The previous evening, Dougal had prosed on for the duration of three quiet snowy streets, regaling Patience with the writings of a woman either ahead of her time or bent on destroying the social order, depending on the critic’s perspective. All the while, Dougal had been rearranging his emotional budget where Patience Friendly was concerned.
She was, indeed, a lady fallen on hard times. Very hard times, very much a lady, and her contrariness was a result of betrayed trust rather than arrogance. No wonder she argued every comma, demanded a say in which letters she answered, and had thrown herself into this project.
On Thursday morning, the office was tidy and neat—unlike Dougal’s thoughts—thanks to Harry’s efforts, though Dougal had enjoyed seeing the battlefield where Patience had thrashed her next deadline into submission.
“Shall I buy more crumpets?” Harry asked, shuffling through the door. “I can take them with me when I fetch Miss Friendly’s column for tomorrow.”
“I’ll fetch her column,” Dougal said. “You can take down the mistletoe, my lad. This is a respectable establishment.”
“I’m not tall enough to take it down—yet. Mind you don’t be pinchin’ the lady’s sweets, Dougal. I’d hate to have to peach on you to Cousin Hamish.”
Cousin Hamish was head of the Perthshire branch of the family, a former colonel who owned two breweries and considerable acreage. His brother, Cousin Colin, owned a distillery, while their sisters, Rhona and Edana, had yet to settle on a single enterprise. In England, the ladies might be discouraged from commercial ventures. In Scotland…
Family supported one another. Hamish had been the one to talk Dougal into trying his hand at publishing, for example.
“Cousin Hamish is hundreds of miles to the north,” Dougal said, “and he likes it up in Perthshire. Be gone with ye, and don’t be telling tales that reflect on a good woman’s name.”
Harry folded himself into one of the chairs facing Dougal’s desk. “Are you thinking of offering for her?”
“Are you, Harold Bruce Sylvester MacHugh?”
Harry’s ears turned red, but his grin was pure MacHugh. “I haven’t sown my wild oats yet, or she’d succumb to my legendary charm in a thrice, and you’d have no one to write Mrs. Horner’s Corner. Speaking of writing, what’s that you’re working on?”
Dougal picked up the page and poured the sand from it back into the tray. “None of your business, but it’s almost ready for the printer. Fetch Miss Friendly’s completed column from Detwiler, give it a final read, and you can take this with you when you make the morning run to the printer.”
“I don’t fancy running anywhere today, Dougal,” Harry said, rising and holding his hands out toward the hearth. “That sky is getting ready to snow from now until Christmas. Mr. Detwiler’s sacroiliac is acting twinge-ish, and you know what that means.”
“It means when we need him most, Detwiler will take a day off, claiming his back has laid him low. It’s winter, Harry. The sky looks like a winter sky. See to Miss Friendly’s column, please.”
Harry left off petting King George and went about his assignment. He was indeed growing out of his trousers—again—and would need new boots before too long as well.
Dougal read over the page he’d written, looking for mistakes or even a comma out of place. In his dreams, he’d give this piece to Patience to tear apart, edit, and refine, but that way lay a war Dougal wasn’t prepared to fight.
Not yet, possibly not ever.
* * *
“That scoundrel!” Miss Friendly cried, boots thumping on the office floorboards as she stalked about like King George in a taking. “That dastardly, underhanded, pestilential, infernal—oh, I wish I were more proficient with foul language.”
“Scurrilous dog?” Mr. MacHugh offered. “Varlet?”
“Too trite, but certainly in the right direction. How did he know, Mr. MacHugh? How did the professor know we were starting a day early?”
Patience stood at the front window, one floor above a familiar scene. On the nearest corner, Jake, the newsboy with the loudest voice, hawked the MacHugh and Sons broadsheets to the Friday morning crowd.
“Mrs. Horner solves all your holiday woes! Family squabbles, lack of funds, stains on the tablecloth—no problem for our Mrs. Horner! Disaster avoided, and a happy Christmas from MacHugh and Sons!”
