“Just don’t get caught.” He rose and turned his back. “And you can explain to Mrs. Linney what happened to her chimney.”
Apparently Jonah’s explanation was plausible. There were no questions, and that night Mrs. Linney extended the offer of bed and board for another night, should they wish it. They accepted, because it was so much easier than going somewhere else, but that night Ben lay facing away, obstinately refusing to turn and take Jonah in his arms, and Jonah curled on the other side of the mattress in silence.
Ben kept up his silence the next day, knowing it was childish, but raw with hurt and, more, with Jonah’s lack of understanding. Apparently he couldn’t see the difference that Ben felt as a real and stabbing thing, between what he had done outside their home and inside it. Or perhaps he thought Ben should have realised what it meant to be a magician, a practitioner, at once.
Or perhaps, a wheedling voice suggested, Ben was being a sulky prick when Jonah was trying his best. He couldn’t help his nature. And it was his nature, that glittering vital spark of joy that made him so glorious to be with, and that Ben’s own solid, earthbound, unhappy temperament could extinguish like cold ash on a fire.
Jonah was uncharacteristically silent in response to Ben’s quiet, but he plunged into the work without hesitation, chattering away to the girls, leaving Ben on the outside, watching his smiles, wishing they were for himself. There was a lot to be done, and Ben took refuge in that too, relishing the approval in Mrs. Linney’s eyes. It seemed a long time since anyone but Jonah had looked at him without pity or contempt.
It was raining the following morning, with one of the abrupt changes of climate that Mrs. Linney assured them were quite usual in Cornwall. She had asked for Ben’s help in the huge old kitchen, tackling a problem with the pump handle. It was a two-person job on an ancient bit of machinery with which Ben wasn’t familiar. Mrs. Linney was evidently all too accustomed to it.
“Blasted thing,” she muttered, wrenching at a nut. Ben put out a hand for the spanner, which she relinquished without protest, sitting back on her heels while he applied his strength. “Makes a change, this. Must be ten year since I had help wi’ the brute.”
“Mr. Linney’s been dead ten years?” Ben asked, and could have kicked himself, because Agnes was very obviously not ten.
Mrs. Linney gave him a look that suggested she was unimpressed with his mathematics. “Four. It’s ten years since old Linney, my pa-in-law, passed. Loosen that one, now.”
“Right. Mr. Linney didn’t deal with this thing, then?”
“Didn’t deal wi’ much.” Mrs. Linney peered at the worn iron. “Arm’s slipped, there.” They worked in silence for a moment, Ben responding to nods and grunts, till she said, quite abruptly, “It’s why we stayed.”
“Uh…”
“Here, when Linney passed. He was no good—I’ve no truck wi’ nonsense about speaking ill of the dead. You deserve ill and I’ll speak it.” She gave Ben a challenging look. He nodded, in full agreement, and she went on, “No good, and my ma told me so, but I was nigh on my Bethy’s age and he was handsome before the drink took him. Well.” She handed Ben a hammer with an abstracted air. “Ma and I fell out over it, and I married him and moved here. I’m foreign here, see.”
“Where are you from?”
“Plymouth,” Mrs. Linney said, as one might say, “Far Cathay.” Ben, for whom it was all so much Cornwall, nodded wisely. She shot him a sharp glance. “Didn’t seem like I could go back wi’ tail between my legs. So I stayed here. And you?”
“Me?”
“Aye, you. Where are you from, Ben Spenser?”
“Uh, Hertfordshire. North of London.”
“Family?”
That hurt. “Parents,” Ben grunted, fixing his attention on the greasy metal shaft he was holding in place. “Brother in the army, in India. Sister married a Scot, moved to Edinburgh.” Did they know of his disgrace? His parents would surely not have written to tell them, but if their infrequent letters went unanswered, they would ask…
Mrs. Linney was watching his face. “Travelling folk, eh? Wandering legs?”
“Not me,” Ben said, heedless in the grip of regret. “I like being settled.” She raised a brow, reasonably enough, since he was here, and Ben managed an unconcerned shrug. “In the long term, I mean. Travelling’s not what I’d want for the rest of my life, that’s all. Lawrence, my brother, always wanted to cross the seas, see the world, but I’m as happy at home.”
“And yon Jonah? He doesn’t strike me as the settled sort.”