Dougal set a package of warm crumpets on the worktable. “I had a thought.”
“You had a thought.” Miss Friendly lifted the parcel to her nose and inhaled without even untying the bow. “Does that unprecedented development require a broadsheet alerting the masses to your good fortune? Perhaps we might refer to it as a seasonal miracle.”
“You’re quite on your mettle, Miss Friendly.” Surrounded by letters, with the cat napping on the mantel behind her, she looked a little less wan, a bit less weary than she had when she’d arrived for the monthly meeting more than an hour ago.
“You brought me warm cinnamon crumpets.” She tossed the string toward the hearth, though it caught on the screen. “How could I not be inspired?”
“I’m inspired too,” Dougal said, unwrapping his scarf and hanging it over the hook on the back of the door. “The professor is printing twelve special editions, and that means he’ll have to start on Saturday if he wants to get them all out before Christmas.”
“Why Mr. MacHugh, you’ve learned the days of the week by heart. Perhaps Harry has been tutoring you. Such a dear boy, though somebody needs to let down the hems on his trousers.”
Dougal shook his greatcoat then hung it over his scarf. “The professor’s twelve days begin on Saturday. Ours ought to begin Friday.”
She’d lifted a crumpet halfway to her mouth, and it remained there, poised before her. “Friday? Have you misplaced what few wits you claim, Mr. MacHugh? That means we have to have the first column to the printer on Thursday morning.”
“Which means if you have it written by tomorrow evening, we can edit it Wednesday, and beat the professor at his game.”
She took a dainty nibble of her sweet as cinnamon perfumed the office. The cat woke, stretched, and nearly fell off the mantel before re-situating himself more comfortably.
“You want me to write a column of insightful, kind, articulate advice.” She took another bite of crumpet. “We haven’t even chosen all of the letters yet, Mr. MacHugh. I can’t conjure solutions without time to think them up.”
“We’ll argue them up.” Dougal took the chair beside her, because the day was bitter and his backside craved the warmth of the fire.
“We’re good at that,” she said, nudging the crumpets toward him. “Take more than your share, and you’ll get no columns from me.”
Dougal used his penknife to slice one of the four crumpets in half, took a bite, then gestured with the remaining portion.
“Are these the letters you’re considering?”
“Yes. Don’t get crumbs on them.”
He picked up the first one and scanned it. “The old my sister is making eyes at my husband. Husband’s holiday token ought to be a month of slumber on the sofa, or a stern warning from sister’s husband—and his brothers.”
“Don’t be such a man.”
“I am a man.”
“Don’t be such a crude man. We don’t know if husband is making eyes back at the sister. If he is, there’s a problem. If he’s not, then the sister is simply making a fool of herself. We don’t know if the sister is married, which also matters. The issue, though, is loneliness.”
The issue was lust.
Dougal spoke around a mouthful of crumpet. “How do you figure that?”
“If the sister were content with her lot, she’d not be trying to attract the attention of her brother-in-law, which efforts are doomed to misery, no matter where they lead.”
“True enough.” Though Dougal had yet to have an entirely miserable time sharing a bed—as best he recalled those few and distant occasions—and a shared bed was the logical conclusion to this domestic drama.
“If the wife were secure in husband’s affections,” Miss Friendly went on, “she would not be troubled by her sister’s behavior.”
“Some women are born troubled.”
Sharing that eternal verity with Miss Friendly earned Dougal the same look George gave him when the cat had been put out first thing on a snowy day.
She paused before starting on a second crumpet. “If the husband were entirely secure in his wife’s affections, he wouldn’t strike the sister as a man who could be tempted.”
“Some men like to be tempted. They aren’t interested in the sin itself, they just like to know they could be naughty if they wanted to.”
She frowned at her half crumpet. “Like some women keep men dangling after them. There are names for women like that, but when a man is flirtatious, we call him a gallant.”
The last of her crumpet met its fate, and an unhappy silence grew.
“Whoever he was,” Dougal said, pushing to his feet, “he was an idiot, and you’re better off without him. I need some tea.”
