A Taste of Honey

by Rose Lerner

  But Betsy murmured, “It’s very good of you to take the trouble, ma’am. I’d be that grateful. Thank you.”

  Mrs. Lovejoy hesitated for a moment, glancing after her husband. Then she nodded regally, bid them good day, and swept off.

  Robert offered up a silent prayer of thanks for her forgetting about the bowls of pastilles and candies. A Sunday miracle, that was. Did she think sugar was free?

  “What an awful man,” Betsy said.

  “She’s worse,” Jemima opined. “Not that that would be an excuse if he strangled her.”

  Betsy gave a nervous bark of laughter. “Oh, well,” she said noncommittally. “I’ll talk to you later, Jemima, all right? Maybe we can find a transcript.”

  Jemima hugged her, nodded at Robert with a look he was painfully aware was also silent condemnation, and stalked off.

  Betsy sighed. “I didn’t sound flippant, did I?”

  “No.”

  “I should have stopped my clapper. I’m such a busybody.”

  Robert felt low as dirt. “Please don’t,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault. I couldn’t think of a thing to say.”

  “I don’t know what I ever did to make her dislike me.”

  “Oh, she’s just particular.” He couldn’t quite voice his suspicion that Mrs. Lovejoy disliked Betsy precisely because he, Robert, liked her. It would sound like puffing himself up, and maybe Betsy would laugh and tell him he flattered himself.

  The Lovejoys were still visible on the path ahead of them, the husband violently shaking his wife’s hand off his arm. Betsy shook her head. “Jemima’s right. It don’t end well, staying with a man like that. She’d ought to leave him.”

  He blinked. “Maybe you have been reading about too many murders.”

  She pursed her lips. “Maybe. But when a woman’s murdered, half the time it’s her husband.” Her bonnet tilted slightly in his direction. “Or her lover. Read the papers if you don’t believe me.”

  “I’m not going to murder you!”

  She sighed. “I know that.”

  He hadn’t been her first lover. Was he her only lover now? When would she have time for another? “There isn’t—there isn’t anyone you are afraid of, is there?”

  What would Robert do if there was? He’d never been one for fights, but he supposed he’d have to protect her. He’d sort it out. He’d talk to Lady Tassell, if he had to.

  She didn’t answer right away. They reached the Honey Moon, and he let them into the kitchen.

  “Lock it behind you,” she reminded him. She hung her bonnet on the peg, and stood there smoothing the ribbons for long moments before turning to face him.

  “Please don’t be angry with me. I—I didn’t lie! You weren’t my first. But my first was a long time ago. And you are, well, you’re my second. I’m not really any kind of woman of the world.”

  For a moment he was glad. This must mean something then, mustn’t it?

  Maybe she’d only been satisfied with him because she hadn’t anything to compare him to, after all.

  “I didn’t want you to feel obliged to marry me,” she said in a very small voice. “I wanted this to be fun.”

  “What does that mean?” he demanded, startled by his own sudden anger. She’d let him think things were one way, and they were another entirely. What was she about? Why resist temptation so long and then give in, if not because you wanted more than just fun? “Would you even marry me if I asked you?”

  She glared back. “Are you asking?”

  He couldn’t ask yet, and he couldn’t say I shall next week because that was as good as asking. But he couldn’t bring himself to say no, either. He whirled away and began setting up his table to juice pineapple.

  “You have so many responsibilities already,” she said softly. “I didn’t want to be one.”

  Robert leaned his fists on the counter, shutting his eyes. He could feel her drawing closer, feel the distance between them lessening until she put her arms around him and leaned her cheek on his back.

  “I should have been more honest,” she said. “But…it hurts. It hurts that now you think you’ve ruined me. That before I merited—I don’t know, some kind of respect or care, or had some value that now I…don’t, I suppose, in your eyes. There are two kinds of women, aren’t there? Good women, who have to be protected from everything, and bad women, who can do as they like. And both of them get murdered.”

  Her chin dug into his back. “You’ll probably say I’ve softened my brain with bad reading, but it’s true. Girls are murdered for bedding men, and for refusing to.”

