Chapter 8:
Tuesday
“This’ll be naught but salt water in a minute,” Jemima said.
Betsy hurried over to show her how to let the water run out the bottom of the sabotiere so she could fill it up with ice again. It was the day of the assembly, and the kitchen was crammed with people churning syrup and custard into ices. Robert was hurrying about offering instructions and putting the finishing touches on his Greek temple.
They’d been naked here, and now it was a public place again.
He stirred a pot of hot sugar. The back of his neck and the curve of his ear made a wave of love wash over her.
It will all come right, she told herself. After this week, they’d be done with Mrs. Lovejoy. They’d have their money in hand, they’d sell the pineapple ices at the market, and she’d tell him she wanted to get married. She didn’t need to wait, any more than she’d needed to wait for him to kiss her.
Robert picked up the heavy pot in his strong arms and began to slowly pour the hot sugar, tinted with indigo, into the ornamental pool.
There was an unpleasantly familiar rap on the door. Robert winced, but the thin, even stream of sugar didn’t falter.
Betsy looked at the door. Oh, why hadn’t she latched it? She always latched it! But there were so many people in the shop this morning. She must have forgotten after Nan went for a cup of coffee.
If Betsy latched it now, Mrs. Lovejoy would hear. She would never forgive the slight.
“I can’t talk to her until this is done and I’ve got the fish in,” Robert said tightly. “I can’t stop neither, or it won’t look right. It won’t be but a moment. Take her round the front and tell her I’ll be right there.”
What could go wrong with that? Straightening her shoulders, Betsy slipped out the door and shut it behind her, blinking in the bright sun. Mrs. Lovejoy looked hot and tired even under her cheerful fringed parasol.
“Good day, Mrs. Lovejoy.”
“Good day, child. Where’s your master?”
“He’s working hot sugar and can’t stop just now, ma’am, but he’ll be round to talk to you in a moment. Let me show you into the front of the shop where it’s cooler.”
“Oh, he needn’t stop, I’ve only a very small question for him. Just you open that door and I’ll be in and out before you can say Jack Robinson.”
“I can’t, ma’am, he asked me most particularly to show you into the shop. He’s working hot sugar, ma’am. It isn’t safe for you.” Betsy was despairingly aware that the cheer in her voice rang a bit hollow.
Mrs. Lovejoy frowned. “There’s no need to talk to me as if I were an infant, girl. I’m twice your age and I’ve been in a kitchen before. I won’t do anything foolish.”
Betsy tried to smile. “I’m sure you wouldn’t, ma’am, but he’s my master and those were his orders. Please come this way. It won’t be but a moment.”
Flattening herself against the wall, she tried to begin leading the way round to the front of the building. But Mrs. Lovejoy was standing rather close, and as Betsy edged along the wall, her head bumped the matron’s parasol. They both reached up to steady it, Betsy’s hand knocked into Mrs. Lovejoy’s, and the parasol went flying.
Mrs. Lovejoy drew back, clutching her wrist with a red face. “How dare you lay hands on me?”
Betsy’s heart sank. She rushed to pick up the parasol. There were great dusty streaks. She didn’t dare try to brush them off, for fear of being blamed for stains.
More than she already would be, anyway. “I’m that sorry, ma’am, I didn’t mean to.”
Mrs. Lovejoy didn’t take the parasol. She was bending her wrist back and forth as if it might be injured, and rubbing her shoulder where the handle had bounced off it. “You may have your master fooled with that cringing air, girl, but I see through you!”
Hot hate spurted up in Betsy’s heart. Mrs. Lovejoy bullied her, and then scolded her for taking it! But she would look cringing to anyone watching: a fluffy little dog at Mrs. Lovejoy’s feet, fetching her parasol and hoping not to get kicked.
She dropped her eyes to hide her anger, but maybe she wasn’t fast enough. “You know, I always thought you had something against me,” Mrs. Lovejoy said, light dawning in her face, “but I begin to think you’re only an impertinent little hypocrite. And it is my duty to inform Mr. Moon of your true nature.”
Robert came round the corner in time to hear this last bit. “I’m that sorry, ma’am, I looked for you in the front of the shop.”