On the opposite corner, a slightly older boy offered the competing product. “Professor Pennypacker packs all the advice you’ll need into one column. Why listen to a nattering old woman when the learned professor has all the answers?”
This had been going on for half the morning, with each newsboy obligingly falling silent when his opponent held forth. A strolling fiddler played holiday tunes on the third corner, and a meat-pie vendor occupied the fourth.
“I have my sources in the offices of the other publishers,” Mr. MacHugh said. “I’m sure Pennypacker’s newsboy occasionally chats with my lads over a pint. I’ve Harry keeping an eye out, but where’s the harm in some friendly competition?”
Mr. MacHugh stood behind Patience at the window, close enough to remind her that they’d embraced, even held each other, for a few moments. The sky hadn’t fallen, King George hadn’t abdicated his place on the mantel, but Patience’s opinion of Mr. MacHugh had shifted—a bit.
He wasn’t ambitious for his own sake. He employed a dozen relations and had sunk his last groat into his business. That took courage, daring, and determination, all of which were admirable qualities.
In a man.
Necessary qualities in a woman without means.
“Is Jake the best choice?” Patience asked. “He’s smaller than Pennypacker’s boy. Younger. The cold might be harder on him.”
“Because his family is from Jamaica? Jake was born in London—he knows our winters—and he’s good at what he does. I thought we might move him to Oxford Street when he sells out this lot.”
“Oxford Street?” Patience turned from the window. “The great houses of Mayfair don’t need Mrs. Horner’s advice.”
Mr. MacHugh perched against his desk and folded his arms. That gesture usually signaled an opinion cast in granite. It also accentuated the breadth of his shoulders.
“Think about it, Miss Friendly. The great houses of Mayfair sit in Mayfair, but the day help, the merchants, the clerks, shopgirls, and not-so-great all come and go between Mayfair and the rest of London. Oxford Street sees much of that traffic, and the professor’s not distributing his wares there.”
A week ago, Patience might have spent half an hour arguing: Jake would waste at least thirty minutes getting to Oxford Street, but he could sell a few copies along the way. Pennypacker’s boy might simply follow Jake and stand him to one of those pints Mr. MacHugh had mentioned. The entire lot of papers might end up in the ditch if young Jake took a tumble on the snowy streets.
Courage, daring, and determination were not the exclusive province of a man in business.
“Oxford Street,” Patience said. “A different block every day, so Pennypacker has to chase us. One of the other boys can bring Jake a fresh lot on the hour, so Jake doesn’t have to waste time coming and going from here every time he runs out. If it’s a war Pennypacker wants, it’s a war he shall get.”
“We’ll have Harry take Jake’s place out front, and send Jake out the back.”
“Oh, that is diabolical, Mr. MacHugh. I take back everything I ever said about you—well, some things. The parts about being—”
He took off his glasses and polished them on his sleeve. “Time for crumpets?”
Patience was tired of crumpets. The treat that had loomed beyond her means had lost its appeal in a few short days.
“Lemon tarts. This calls for lemon tarts, and then I must apply myself to the next set of letters.”
“Harry!” Mr. MacHugh called. “To the bakery, and tell Jake to come in when he’s sold the last of his stack. Lemon tarts for Miss Friendly today.”
“And a lemon tart for Jake if he sells out in fifteen minutes!” Patience called.
A cheer went up from the clerks, along with promises to take newsboy duty for the next week, for the next year, if fresh tarts were part of the compensation.
Patience not only understood the ribaldry, she delighted in it. “What are you smiling at, Mr. MacHugh?”
His smile transformed him, from a sober and somewhat ruthless man of commerce, to a buccaneer of business, a pirate prince of the publishing world. A quantity of alliterative excesses occurred to Patience, but they all came down to the fact that when Mr. MacHugh smiled at her, he was as attractive as a plate of fresh lemon tarts.
Delicious, complicated, spicy, tart, with just the right amount of sweetness too.
“I’m smiling at a general forging of a path to victory. Pennypacker is no match for you, Patience Friendly, and I think his good fortune has turned against him.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re selling more copies because he came out a day early, just as you did.”