  “I’m not going to murder you!”

  “That isn’t the point. A woman can’t win either way. And I wanted to do as I liked. For once in my small boring life.” She sighed, her breasts moving against him. “But I’m sorry I wasn’t honest. You’d a right to do as you like, too, and if you didn’t want to be entangled with me…”

  “I did want it,” he said. “But I don’t have to do everything I want to.”

  “You don’t do anything you want to.”

  He jerked away from her, voice rising. “I’ve only ever done what I wanted to!”

  Only after heaving a crate of pineapples onto his table with a thunk could he speak at a reasonable volume again. “All I ever wanted was this shop, and I’ve been completely selfish about it. You must see that. I left my mother behind. I risked my father’s patrimony. The Makepeaces saved for Peter’s apprenticeship all their lives, and I should have told them, ‘Find someone more established, I can’t promise to be in business five years,’ but I took their money!”

  Robert twisted the crown off a pineapple with a savage jerk of his wrist. “I’ve taken a fortune from the Dymonds. I knew Mrs. Dymond was desperate and didn’t want me, and I’d have married her anyway.”

  He set the fruit on its side and picked up his knife—and then he set it down, because his hand was shaking. “Don’t you see how selfish I’ve been with you? You know those children who come in here and cry and scream because they don’t understand why they can’t have every sweet they set eyes on? That’s what I’ve been like about this damned shop.”

  “You’re allowed to want things,” she said pleadingly.

  He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t look at her green-gold eyes and her sweet face and her yellow hair because he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.

  Suddenly he remembered her lying on her back, that farthing of sunshine on her shoulder and a pattern of leaves on her face. Your worst fear is losing the shop, isn’t it?

  But it had stopped being, he realized. He was more afraid of losing her.

  You can do this, he told himself. Pick up the knife. Cut the pineapple. Make the ices and get your money. Then you can ask her to stay.

  His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

  “You’re allowed to want things,” she repeated, more strongly, and came behind him again. This time she slid a hand down to his cock. “May I?”

  Desire sprang to life, like hunger at the smell of food. He wanted this, and he lacked the will to deny himself. “Yes,” he said. “Please.”

  Unbuttoning his breeches, she fondled him until he was hard and eager in her hand. Robert struggled to breathe, in and out, as her other hand reached round to cup his bollocks.

  I’m allowed to want this, he told himself, and tried to believe it.

  Letting go his bollocks, Betsy pushed his breeches down. She ran her hand over his arse, squeezing. “You’ve got a lovely arse.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She giggled, sounding almost happy again. Her hand drifted inwards, pushing one buttock aside to…to look at him? She circled his arsehole with her thumb, still stroking his cock. “If I were a man, I could put my cock in your fundament.”

  He froze. “What?”

  “Isn’t that what men do together?” She pushed up his shirt and kissed his bare back. “They wouldn’t do it if it didn’t feel good, don’t you think?” />
  “Well, I imagine it feels good for the man doing the buggering.” But her fingertip trailed over his arsehole again, and he shivered, his muscles contracting.

  “I know, but…some men must like it, don’t you think? I like it when you’re inside me.”

  In spite of himself, he thought about it. If she were a man behind him and he loved that man the way he loved her, and her cock was pressing at his hole…he’d want it. He’d want her inside.

  “You can’t really mean to put your fingers in there.”

  She wavered. Then she let go of him and leaned past, arm outstretched. He caught half her smile out of the corner of his eye, and she plucked the pestle from the mortar.

  All right, so it wasn’t the great wooden bowl and club he’d mash the pineapple in, but neither was it the teacup-sized one for spices. The marble pestle was six inches long and slightly tapered, maybe an inch across at the narrow end.

  Robert tingled all over, as sudden and sharp as if he’d just remembered a cake left in the oven.

  He turned his head to see where she’d gone, and saw her smearing soft butter on the pestle with her fingers. The narrow end, thank God.

  Would he really let her do this?