He left the office not to see to the teapot—the clerks always had one going on the parlor stove in cold weather—but to put distance between himself, Miss Friendly, and thoughts of shared beds. Dougal had no business speculating where Patience Friendly was concerned, but he’d long ago given up lecturing his imagination on that score.
As he brought a tea tray back into his office, it struck him that for Miss Friendly, being closeted alone with a man under the age of eighty must be an unusual occurrence. If she’d had a flirtatious swain in tow at some point—a gallant—she wasn’t the daughter of a merchant, schoolteacher, or yeoman.
“Will you answer the letter about the flirting sister?” he asked.
“I can use the letter as a point of departure regarding holiday loneliness and remind the readers that problems admit of solutions when we’re in possession of all the relevant facts. Shall you eat that last half crumpet?”
Dougal set the tray down and regarded the sweet. The part he’d eaten had been delicious. Perfectly baked, between cake and pudding in the center, sweet, spicy, delightful.
“No.”
Miss Friendly reached for it, and Dougal grabbed her wrist. “You’ve had three, madam.”
“It shouldn’t go to waste.”
Someday, Dougal wanted her to look at him the way she regarded that last half crumpet.
“It won’t. Harry!” he called. “Come clear up this mess, please.”
Harry trotted into the office, wrapped the paper around the last half crumpet, and swept the table free of crumbs.
“Anything else, Dougal?”
Before non-family, Harry was supposed to call his employer Mr. MacHugh. “Aye. Send ’round to the chophouse for two plates at half four. The usual portions, and tell the lads they can go home an hour early if the snow keeps up. Fill up the coal buckets before you go and sweep off the steps.”
“Right, Dougal.”
The instant Harry had gone, Miss Friendly was on her feet, hands at her hips. “I can’t believe you just threw away a perfectly good half of a delicious…” Her eyes narrowed. “You saved it for the boy.”
“Nothing edible goes to waste when Harry’s on the premises. Now, about this letter?”
She flounced back to her seat, and then the real arguments began.
* * *
Patience had never spent most of a day at her publisher’s office. The insights gained were fascinating. The pace of the work never let up, with clerks coming and going, errand boys and printer’s assistants adding to the traffic, and packages coming in by the hour.
The bustle was distracting at first, but then it became a sort of music, like a string quartet playing in the background at a Venetian breakfast. Several hours of choosing and discarding letters with Mr. MacHugh also revealed that clerks did not always use refined language, and most of Mr. MacHugh’s staff spoke with thick Highland burrs.
As for MacHugh himself, he was the biggest revelation of all. He was gruff, demanding, tireless, and devoted to his staff.
“You sent your clerks home early,” Patience said, getting up to fetch a cushion from the sofa. “Will you dock their pay?”
“Of course not. They’re paid little enough as it is, and they’d work late if I asked it of them. We should finish up here. We’ve chosen enough letters to last you the first six days, and it’s dark out.”
Patience tossed the cushion onto her chair, then resumed her seat. To blazes with decorum when her backside ached.
“The food was surprisingly good,” she said, surveying the remains of their meal. The chophouse had sent around a hot sandwich, ham and cheese, the cheddar almost melting but not quite, a perfect dash of mustard turning good food into a feast.
At home, dinner would have been soup made from the leftovers of the Sunday joint, but mostly broth, potatoes, and carrots.
“We’re faithful customers at the chophouse,” Mr. MacHugh said, moving the empty plates to the desk. “Shall we be on our way?”
“You needn’t walk me home, Mr. MacHugh.”
He leaned back against the desk, arms folded across his chest. At some point, he’d taken off his coat, and Patience had taken off her boots.
A far cry from the propriety with which she’d been raised, but propriety did not keep the coal bins full.
“Miss Friendly, I conceded to you on the matter of the child who’d pinched horehound candy from the sweet shop. I capitulated regarding the mother-in-law’s awful bread pudding. I compromised regarding the best way to scent tapers without spending a fortune, but I will not allow a woman in my employ to walk alone on the streets of London at night.”
