Listen to the Moon by Rose Lerner Read Free Book Online

at all. Said the blacksmiths weren’t entitled to take food from the mouths of her lodgers simply because they’d decided to have a holiday. She was sorry when a clinker came through the front window and she’d new glass to buy.”
    “A clinker?”
    She blinked. “Is that a Sussex word too?”
    He pressed his lips together and didn’t remind her that he was from Sussex.
    “It’s these sort of paving stones.” She pointed at the small, hard bricks beneath their feet. “There’s an apple tree a mile down the road. It’s a favorite with little boys, but I’m taller than they are, praises be. I can generally reach a few they can’t.”
    She meant to climb a tree in this weather?
    “And your mistress knows you are on your way to go clambering about the upper regions of a tree in the blinding rain?”
    Sukey nodded. “She were hoping the sun would come out, but it hasn’t, and if I don’t go now, it will be dark.”
    “This is madness. I’ll buy you apples.”
    “I’d get the sack if I let you buy me apples,” she said flatly. “No one would believe I didn’t give you something for them.”
    “Then tell me where the tree is, and how many apples you require, and I will fetch them.”
    She gave him a pitying look. “When’s the last time you climbed a tree?”
    He’d been fourteen or fifteen. It didn’t feel so very long ago, but looking at her smooth, youthful face, it struck him with great force that it had been. “I shall manage.”
    Her laugh had a nasty edge. “The branches would break under your great weight.”
    So she meant to go out on slender, slippery branches. “This is rank folly.”
    “No, rank folly would be losing my place by giving Mrs. Humphrey a piece of my mind,” she said grimly. The wicker handle of her basket creaked under the pressure of her fingers, and he realized that she was not foolhardy in the least. She was frightened and putting on a brave face because she saw no alternative. “She wouldn’t even give me an umbrella. Said I would let it turn inside out.”
    He held his over her head, silently.
    “Thank you.” She hunched her narrow shoulders. “But you should go back. You can leave me the umbrella, if you like.” Her pelisse was too large, its upturned collar tailored to frame a profusion of linen ruffles she didn’t possess. He could see water dripping down the back of her neck, plastering stray tendrils of hair to her cool, clean skin. He wanted to taste it.
    “I like storms,” he said calmly. “I find them picturesque.”
    “Do you now?”
    “I’m a very poetical fellow.”
    “It shows,” she said wryly, and let him take the basket. She stuffed her fingers into her sleeves, shivering, and for a mad moment he thought of taking off his greatcoat to serve as a muff for her. But the day was too wet and cold to do anything of the kind, so he merely kept pace with her—she was in such a hurry that he barely had to slow his longer legs—and waited to see how far she could go in silence.
    A hundred yards, as it turned out. “Last year Mrs. Dymond came with me to pick apples,” she said, a little sadly. “Mr. Dymond will take good care of her, won’t he?”
    “I have no doubt she is indoors at the moment, if that’s what you mean.”
    She gave him an irritated look, her wet eyebrows small dark slashes in her white face. “It isn’t.”
    He didn’t know why her worrying over Mr. Dymond’s wife should annoy him so much. “You would do better to save your tender concern for yourself. You are far more in need of it than Mrs. Dymond.”
    “I don’t suppose anyone is in need of my concern,” she said, heartily offended. “I can still bestow it where I like, I hope. You needn’t behave as if I’m a loyal family retainer like you. Mrs. Dymond was a friend, of sorts. Someone to talk to, anyway.”
    John set his jaw, comprehending now why he was so annoyed. He had never wanted to be a loyal family retainer. He had liked and respected the Dymond