Chapter 3:
Thursday
Betsy let herself into the closed shop with her key, hopeful of a warm welcome but plagued with renewed nerves. Tying her faded green-and-white apron tighter than usual, so it curved closely to her breasts, she ventured into the quiet kitchen, a piece of stale seedcake in hand.
Mr. Moon sat sketching, his free hand fisted in his hair. Head-on, his long nose with a bump in it gave him a coltish, raw-boned, friendly look. But there was something austere in his profile, like a hawk or a monk. Something pure and fierce.
Looking over, he smiled sheepishly, the purity and fierceness out of sight once more. But she knew they were there. “Morning, Betsy. Did you sleep well?”
I dreamed of you, she thought, but she’d never be able to make it sound like a flirtatious joke. It wasn’t even true, and he’d believe it.
“I did, thank you. Though I dreamed I was late to work,” she said honestly.
“I dreamed all my teeth were falling out one after t’other. I’ve dreamed that dunnamany times, and I don’t know why. I’ve good teeth and I take care to clean the sugar off.” He felt at his jaw as if reassuring himself that his teeth were still firmly in their sockets. “I’ve made a list of what we’ll need to lay the table at the Assembly Rooms. Some things we’ll borrow from Mr. Whittle at the Lost Bell, and half a dozen or so I’ve to beg Mr. Killick for the loan of.”
That was the confectioner at Lenfield House. As a boy Mr. Moon had walked there from Runford on his weekly half-holiday, an hour each way, to learn as much as he could from Mr. Killick.
“I need to be getting a start on the gum paste ornaments,” he said. “Can I send you to Lenfield? Only a few bitty things will need to be fetched today. I’ve marked them with an X—a sack or basket ought to suffice.”
It was a seven-mile walk, and half an hour after dawn the day was already warm. Betsy tried not to grumble. Someone had to go. “Aye, of course.”
He showed her his list, carefully describing each item to her despite the drawings he’d already penciled in the margin. Surely the shop would be a success, soon enough. Surely the love he lavished on it couldn’t be wasted.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
“Not a jot,” she said. “You know I want the assembly to be splendid.” She slipped the list into her bodice.
He raised a finger to trace the paper’s outline beneath her dress, its flowered print almost invisible with age. “Thanks. I’m sorry, but I think you’d better go before it gets too hot.” But he tilted up her chin for a quick kiss. “And there I’ve got a smudge of lead on you.”
He licked his thumb and rubbed it off, and the pink flash of his tongue made even that unromantic gesture unfairly erotic.
* * *
The columns for the round temple were crooked.
Robert felt the first cloying tendrils of panic in his nose and throat. Or maybe that was a coating of powdered sugar, from pounding gum dragon and sugar into paste all day.
He’d used this set of dowels a dozen times and never had crooked columns, so he must have coated them unevenly with gum paste. The whole thing would fall the moment someone tried to slice into the blancmange dome on its platter.
Betsy let herself into the kitchen. She looked hot and tired after tramping about under the hot sun all morning; he’d ought to give her a moment to rest.
“The columns are crooked,” he said.
Frowning, she set down her basket. “Are they?” Nudging a bucket in front of the door to let in a breeze, she came and stood at his elbow. “Only the smallest bit. Once you’ve dabbed them with royal icing and stuck the plate on, it should hold.”
“Do you think?”
“I do.”
Maybe she was right. Maybe a little crookedness could be overlooked. Lively St. Lemeston wasn’t London, after all. But he was grateful his old master, Mr. Killick, wouldn’t be at the assembly to see it.
“Mrs. Lovejoy came by while you were gone,” he said. “She said maybe there’d be two hundred twenty-five at the assembly, and insisted on adding two chocolate cream tarts to the menu. Said it came to her over her morning chocolate.”
Betsy rolled her eyes. “Is she paying us extra for them?”
Robert felt ashamed that he wasn’t a better negotiator. “She’s already paying us such a great sum, and it won’t be much extra work, just a little extra tart dough and shaving some chocolate…”
He went and got a platter so he wouldn’t have to see Betsy smothering her sigh. It wasn’t much use trying to make it balance before everything was pasted in place, but he held it above the columns to see how it would lie.
Mostly flat. Mostly.
“It’ll hold,” Betsy said firmly. “You’ll see. How much more do you have to do?”
“I’ve made the columns and the steps, but I’ve still to mold the architrave, frieze, and cornice of the dome, and all the flourishes and ornaments for the frieze.”
“The whats of the dome?” She pulled a roll from her basket and dug her thumbs into it to open it. “Would you like one?”
Robert realized that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “Thank you.” He reached for it.
Prying a second one apart, she shook her head and disappeared into the cold room, no doubt for butter and jam.
“Ohhhh,” came her voice, loud and soft and loud again as the door swung. “Maybe I won’t be right back after all. Latch the door and come in here a moment.”
“I should start on the dome.”
“Just for a moment,” she called. “There are hours and hours of daylight yet.”
