Chapter 6
Six
Long before she met her king, the concubine dreamt of a just, wise, and tender man with a wicked laugh and strong hands and an insatiable lust for her.
For many years, the dream was enough.
— The Concubine and Her King. Unpublished MS.
“Help.”
Susannah looked up from her darning. Dando stood in the doorway of the parlor, neckcloth in his hand. He was in his best clothes, his jaw was freshly shaven, and he’d attempted to tame his hair with pomade.
She leapt up. “Oh, my goodness. Yes, yes.”
She went to him and took the neckcloth and gestured for her little brother to lean down.
Little brother. Ha. Dando hadn’t been little for a long time. He was well over six feet, well over fifteen stone. But he was the youngest of all the Beasley boys, so he’d always be Susannah’s little brother, no matter how big he got. No matter how old.
Susannah stopped in the middle of arranging the neckcloth.
She counted in her head—Dando was thirty-eight years of age.
That made her fifty. Fifty years on this earth!
Half a century and she had no idea where the years had gone because it had been only yesterday that she’d been a girl of seventeen running off to dance on the village green herself.
“Susannah.” Her brother brought her back to the here-and-now.
“Oh, yes.” She began to work on forming the knot of the cloth. Turn and smooth and twist and smooth.
“You look very well,” she ventured.
One had to be careful not to compliment Dando too much, or he would retreat into his shell like a tortoise. Even with this mild bit of praise, he turned red.
Susannah finished tying and tucking the ends of the cloth. “There.” She picked a thread off his waistcoat. “Fair of flesh and fell.”
He growled. Oh, no, she had gone too far. Would he now refuse to go to the fête? That’d be a shame when he’d gone to so much effort, and he really did look so well.
He straightened up and used one of his huge hands to shovel back the locks that had fallen forward over his brow. Susannah really should have cut his hair this evening, but it was too late now.
“You won’t go?” her brother asked.
Ned had been very silly at last year’s fête, and Susannah had decided she had better stay away.
This year, at any rate. Although she hated to miss the dancing.
The men of Much Wemby wouldn’t partner her, wouldn’t want to be seen with her out in the open and in front of their wives or mothers, but Dando always lumbered through a few sets with her, and sometimes a stranger might ask for a dance.
But she should wait until she was alone to think of strangers. Blond, startlingly handsome gentlemen-strangers with noses and shoulders.
“I’m going to put my feet up here by the fire.” She sat in her chair and took up her darning. “I’m going to have a splendid time closing this hole in your stocking.”
And thinking about How Susannah met the startlingly handsome gentleman. She’d probably never stop thinking about that. About him.
Doubt lingered in Dando’s eyes, but he did not argue. “Good night.”
“Yes, good night, and don’t break any hearts, Dando-dear.”
His face went red again, and he quickly left the parlor. She heard the front door open and then close.
After thirty-eight years, she should know the right thing to say to her brother.
But so often she said the thing that would have been right for another brother.
Don’t break any hearts is what she would have said to Hodge or Jory.
No fighting is what she would have said to Nolly.
Next year you’ll dance all night to Simon.
And, to Dando, she should have said Have fun. Fun could mean flirting with girls, but it could also mean watching the dancing or talking to Cornelius, so Dando could take it any way he liked. And Dando spent more time with horses than people, after all. He deserved some lively fun.
She jumped up, not caring where the stocking or needle went, and ran to the front door.
She threw it open and went out into the lane.
The sun was already down, and the sky was darkening.
She imagined she could hear faint music and merriment, but that was just her imagination.
Much Wemby was too far for the sound to travel all the way to Little Wemby.
Dando was thirty yards down the lane already.
“Oy!” she shouted.
Dando turned. She couldn’t see his expression.
She waved. “Have fun!”
He waved back and walked on.
She felt so much better. She sniffed at the fragrant air of the spring night and stared up at the bright moon and the first stars coming out.
No matter where one was in the world, the stars were there, although Hodge had once explained to her that the stars were different below the equator.
Hodge might be looking at the strange stars of the Antipodes right now.
Or he might be lying on the bottom of an ocean.
She walked back into the cottage. She settled into her chair and stared at the fire.
Her mind was filled with absent brothers, Nolly and Jory and Simon and Hodge.
