As Meat Loves Salt. Maria McCann

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СКАЧАТЬ Master’s boots. Zeb and Caro were most likely keeping out of my sight, and they were wise, for every time I thought of Zeb taking her in his arms, my jaw set and my own arms and shoulders became hard as iron.

      The door opened and I glared upwards. It was Izzy.

      ‘I have made a discovery today,’ I said at once.

      ‘Have you?’ His voice was mild. ‘Will you tell me what?’

      ‘Acting the ambassador? Be straight. You are come to make their excuses.’ I bent forward and spat into the grate.

      Izzy contemplated me. ‘Who are they? My business with you concerns no excuses.’ He pulled up a chair next to mine.

      ‘Well?’ I snapped.

      ‘Nay, I can’t talk to you in that style. Would you rather I went away?’

      ‘Zeb is courting Caro,’ I burst out before I could stop myself. ‘Don’t you know it?’

      ‘You amaze me. How did you make this – discovery?’

      I told him what I had seen and heard. Izzy’s face quickened with some inner revelation before I was halfway through.

      ‘This is – none of it what you think,’ he began slowly.

      ‘What, not the embrace!’

      He scratched his nose. ‘Jacob…there’s a thing I must break to you. Somewhat ticklish.’

      I thought, You are in the right of it there.

      ‘Caro has sought Zeb’s counsel.’

      ‘Why not mine?’

      ‘It concerns you.’ Izzy glanced up at the ceiling as if wishing himself anywhere else in the world. ‘She has sought mine also, and her difficulty is—’

      ‘How to break off with me!’

      ‘She wonders why you wait so long to declare yourself.’

      I was silenced.

      He took a great breath and went on, ‘If I may speak my mind – take note, this is none of her saying! – you make a fool of her, keeping company so long and the day not settled on. She has never wanted any but you. I thought you had a great mind to her also, and you can be sure the Mistress would be pleased. Where then lies the impediment?’

      ‘She is mighty familiar with Zeb,’ I answered slowly, and then, filling with stubborn anger, ‘I will not espouse her, or any, where I think my brother might have been before me.’

      That was the only time in my entire life I saw Isaiah in a passion.

      ‘Do you ever raise your eyes and look about you?’ he hissed. ‘Everyone knows where Zeb’s delight lies, except the hulking idiot who is his brother.’

      I gaped at him.

      ‘Besides, now is too late,’ Izzy went on, his eyes gleaming, ‘for such talk! You have kept company with her for months and given no hint. I repeat, you make a fool of her, and – I promise you! – if one word of your – madness – gets out, you’ll make such a fool of yourself as you’ll never live down.’

      ‘He embraces her.’

      ‘Because he sees her unhappy! And should they kiss, what is it to you? You are not espoused, and if you like it not the remedy lies in your own hands.’

      I was stunned, partly at this view of the matter, but mostly at what he had said of Zeb. ‘Zeb in love? Who?’

      ‘O, a certain maid whose ear he has been nibbling, full in your view, these past months. She has two eyes and a mouth and her name begins with P.’

      Things that I had taken for jests came back to me: Zeb arm-wrestling Patience, or begging a lock of her hair ‘for lying on a maiden’s hair brings a man sweet sleep’.

      ‘Caro does not wish to break off, then—?’ I faltered.

      Izzy rolled his eyes.

      I went on, ‘Yet they spoke of cruelty – said it was cruel.’

      ‘You. You’re cruel to Caro.’

      ‘To Caro…?’ They had talked of a be. I was about to explain his mistake when the truth came to me. The cruelty Zeb had spoken of was my own, and the sufferer Izzy. My elder brother had never ceased to love Caro, that was it; he had but loved her more tenderly as she turned away from the shared kindnesses of their early years towards something different with me. O Izzy, Izzy: he was the better man of us two, I own it freely, but he was not the sort of man a maid dreams of taking to her bed, and he had been forced to learn it over and over as he watched me win her. I could hardly bear to look at him as he sat there, smiling in defeat.

      ‘Cruel to Caro, yes.’ I must now conceal my pity.

      ‘I would see her happy,’ he returned simply. ‘I thought her happiness must lie with you.’

      He it was, I remembered now, who had first told me of her preference.

      ‘But I begin to think I was mistaken.’ Izzy stared ahead of him. ‘Lord, what brothers I have. One eats women and the other starves them.’ His voice trembled as he rose to leave the room.

      ‘Don’t go, Izzy.’ I flung my arms round him from behind. ‘Wait and see – I will declare myself.’ Even as I said it I felt what a bittersweet promise this must be to him.

      He turned to me and we pressed our faces together, the way we had always made up our quarrels as children. I had to bend down now, having so far outgrown my childhood protector. His face was damp around the eyes and for a moment I felt with horror that he was about to cry, but his gaze was bright and steady.

      As he put me away from him, Izzy said quietly, ‘You are near as handsome as he, and bigger.’

      ‘Don’t make me more of a fool than I am,’ I answered.

      ‘There, I knew you would not hear it.’

      ‘You love me too well, Izzy.’

      He sighed. ‘Very well, think yourself ugly. But Jacob,’ he went on, ‘be not so harsh with Zeb.’

      I said I would not.

      Going to seek out Caro, I found Zeb and Patience in the scullery, his arms about her as she scraped at a dirty dish, and I wondered at my blindness for so long. My own darling I discovered moping in the great hall. When she saw me she rose, and would have quitted the room, but I stepped up to her and begged her forgiveness. Before we parted that night, our betrothal was a settled thing.

      

      The Mistress furnished Caro with a good dowry. All the money I could afford for her portion had been put by out of my own sweat, and was not bad considering the little that servants such as ourselves could scratch together. Neither of us could fairly hope for more if we meant to stay where we were.

      My СКАЧАТЬ