been satisfied with him because she hadn’t anything to compare him to, after all.
“I didn’t want you to feel obliged to marry me,” she said in a very small voice. “I wanted this to be fun.”
“What does that mean?” he demanded, startled by his own sudden anger. She’d let him think things were one way, and they were another entirely. What was she about? Why resist temptation so long and then give in, if not because you wanted more than just fun? “Would you even marry me if I asked you?”
She glared back. “Are you asking?”
He couldn’t ask yet, and he couldn’t say I shall next week because that was as good as asking. But he couldn’t bring himself to say no, either. He whirled away and began setting up his table to juice pineapple.
“You have so many responsibilities already,” she said softly. “I didn’t want to be one.”
Robert leaned his fists on the counter, shutting his eyes. He could feel her drawing closer, feel the distance between them lessening until she put her arms around him and leaned her cheek on his back.
“I should have been more honest,” she said. “But…it hurts. It hurts that now you think you’ve ruined me. That before I merited—I don’t know, some kind of respect or care, or had some value that now I…don’t, I suppose, in your eyes. There are two kinds of women, aren’t there? Good women, who have to be protected from everything, and bad women, who can do as they like. And both of them get murdered.”
Her chin dug into his back. “You’ll probably say I’ve softened my brain with bad reading, but it’s true. Girls are murdered for bedding men, and for refusing to.”
“I’m not going to murder you!”
“That isn’t the point. A woman can’t win either way. And I wanted to do as I liked. For once in my small boring life.” She sighed, her breasts moving against him. “But I’m sorry I wasn’t honest. You’d a right to do as you like, too, and if you didn’t want to be entangled with me…”
“I did want it,” he said. “But I don’t have to do everything I want to.”
“You don’t do anything you want to.”
He jerked away from her, voice rising. “I’ve only ever done what I wanted to!”
Only after heaving a crate of pineapples onto his table with a thunk could he speak at a reasonable volume again. “All I ever wanted was this shop, and I’ve been completely selfish about it. You must see that. I left my mother behind. I risked my father’s patrimony. The Makepeaces saved for Peter’s apprenticeship all their lives, and I should have told them, ‘Find someone more established, I can’t promise to be in business five years,’ but I took their money!”
Robert twisted the crown off a pineapple with a savage jerk of his wrist. “I’ve taken a fortune from the Dymonds. I knew Mrs. Dymond was desperate and didn’t want me, and I’d have married her anyway.”
He set the fruit on its side and picked up his knife—and then he set it down, because his hand was shaking. “Don’t you see how selfish I’ve been with you? You know those children who come in here and cry and scream because they don’t understand why they can’t have every sweet they set eyes on? That’s what I’ve been like about this damned shop.”
“You’re allowed to want things,” she said pleadingly.
He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t look at her green-gold eyes and her sweet face and her yellow hair because he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.
Suddenly he remembered her lying on her back, that farthing of sunshine on her shoulder and a pattern of leaves on her face. Your worst fear is losing the shop, isn’t it?
But it had stopped being, he realized. He was more afraid of losing her.
You can do this, he told himself. Pick up the knife. Cut the pineapple. Make the ices and get your money. Then you can ask her to stay.
His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
“You’re allowed to want things,” she repeated, more strongly, and came behind him again. This time she slid a hand down to his cock. “May I?”
Desire sprang to life, like hunger at the smell of food. He wanted this, and he lacked the will to deny himself. “Yes,” he said. “Please.”
Unbuttoning his breeches, she fondled him until he was hard and eager in her hand. Robert struggled to breathe, in and out, as her other hand reached round to cup his bollocks.
I’m allowed to want this, he told himself, and tried to believe it.
Letting go his bollocks, Betsy pushed his breeches down. She ran her hand over his arse, squeezing. “You’ve got a lovely arse.”
“Thank you,” he said.
