Sweet Disorder: Lively St. Lemeston, Book 1

by Rose Lerner

  Mr. Moon came back in, holding a great bowl with a lid full of ice. He lifted the lid off carefully and took a spoonful of the contents. “Try it.” He handed her the spoon.

  She eyed it warily. It looked like brown-bread ice cream. She didn’t mind that, so she tried it.

  The gates of heaven opened in her mouth. She could hear the Hosannas as the cold cream melted on her tongue. It was rich and thick and satisfying and sweet and…salty. It should have tasted strange, but it was perfect. It was better than perfect. It was everything everyone had told her sweets should be, all her life. She wanted to eat a gallon of it. “Oh,” she said helplessly. “Can I—”

  Mr. Moon’s face glowed even brighter as he dished her up a great helping. “I knew I could find it. There’s one for everyone.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s brown-bread cream ice with bacon,” he said.

  “Bacon?” She realized she was talking with her mouth full, and hastily shut it.

  He nodded. “I baked some bacon and butter into the bread. And I boiled the cream and milk and egg yolks with bacon in it, then strained it through cheesecloth to make the ice.”

  She swallowed. “It’s wonderful. It’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. I don’t know how I’m to eat anything else, now.” Mr. Moon’s grin looked as if it would split his face right in half. “I brought you one last book. A poem by Mr. William Wordsworth. Would you like to hear it?” He looked dubious, but he nodded. “When I’ve finished this ice,” she clarified.

  At long last, she picked up the book and opened to the marked page.

  There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

  The earth, and every common sight,

  To me did seem

  Appareled in celestial light,

  The glory and the freshness of a dream.

  It is not now as it has been of yore…

  She looked up. He was listening, really listening, so she kept reading. It was a long poem. By the time she’d reached the bottom of the first page, Betsy and Peter had both gone back to their tasks. But when she got to Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy, Mr. Moon set down his knife.

  “Sir, I think the stucklings are burning,” Peter said.

  “Then take them out, there’s a good boy,” Mr. Moon snapped. “What was that about splendor in the grass, Mrs. Sparks?”

  He was silent for long moments after she read the last line. “I never knew a man could do that with words. It’s a whole—a whole feeling, and I never knew there was a way to say it. I thought it was just me that felt it.”

  She beamed. “A man can do anything with words.”

  Mr. Moon winked at her. “Not anything.”

  She laughed—and then she flushed, hearing Nick’s voice in her ear, saying, If you put your hands flat on the table, I could pull up your skirts and take you. “You’d be surprised.”

  It was so splendid to find this one moment of connection with another human being, this one moment when she and Mr. Moon understood each other. With Nick she felt this way all the time. For the first time, today, she’d felt sorry for Wordsworth. She’d thought, The glory hasn’t passed away from the earth at all, you poor unhappy man.

  Nick had made her feel that way, as if the dull sadness of these last few years wasn’t a natural part of being a grown woman at all. It was just a film that had formed over life’s brightness, like dirt on a window, and all she had to do was wash it off.

  He made her want to dance down the middle of the street. But that wasn’t safe, and it wasn’t respectable, and it didn’t matter that her feet itched to do it.

  Helen needs you, she told herself firmly. It didn’t matter what she wanted, at all.

  When Nick got back to the Lost Bell, the proprietor bustled up to him. “Mail from London, sir. Heavy, fine paper with a great big seal. It looks to be important.” He handed Nick the folded letter with an air of pride at being the one to deliver such a vital missive.

  Nick smiled so as not to disappoint him, but his heart sank. He knew what was written on that heavy, fine paper. The special license. “Thank you for giving it to me so promptly.”

  Upstairs, he broke the seal and spread the license out on the table, reading every dull legal phrase with care. He lingered longest on two words, however, his eye tracing and retracing every stroke of the clerk’s pen:

  Phoebe Sparks.

  The impulse to throw the paper into the fire built in his chest. He wouldn’t even have to watch it burn; he could pack his things, hire a coach to take him to London tonight, and never look back, knowing every trace of this chapter in his life was gone forever. Every bone in his body ached to do it.