There were—thank God it was summer—and while Betsy might not be a confectioner she had a good eye and sure hands. She could lay the ornaments on the frieze as neatly as he could. They’d finish the temple by nightfall.
Robert stepped into the cold room, so named because it adjoined the ice room and was away from the heat of the ovens.
Oh. It had been devilish hot in the kitchen, hadn’t it? He’d not remarked how much he was sweating until the cool air hit him. He felt calmer and happier at once.
“Did you latch the door?” she asked, and he assured her he had.
They ate companionably, sitting on the edge of an ice chest, and by the time the jammy, buttered roll had gone most of Robert’s panic had too.
Snaking an arm around Betsy’s waist, he drew her against him. “I’m glad you’re back.” He caught the edge of a pleased smile as she leaned against his shoulder.
He twisted to kiss her. She kissed him back eagerly, and he thought, I could have her right now.
Only moments later, it had become, I have to have her right now. “Let’s—may I—”
She nodded urgently, her nose bumping against his. One breast was pressed into his side. He’d barely even touched those yesterday. Despite all she had allowed him to do, he still half expected a slap as he put his hands up and shaped them to her curves.
My, but her bosom was soft, softer than the yielding layers of linen that covered it. And there—there were her nipples, stiff beads against his fingers. She gasped and pushed against his hands, reaching under his apron for the buttons on his breeches.
“Not yet,” he said. “Let me take your clothes off.”
His whole body thrilled as he said the words. There was no confection or fruit the color of her skin, but he thought of delicious things anyway, peach custard and marzipan. That tiny sensitive part of her cunny was the delicate pinkish red of a translucent red-currant ice.
Betsy went stiff. Her nod was very slight.
Had he finally gone too far? Why should this be too far? He took his hands off her and laid them flat on the ice chest. “Do you not want me to?”
She took in a deep breath; he felt a pang of loss at her bodice pushing against air instead of his palms. “Go and check the latch again,” she said. “I’ll be along in a moment.”
He did as she asked, embarrassed in the brightly sunlit kitchen by his obvious erection. Maybe that was how Betsy felt about being naked—afraid of looking foolish. As if she ever could.
Robert laid his apron on the counter. Would it make her less self-conscious if he took off his own clothes, or would it frighten her?
She came in with a blushing smile and a bowl of ice. “You’d ought to take off your clothes too. Would you unlace the back of my gown first?”
“Oh aye,” he said eagerly, to make her laugh.
Her stays laced in the front. He’d known that from touching her. He knew dunnamany things about her now that he hadn’t known two days ago.
Dunnamany things about her body, anyways.
But he knew her mind well enough already—didn’t he? They’d worked together for more than a year now. They’d talked for hours. He knew enough about the last twenty years of Sussex murders that he could write a book, if writing a book were a thing he could do, which it assuredly was not.
He knew about her best friend, Jemima, and her mother’s tiresome habit of cooking everything to a mush, and her little sister who wanted to go into service in London but hopefully wouldn’t until she was old enough to look out for herself.
He knew Betsy hated peeling apples, that her pattens always gave her a blister the first rainy week of the year, and that the autumn she was ten, she and Jemima had gone nutting every Sunday to see if the devil would really hold down the branches for them as superstition promised.
They stripped in silence. She pulled off her stays, contorting to keep the lace from coming entirely out of its holes, and rolled down her stockings swift and sure as she must do it every night before bed. He watched, and felt he knew her not at all.
What do you lie in the dark and worry over? he wanted to ask her. How many children do you want, and what sort of old woman would you like to be?
He couldn’t say that. It wasn’t bed talk—or kitchen-counter talk, as the case might be.
He took off his own stockings, and his breeches. “Smallclothes too?”
After a pause, she nodded without looking at him.
Robert obeyed, hoping she wasn’t disappointed, that his hips weren’t too bony and that she wouldn’t rather a man have more hair on his chest.
He was the furthest thing from disappointed when she pulled her shift over her head. The curves and angles and textures of her were flawless, all of them. Her golden forearms, neck, and face gave way in stark lines to the pale skin under her dress, inspiring an unexpected tenderness. The sweet curve of her hip and the deep shadows under her breasts made him wild to be in her.
He drew near to her. The possibility of coupling hung in the warm air between them like the smell of something baking in the oven. There were nerves in that too—will it taste as good as it smells?—but he was so eager to take the first bite of her, he couldn’t pay the nerves much mind.
He could touch any part of her he’d a mind to, could set her up on the counter and slide right in with nothing in the way.
Sweat beaded on her forehead. A drop trailed down her neck and between her breasts, tracing a red crease from a seam of her corset. He licked it up, salt and skin on his tongue, breathing in her heat.
She took a chip of ice from her bowl and ran it across her forehead, down her neck and then—she hesitated ever so slightly—around her left breast. Her lips parted on a sigh.