The snow had stopped, but slippery footing was not the worst that could befall a solitary woman on London’s streets, especially at night. Poor women took their chances, while wealthy women never went anywhere unescorted.
Patience would never be wealthy again. “Can’t you send Harry with me?”
“Can’t you accept my company for the distance of a few streets? You’ve spent the better part of a day with me, and we didn’t come to blows.”
“A near thing, and only because I disapprove of violence.”
“You disapprove of me,” he said, pushing away from the desk. “Get your boots on, and I’ll see to it you’re home safe in a half hour. I’ll send Harry around to fetch the first column from you tomorrow afternoon.”
He passed her the boots, which needed new heels, but kept her feet reasonably dry over short distances. The temptation to argue was strong, also unwise. Patience put her boots on, then wrapped herself in her cloak and scarf and let Mr. MacHugh accompany her to the front stoop.
Down near the corner, some elderly soul shuffled along, bent against the bitter breeze, but the thoroughfare was otherwise deserted.
“Let’s be off,” Mr. MacHugh said. “A bit of fresh air is all well and good, but I don’t fancy a lung fever when the work is piling up.” He tucked Patience’s hand around his arm and set off at a surprisingly considerate pace, given the difference in their heights.
Fatigue descended as they walked along, and in the privacy of her thoughts, Patience was grateful for Mr. MacHugh’s presence. The streets were unsafe for a woman traveling by herself at this hour.
And they were lonely.
After all the bickering, discussing, arguing, and debating, the silence of the December night was profound. The new snow muffled even church bells, and the smell—coal smoke on a frigid breeze—was desolate.
They had turned onto Patience’s street when she broke the silence.
“I don’t disapprove of you.”
Mr. MacHugh made a disparaging noise between a snort and a huff.
“I don’t,” Patience went on. “I might not…That is to say, I don’t know what to do with you. I was not raised to be in anybody’s employment. I don’t care for it, but I don’t care to rely on charity either.”
“You’d rather be idle?”
His curiosity was genuine, not a taunt aimed at a class of society for which Mr. MacHugh had little respect. At least he hadn’t asked if she’d rather be married.
“I’d rather be the employer, if you must know. I cannot abide somebody telling me what to do, presuming to know what’s best for me, or how I ought to go on.”
“Especially not a man?”
“Not anybody.”
Patience braced herself for a lecture on the way of the world, the dictates of the Almighty, nature’s laws, and other masculine flights of self-importance. If men were so infernally smart, competent, and ideally suited to ordering creation, then why was most of the Continent constantly at war, and why hadn’t men been chosen to endure the agony of childbirth?
“I don’t care for being told what to do myself,” Mr. MacHugh said. “There are sheep and there are shepherds. I’m not a sheep, and I’m not convinced gender matters the way the preacher claims it does, but that’s just a former schoolteacher’s point of view.”
They’d reached Patience’s doorstep, the only one on her side of the street with a lamp lit.
“You were a schoolteacher, Mr. MacHugh?”
“Aye, and still would be, except my grandfather left me some means. In the schoolroom, I saw what a difference knowledge could make to a receptive mind. I must admit small boys are not always ideal students, while little girls on the whole struck me as cleverer than the boys, more eager for knowledge. I had hoped that as a publisher, I might be able to do more to make knowledge available to receptive minds.”
Mr. MacHugh’s high-crowned hat gave him extra height in addition to what nature had bestowed, and yet, a hint of the small boy remained in his gaze as he studied the lamp post.
“Have you given up so easily on that dream of sharing knowledge, Mr. MacHugh? Your publishing house is not quite three years old.”
He took off his hat and dusted a few snowflakes from the brim. “I’d planned to be the publisher who brought enlightenment to the masses, you see. Science, languages, tales of faraway lands, all for a reasonable price. No Gothic novels, scandal sheets, or fashionable nonsense for me. It hasn’t worked out that way.”
Half the elderly women who dwelled across the street were probably peering out their parlor windows, horrified that Patience was having discourse with a man on her very doorstep.
Warmth blossomed in her heart nonetheless, because Dougal MacHugh was not quite the pinchpenny taskmaster she’d thought him to be. He had dreams, he’d known disappointment. He’d not been above instructing little girls or noticing their intelligence.