  He forced his muscles to relax, breathing in and out until the urge ebbed a little. He couldn’t go, anyway. Tony needed him. He folded the paper back up and tucked it into his coat pocket.

  This pain, he chose to feel.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “I can’t go.” Helen balked in the doorway to the stairs. “I can’t face him.”

  “I’m so sorry, Ships,” Phoebe said for the hundredth time. “I don’t want to do it either. But it’s just one evening, and then you never have to see him again, and we’ll have Lady Tassell’s help and money in our pockets.”

  “He’ll be back next election. Maybe I should just leave town.”

  Phoebe put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “This is your home, not his. You shouldn’t have to run away. I couldn’t have changed the deal without telling Lady Tassell the truth. She wants you there because you’re the prettiest girl in town, you know that.”

  “I hate being pretty,” Helen said flatly.

  Phoebe didn’t know what else to say. She desperately didn’t want to go either. Nick would be there. “All right,” she said, trying to sound warm and not quite managing it. “I’ll tell her you ate something that disagreed with you. See you tonight.”

  Helen’s shoulders drooped. “No, I’ll go.”

  Phoebe felt like the greatest beast in the world. “You don’t have to.”

  “It’s just one evening.” Helen’s fingers traced the orange and purple ribbons she’d braided into her hair, her mouth thinning miserably. Phoebe realized she was doing the same thing with her own rosette and hastily dropped her hand.

  The streets were crowded with townsfolk on their way to the hustings, but Phoebe elbowed her way through without difficulty, Helen following in her wake. Ahead of them, a carriage was having less success; the crowd filled the road. As they passed the mired vehicle, a familiar voice called to the driver, “We’ll get out here, that’s all.” The door flew open, and there stood—

  “Jack!” Phoebe cried. “You’re back.”

  Jack grinned broadly at her. “That I am, and so is the new Mrs. Sparks.” He jumped down from the carriage. “I told you we’d make it in time for the polling.” He climbed up on the roof to retrieve an old sedan chair lashed there. “Oi, clear the way!” he bellowed, shoving his way to the sidewalk with the chair.

  Caroline Jessop—Caroline Sparks now—leaned out of the open carriage door, red hair and happy face ablaze against her dusty, travel-stained cloak. “We’re sisters!” she shouted.

  Phoebe smiled at her, trying not to feel gnawed apart by envy for their new-wed bliss. “Welcome to the family.”

  “Nobody touch this chair,” Jack shouted to the passersby behind them, and then he was back lifting Caroline out of the carriage. She slung an arm comfortably about his neck, and he leaned in to kiss her.

  Several long moments later, she pulled back, eyes shining. “Your sisters are right here.”

  Jack winked at Phoebe. “Oh, you should have seen her and Will when they were first married.”

  Phoebe felt a truly Wordsworthian pang of nostalgia for something that could never have lasted. She and Will had been happy at first, deliriously happy. Where is it now, the glory and the dream? Maybe it was better this way, better to be an old maid than to take that
risk again.

  Jack settled his wife in her new chair. She made a face. “Ugh, I hate this chair.”

  “We bought it off a man in London,” Jack explained. “He was peddling people about in it. It was cheap. Well, you can see why.”

  It certainly didn’t move as smoothly as the expensive one Caroline had left behind as Jack started pushing it towards the square. But Caroline said, “And then he said, ‘Don’t drop her, ducks, there’ll be plenty of time for tumbling later!’” She and Jack dissolved into laughter.

  “I suppose you had to be there,” Caroline got out between giggles. Phoebe glanced at Helen to share an eye-roll, and caught her watching them with the same naked envy she felt. Poor girl. Helen deserved that innocent, uncomplicated joy.

  “So how are the numbers looking?” Jack asked. “Will our man win?”

  Our man. Phoebe remembered that of course Jack was still planning to vote for Tony Dymond.

  “That bad?” Jack said. “Then it’s a good thing we shelled out for the post-chaise. We nearly didn’t make it, you know.” He looked Phoebe up and down. “You don’t look married.”

  “I’m not.” She tried to sound happy about it. “Lady Tassell agreed to help us anyway. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  Jack clapped her on the shoulder. “That’s splendid news.”

