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

fading and
the rain streak the glass, and you could see he was thinking about putting in
another hour gentling the new colt.
    Joyeux and her
equally-fashionable husband had made their excuses and left as soon as it was
polite, claiming a long way to travel.
    And so it was
just the people she loved, on her wedding night, at the last. It had been a day
of courteous, smiling busyness, of many kind wishes and many blessings and
congratulations, but at the last, as the dusk came down, there was no air of
wild festival about it, and that was right, that was as it should be. There was
only a quiet joy, a settling at peace, like the rose-gold ember at the heart of
a flame. There was a rightness about it, because neither she nor Thankful were
ostentatious in their loving, but quiet - and faithful, for they had loved one
another, all unspoken, for almost six years before this day. Marriage set a
crown on their happiness, but it was only a recognition of a thing both of them
had known already.
    The parlour was
not a room that was often used, a room full of mam’s precious things, her
embroidered seat-cushions and the odd trinket that her father had remembered to
bring back from travels about the country in the wars. Old, now, for the most
part, but comfortable, and sweet, and it had a scent of home and cleanliness
about it, and Thomazine closed her eyes and sat smiling with the warmth of the
fire on her face while her husband poked her cold toes and made little fond but
irritable noises reminiscent of a man who thought his wife wanted for common
sense. (He’d told her that already. Twice.) Frannie Pettitt leaned with
difficulty from her chair by the fireside and lifted a fold of Thomazine's
heavy woollen skirts. "There," she said, "I'm that glad you didn't
end up wearing that lovely silk today after all, Thomazine. You would have been
perished, in that church."
    - and Thomazine
opened her eyes and gave Thankful a secret, happy glance, sharing the little
conspiracy. She had been relieved to see that he'd come to his wedding as his
own plain, unpretentious, Sunday-best self: but he had been equally relieved to
see her in her good wool gown and her lace collar. She had a suspicion that he
might yet have broken and run at the last, had he faced a fashionable stranger
in silks and satins at the altar.
    Frannie smiled,
and took a pin from her kerchief. "I'd not have liked to put pin-holes in
your taffety," she said, and pinned a silk ribbon bow to Thomazine's
skirt, and straightened up with a little huff. "There you go, my dear. I
wouldn't have you go without a little frivolity." 
    "Not
altogether without," Thankful said, with that shadow of a smile that was
always more in the eyes than the lips, if you knew to look for it.
"Zee?"
    And he put his
hand to the breast of his coat, and handed hr a little package. He'd bought her
pearls, a string of them, probably better ones than he should afford, in all
conscience, and there was a little outcry of admiration from the party as they
were passed about. "Every pearl a tear, they say," he said.
"Your mother reckons if you have them for your bridal you might never know
sadness. You – like them?"
    "Tears are
for joy, as well as sorrow," she said gently, and then, because they were
at home, and amongst friends, and none might laugh, she touched her fingertips
to his wet lashes, because Thankful was the biggest watering-pot she knew, for
all his austere demeanour. "Are they not?"
    And quite
unselfconsciously, and quite gravely, he took her hand and touched his lips to
her fingers. "Happiest day of my life, my tibber. Bless you."
     
     
    4
     
    She’d come through the day with absolute
serenity, and he’d taken much of his lead from her, because he would have been
lost, else. Surrounded by old comrades gone respectable, and he felt a little
awkward, being the last bachelor of their old company at forty-two. Forty-two
and missing in action for the better part of twenty years, in Scotland and in
one