“If this project goes well,” Patience said, “you’ll have some latitude, some room to put a bit of knowledge before the masses and see if they like it. That will be my holiday wish for you, Mr. MacHugh, that your dream can come closer to reality.”
He tapped his hat back onto his head. “Give the professor a sound drubbing, Miss Friendly. That’s all I ask. I’ll bid you good evening.”
Patience made her way up the steps, while, like a suitor, Mr. MacHugh waited for her to safely enter her home. She closed the door behind her and, before she undid her cloak and scarf, peered out the window.
Mr. MacHugh was already in motion, his stride confident, his dark cloak flapping against his boots. He hadn’t scoffed at Patience’s dreams, and he had dreams of his own. Watching him make his solitary way down the street, Patience considered she might have something else in common with Mr. Dougal MacHugh.
Perhaps he was lonely too.
* * *
“You canna tell the woman to leave her husband,” Dougal shouted. “You’ll put me oot t’ business, ye daft woman. I’ll have preachers six deep on m’ doorstep citing Scripture, and a bunch of harpies quoting that Wollstonecraft woman in response.”
For the space of a day, Dougal had pondered his walk through the snowy evening with Patience Friendly. From his perspective, their dealings had subtly shifted as a result of that walk, the shared meal, and the long afternoon spent shaping the details of their holiday project.
He’d given her a piece of his past, something none of his competitors knew. The schoolteacher from Perthshire aspired to commercial success, and Patience Friendly had not mocked his ambition.
Now, he aspired to turn her over his knee.
“The poor woman’s husband is gambling and drinking away coin needed to feed her child,” Miss Friendly retorted, marching across the office. “If she stays with him, she and the child will die, or worse.”
“Such drama over a man enjoying a wee dram or two. What could be worse than death?”
She aimed a glower at him, magnificent in its ferocity. Up close, her eyes were storm gray rather than their customary blue, though she still bore the fragrance of lemons and spices.
“Must I spell it out for you, Mr. MacHugh? You’ve lived three years in London. Are you still in ignorance of the Magdalene houses and foundling homes?”
“Don’t insult me, Patience Friendly.”
“Don’t ignore a woman whose child’s life is imperiled, Mr. MacHugh. I say my reply to the letter stands. If a man is fonder of his pint than he is of his own child, he’s a menace to the child. A father’s first obligation is to protect his young.”
“Find me Scripture to back up that position, and I’ll let you quote it, but that’s as far as I’ll go.”
“You arrogant varlet.” Miss Friendly’s voice cracked like a tree trunk sundered by gale-force winds. “Scripture is written by men, interpreted by men, translated by men, and preached by men. What would a man know of a lady’s plight in this situation? The mother—a countrywoman from your benighted Scotland—didn’t write to the all-knowing professor, she wrote to me.”
The staff was accustomed to Dougal raising his voice, and heated arguments among the clerks were not unusual. Dougal wasn’t above dressing down a printer who failed to deliver on time, and some of the other authors—the male authors—could be colorful in their choice of words.
To have provoked Miss Patience Friendly to shouting felt like both an accomplishment and a disgrace. A violation of some natural order that stood above even Scripture.
“She’s right,” Harry said, sauntering through the open door with a bag of crumpets. “‘Let the women keep silent in the church,’ for example. Why wouldn’t God want to hear from half his children? Doesn’t make any sense to me, and yer auld mum would agree, Dougal.”
“There you have it,” Miss Friendly snapped, snatching the bag of crumpets from Harry. “From the mouths of babes, or in this case, strapping youths coming into the full glory of their intellectual powers.” She tore open the bag and passed Harry a crumpet.
Harry accepted the sweet, bowed, and smirked his way out the door.
“We’ll set the letter aside for now,” Dougal said. “Plenty of others remain, and we needn’t tackle that one first.”
Miss Friendly held her crumpet as if she were considering pitching it at him. “We can set the letter aside for now, but the misery of poor children ought to be a suitable topic for the holiday season. You will not convince me otherwise.”