The newsboys called back and forth to each other, exchanging taunts and jibes. “So is Pennypacker.”
“He won’t be on Oxford Street.” The smile came again, along with a lifted eyebrow that promised doom to the presuming professor.
Patience smiled back and got to work on the next column.
* * *
Patience Friendly was gorgeous when she smiled. Full of mischief, plans, and energy. When she smiled, she sparkled like moonlight on snow. To see her illuminated with joy was like imbibing a fine dram on a cold night. Every particle of Dougal’s soul was warmed and cheered by the sight, just as he delighted to watch her hurling thunderbolts of advice in active voice.
Friday had been lemon tart day. Today she’d had Dougal send for stollen and divided the loaf among all of the clerks, then disappeared back into Dougal’s office.
“So you’ve put out two editions now.” Detwiler tossed half a scoop of coal into the parlor stove, then straightened on an old man’s sigh. “How’s your plan working, lad?”
“You’re wasting coal, Aloysius Detwiler. The lads have left for the day.” Dougal remained perched on Harry’s stool, for it was closest to the fire. Only Detwiler, as the senior editor, merited his own desk.
“But Mrs. Horner remains in your corner, scribbling away.” Detwiler moved about the room, tidying up. Good editors were born to tidy and fuss, and Detwiler was the best. Fortunately, he was married to a MacHugh and had some notion of family loyalty.
“Time I walked the lady home, then,” Dougal said. “She’ll be pleased with today’s sales.”
The clerks came in an hour later on Saturday morning and left at midafternoon, though there had been plenty of time for Jake and Harry to sell out their supplies of broadsheets.
“Miss Friendly wasn’t pleased that the professor followed us to Oxford Street.” Detwiler went around the room, putting all the quill pens at the same angle in their standishes. “She’ll be furious to learn she’s been working for the professor himself.”
“You promised you’d not breathe a word.”
“The door is closed, and as much time as you spend in there with Miss Friendly, I’ll not find you any more alone than you are now. You’re playing a dangerous game, Dougal. What’s to stop Mrs. Horner from going into business for herself? Ladies write entire books when the need for coin is great enough.”
“Patience hasn’t the coin to compete with me.” Not to mention, she was female, of marriageable age, unwed, and without male relations who might mitigate those unfair realities.
“You should tell her, Dougal.”
He should. A woman who’d been played false regarding her entire future would not take kindly to being manipulated, even in the interests of securing greater income.
“I’ll tell her when we’ve put out the remaining editions. She works wonderfully under pressure and has an instinct for battle. She should have been a barrister.”
Detwiler settled onto the cushion in his chair and withdrew a pipe and nail from a pocket. “That, my boy, will be twelve editions too late. For Christmas, you will reveal to Miss Friendly that she’s been lied to, played for a fool, taken advantage of, and exploited without mercy. All to put coin in your pocket.”
“Yours too, and hers.” Especially hers. “I’ve increased the print runs for next week, we’re doing so well.”
The nail scratched across the bowl of the pipe. “If you say so, professor.”
“She might never find out.”
Scratch, scratch, scratch…The world of London newsprint journalism was about the size of a Highland village, and twice as prone to gossip.
She’d find out. “Take yourself off, Aloysius, and my regards to Cousin Avery.”
Detwiler tapped his pipe against his palm and tossed the ash into the bin beside the stove. “You and Harry joining us for Christmas dinner this year?”
For the past three years, Dougal had been the bachelor relation taken in over the holidays as a kindness on the part of his relatives. Where would Patience spend Christmas? With whom? As far as Dougal could tell, she hadn’t even a cat to share her household.
“I’m sure Harry will devour half your goose, but I’ve other plans, thanks very much.”
“More for Harry, then. See you Monday.” Detwiler pushed to his feet, got his coat and scarf, and shuffled out into the gray afternoon. London winters weren’t as dark as their Perthshire counterparts, but an overcast December day was still a glum undertaking.
When a man had a guilty conscience.