Especially Hodge. Hodge had been gone the longest, but, of all her brothers, he’d understood her best. Maybe he’d understood her better than she’d ever understood herself.
In her mind, she gathered them around her. Not as men, but as boys again. Her boys. Hodge, the next oldest after her. Naughty Nolly. Then sweet Simon. Laughing Jory. And baby Dando. What a terrible lot of trouble they all were. And how terribly she loved them all.
“Suuuuuuuusannah.”
She blinked. She must have been lost in her dream for hours since the fire was all embers and ash now.
“Suuuuuuuusannah.”
No, no, no, no. The damn fool. She got up, stiff from being still for so long, and marched to the door with as much dignity as she could muster and threw it open.
Ned Greenway stood in the middle of the lane. Moonlight bathed him in silver, and, for a moment, he looked exactly like the gorgeous boy who’d stolen all her kisses.
He held his arms out. “Come dance with me.”
She stayed in the doorway. “Go home. You’re drunk.”
“Just a little,” he said and staggered, and she had to dart forward to catch him and keep him from falling to the ground. He was so heavy that she almost fell herself.
“Stand up, Ned,” she scolded.
“Sweet Susu,” he crooned and leaned on her even more. His breath reeked of The Swan’s bitter. “Sweet Susu, dance with me.” One of his hands landed on her breast.
“Don’t do that.” She pulled his hand away. “And don’t call me Susu.”
“Be nice, Su—Susannah. Dance with me. I walked all the way here.” He hiccoughed. “All the way to Little Wemby.”
“No.”
“So cruel.”
She wasn’t cruel, but the word was like a knife in her heart. Why must he say such a thing? Why couldn’t he behave well? He had everything he ever wanted.
“If you won’t dance with me, give me a kiss,” he said.
She could kiss him. No one would ever know, and Ned wouldn’t remember. Susannah could pretend he was someone else, someone with a bigger nose and eyes the color of rime.
“C’mon, Miriam. Kiss me.”
Thank God. Thank God Ned had reminded her he had a wife. Not that she’d truly forgotten, but she’d wickedly wanted to pretend, and she’d promised herself she’d never do such a thing again.
Miriam was, at this moment, almost certainly up to her neck in revelers at The Swan, filling tankards as fast as possible and wondering where her good-for-nothing husband had gotten to.
“Sweet girl.” Ned nuzzled just below Susannah’s ear.
“Stop.” She hunched up her shoulder and pushed his face away from her neck. “Get out of the lane.” She led Ned away from the cottage. “Now, lie down here.”
She meant to lower him to the ground, but he pulled away and threw himself down in the boneless, careless way that came with drink. He’d have both a sore head and a sore backside in the morning. Good. He deserved it.
Maybe she was cruel.
He reached for her. “You come down here, too, sweetness.”
“No, I’m going to go get Beramo and the cart and take you home.”
His lower lip stuck out, and he turned petulant. “You used to like a frolic, Susu. What happened to you?”
You, she wanted to say. You happened to me.
But that wasn’t fair. She couldn’t go around blaming her life on Ned Greenway, a boy-man who had never promised her anything, never pretended to be anything more than a charming, good-looking layabout. That would be like blaming Mother for falling ill and dying. Or Father for being Father.
“Stay there,” she said sternly and went to hitch the horse to the cart.
Ned had fallen asleep by the time she brought the cart around to the lane.
She had to prod at him with the toe of her boot, and he groaned as she pulled him to his feet and pushed him into the cart, but he didn’t try to fondle her again.
And he didn’t vomit in the back of the cart as she drove to Much Wemby, feeling doubly lucky because she didn’t pass a single person on the way.
Everyone was on the green, and Susannah was careful to avoid the main part of the village after the cart crossed the bridge.
But now she could hear the music, and her toes tapped out the steps of a country dance.
But her luck came to an end round the back of The Swan.
The kitchen door was propped open, and light was pouring out.
By this time of night, the kitchen would usually be dark and the ovens cooling, but dancing on the green encouraged both a thirst for ale and an appetite for The Swan’s pies, and the fête was a chance to do good business, and Miriam would never pass up good business.
