Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield

wife stoked the fire, and Thom was as good as his word and poured something warming generously into glasses.
    “You are not riding back to Whittingford tonight, are you, Mr. Bellman?” Thom’s wife asked, looking at the wet garments that were draped all around the hearth. When she learned that he was, she called again. “Rose! There is a young man here soaked from head to foot, who has to ride to Whittingford this evening. Before all the rest, take his boots. Let’s see if we can’t get them a bit dry before he goes.”
    The chinking of plates and cutlery from the next room stopped and a girl appeared and leaned against the doorframe. Fair hair, blue eyes, the spit of her mother.
    “Shall we try something of grandfather’s on him, Rose? Would it fit?”
    The girl’s eyes measured him up. “I think so.” She looked him in the eye. Her gaze was straight and steady. “You’ll not have to mind the smell of mothballs.”
    “I don’t mind.”
    She turned to fetch the clothes.
    “I’ll bring them back next Sunday,” he told Mrs. Weston.
    From the next room, the girl looked over her shoulder at him and smiled. She had a nice gap between her teeth too.
    ·  ·  ·
    Paul had told him yesterday everything he needed to know about the East India and General Company order for fine cloth, and today it was plain that not a word had gone in. Paul went over it a second time.
    “Right,” William said. “I understand it now,” and he settled down to the record book again.
    “Anything wrong?” asked Paul.
    “No.”
    But William was off-kilter, Paul could tell. Something had unsettled him. Perhaps it was time to take him fishing again. In the peace of a Sunday afternoon perhaps his nephew would be coaxed into revealing what the trouble was. But when he proposed an afternoon on the river, Will looked alarmed. He couldn’t go, he had something he had to do.
    Well. He’d tried. Whatever it was, it would probably blow over. Anyway, even with only half his mind on the mill, William still did a fine job.
    ·  ·  ·
    William’s calfskin notebook went unopened for a week. There were no spare minutes in the day to be filled with tasks, because every minute was filled with Rose. Her eyes, her hair, her teeth—he could spend half an hour imagining running his tongue over those teeth. And then, the rest of her was exactly as he liked. She was well made, whether you looked at her from the front or behind or sideways on. After that first frank look, she had not lifted her eyes to his until they said good-bye. It was not coyness: She was too occupied to be coy, what with packing his boots with old rice to draw the wet out, slicing bread and ham, pouring tea and fetching cake, making wide-eyed faces at her baby sister, wagging a finger at the brothers who were out to steal each other’s cake. But he knew by the way she didn’t look at him that she was pleased he was looking at her.
    As it turned out, the gap between Rose’s teeth was every bit as pleasant to his tongue as he had imagined.
    “Every time you smile, I see that gap and I have to kiss you,” he told her.
    “That’ll be a lot of kissing then,” she replied, “because I smile all the time!” And it was true. She was smiling as she said it. He kissed her again.
    How many Sundays had it been now? Three, including that first. Only a fortnight then, and a whole new world.
    In a field, under a tree, they kissed and clung and petted. His fingers had found the way into her undergarments already, and hers into his.They were delighted with the thrills hands could give and receive but yearned for more advanced pleasures.
    “I want—” he said and, “So do I,” said she.
    The trouble was, having got her parents’ cow out of a ditch he was indebted. That good woman, kindhearted and so quick to think of his boots. Making her cross? It was unthinkable. He thought of the tender man who had spoken so soothingly to his terrified cow. No. It was a happy home, and