Read A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) for Free Online Page B

child before?"
    "Only you,
tibber," he said, "I didn’t dare any others, after that. You were
sufficient wriggly to frighten the life out of me." He gave a happy sigh.
"We'd not be missed, lass. If you'd care to see our home. Travel light,
we'd be there in - a week? Maybe?"
     
     
    9
     
    Afterwards, she looked back on that week
as their honeymoon, for all it was spent trailing hock-deep along deep-rutted
muddy lanes in the rain. She learned a number of things: that it was possible
to ride holding hands with a man, if your respective mounts were amicable
enough, and if you were able to slip the disapproving eye of your maid and his
groom for more than an hour at a time. That amongst his many admirable
abilities Russell's ability to command a hot meal and a warm bed in short order
in even the busiest inns, was amongst his finest, and that without even raising
his voice. That he could be remarkably intimidating, if you put his back to the
wall; that he was fierce in his defence of his own, and would brook no
insolence from his subordinates. She wondered if he had always been so, as a
fiery young officer, or if that trick of arrogant command was a thing he'd
learned later.
    "Boots,"
he said firmly, and that was something else she had learned about her new
husband. She sat and put her muddy booted foot into his lap obediently, with a
sigh.
    "Russell,
do we really have to -"
    "Dry boots,
clean stockings." It was something of an obsession of his, this dry boots
and clean stockings, every day. He rolled her stocking down over her foot,
rubbed her frog-cold toes between his hands, and looked up at her. "You
ask my bailiff, my tibber. He was with me in Scotland, and I have never seen
men as miserable as those without good boots. Can’t be warm when your feet are
damp, Zee, no matter how many clothes you have on."
    "I'm not a
soldier, Russell," she said patiently, and he'd planted a kiss on his palm
and placed it on her instep.
    "Surely.
But you’re my wife, and I have a duty to look after you."
    "Oh?
Indeed? So dragging me halfway across the country in midwinter is looking after
me?"
    "Character-forming,"
he said sweetly. "Anyway, you’re enjoying it."
    And actually,
she was. She had never been so far outside Essex before, crossing the
Chilterns, though she cared little for the chalky taste of the ale. The people
sounded different, the sky looked different, the trees looked different.
Everything was a little wider and paler and colder than it was in Essex.
    And then they
were in Buckinghamshire, and it seemed that they would be obliged to call at
every little manor in the county, at Radnage and Walters Ash and Wooburn, that
Major Russell might introduce his draggled bride in company. And she fell to
wondering if perhaps she might not take to her new home after all, for Russell
at his stiffest and coldest was as nothing to the stiffness and the coolness of
the people he claimed as friends and neighbours, moving politely around each
other, offering cakes and wine with a brittle social gloss.
    "My new
bride," he said, and his voice had the same pride to it as it had had the
,first time he'd said it, and this had to be the fifth or the sixth.
    Mistress Eleanor
Lane, of Everhall manor, inclined her head graciously, and looked at Thomazine
with some curiosity.
    A big house,
venerable and - Thomazine sniffed, surreptitiously - not very well kept, for
despite its grandeur, it smelt of mice, and damp. Not as clean as White Notley,
either. She restrained herself from craning her neck to observe the creamy
cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling, that her domestic soul itched to take a
broom to. Almost imperceptible, but distinctly there.  "Indeed, Mistress -
ah - Russell?"
    "Indeed," Thomazine
replied, returning her stare for stare, for Mistress Lane evidently fancied she
resembled a blush-rose, in her stiff pink silks. In point of fact, with a roll
of creamy fat over the stiffly-boned shoulders of her fashionable gown, and a
bum roll behind