Should she turn the cart around and take Ned through the front? Or go through the kitchen and risk the ire of The Swan’s cook?
The cook was Celia, Ned and Miriam’s daughter, and Celia didn’t like Susannah.
Understandably. It was too bad Susannah couldn’t go to Celia and explain the truth—that Celia’s father was just a silly fool who imagined some kind of fondness for Susannah, but there was nothing to worry about because Susannah would never knowingly be part of hurting Miriam.
But Susannah couldn’t say that. She was tickle-headed, but she knew saying that wouldn’t help anyone.
And if she started down the road of truthfulness, she might go on and tell Celia how much she wanted Celia to like her, Susannah, because Celia might have been Susannah’s daughter if things had been different.
No, no, no, never, never, never, don’t, don’t, don’t. She must not allow herself even to think such a thing. Susannah could never have produced a daughter as pretty or as prudent as Celia. Celia was Ned and Miriam’s daughter, through and through.
But going round the front with Ned was out of the question. It would embarrass Miriam in front of the whole village. Susannah would just have to brave Celia or hope against hope that Miriam was cooking and Celia was serving in the pub. She crept to the kitchen door and peered around the jamb.
Oh, fum-foe-fee. A flushed Celia was rolling out pastry with masterful strokes and—
“Arp!”
The sound came out of Susannah before she could stop it. The huge man in his shirtsleeves and an apron, his arms deep in a tub of soapy water, was her brother.
Dando and Celia had both looked up at Susannah’s yelp. Celia frowned. Dando nodded and said, “Susannah.”
What was going on? Well, she couldn’t puzzle this out quickly, not at the moment, and they’d both seen her now.
Susannah stepped into the warmth of the kitchen. “Your father. I mean, that is, he’s a little pot-shotten. I have him in the back of the cart.”
Dando took his arms out of the tub of suds and wiped his hands dry with a cloth. Celia snorted but didn’t say anything.
“Should I go tell your mother?” Susannah’s eyes went back and forth between Celia and Dando.
Celia sighed. “No.” Then she said, “Thank you,” but she was looking at Dando.
And Dando was looking back at Celia.
Susannah’s brother—her shy brother who wouldn’t say boo to a goose—was meeting the eyes of a woman. And not just any woman, but a plump, beautiful one like Celia.
Dando made his way to the door, brushing by Susannah.
“Hush, hush, hush,” he said under his breath, just what Susannah had said long ago when she’d paced the floor with him in the middle of the night.
Susannah was giddy. She wanted to twirl and shout and clap her hands. But she didn’t. She followed Dando to the cart and helped him hoist the snoring Ned over his shoulder.
“You and Celia?” she whispered to her brother.
He grunted, a nothing sound, but Susannah knew what she had seen. She followed Dando back into the kitchen. She wanted to see Dando and Celia together again, see more of the magic, but Celia was gone, her pastry abandoned, and Miriam was there instead.
Miriam nodded towards the back stairs. “Celia will show you where to put him.”
Dando bore Ned away, up the narrow stairs, the treads creaking dangerously with the unaccustomed double weight of two men.
Even after hours of tending to the custom in the public house, Miriam looked as neat as ever. Suddenly feeling quite untidy and awkward, Susannah tucked loose strands of her hair behind her ears.
“Miriam, you mustn’t think—”
“Thank you,” the other woman said curtly. “For bringing him home.”
Susannah swallowed. “Of course.”
A clatter came from the pub and several shouts. Miriam made a shooing motion with her hand. “Go home.”
“Wait, I—” Susannah looked around, wrung her hands. “Can I help? Wash the dishes? Or make the pies?”
Another shout and a crash from the pub. “No. Just go home.”
“Ah.” Still she couldn’t leave. “I hope . . . I hope Ned won’t spew up. He hasn’t yet, but he might need a chamber pot to hand.”
Miriam’s face hardened. “I know how to tend my husband.”
“Yes, yes, yes, of course, you do.” No one would ever doubt Miriam’s skills at tending to anything. “I never meant—”
Susannah’s words were drowned out by good-natured shouting and singing as Miriam opened the door to the pub and slipped through it.
“—to suggest otherwise,” Susannah finished.
She looked around the empty kitchen. Her brother might have a place here, but she did not.