She giggled, sounding almost happy again. Her hand drifted inwards, pushing one buttock aside to…to look at him? She circled his arsehole with her thumb, still stroking his cock. “If I were a man, I could put my cock in your fundament.”
He froze. “What?”
“Isn’t that what men do together?” She pushed up his shirt and kissed his bare back. “They wouldn’t do it if it didn’t feel good, don’t you think?”
“Well, I imagine it feels good for the man doing the buggering.” But her fingertip trailed over his arsehole again, and he shivered, his muscles contracting.
“I know, but…some men must like it, don’t you think? I like it when you’re inside me.”
In spite of himself, he thought about it. If she were a man behind him and he loved that man the way he loved her, and her cock was pressing at his hole…he’d want it. He’d want her inside.
“You can’t really mean to put your fingers in there.”
She wavered. Then she let go of him and leaned past, arm outstretched. He caught half her smile out of the corner of his eye, and she plucked the pestle from the mortar.
All right, so it wasn’t the great wooden bowl and club he’d mash the pineapple in, but neither was it the teacup-sized one for spices. The marble pestle was six inches long and slightly tapered, maybe an inch across at the narrow end.
Robert tingled all over, as sudden and sharp as if he’d just remembered a cake left in the oven.
He turned his head to see where she’d gone, and saw her smearing soft butter on the pestle with her fingers. The narrow end, thank God.
Would he really let her do this?
It was immoral, and probably against the law. Yet it seemed harmless enough in the sunny kitchen, and his cock stood stiffer than ever. Who knew why, but he wanted this—maybe badly.
I’m allowed to want things. Betsy says so.
So he stayed where he was, hands on the edge of the counter, breeches about his ankles, and let her caress his arse with slippery fingers. Planting his legs, he stared at the wood grain in the counter. The pestle poked at him, and it took him a moment to realize he had to relax and let it in.
Oh, that was strange, to feel it slip in an inch, propping him open. Betsy moaned as if she’d just taken her first taste of a new sweet. She pushed up his shirt and laid a line of openmouthed kisses down his spine, and somehow he opened farther. Butter dripped obscenely down his thighs.
It wasn’t comfortable, but it was—it was something. The cool, unyielding marble was impossible to ignore. He was pinned here in this place, in this moment, every sensation heightened the way a splash of lemon woke up your taste buds.
Betsy laid her cheek between his shoulder blades and reached for his cock again, setting up a rocking motion behind as she tugged before.
The strange rhythmic pressure in his arse suddenly flooded his body with pleasure. It was too much at once, he couldn’t bear it long—Robert wrapped his fist around hers and thrust with fierce purpose. He made sounds he was sure were ridiculous, crushing her fingers around his cock.
“Betsy,” he got out. “Betsy—”
When she licked her lips, the tip of her tongue brushed his back. “Robert.” She said his Christian name a little shyly. Her skirts caressed his bare legs every time she jolted gently forward.
He spilled over their fingers with a shout, his arse spasming helplessly around marble.
Robert squeezed his eyes shut and covered his face in his hands.
Betsy slipped the pestle out with a squelching, buttery sound. Ugh. His body was too worn out for mortification to spread much ice through his veins, though. His back made a popping sound as he straightened. “I’d better…clean up,” he muttered, and escaped upstairs.
As he washed himself, he noticed for the first time how bare and dull his room was. It had never been strongly colored by any emotion but worry.
All his joy and pleasure and love and friendship, all the messy glory of life, was saved for the kitchen and the shop. Oh, he took himself in hand plenty of nights, but that hardly made a room feel lived in.
What would it be like to bring life here too?
He’d told Betsy he wanted the Honey Moon to make people feel as if they were in a happy home. But how could it, without being a happy home itself? His happy home.
Maybe his two dreams were intertwined, and he could have both of them. “I’m allowed to want things,” he whispered to the empty room.
When he came downstairs and picked up his knife, his hand didn’t shake at all. He started cutting pineapple.