  She forced a smile. Jack didn’t notice; he was looking at his wife.

  Their progress was slower after that, but neither Phoebe nor Helen minded. She tried to avoid her friends, pretending not to see when Martha Honeysett waved at her from across the street. She caught sight of Mr. Moon passing out sweets and Sukey holding a banner with a group of her friends. The hustings were tall and festive, covered in bunting in the colors of both parties. It was, objectively, a hideous clash, but until now Phoebe had always liked it. It had seemed cheerful and rowdy, like the elections.

  The Dymond family stood in a cluster to the left. Nick slouched discontentedly against the back wall, his eyes fixed on the old church without seeming to really see it. Occasionally he shook his head or nodded in response to a question from his brother or mother, but he didn’t turn to look at them. Her heart smote her. He wanted to be here about as much as she did.

  Mr. Gilchrist was up there too, talking to Lord Wheatcroft’s daughter. He saw them immediately and tapped Mr. Jessop on the shoulder, pointing out Caroline and Jack. Mr. Jessop pushed his way down the stairs and disappeared into the crowd. Phoebe stiffened, expecting a scene.

  Nick’s head turned to follow the direction of Mr. Gilchrist’s pointing finger without any real urgency. His eyes fixed on her at once. Their gazes held—and then he gave her that charming, boyish, practiced grin of his and went back to looking at the church.

  Phoebe felt lower than worms. She linked her arm through her sister’s, ostensibly to give Helen support but really because she needed it herself. The poor girl was rigid as a board. “It’s only a few hours,” Phoebe said. Helen nodded silently, looking anywhere but at the hustings.

  Mr. Jessop appeared in the crowd a few feet away, crying impatiently, “Make way, kindly make way.” Phoebe had forgotten all about him.

  “Father.” Caroline looked small and pale again, suddenly.

  Mr. Jessop gave her a narrow-eyed look children the world over would have recognized as We’ll discuss this later. Then he smiled and embraced her. “Caroline Maria, you naughty puss!” he said in a carrying voice. “What a fright you gave me.” He clapped Jack on the shoulder. “And you, young man. I’ve half a mind to knock you down.” He shook his head indulgently. “Welcome to the family, boy.”

  Jack looked pole-axed. Phoebe waited a moment, then elbowed him. “Thank you, sir,” he said hastily.

  “I’ve got your chair at home,” Mr. Jessop said more quietly to his daughter. “I’ll have it sent round to your new lodgings at once.”

  Caroline’s smile trembled, and her eyes were bright. “Thank you, Papa.”

  He gave her a crooked smile back. “I love you, puss.”

  “I love you too.”

  “Well, I—” Mr. Jessop sniffed, jerked his head in the direction of the hustings, and dove back into the crowd. His progress this time was slowed by handshakes and congratulations, which he took with remarkably good grace.

  “I suppose he is a politician,” Phoebe said. Caroline nodded in proud agreement.

  She sneaked another glimpse at Nick, who was quite plainly snapping at his mother. But he was here. He’d come to support his brother. Of course, he didn’t know that his brother was a low seducer and terrorizer of defenseless girls. She’d lied to him about everything, and he’d been trying so hard to find the truth. How would he feel if he knew?

  “Ah, Mrs. Sparks,” said a familiar smooth voice at her elbow. “I thought you were marrying a Whig.”

  “I was,” she told Mr. Gilchrist. “But I’ve come into some money, instead.”

  His eyebrows rose, and he leaned in confidentially. “Not from the young pig-Whig, I hope.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Helen said crossly. “How long have you been waiting to use that bigwig pun?”

  He smiled. “Oh, I use it frequently.” He stepped neatly around Phoebe and looked Helen up and down. “The cuffs are genius.”

  She smiled up at him, dimpling.

  Phoebe looked at her sister’s spencer. She’d added gold braid and tassels to the front in accordance with the latest craze for frogging, but instead of covering the width of the breast, she’d done a shortened version and piped embroidered ribbon on either side. The effect was very modern and gay, and Phoebe had complimented her on it, but she hadn’t even noticed the cuffs. Now she saw that Helen had added narrow, short frogging to the buttons as well and meticulously given the closure a zigzag edge.

