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

and curious,
and loving. And she liked kissing him, he knew that much, she'd enjoyed that
part, she'd wanted more, and it was only by God's grace and the fortunate
arrival of a groom in the stables on more than one occasion that had brought
her innocent to her bridal bed. Innocent-ish. There had been a degree of
familiarity between them - a shocking degree of familiarity - he pulled a
pillow into his lap again.
    "Can you
help me with my laces? I should have a maid, you know...."
    "I imagine
that I may act as a personal maidservant. With direction," he added. He
had some knowledge of her intimate garments. He wouldn't have called himself
confident, but he knew where the laces went. Came out. She'd managed to untie
the lacing of her gown, but that was as far as she'd got. "Oh, come here,
wench," he said with a sigh. "You're all adrift."
    Stiffened and
boned like a cuirassier's breastplate, and he knew how it felt, but he finally
pulled the last lace through the eyelet and freed her from that dreadful
instrument of torture, dropping it on the floor. Rubbing her poor pinched
little waist, where the linen of her shift was all creased and crumpled where
it had been rucked up against her skin, and then remembering what he was doing
just slightly too late as he forgot how to breathe. So did she, and she took
his hand and held it against her flank, and the pair of them stood like a pair
of holy fools, not quite touching, her face turned up to his. She swallowed.
"Thankful, I think you’re going to have to kiss me."
    "Think I
must, tibber," he agreed, because he thought he did or die in the wanting
of it. Meaning to be careful, and gentle, and in the end being none of it.
     
     
    6
     
    He was still lying there at gone
midnight, flat on his back with his hair fallen in his eyes and a silly grin on
his face, watching the moonlight move in squares across the clean scrubbed
boards of Thomazine's own.
    (- she snored, a
little, and he liked it. Liked her snuffling, whistling breathing, and the way
she growled in her sleep when he might have taken more of the coverlets than
she thought he was entitled to, and the way she was holding him as tight as if
he might take it into his head to disappear in the night. He felt -
    He felt married .
And the thought of it gave him an odd feeling about his heart again, and he put
his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her in ardent silence, and she muttered
something incomprehensible and buried her face in her armpit.)
    He was loved.
Loved, and loving. He had a place. It was, currently, a grace and favour place
in the Babbitt household - his old commander's son-in-law, by God, who'd have
ever thought it? - till there was a roof on the house at Four Ashes again, and
the place wasn't falling to bits about his ears. But that was in the future,
and for the first time since he'd been a passionate boy in the New Model Army,
there was a future. There would be children at Four Ashes again, and
laughter, and joy. He would make it so. He would make it a home again, for this
bright girl and the bright babies they would fill it with, one day. And no
child of his would ever know imposed fear, or humiliation, or darkness, not the
way he had known it as his sister's hands.
    She had been a
monster, and he was not sorry she was dead. A cruel, unloving, vicious,
inventive bitch, and the Lord be thanked she had never whelped children of her
own, for she would have twisted them worse than she had managed to twist him.
She had almost managed to break him of his faith, but he still had a God, and
he prayed to Him, nightly, that her black and rotten soul might be brought to
look on what she had done to her little brother in the name of godly zeal. And
he couldn't forgive her, though a good man should do so.
    He had not
visited her grave, and they could make of that what they would at Four Ashes.
And nor would he, unless it was with a stake and a rowan-tree, to make sure
that the bloodless bitch stayed