For them, this was a compromise. A show of diplomacy was in order. “Convince you to change your mind once you’ve formed an opinion? Daft I might be, but I’ve no desire to end my days prematurely. Enjoy your crumpets.”
Dougal tried for a dignified exit, but Miss Friendly tore off a bite of cinnamon heaven and popped it into her mouth as he passed her.
“You don’t care for a crumpet, Mr. MacHugh? They’re very tasty.”
“I’ll have a half.”
The rest of the afternoon went the same way, bickering and sweets, then the occasional philosophical argument, followed by a heated difference of opinion over the placement of a comma.
All quite invigorating, and yet the disagreement over the gin widow’s letter left a sour taste in Dougal’s mouth.
“Has Miss Friendly driven you from your own office?” Harry asked as the clerks began packing up. “I can still make a run to the chophouse if you’re going to demand more work from her.”
Dougal eyed the closed door to his office, which sported his name—Dougal P. MacHugh, Publisher—in shiny brass letters. An hour ago, that door had opened enough for a disgruntled King George to be shoved into the clerk’s room, but Miss Friendly hadn’t emerged or demanded more crumpets.
“She’s working,” Dougal said. “You lot go get the greenery, and mind you, don’t overspend. We’ve a budget in this office.”
“We’ve a budget even for a frolic,” Harry retorted. “Is it any wonder the Scotsman has a dour, miserly reputation?”
“Hear, hear,” old Detwiler chorused from his desk.
“Traitor.” Dougal pushed a few coins into Harry’s hand. “Stand the lads to a pint when you’re finished outside. Detwiler must buy his own, though.”
The office emptied, save for Dougal, King George, and the literary force of nature who’d taken over Dougal’s office.
Miss Friendly had said she wanted to be the employer, an unusual ambition for a woman her age. Widows could own entire networks of coaching inns, breweries, and all manner of establishments, but a single woman of Miss Friendly’s age—a spinster—could dream of managing only her own household.
“Rrrlf.”
George stropped himself against Dougal’s boot. Dougal considered shoving the cat back through the door, a sort of reconnaissance maneuver, but decided on safety in numbers instead. He picked up George, did not knock on his own door, and entered the office.
He faced a writer’s version of a battlefield. A dictionary lay open on the table. The remains of a bag of crumpets sat beside it. Foolscap had been crumpled and tossed toward the hearth, and more sheets covered with scrawling penmanship were scattered over the table.
Miss Friendly sat at Dougal’s desk, her arms crossed on the blotter, her cheek pillowed on her forearm. Dougal set the cat on the mantel and crept closer, for his most popular author was apparently fast asleep.
“Miss Friendly?”
Her breathing continued in the slow, mesmerizing rhythm of exhausted sleep. A quill pen lay beneath her right hand. At rest, her features were more elegant, more delicate than when animated with her endless opinions.
Dougal slid the quill from beneath her grasp, and still she remained asleep. George paced back and forth on the mantel, as if waiting for a laggard minion to build up the fire.
Instead, Dougal lit a candle from a spill and took the candle to the desk. Better light didn’t change what he’d observed when he’d first approached his sleeping beauty.
Miss Friendly was tired—her eyes were shadowed with fatigue, and her sleep was sound. She had also been upset, apparently, for in her left hand she clutched a lace-edged handkerchief, and her cheeks were stained with tears.
* * *
Patience dozed in that half-dreaming state where sounds from the waking world had no significance and thoughts drifted freely.
At least she hadn’t cried in front of Dougal MacHugh. He wasn’t exactly dreadful anymore, but he was disappointing, which was worse. On Monday, he’d acknowledged that even a young female might have a nimble mind. Today, he’d gone right back to parroting hidebound attitudes merely because they’d keep his business from offending the good clergy of London.
Let the women keep silent in the church, indeed.
“Miss Friendly.”
Patience wasn’t feeling very friendly. Other snippets of Scripture floated past, none of them useful when a child’s belly was empty. The cat rustled about the office, and Patience had the odd thought that she liked having George underfoot.