  She looked between the cuffs, her sister’s beaming face, and Mr. Gilchrist’s oily smile, and had a very bad feeling about where this was going.

  Sure enough, Gilchrist said, “I’m leaving town after the election, you know.” He paused. Helen’s face went carefully blank. “Maybe even tomorrow morning, if we can send you Orange-and-Purples packing without a poll.” He waited for the expected enthusiastic denial.

  Neither sister obliged him. Instead Helen said, in a rather colorless voice, “I hope you have a very safe journey.”

  Mr. Gilchrist glanced at Phoebe. “Have I your permission to ask your sister to marry me?”

  “What?” Jack demanded. “No! No you don’t, you Tory rodent, and I—”

  Phoebe put a hand on his arm. She would have liked to back him, but Helen was regarding Mr. Gilchrist with the white, strained face of someone who had been offered her heart’s desire and knew she couldn’t have it.

  “You can ask,” Phoebe said. “But if she says no, I hope you’ll be less of a nuisance about it than you have been about my votes.”

  “I promise nothing,” Mr. Gilchrist said. “Miss Knight, please allow me to tell you how deeply I worship you. Will you make me the happiest man on earth?”

  Helen opened her mouth, but if she made a sound, it was lost in the noise of the crowd. Then she said, so quietly they could barely make it out, “There’s something you don’t know.”

  Mr. Gilchrist blinked. “I am all-knowing,” he said, striving for a joke, but he looked very young and anxious as he said it.

  Helen glanced around, then stood on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear.

  His jaw dropped, his eyes going to Helen’s still-trim waist. “Ohhh.”

  “Yes,” Helen said. “Oh.”

  He looked, mostly, terribly disappointed. “But—who?”

  Helen glanced up at the hustings, so swiftly Phoebe thought Mr. Gilchrist might not have noticed. Then she burst into tears and fled.

  She didn’t move very fast through the crowd. Her vision was blurred by tears, and she’d never been very handy with her elbows. Phoebe caught up with her easily and dragged her into the church, an empty, echoing oasis in the midst of chaos. The opaque walls of the dese
rted box pews made her nervous, as though they concealed crouching, sanctimonious eavesdroppers.

  “I love him,” Helen sobbed. “I love him and he’ll never marry me now. I’m ruined.”

  “You aren’t ruined,” Phoebe said, startled at this ardor for fox-faced Mr. Gilchrist. “You aren’t. If he doesn’t marry you, he’s a fool, that’s all. No one else knows. We can still get through this unscathed. Put up your chin, and we’ll go back out there—”

  “If I hadn’t been so stupid I could have had him,” Helen said furiously. “If I’d just waited two dratted months— I hate Tony Dymond. I hate him. I can’t bear to go out there and cheer for him. I can’t bear it that he’s going to win and I’ve lost everything.”

  Phoebe had striven and sacrificed, had done everything but bleed, to get this bargain for Helen. She’d given up Nick. And she’d thought she’d finally come out on top. In that moment it all fell apart: Helen felt as if she’d lost everything.

  Helen had been against Phoebe’s election-marriage plan from the start. Phoebe had pushed her into it, had ignored it when Helen said she wanted to leave town and keep her baby. She hadn’t really listened. Maybe it had been for Helen’s own good, maybe it was even the safest choice—but it ought to have been Helen’s choice to make, not hers.

  She thought of poor Ann in her quiet line of work, and her virtuous sister. Phoebe had made herself the heroine of Helen’s story.

  Nick had told her. He had told her that when you looked at someone you loved, you should only see them.

  Love, she realized suddenly, didn’t mean putting another person’s happiness above everything else. It didn’t mean giving up everything. Loving someone meant letting him choose, letting her put herself first. “What do you want to do?” she asked. “We can stay, and keep the money. Or we can walk out right now.”

  Helen swallowed, looking frightened. “What do you think I should do?”

  Stay, she thought. “It’s up to you.”

  “It’s another vote for Reform in the Commons,” Helen said slowly. “And he could tell everyone. The scandal would be so hard on you and mother—”