Betsy drew back against the wall and hoped with all her soul that Mrs. Lovejoy would just ask what she’d come to ask.
Mrs. Lovejoy drew herself up. “Your girl actually had the nerve to put her hands on me,” she said. “She has damaged my property, and she is pert and two-faced. You may be too kind to see it, but you do her no favors by allowing her to continue in her shiftless ways. I demand, absolutely demand, that you dismiss her at once!”
Robert blinked, his brows drawing together. “Mrs. Lovejoy—”
The fussy curls at Mrs. Lovejoy’s temples trembled. “I’m sorry, sir, but it is sack her or I cancel my order. I hate to do it, for I don’t know what I shall do about the assembly, but I cannot in conscience allow myself to be treated in such a manner.”
She snatched her parasol from Betsy at last; it shook in her hand, the fringe jumping. “Oh, Mr. Lovejoy will be furious with me, and what will everyone eat? But one must have self-respect, Mr. Moon.”
Betsy looked at the horror written across Robert’s face. If Mrs. Lovejoy cancelled the order now…they could never sell that much food in time. It would spoil, or the texture would go. Even an ice could only last so long. All those gallons of cream bought on credit, for nothing.
Your worst fear is losing the shop, isn’t it?
I reckon so.
His throat worked, and his ears began to burn. Poor kind Robert. She wouldn’t make him find the words.
Betsy untied the strings of her apron and pulled it off. “Good-bye, then.”
“Wait,” he said quietly.
She couldn’t look at him. “It’s all right. I don’t mind.”
He shook his head. “One must have self-respect, mustn’t one, Mrs. Lovejoy?” She had never heard him sound like that: resolute as a Christian martyr. He looked their customer straight in the face. “I’ve done everything you asked. But I won’t do this. I’d rather go bankrupt.”
Mrs. Lovejoy looked as horrified as Betsy felt, with none of the helpless, guilty relief. “What will I tell Mr. Lovejoy?”
“That’s up to you,” Robert said. “Unless you’ll change your mind. Everything’s almost ready. It’s going to be beautiful. Come in and see the temple.”
Mrs. Lovejoy hesitated. Betsy sent up a quick prayer…but the woman wrung her hands and hurried off.
Leaving Betsy and Robert standing there, staring at each other.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” Betsy said, feeling almost shy. “I was ready to go.”
He shook his head. “The shop’s no use without you.”
Joy poured over her. “The shop will be fine.” She reached for his hand. “We’ll sell as much of this as we can, and we’ll make enough to pay Mrs. Diplock. We can preserve the berries—”
He shook his head again, and this time she saw the hopelessness in the motion. “Didn’t you hear me? I’m going bankrupt.”
“What?”
“I’m going bankrupt. The shop’s over.”
Her heart was ice trying to beat. Bankrupt? He was giving up on the shop? What chance did she have, if he’d given up on that?
“I won’t run up any more debts I can’t pay. If they don’t send me to prison, I’ll go work in someone else’s kitchen. Lenfield House, maybe. I can’t ask you to wait, but in a few years…” He ducked, turning his head away. “Maybe I can save up enough to ask you to marry me.”
“Why wait? If you want to marry me, why not now?”
“I can’t ask you that.”
“You can’t ask me much, seems like.”
“Betsy…”
She gathered up her courage. “I want to be your wife,” she said. “Your helpmeet. I’m not going to change my mind. I don’t mind not having money.”
“I can’t bring a wife to Lenfield with me.”
“Don’t go bankrupt,” she couldn’t help saying. They could come round. She knew they could. “We can—”
He turned his head away, showing her only that monklike profile. “Don’t.”
“Then I’ll live in Lively St. Lemeston while you go to Lenfield. I don’t mind waiting, if we’re married.”
“I can’t.”
Her eyes stung. “I’ve waited so long,” she said around the lump in her throat. “I thought you’d come round eventually. But I was stupid. I can’t earn your love. I can’t demand you repay mine, like a debt. Either you love me or you don’t. Either you want to marry me or you don’t. But I won’t wait anymore.”
She took his hand, despite his sound of protest. “I’m good enough to be happy, and so are you, Robert. Let’s—let’s be happy.”