“Has Harry left for the day?” Miss Friendly stood in the doorway to Dougal’s office, his glasses perched on her nose, a folded broadsheet in her hand.
“Aye, but we can stop at the bakery when I walk you home.”
Her brows twitched down. “I’m in the middle of a reply, but did you see the professor’s column for today, Mr. MacHugh?”
He’d written it. “What transgression has the old boy committed now?”
Patience stomped across the clerk’s office. “You have remarked that he and I often deal with similar situations, and a general discourse follows regarding who had the better advice.”
A general donnybrook followed, of the literary sort, and the readers loved it. “I’ve wondered if people don’t write to you both, just to see whose advice is superior.”
She paused at Harry’s table and nudged his pen around in a circle. “You think the readers are playing us off each other? Making up situations to pit the professor against me?”
“I hope they are. That tells me the readers are invested in your column, like a sweepstakes, or a cricket match they’ve bet money on.”
She clambered onto Harry’s stool. “My advice column isn’t a sporting match, Mr. MacHugh. I care about my readers. I genuinely want to help them with life’s more vexing challenges. I’m not writing to entertain, I’m writing to educate, to commiserate.”
Why did she have to turn up philosophical now? “You’re writing to earn coin, Patience.” Dougal stalked into his office and busied himself banking the fire, but a familiar tattoo of feminine boot heels followed him through the door.
“I earn coin for helping people sort out their difficulties,” Patience said, a strident note creeping into her voice. “I’m not a dancing bear, writing farce for the masses. A woman who’d poach on her own sister’s marital preserves is not a joke, Mr. MacHugh.”
Dougal straightened and found himself face-to-face with King George lounging on the mantel. The cat’s expression was superior, even smug. Tell her, laddie. Tell her now.
“I should put George out,” Dougal said, scratching the idiot cat’s head.
“Mr. MacHugh. You posit that my advice is not even addressed to real problems. You will please assure me that the letters I diligently sort through and consider each week are received from the post?”
“They are.”
“Since when has petting that beast become such a fascinating undertaking that you can’t face me as we have this discussion?”
Dougal turned. “The letters you respond to are received from the post, Miss Friendly. I can assure you of that. I suspect some might be fabricated.”
That much truth filled her with consternation. If Dougal had told her the bakery had closed up shop, or he was canceling her column, her expression could not have been more perplexed.
“How do you deduce such a thing?”
Because Dougal saw every word of every letter, not only the redactions and paraphrases printed in the broadsheets. “You dealt with a sister making calf’s eyes, and he addresses a brother engaged in the same sort of flirtation.”
“Exactly!” Patience said, brandishing the broadsheet. “Do you know what his advice was?”
Yes, Dougal knew. “Tell me.”
“To ignore the whole situation! To do nothing, to pretend obvious displays aren’t taking place, and a marriage at risk for serious damage is fine, fine, just fine. The professor counsels dignity and forbearance.”
Dougal took the broadsheet from Patience and laid it on his desk. “While you said without a command of all the facts, devising a course of action was difficult. Sound advice.” Which Dougal had not thought to offer.
“Boring advice,” she retorted. “I should have told that good woman to accost some handsome man under the mistletoe while her husband looks on. The professor would never have come up with such a bold approach to the situation as that, and the readers would have been impressed with the novelty of a woman taking action.”
Dougal had gone all day without arguing, but that…that…pronouncement required a response.
“The professor would never have been so daft. Kissing some callow swain to provoke jealousy is the stuff of the very farce you seek to avoid.”
She pushed her glasses up her nose, marched up to him, and jabbed at his chest with one finger. “A passing indulgence in a venerable holiday tradition, in which you yourself apparently see no harm, is not a farce.”
“I told Harry to take that damned stuff down.”
She smiled, looking very much like King George when Dougal had spilled the cream pot all over the desk blotter.
“Language, Mr. MacHugh.”
Dougal might have yet salvaged a respectable argument from the moment, but Patience smoothed ink-stained fingers over his neckcloth, turning victory into a rout.
“Profanity is the crutch of the linguistically uninspired,” she went on, quoting from one of Mrs. Horner’s most popular articles.
