A Kiss For Midwinter

When she hesitated, he said, “You’re welcome to stay down here. Alone with me.”

And of course, on that, she went up without him. He washed the teapot and found a bucket for water.

“Call me Lucas,” he could hear his father saying, as Jonas slipped out the door and headed to the pump.

By the time he got back and put some water on the hob to boil, they were chattering like old friends. He couldn’t quite make out their conversation over the clank of the dishes as he scrubbed them out. Trust Lydia to charm his father in a quarter of an hour.

He snorted.

Trust his father to charm Lydia as well. He gathered up tea things on a tray—all clean now, the silver shining and the teapot whiter than it had been in years—and started up the stairs.

“I do want some explanation,” Lydia was saying. “What is all of this?”

Jonas could hear the note of distaste in her voice, could imagine her gesturing to the piles of rubbish alongside his bed.

“This is my independence.” Just as easily, he could hear the pride in his father’s voice. “I don’t mean to be a burden on my son in my old age,” his father said. Pride. Overwhelming pride.

Granthams don’t cry, he remembered his father telling him when he was eleven. So you’re going back to school, and I won’t hear any more complaints from you. No matter what they do to you.

“Does your son think of you as a burden?”

“He’s just starting out in life,” his father said earnestly. “About to get married, he is. He doesn’t want an old man leaning on him. When I’m back on my feet, I’ll be able to cut this all up for the scrap metal.” Jonas came up the last few stairs, just in time to see his father lean in. “You see this? Everyone thinks it’s junk. But what you can see right now may well be worth ninety-five pounds. You hear that? Ninety-five pounds, if you know what to do with it.”

That last was delivered in the kind of voice that an elderly man believed to be a whisper, but which could have been heard three counties over.

To her credit, Lydia didn’t guffaw. “Ninety-five pounds,” she said quietly. “My, that’s clever of you.”

“Clever. Ha. I’m not the clever one. You know my son. Now, there’s a clever boy. When he was three, I said to his mother—this boy is going to be something, if only we don’t get in his way. The local grammar school wasn’t good enough for him, no. We knew we had to get him into Rugby. Not easy for a scrap-metal dealer, do you think?”

She made an appropriately appreciative noise. Neither of them had seen him, standing in the shadows of the stairwell, simply drinking in the sight of them together.

“If there was a penny to be squeaked, my wife squeaked it,” his father announced proudly. “And what she didn’t save, I found. And after she…well, never mind that. My son, he went from Rugby to King’s College. Worked with them over on Portugal Street for a few years, he did.”

“You must be very proud,” Lydia said.

“Well, that’s as might be. Right now, I just want to know, where the devil is the—” He turned toward the stairwell and caught sight of Jonas standing there. All that proud boasting closed in on itself. He folded his skinny arms and looked down. “Took you long enough,” he grumbled.

It had ever been like that between them. For years, Jonas had thought that his father was gruff, that he could never please him. It had taken him until early adulthood to understand that his father was proud—so proud that his pride shamed him.

Jonas set the stacked cup and saucers on the bedside table, distributed them, and poured the tea.

He handed Lydia her cup. “There’s no cream or sugar, unfortunately. It’s not good for his heart.”

“As if I would in any event. Did you know the average man spends one pound six shillings a year on sugar, if you add it all up? I read it the other day. Over the course of a man’s life, that adds up to well over sixty pounds. Just for having a little sweetener. You seem a sensible woman, Miss Charingford. You don’t take sugar, do you?”

“A little.”

“Two sugars. And cream.” Jonas had watched her often enough.

“Two sugars?” His father looked scandalized. “Why, that’s a hundred-pound habit. Best to break it now. But do you know what this fellow has me doing?” He gestured at Jonas.

Lydia shook her head.

“I’ve told him a thousand times that if you mix lard with rice, you can scarcely taste the difference between that and meat. Can you believe he’s had the temerity to instruct the grocers not to send me any more lard?”

Lydia’s eyes only widened a fraction at that. She blinked a few times, but then managed to answer. “I can believe it,” she said. “He is a most officious man, when he puts his mind to it. But…” She glanced once at Jonas, and then looked away. “But I do think he means well,” she whispered.

“ARE WE STILL PRETENDING THIS IS ABOUT A WAGER?” Lydia asked, as they left his father’s home.

He looked over at her. “There is a wager on the table. And if I win, I still intend to collect.” The last thing he wanted, though, was to win.

She looked away. “I have no idea what you’re doing.” Her voice was quiet. She threaded her fingers together, looking down. “You could have shown me a great deal worse than you have. You aren’t even trying to win. I don’t know what you want.”

She still hadn’t looked at him.

“I think, Lydia,” he said carefully, “that you do know.”

She shook her head furiously. “I don’t,” she insisted. “You can’t want me to say that I see nothing good about that old man. That’s ridiculous. He’s not well, and his mind seems…not what it might once have been. I surmise that his house is the cause of Henry’s injury, and I could weep for that. But the pride in his eyes when he talked of his son, his sense of familial feeling… There is love there. And that means I win the wager.” Her fists balled. “I win, and you don’t care, and I don’t understand you.”

“There is only one thing you don’t understand,” Jonas said quietly. “I didn’t intend to ask you if you found something good in the man we visited today. There is a great deal that is good in him. I wanted to ask you what you thought of his son.”

That stopped her in her tracks. She frowned. “His son?”