“I do love you.” He gripped her fingers. “I do want to marry you. Of course I do. But I can’t ask you—do you realize, if we were married, you’d be liable for my debts?”
Betsy tried to be stoic. After all, she’d been ready for it all week, hadn’t she? Jemima would be disgusted if she broke down now.
Tears streamed down her face anyway. “You care so much whether I like your cake, and now I tell you I love you and it doesn’t matter to you at all! I thought of the Honey Moon as ours, but of course I was just fooling myself. One must have self-respect? I’m sick when I think how little self-respect I’ve had.”
She ripped her hand out of his, crumpling her apron into a ball. “Your shop, your happy home, your self-respect, your nerves that need soothing. What about my nerves? What about my heart that’s breaking? I might as well have poured my love into a stone as into you and this blasted shop. You should have sacked me.”
Betsy threw the apron at him. “Send my wages when you have them. If you ever have them.”
Hand on the wall for balance, she went blindly toward the street, leaving her mother and sister and best friend inside still working. They were helping for free, because even though none of them had said anything, they all thought of it as an investment in the rest of Betsy’s life.
Let Robert explain to them. She went home and crawled into her and Nan’s bed and cried and cried.
* * *
Robert sat in his empty kitchen, tears leaking down his face. He might as well put out the fires entirely. He shrank from it, though. An oven without hot charcoal at the bottom of it was dead.
Everything was over. The shop and Betsy, and all because he didn’t have the patience God gave a grasshopper. He’d rushed everything. He should have waited to sell his father’s bakery and saved up something. He should have taken on less debt, started on a quieter street, sold fewer kinds of candy, told Mrs. Lovejoy he wouldn’t shut the shop for her order, told Betsy not to kiss him.
He definitely shouldn’t run after her now and beg her to marry him.
He knew all of that was true. And yet when he thought, I should have told Betsy not to kiss me, every last drop of blood in him dug in its heels. He just…couldn’t really believe that.
He’d made a great many mistakes. But maybe…maybe he’d just made the worst of them.
He washed his face, banked the fires, and ran out the door.
* * *
Robert knew which house she lived in, but not which room. He didn’t want to embarrass her. He hesitated for half a minute, and then gave it up as a bad job.
“Miss Piper!” he bellowed. “Miss Piper!”
It was July; all the sashes were open. He knew she must have heard him. Curious faces poked out of windows all up and down the street.
Face burning, he shouted again, “Miss Piper, I need to talk to you!”
A minute or two passed in silence. He was gathering breath to shout again when someone came round the back of the house.
It was Jemima Midwinter, scowling. He tried to decide if this was better or worse than no one coming at all. Better, he decided. “Let me see her,” he said, trying to sound commanding.
It was no good. She crossed her arms. “Why should I?”
“It’s not your affair.” Oh, why had he said that? Her glower heated by a few hundred degrees. He shrank back.
“I think people hurting my bosom friend is my affair, and I think you’d better get out of here before I’m on trial for bashing your head in.”
He’d always suspected that Miss Midwinter’s fascination with murder was bloodthirstier than Betsy’s. He swallowed. “I want to marry her.”
“Yes, she mentioned that. Only you can’t ask her to wait. Sounds like a lot of excuses to me.”
“I’m not asking her to wait.” He took a deep breath. “I’m asking her if we can post the banns this Sunday.” Saying it felt like diving into cold water on a hot day, the way you came up to the surface shocked and laughing.
She blinked. “Really?”
He nodded. “And…er…of course you’d be welcome in our home whenever you liked?”
Miss Midwinter raised her eyebrows. “How generous of you.” She chewed her lip. “You promise? About the banns?”
“I’ll take my oath, if you’ve got a Bible about you.”
She shrugged, turning and walking back the way she’d come. He followed her into the back garden, through a cramped kitchen, and up a flight of stairs to the Pipers’ room. It was homey, with pictures tacked to the wall, and that was all he had time to notice because Betsy sat on one of the beds, eyes red with tears. Her mother and sister watched him silently from either side of her.
“What do you want?” Betsy asked, voice thick.
“I changed my mind.”