“Madam, wake up. The lads will say I worked you to exhaustion.”
That growling burr was familiar, and not.
Somebody gently shook Patience’s shoulder. “Woman, ye canna be sleeping in my very office. We’ll stop at the bakery and get some tarts, for I’m certain you’ve eaten every crumpet in Bloomsbury.”
The word crumpet had Patience opening her eyes. “I adore a fresh lemon tart.”
Dougal MacHugh knelt beside the desk, his emerald eyes full of concern—for her?
“I’ll buy ye a dozen. Why were ye cryin’, Patience?”
Patience. He avoided using her given name, but she liked the way he said it.
“How did you know I was crying?” For she had been, and dissembling would simply make her look foolish. More foolish. She sat back, knowing her sleeve had left a crease on her cheek, and her hair needed tidying.
She’d taken a break to read the morning paper and seen an engagement announced. Not just any engagement, but the one that ten years ago should have been hers.
A callused male thumb stroked her cheek. “I see the evidence of your tears. If somebody needs a beating, I’ll gladly do the honors.” In his way, Dougal MacHugh claimed a certain rough charm.
“He’s a viscount now. He’d see you put out of business and laugh about it with his friends.”
Mr. MacHugh brushed an errant lock of hair back from Patience’s brow. “I liked teaching little children their letters, sums, and history. I’d like teaching a viscount his manners more. I take it your papa wasn’t in a position to hold the bastard accountable.”
Bastard was such a vulgar, appropriate word. “Papa was the reason the viscount went on his way, even though the engagement had been all but announced.”
This was ancient, entirely irrelevant history. The Windhams knew all the details and had stood by Patience through it all, though the rest of her acquaintances had dropped her flat. Used goods. A jilt. A jade. Patience was no stranger to vulgar words, though she had denied herself use of them regarding the viscount.
“Was there a disagreement, lass?”
Small children had likely confessed all of their troubles to Dougal MacHugh when he put questions to them so gently.
“There was a predictable melodrama,” Patience said, “though I was the only one not given the script. Papa, like many younger sons, lived beyond his means. He had a falling out with his older brother, and the debts began to pile up. Papa realized that he couldn’t afford more than one Season for me, but for that one Season, he spared no expense.”
Mr. MacHugh turned and perched with his back to the desk drawers. “And when the viscount realized you were not an heiress, not even in possession of good settlements or on good terms with the head of your family, away he went. He broke his word, and he broke your heart.”
“Well put.” The first mattered more than the second, in hindsight.
“Your uncle was no help?”
“My uncle was determined to teach my father a lesson, my father was intent on the same exercise where the baron was concerned, the title has since gone to a cousin I’ve never met. I think Scottish families must be different.”
“Scottish families are poorer, for the most part. We can’t afford such meanness to one another.”
Meanness, another appropriate word. “The viscount proposed to me. Not down on bended knee, but sitting in the pergola. He proposed, and I accepted. I know now why a young man is left alone to propose to his lady.”
“Because men can’t bear to have witnesses when they’re rejected?”
“That too, but also so they don’t have witnesses when their proposal is accepted. He later claimed I’d misconstrued his words, I’d read into friendship a regard that hadn’t been tendered.”
Mr. MacHugh rose straight to his full height. “Patience Friendly, if ever a woman had a fine command of the language, and the many subtleties thereof, you are that woman. You misconstrued nothing, and the viscount was never your friend.”
He tugged Patience to her feet, and because she’d been sitting so long—surely that was the reason—she wobbled and clutched at the nearest stable object.
Her arms found their way around Mr. MacHugh’s waist, and—later was time enough to wonder why—his enfolded her.
“Nobody has ever said that to me.” She gave him her weight, and he obliged with a genuine embrace. “My parents questioned me endlessly. What had he said? Was I sure? Could I have misheard him? What words did he use? It’s as if they wanted him to be right and me to be a witless ninny.”
“You were right, they were wrong. You are not a witless ninny. Your parents’ first responsibility is to protect their young—I have this on the best authority—and they failed you.”