Robert heaved her onto the counter and spread her thighs, taking himself in hand. She was visibly slick with arousal. He waited for her nod and drove into her at once.
The ice clattered to the floor. She was so hot, the hottest thing in summer, her cunny’s grip tight and yielding. He’d ought to pick up the ice before one of them slipped in the puddle, but he felt for it with his foot and kicked it across the kitchen.
He guided her back until she rested on her elbows and he could watch her breasts bounce lewdly and her arse slide on the counter with every thrust. Her head fell back, loose locks of hair swaying. He had never dreamed what this would be like, to see his effect on a woman in that undeniable movement. Already he could feel his pleasure about to peak.
“I’m sorry it’s so quick,” he got out. “Let me rest a moment, and I’ll make it up to you.”
She laid a hand flat on his stomach. He was confused at first, and then it struck him that she could feel his muscles tense with each thrust. Her fingers curled a little, and her eyelids drooped in satisfaction.
He spent, watching himself pump helplessly into her until the pleasure ebbed, and then a little longer. She made a small noise of disappointment when he stopped.
Robert shut his eyes. Her hips filled his hands, her cunt held his cock, but he couldn’t see her. He breathed until he felt less wild.
Opening his eyes, he reached for the bowl of ice.
* * *
It was hot in the kitchen, and Betsy was sweating with exertion and lust. When Mr. Moon slid a bit of ice along her collarbone, it was a bright pure shock, balanced on the knife-edge between Please don’t and Please don’t stop.
The ice slid down her breastbone and made a great swoop over her stomach. She gasped and shivered violently.
She wanted to watch, but it was even better to close her eyes and follow the progress of that patch of cold, now spiraling ever so deliberately up her right breast. She held her breath, bracing herself as he rubbed the ice directly on her nipple. But instead of stinging, it created undiluted sensation, the slippery ice seamlessly arousing every point on her skin one after the other.
His cock was slipping out of her. She wanted him back, or his fingers, or—a piece of ice? Could she bear it?
Suddenly a second piece of ice curled up her right breast. Her nipples were twin points of yearning, stabbing through her, transfixing her. Her hips jerked, and then his hot mouth closed over one icy peak.
She screamed.
He drew back. “Did I—is it not comfortable?”
She squeezed her eyes tighter shut and shook her head, reaching out blindly. He made a pleased noise, and then there was liquid heat on her breast again.
Mr. Moon’s tongue followed ice across her heated skin—arms and hips and inner thighs—hot and cold, soothing and agitating, until she no longer had the strength to do anything but lay on the counter, wood against her back, gasping for breath.
Then, finally, he slid a piece of ice straight down her stomach to where he’d put his mouth yesterday.
That did hurt, the skin there so thin and sensitive that it shrank back desperately. She moaned as icy water dripped down her slit, melted by her heat. Did she want him to stop?
The ice withdrew. She heard it clinking against his teeth, and his knees settling on the floor. She trembled, legs spread wide, until he licked her, his mouth cool and hot by turns.
“Put—put your fingers in me,” she begged, tongue clumsy in her mouth.
He slid one in, tentatively, and then another. His fingertips were ice-cold too.
This was the best refuge from summer she’d ever dreamed of. She’d never dreamed anything so glorious.
She remembered suddenly how unsure he always was. She ought to encourage him. But could she really—really talk to him while he was licking at her cunny and his fingers were curling deep inside her?
“This is better than eating ices,” she said shakily. Her cool breasts basked in the warm air.
He rubbed her with a cold thumb. “Not better than my ices, I hope.”
She tried to compare, but imagining eating one of his ices, sweet peaches and cream running down her throat—it overwhelmed her. It was too much, too much of him. There was only one thing she wanted to say right now, three short words, and he wouldn’t like them. They would sound like a responsibility.
“Nothing’s better than your ices,” she told him unevenly, since he wanted to hear it. “Your ices make angels covetous.”
His fingers twisted. Betsy moaned, pliable in his hands as a bowl of sugar paste. There was no being in this world or the next that wouldn’t covet this. She floated, grasping for something solid, and pleasure wrapped its bright wings around her.
Ecstasy drained away, leaving her naked and sweaty on a kitchen counter. She never wanted to move again, but there was work to be done and she must look depraved. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes.
Mr. Moon beamed down at her, running a finger proudly along her hip the way he sometimes did with the cakes when they came out especially puffed and golden. He was naked too, lean and long, and it made her so very happy to sit up and lay her hand on his bare skin, pull him towards her and kiss his shoulder. Happy and afraid.
One week, she’d promised herself. Five days left of it. Could she bear to only have five more days of this?
He liked her, didn’t he? Surely a man couldn’t make a girl feel this way if he didn’t like her dreadfully. He wouldn’t look at her like that.
He hesitated, hovering close. Pleasuring her had made him hard again. “May I…? One more time, before we…?”
Betsy nodded, sliding to the edge of the table to welcome him in.
A week couldn’t be enough for him either. He’d want forever. He would.