  It was immoral, and probably against the law. Yet it seemed harmless enough in the sunny kitchen, and his cock stood stiffer than ever. Who knew why, but he wanted this—maybe badly.

  I’m allowed to want things. Betsy says so.

  So he stayed where he was, hands on the edge of the counter, breeches about his ankles, and let her caress his arse with slippery fingers. Planting his legs, he stared at the wood grain in the counter. The pestle poked at him, and it took him a moment to realize he had to relax and let it in.

  Oh, that was strange, to feel it slip in an inch, propping him open. Betsy moaned as if she’d just taken her first taste of a new sweet. She pushed up his shirt and laid a line of openmouthed kisses down his spine, and somehow he opened farther. Butter dripped obscenely down his thighs.

  It wasn’t comfortable, but it was—it was something. The cool, unyielding marble was impossible to ignore. He was pinned here in this place, in this moment, every sensation heightened the way a splash of lemon woke up your taste buds.

  Betsy laid her cheek between his shoulder blades and reached for his cock again, setting up a rocking motion behind as she tugged before.

  The strange rhythmic pressure in his arse suddenly flooded his body with pleasure. It was too much at once, he couldn’t bear it long—Robert wrapped his fist around hers and thrust with fierce purpose. He made sounds he was sure were ridiculous, crushing her fingers around his cock.

  “Betsy,” he got out. “Betsy—”

  When she licked her lips, the tip of her tongue brushed his back. “Robert.” She said his Christian name a little shyly. Her skirts caressed his bare legs every time she jolted gently forward.

  He spilled over their fingers with a shout, his arse spasming helplessly around marble.

  Robert squeezed his eyes shut and covered his face in his hands.

  Betsy slipped the pestle out with a squelching, buttery sound. Ugh. His body was too worn out for mortification to spread much ice through his veins, though. His back made a popping sound as he straightened. “I’d better…clean up,” he muttered, and escaped upstairs.

  As he washed himself, he noticed for the first time how bare and dull his room was. It had never been strongly colored by any emotion but worry.

  All his joy and pleasure and love and friendship, all the messy glory of life, was saved for the kitchen and the shop. Oh, he took himself in hand plenty of nights, but that hardly made a room feel lived in.

  What would it be like to bring life here too?

  He’d told Betsy he wanted the Honey Moon to make people feel as if they were in a happy home. But how could it, without being a happy home itself? His happy home.

  Maybe his two dreams were intertwined, and he could have both of them. “I’m allowed to want things,” he whispered to the empty room.

  When he came downstairs and picked up his knife, his hand didn’t shake at all. He started cutting pineapple.

  Chapter 7:

  Monday

  Betsy walked to the Honey Moon just before dawn on Monday. She kept a lookout for murderers, but not a very sharp one; the sky was a rich, dark blue and the air was crisp and cool.

  Robert smiled at her as she hung her pelisse on the peg, his face mysterious and dear in the dim light from the ovens. He was already clarifying sugar in a copper pot. He leaned over to kiss her as she walked by, but made no move to turn the kiss into anything more.

  Betsy wasn’t surprised. She’d seen his list of everything they needed to accomplish today: the custards and compositions for ices and ice creams, to chill overnight before being congealed tomorrow; macaroons for the grand trifle; blancmange and pistachio cream for the temple; molded jellies dotted with cherries and plums; crusts they would fill with sugared strawberries and whipped cream at the assembly.

  If they finished it all, maybe tonight there would be time for dalliance, but they both already knew they wouldn’t finish it all. They might not even sleep tonight. Betsy had warned her mother not to look for her.

  If I do well today, he’ll see what a good wife I’d make.

  Suddenly the familiar thought made her uncomfortable.

  All this week she’d striven to be the perfect woman, just as she’d striven for the last year and a half to be the perfect shopgirl. When Robert asked her what she was afeared of, she’d known without hesitation: not being good enough.

  But could love really be earned like wages?

  The ovens hadn’t yet heated the room. Betsy felt cold and small.

  She didn’t want to live for his praise and his approval. She wasn’t a child trying to make her mother smile anymore. If she meant to do this job for the rest of her life, she’d better enjoy it.