A queer feeling came over Patience, part sadness, because her parents had failed her spectacularly, but also part relief. No witnesses could verify the harm done to her by a faithless young man, and thus doubt had assailed her, even from within.
Had she misheard? Was she exaggerating? Did she misconstrue words intended to convey only general esteem?
“Papa said I must have misunderstood. I didn’t misunderstand the viscount’s hands under my skirts. Only a fiancé or a cad takes such liberties.”
She buried her face against Mr. MacHugh’s shoulder, appalled at her own honesty, and even more appalled at how ignorant she’d been ten years ago.
“Losing our innocence is painful, but it’s how we find out what sort of person we are.”
The desk and the chair prevented Patience from stepping back, and yet, she wanted to see Mr. MacHugh’s eyes, wanted to assure herself he brought no judgment of her to this discussion.
Because if he did not judge her, perhaps she might cease judging herself. She’d accused herself of ignorance, while Mr. MacHugh pronounced her guilty only of trusting the wrong man.
She scooted onto the desk, and Mr. MacHugh remained where he was—close enough to hug, his hands at his sides.
“You could have gone into a decline,” he said. “Thrown yourself on your uncle’s charity, embroiled the viscount and your family in worse scandal than a simple reversal of fortune. You didn’t. You soldiered on. You are still soldiering on, and God pity the fool who thinks to take advantage of you ever again.”
Dougal MacHugh’s approval made Patience want to cry all over again, also to smile. To beam, to laugh, to hug him again.
How odd.
“I could not allow my brother to suffer as a result of my situation. Mama pawned her jewels to buy him a commission and found work tutoring bankers’ daughters in elocution, deportment, and French. She wrote pamphlets on the same subjects, and then I took up that occupation when she died.”
Please don’t ask about Papa. She could see the question in Mr. MacHugh’s eyes, could feel it bearing down on her.
“And your father. Did he drink, Patience?”
“Sometimes. Mama said he expired of shame. We moved in with her mother, and that’s the only reason I have a roof over my head. Grandmama left everything she had to me. You mustn’t think my circumstances are pathetic.”
Precarious, yes. Never pathetic. Not as long as Patience had friends and meaningful, paying work.
“I think you are resourceful, resilient, and brilliant at what you do, but it’s time I got you home, Miss Friendly.”
Patience didn’t want to leave, and she didn’t want to be Miss Friendly. She wanted to sort through the remaining letters, eat more of the hot, delicious food from the chophouse, and argue with Dougal until full darkness had fallen.
Except it already had. “Is my first column ready for the printer?”
“We’ll send it over bright and early tomorrow. Three letters, all answered with your signature good sense. Come Friday, the professor will have an apoplexy.”
“Good,” Patience said, scooting off the desk. “He’s certainly given me a few bad moments. The man is insufferable. Thinks he knows everything, and what he lacks in pragmatism he makes up for in long-windedness.”
She was wrapped in her cloak and at the front door when it occurred to her that something about the office had changed. The scent was different, for one thing. Beneath the coal smoke, ink, and paper smell lay the fragrance of pine.
“You decorate for the holidays? Doesn’t that cost a bit of coin, Mr. MacHugh?” The windows were swagged with pine roping, a wreath of pine and holly graced each of the double doors, and cloved oranges hung from the unlit wall sconces.
“The clerks enjoy decorating, the patrons like it, and my competitors do it, so I make a few gestures. It’s in the budget, though I’ll have a word with Harry tomorrow regarding fiscal restraint.”
He pointed a gloved hand upward, to a sheaf of greenery dangling by a red ribbon from the chandelier.
Every spinster’s worst holiday nightmare hung overhead—mistletoe, and plenty of it.
“Come along,” Patience said, wrapping her arm through Mr. MacHugh’s. “Tomorrow will be another demanding day, and we’ve tarried long enough.”
She nearly shoved Mr. MacHugh through the door, and then engaged him in a discourse on the writings of Mrs. Wollstonecraft. Patience wasn’t familiar with the author’s philosophies, but if they had earned Mr. MacHugh’s notice, she’d remedy that oversight posthaste.