She went white as powdered sugar. “What?” she whispered.
“I changed my mind. Can we…can we talk in private?”
“You don’t have to,” Miss Midwinter told her. “I could push him down the stairs instead.”
Nan, sitting beside Betsy, gave her a gentle nudge in his direction and whispered something in her ear.
“You’d better not make my daughter cry again, young man,” Mrs. Piper said.
Betsy sniffled behind her handkerchief. “Why don’t you talk to me here,” she said. “Jemima might need witnesses. You know, that it was an accident.”
He looked at her blotchy, wary face. He’d never wanted anything so much. “I changed my mind,” he said again. “I’ve been as bad as Mrs. Lovejoy, haven’t I? Expecting to get the things I want now, and just the way I like them, and if I don’t, I’ll pack up my things and go.”
He got to his knees, so her face would be closer. “While I’m at it, I’m that sorry about Mrs. Dymond. It was a mistake to think of marrying her. It was counter to everything I want to do with the shop, and I’d have been unhappy. But that isn’t the worst of it, is it? It was cruel to you. I didn’t understand how much it hurt you, but I did—I did know you liked me, and I’m sorry.”
Jemima snorted.
“No,” Betsy told her. “It feels nice to hear him admit it.”
“I shouldn’t have taken Mrs. Lovejoy’s order, and I knew it when I took it, but I took it anyway, because I wanted—” He remembered suddenly. “Because I wanted to marry you quicker.”
Her mouth made a small round O, and her eyes flew to his face—but only for a moment, a flash of green and honey.
“I got myself into this pickle,” he said, “and here I am asking you to go snacks with me. But…”
It wasn’t easy to go on, not knowing how she’d take his words. But at the same time, he couldn’t understand how, but it was easy. Maybe because he knew what he felt, and nothing could change it.
“I’ve never been so happy as I was with you this week, and it made me afeared. Of losing it, aye, but not deserving it too, I reckon. Not sufficing. Not paying it back.” He didn’t think of all the people he wasn’t going to pay back. Shops went bankrupt sometimes. That was life.
He thought about Betsy, and what she wanted, because they were both allowed to want things. “Happiness hadn’t ought to frighten a man. He should be strong enough for it. Strong enough for sorrow too. I love you, and to hell with it. You’re a grown woman, aren’t you? You know what you’re risking, and you can say yes or no as you like, but I’m asking you. Will you marry me? If you say yes we’ll post the banns on Sunday and be married inside a month.”
Nan make a small squealing nose, and Jemima sighed in resignation. But Betsy met his gaze, finally, and he sagged with relief at the look in her eyes. “You mean it, don’t you?” she said. “Please mean it. Oh drat, I’ve used up my handkerchief.”
He gave her his. “I mean it.”
She threw herself into his arms. Her lips tasted like salt, but it was a wonderful kiss. A kiss that didn’t have to lead to anything naughtier, that was just a kiss, just a way of saying how he felt about her.
She kissed him back, wordlessly telling him she felt the same. He expanded into light and air until he thought he might split open, like a meringue put in an oven too hot for it. But he didn’t. He was strong enough for this. She trembled, and he rubbed her back until she stopped.
When he could stop kissing her, her mother and sister cried and embraced her. Jemima Midwinter embraced her too, and regarded him over Betsy’s shoulder with a flat, menacing Don’t make me regret this look.
Robert beamed at her.
“Don’t—don’t sell the shop,” Betsy said suddenly. “Please. I think we can save it.”
He blinked, afraid again. It was one thing to be gloriously happy, but to be gloriously happy twice over… “Do you think so?”
“She as good as runs that shop,” Jemima said. “I’d trust her opinion over yours.”
“Jemima. I love the Honey Moon,” she told him. “I hate the thought of it being gone.”
He took a deep breath. “All right,” he told her. “If that’s what you want.”
“We’ll sell everything at the market tomorrow. It will be an awful hot day.”
“Pfft,” Mrs. Piper said. “Go tonight and set up a cart outside the Assembly Rooms. Everyone will be hungry enough, you could charge double.”
His eyes met Betsy’s. The awed expression on her face probably matched his own.