  And as the day wore on, she found to her surprise that she did enjoy it. She liked the precision of it, and the beauty. She liked the lovely shining picture clarified sugar made when you poured it out. She liked the clinks of spoons in bowls and the thuds of spoons in pots. She liked the copper molds. She was glad she’d polished them to a shine.

  She hadn’t even noticed she was happy here, she’d been so busy thinking, Is he happy?

  Could she really bring herself to leave, if he didn’t propose at the end of the week?

  * * *

  When the clock struck one, Betsy was dropping neat spoonfuls of batter onto trays while Robert tended the ovens. She popped a warm macaroon in her mouth, feeling almost smug at how well things were going.

  Someone knocked on the back door.

  The dismay on Robert’s face matched her own, but he went and opened it, pasting on a smile. “Mrs. Lovejoy! How do you do?”

  “Very well, Mr. Moon, and you?”

  “Well, ma’am. I can only talk a moment, there’s macaroons in the oven.”

  “Of course, of course,” she said with a nervous laugh. “I’ve only a teensy-weensy little change to the menu.”

  Betsy’s heart sank.

  “What sort of change, ma’am?”

  “Well…” Her face brightened. “It’s good news, really. Wonderful news. The new Lord Ilfracombe is coming to our assembly. Just think! A tragedy of course; his father and two older brothers died quite suddenly. Now we have vaccination against smallpox, these things ought not to happen anymore, don’t you agree? They were in a sailing accident, I believe. His lordship was quite good friends with the Dymond boy in the army, so he’s coming here on his way home from the Peninsula. I just spoke to Mr. Nicholas and he said his friend will certainly attend our assembly. Such a chance for one of our girls! I hear he is to have quite six thousand a year. But he absolutely does not eat pineapple, Mr. Nicholas says. His mouth swells dreadfully. So we’ll have to get rid of the pineapple ices.”

  Betsy set down her spoon. They had spent hours and quite a few guineas on the pineapp
le ices. The composition was cooling in the next room in a great copper bowl. Robert had to tell her no.

  “I don’t, um…” Robert looked pale and panicked. Silence stretched.

  The last time Betsy had said something, she’d only made things worse. But she was the shopgirl, and it was her job to deal with customers. “That’s wonderful! And it was you who invited him?”

  Mrs. Lovejoy preened a little. “When Mr. Nicholas told me he was coming, I knew I couldn’t let such a chance slip through my fingers. I owed it to the town.”

  “That was right kind of you,” Betsy said. “I can’t imagine how excited all the gentlemens’ daughters will be.”

  Mrs. Lovejoy’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you go talking to him, mind. I won’t have him bothered.”

  “Mrs. Lovejoy,” Robert said, exasperated.

  And there it went, the little store of goodwill she’d built up in those few seconds to make their explanations go down smoother. Betsy wondered for the millionth time what she had done to make Mrs. Lovejoy dislike her.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am,” she said humbly. “I’ve got a fellow already.”

  Robert, bless him, didn’t do anything too obvious with his face.

  “Hmph,” Mrs. Lovejoy said, sounding a little mollified. “Well, I hope you’re behaving yourself, dear. This is a respectable establishment, and you’ve a responsibility to do nothing to tarnish it.”

  Betsy almost laughed. If she only knew! “I know, ma’am.”

  “Mrs. Lovejoy,” Robert began firmly, ears red, “I’m going to have to ask you—”

  “Mr. Moon,” Betsy pleaded.

  “Don’t interrupt your betters, dear,” Mrs. Lovejoy said.

  Somehow, that knocked the breath out of her. He is not my better, she wanted to say. He isn’t. But she couldn’t speak.

  “Betsy, if you would allow me to speak to Mrs. Lovejoy alone,” Robert said.

  Betsy hoped he wouldn’t agree not to serve pineapple. She’d ought to hope he wouldn’t read their customer a jobation, but at the moment, she hadn’t the heart. “Yes, Mr. Moon,” she said in a stifled voice. “I’ll just go clean up some things in the front.”