Dougal was inspired—to sheer foolishness. “You think a kiss under the mistletoe is a harmless holiday tradition?” He took Patience by the wrist and led her from the office. “A mere gesture, of no significance? A quaint tradition, nothing more?”
“A venerable tradition, but quaint, yes. Mr. MacHugh? What are you—Mr. MacHugh?”
Dougal led her to the front door, to a spot beneath the offending greenery hanging from its red ribbon.
He yanked both shades down, gave her the space of two heartbeats to register a protest—which he would have heeded, had any been forthcoming—and then he kissed her.
* * *
The heavenly choruses that had appeared to the shepherds in Bethlehem might have inspired the same upwelling of joy Patience experienced under the mistletoe with Mr. MacHugh.
She’d braced herself for an admonitory lecture of a kiss, having every intention of lecturing Mr. MacHugh right back. Instead of that figurative lump of coal, Mr. MacHugh’s kiss was full of sweetness, tenderness, and delicacy.
He offered her a cinnamon biscuit of a kiss—he even tasted of cinnamon—offer being the operative verb. His attentions were beguilingly gentle and his palms cupping Patience’s cheeks warm and cherishing.
“I don’t know how—” She didn’t know how to kiss, where to put her hands, what to do, and her ignorance was a terrible burden.
Mr. MacHugh solved those dilemmas by putting Patience’s hands at his neck and stepping closer.
“There’s no wrong way to kiss, Patience. A kiss doesn’t have to be constructed with consistent tenses and agreement of gender, number and case. Kissing is for moments beyond words.”
Mr. MacHugh gave her a treasure trove of such moments when he stroked the backs of his fingers against her cheek, when he cradled her head against his palm, when he traced his tongue over the seam of her lips.
She retaliated—reciprocated, rather—and his lips parted.
Oh, gracious. Oh, Happy Christmas, Happy New Year. Where to put a comma—a most excellent premise for a discussion—had nothing, nothing on the complexities of how to turn a kiss into a conversation.
Patience shifted and accidently trod on Mr. MacHugh’s toes. She stepped back, horrified to have put an end to such a rare delight, and found Mr. MacHugh beaming down at her in the dim foyer. He held out his hand, an invitation, and the festivities recommenced next to the unlit sconce.
Mr. MacHugh braced his back against the wall, and Patience bundled in for another round of affection, exploration, and—heavenly choruses in the happiest of keys—arousal.
This was what it felt like to be intimately interested in a man, to desire him, not the secure future his proposal offered, not the protection of his name, or the dream of children to love, but him.
Patience smoothed her hand over broad shoulders and a muscular back, then sank her fingers into thick, dark hair. Mr. MacHugh’s flavor was spicy, sweet holiday treat, his textures were varied—silky hair, whiskery cheeks, lean angles, soft lips, hard…
Patience had inspired Mr. MacHugh to arousal as well, to the heat in the blood, the catch in the breath, that signaled two adults susceptible to passion for each other.
The joy of that, the startling, gleeful satisfaction of it, had Patience leaning against him, all her attention centered where his arousal pressed unapologetically against her belly.
“Tell me, Patience. D’ye still think advising a kiss beneath the mistletoe is in keeping with Mrs. Horner’s signature common sense?”
She wiggled, and he sighed. The cloved orange bobbed against her elbow, and Patience could not recall a time when she’d been so utterly, completely, unexpectedly happy—or glad to be wrong.
* * *
Dougal could not recall a time when he’d been so utterly, completely, inexcusably dunderheaded—though happily dunderheaded.
He’d stolen a kiss, and Patience Friendly had stolen his every good intention, not that the lady was accountable for his actions. She was untutored in the art of kissing, but a damned fast learner. Her kisses were as eager as they were inexpert.
And God above, the passion in her. As dedicated as she was to her writing, as exacting and demanding as she was about the written word, her kisses were ten times more…more.
“I have an idea,” she said, her hand trailing over Dougal’s chest.
