Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“My—dear Benjamin,” she caught on the endearment briefly, but forced herself over the stumbling block. “I have been keeping a little secret from you, but I hope it is one you will like. Or that you will like in the end, though I did meet with a little…complication today.”
“A secret,” he echoed, watching her.
And then, though she had carefully prepared and arranged the pieces of her speech, the wariness of his tone somehow sent them all tumbling to the floor of her brain, to be retrieved in whichever order they came to hand.
“It’s—you know that sagging armchair you have in your chambers?
” she began. “I was thinking about the sofa—I mean the sofa here—you don’t have a sofa there—the sofa here, which we moved upstairs when Mrs. Ellsworth came and which now we have to keep up there, though heaven knows why.
It isn’t as if it fools anyone, because I suspect, as we’ve discussed, Rundell and Co are under no illusions—anyway, I thought, wouldn't it be lovely if we had a second one? And—and then there would be no question of moving one upstairs or downstairs because we would have one upstairs and one downstairs—”
“Maria,” he interrupted, “what on earth are you talking about, and why did the existence or non-existence of a second sofa require you to hunt me down at my chambers? Are you confessing that you have purchased one on credit?”
“I took a job,” she blurted. “I took a job because I thought we could get another sofa. That is, I thought I would surprise you with the money and we could get another sofa.”
Benjamin forgot all about eating. He might, in fact, have turned to stone in amazement.
“My job is to serve as a companion to a sweet old lady,” Maria hurried on in the silence.
“She had a stroke of palsy or something, for she hardly speaks. But for a few mornings a week I sit with her while her daughter goes out to give music lessons, and she pays me two shillings per day. The daughter, I mean. At the end of every week. So I’ve already collected sixteen shillings, you know—nearly a pound.
And in the Journal there are always advertisements for auctions, and I thought soon we could afford a sofa from one of those auctions, though I hadn’t worked out yet how I would attend an auction or how much a sofa might cost there, but I daresay it would be cheaper than a new one from Badcock’s. ”
She stopped because she had run out of breath.
A faint line had appeared between his brows, and his eyes held hers. “Why—are you telling me this now? If you have kept this secret for over a fortnight, why the urgency now?”
“Oh! Yes. Well.” She had not expected this to be his first question.
Not that this was going quite how she planned.
She should be glad there was no outburst, shouldn’t she?
No fist pounded on the table. (Not that her husband had ever done either of those things, even in their earlier quarrels.) On this occasion he did not even raise his voice (yet).
“Yes,” repeated Maria, now folding her hands primly so she might quietly wring them.
“I tell you now because it so happens my employer, a Miss Cheney, is the older sister of—a few other siblings, whom I did not meet until they chanced to visit their mother. And today it was her youngest brother, a Mr. R—”
“Raymond Cheney,” he supplied. “Tall? All of one color? Looks like a baluster?”
“Or like a bedpost, yes. I thought so too.” She gave a tentative smile. “I’m afraid he wasn’t a very pleasant person.”
“What did he say?”
Despite his calm, he held himself with the stillness of a crouching tiger, and while Maria did not think he would pounce upon her, she could not be certain he would spare Mr. Cheney. She must tread carefully.
“He said nothing in particular,” she replied, forcing a wider smile. “Nothing which needs repeating or…addressing.”
“Are you saying you searched high and low for me to tell me Raymond Cheney was an unpleasant person?”
“I didn’t search high and low,” Maria heard her own voice rise.
“I sought you at New College, where I understood you spent your days.” Oh, dear.
She hadn’t meant to touch upon that—his own secrets—until the first matter was settled.
“That is,” she added immediately, “I wanted you to hear about my employment not from the unpleasant Mr. Cheney, but from my own lips, as it were.”
Coloring, his gaze dropped to the lips referenced.
But did he flush because of her implied accusation or because she made allusion to her lips?
If the latter (and she began to blush herself), she had meant it merely as a figure of speech, of course.
Hadn’t she? She wasn’t thinking about kissing right now, any more than he was thinking about kissing, except that maybe now he was thinking about kissing because now she was thinking about kissing.
Stop this, Maria! Compose yourself at once!
Perhaps she was not alone in commanding herself thus because Benjamin straightened his spine and rejoined, mild as milk, “Well, now you have told me and are relieved of that burden. Was there anything more to the episode with Cheney which made it unpleasant?”
“Is that all you have to say about it?” she demanded, finding her temper rise in proportion to his composure. She wanted to work—of course she did, or she would not have sought employment—but ought he not to have an opinion on it?
“Were you expecting more, Maria? Then I will tell you at once: I, too, see the benefit of a second sofa. And in a brocade to match the parlor chairs, if possible.”
He was lucky Maria held no fork, or she might have been ill-mannered enough to smack it down on the cloth. “I tell you I was working, Benjamin. That I am working. For money! And you neither praise nor censure me?”
“That depends.”
“On what, sir?”
“On whether, apart from your desire for this second sofa, you also sought to disparage me.”
She leapt to her feet so abruptly that she knocked the table with her thighs and their wineglasses rocked. “How can you even think such a thing? We are—When have I ever given you cause to—to think I would—”
Rising more slowly, he flung down his napkin.
“Whether you meant to or not, Mrs. Ellsworth, I assume this has been the result. Was it not, if Cheney made himself unpleasant? Knowing the man to be a sneering, unhappy, gossipy sort, I can guess that, when he discovered you there and learned your connection to me, that was the direction his comments took.”
Her sputtering was confirmation enough, but, without waiting for her to master herself he continued. “He probably said words to the effect that I was known for grubbing after money, and had I put you up to it, et cetera et cetera.”
Falling neatly into the trap, she thumped her fist on the table and retorted, “And what if he did? That does not mean I in any way shared his opinions or that I did not take umbrage on your behalf. On our behalf. Because I supposed us on the same side! Which means that, far from intending to run you down or to disparage you by my actions, I meant them only for our common good. To improve our shared situation!”
If Maria had not been conscious that her voice continued to rise throughout this speech, she was made aware of it the next moment when she felt through the soles of her slippers the mortifying, familiar thump THUMP of the landlady’s broom.
And, then, though she would groan later to recall it, she let fly a growl of frustration and stamped her own feet upon the carpet in an indignant tattoo.
“Maria,” said Benjamin, coming swiftly around the table and taking hold of her arms, “let us continue this upstairs.”
But she wriggled in his grasp, hissing, “I tell you that was the only reason for keeping a secret from you—to delight your stupid, ungrateful self with a surprise, and not because I had a single malicious intention—which is why, when I knew the game was up, I came straightaway to find you, only I couldn’t find you, could I, because you were off keeping secrets of your—mmffm mmermff—”
Maria’s sudden unintelligibility did not result from a hand clapped to her mouth or from lapsing into cipher to thwart listening ears, but came about rather because her husband had silenced her most effectively with a kiss.