A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) by M J Logue Read Free Book Online

and about, she resembled nothing so much as an undercooked
sausage. Thomazine was a little crumpled, for they had spent the better part of
a week on horseback and the greater part of her baggage was as yet at White
Notley. But her plain steel-blue wool gown was good, for her mother had a taste
for line and colour that was unsurpassed throughout Essex, and Thomazine drew
herself up to her full height and looked down her not-inconsiderable nose at
Mistress Lane as though she was the Queen of England herself. (Possibly
taller.) "We are new-married. A week, no more."
    "How
charming. Such pretty hair." With a smile that said, such a shame about
the lamentably prominent nose, dear, and the unfashionable length of your
bones. "You have such a lot of it, Mistress Russell. I always find
long hair so difficult to keep tidy, don’t you? Such a relief that the
prevailing fashion is for en deshabille , I think. It must make things so
much easier."
    "Indeed,"
Thomazine said again, unsure whether or not she ought to give the sausage-lady
tit for tat, or whether perhaps she had misunderstood that last. For, after
all, it wasn't Thomazine who was crouched on a spindly stool like a toad on a
mushroom, with her sagging bubbies thrust up as a kind of ghastly support for
her jowls, simpering at polite company. Perhaps Mistress Lane had only meant
that the prevailing fashion was not to finish putting on a bodice before
receiving guests. She glanced up at Russell, hoping to take her lead from him -
was it meant, perhaps, as a joke, that he might understand?
    "Well,
madam, I must not keep you from your journey," the sausage-lady said, and
the rude baggage actually twitched her head aside, tinkling a little bell with
one podgy hand to summon a servant.
    "No,"
Russell said, equally curtly, and he had that old, slightly wide-eyed, rigid
look about him, as if by holding himself very stiff he might also hold his
temper in. (It was not a look she had often seen, at White Notley, and she put
her hand out and touched his wrist. He smiled down at her, but he stayed rigid.
That angry, then. Sausage-woman had meant to be rude.) "No, we have a way
to travel, before we reach home."
    She was not
surprised that Russell was as slight as he was, if the only refreshment anyone
ever offered guests in these parts was thin, sugary wine, well-watered, and
stale cake, and even that grudgingly. At White Notley any guest who arrived at
the supper hour would have had a place made for them at table, and be expected
to do service to Williams's good food. "Perhaps you would do the honour of
calling on us when we are settled at Four Ashes, Mistress Lane," Russell
said icily.
    "Perhaps.
Although it will be a while and a while before the house is fit to live in, so
I believe. I understand the house to be gutted, sir. Wholly gutted."
    "It
was," he said. "My bailiff has had men working on it this six months
and more."
    "No expense
spared, indeed."
    "None."
    She inclined her
head again, dismissively. "How very fortunate that Mistress Coventry's
untimely death should leave you so well provided-for, Major Russell. My
congratulations on your - most unexpected - marriage, sir. And my husband's,
also, were he here to offer them. I bid you a good day."
     
     
    10
     
    "Well. That went well."
He sniffed, and hunched his shoulders, and looked so remarkably uncomforted
that she nudged the black mare up close to his big grey horse and took his
hand.
    “I imagine we
are going to get any number of odd looks for a while. It is a little
unexpected of you to turn up with a new wife, when you’ve been the county’s
most eligible bachelor for years. She's probably been secretly in love with you
for years herself.”
    Which startled a
laugh out of him. “Thank you, Thomazine, for that piece of shameless flattery.
A patent untruth, but thank you. They’ve not set eyes on me for the better part
of twenty years, tibber. I could have had six wives, for all they know.”
    “All at once?” she said