“Could we really?” she said, almost wistfully. “Mrs. Lovejoy will be furious.”
He shrugged. “Then she shouldn’t have canceled her order.” He looked around the room. “Would you all mind awfully coming back to the shop for a few hours?”
* * *
“Ices,” Betsy called out. “Cold ices for a shilling! Pineapple, lemon, peach, coffee ices! Trifle! Blancmange! Jellies! Burnt cream!”
Robert settled the blancmange dome atop the temple, grinning when it balanced. It looked magnificent, and a small crowd had already gathered to watch.
Betsy thought privately that Robert looked magnificent too.
It was a hot night, especially for gentlemen in evening dress. Young Lord Wheatcroft, handsome in his black tails, stopped to buy an ice. His sister and her husband hung back, too staunchly Tory to have ever come in the shop.
“Made with our pineapples!” the baron told them proudly, and grinned at his sister. “You’re red as a lobster, Lydia. Take care you don’t swoon.”
Mrs. Cahill did look hot even in frothy yellow muslin, her careful copper curls wilting at the back of her neck.
Betsy opened the ice chest halfway, sending cool air wafting in the lady’s direction. Mrs. Cahill glanced indecisively at her husband, who tossed a shilling in the air and caught it before dropping it in Betsy’s hand.
“A coffee ice, if you please,” he said. “Thank you. Will you share it with me, Mrs. Cahill? That’s only half a wickedness.”
Mrs. Cahill’s mouth curved up, and she whispered something in his ear that made them both laugh.
“You can borrow a spoon if you eat it here, sir,” Betsy said.
Soon their little table was surrounded by gentlefolk in their Sunday best, eating ices with borrowed spoons and laughing and talking and not going inside at all. The Dymonds stopped to say good evening, and then stayed to wish Betsy and Robert joy, and the next thing Betsy knew, their friend the new Lord Ilfracombe had bought the entire sugar temple and spent most of an hour happily divvying up the choicest bits among himself, his friends, and attractive young ladies passing by.
It all felt rather like a fair, and no one showed any inclination to leave the cheerful open-air bustle for the stifling assembly rooms.
“That’s three I owe you,” Robert told the Dymonds ruefully.
Mr. Dymond looked surprised. “You know that was all my mother’s money, don’t you?”
Robert blinked.
“We’d rather you had it than her,” Mrs. Dymond assured him, and for the first time, Betsy liked her. “Just vote Orange-and-Purple next election.”
At last Mrs. Lovejoy appeared on the porch to find out what was keeping everyone. Seeing their cart, she flushed a hectic red, mouth trembling. Her eyes glistened. For a moment Betsy was afraid she’d come down and shout at them, and then she thought—and what if she does?
“We’re getting married, ma’am!” she called cheerfully. Robert laughed and waved.
Mrs. Lovejoy jerked back as if she’d been slapped.
“Two raspberry ices, if you please,” Jack Sparks said, pushing his wife up in her wheelchair, and by the time Betsy looked back up at the porch, Mrs. Lovejoy was disappearing inside, posture rigid.
“Thank you,” Caroline Sparks said, eyes gleaming as she took a bite. “Firstly for this ambrosia, and secondly because this is much more fun than watching people dance.” She passed Robert her memorandum book and a pencil. “Can you write down a copy of the menu for the paper?”
In a few hours, all that was left were a few drifts of cream, some overturned sugar pillars, and an empty crystal trifle bowl.
“Maybe I should go back to the shop and see if I can fetch anything out of the cupboard,” Robert said. But the sun was setting, and after all that sugar the townsfolk were finally ready to dance; they drifted into the Assembly Rooms in twos and threes. Lord Ilfracombe wrapped the rock candy boulders in his handkerchief, kissed Betsy on the cheek, and went inside.
Robert and Betsy beamed tiredly at each other. “How much did we make?” he asked.
“Thirty pounds, five shillings, and sixpence,” she said. “We ought to have charged triple for everything.”
He shrugged. “It’s more than enough to pay the milkwoman. What do you say we go home and wash all these spoons?”
But somehow they ended up splashing each other at the pump and then helping each other out of their wet things, and the spoons had to wait until morning.