Perhaps this idea would involve the sofa in his office, in which case Dougal would have to pitch himself out the window into the nearest snowdrift.
“I’ve always admired your nimble mind, Patience.” And her ink-stained hands, which Dougal wanted to kiss. Her curves were delightful too, as was her vocabulary and her ability to reduce a complex problem to its simplest form.
“I’ll write holiday couplets for Jake to sing when selling the broadsheets.”
Dougal made himself focus on assembling her words into a sentence he could comprehend, for the weight of her against him was perdition personified.
“Holiday couplets?”
“Yes! The clerks can help with them.” She whirled away, back into the clerk’s office. “You know, ‘God rest ye merry, gentlemen, here’s a broadsheet you can read / Mrs. Horner has a clever solution to your every single need.’”
“That sounds naughty.” Memorable, though. Very memorable.
She stopped short and patted Dougal’s cheek. “You’ve been disporting under the mistletoe, Mr. MacHugh. Try to focus on the issue at hand.”
As he trailed Patience into his office, all Dougal could focus on was the twitch of her skirts. “Couplets aren’t a bad idea, but a whole chorus would be better.”
“One aimed mostly at the women.” She ensconced herself behind Dougal’s desk. “Let the professor sing to the men. I also think we should collect up the holiday columns and publish them as a pamphlet, Mrs. Horner’s Help for the Holidays. Has a nice ring to it. Let the printer know now, so ours will be ready to go days ahead of the professor’s feeble reprise. Toss in a bonus column on difficulties surrounding celebration of the new year.”
One kiss, and the woman was on fire.
One kiss, and Dougal had made a delicate situation impossible. “Patience, we’re alone here.”
She extracted a penknife from one of the desk drawers. “I know, else I shouldn’t have kissed you.” She pared a fresh point on his best quill pen, her movements economical and practiced.
“You kissed me, did you?”
The penknife paused. “I thought I did a passably good job, for being out of practice.” A hint of vulnerability infused her words. She put the knife away and took a fresh sheet of foolscap.
Dougal banked the fire, though George’s tail dangled about his head all the while. “If that’s your idea of a passably good kiss, then heaven defend the man who’s on the receiving end of your polished efforts. I’m walking you home, Patience. Now.”
She brushed the quill across her mouth, and Dougal had to look away.
“I believe your nerves are overset, Mr. MacHugh. Perhaps it’s best if we do take some air. Based on your discourse regarding Mrs. Wollstonecraft, I’ve arrived at a few insights regarding the dictates of propriety.”
Yes. Frigid, fresh air. Just the thing. “Mrs. Woll—? Oh, her.”
“Does George go out?”
“I’ll come by on my way to services tomorrow and put him out for a bit. He guards the castle at night, or that’s the theory. Mice can do a lot of damage to paper and glue. Your cloak, madam.”
How could she do this? Maintain an animated focus on literary affairs while Dougal wanted to toss Mrs. Horner’s Corner, the professor, and the entire yuletide problem into the nearest bowl of Christmas punch.
So he could resume kissing Patience.
She prattled on for the length of three London streets about how the rules of propriety were a subtle scheme to protect not the young lady, but the fortune that accompanied her hand in marriage. Women of lesser station received much less protection, but their relative poverty also gave them more freedom.
This theory was just outlandish—and logical—enough that Dougal could pay some attention to it. Not as much attention as he gave to the way Patience spoke with her hands when impassioned by a topic, or to the memory of those hands smoothing down his back.
Next time, she might venture a bit farther south.
God help me. There must be no next times.
“You’re not inclined to argue with me?” she demanded as they turned onto her street.
“I’ll consider your theories as we take our day of rest tomorrow.” Dougal would spend that day furiously drafting the professor’s last few columns, with apologies to the good Presbyterian pastor in Perthshire, who’d be horrified at such industry on the Sabbath. “Why has nobody lit a single lamp yet on your entire street?” London homeowners were subject to regulations requiring porch lights.
“We’re thrifty in this neighborhood,” Miss Friendly said as they approached her doorstep. Her building was fashioned so the first floor overhung the doorstep, creating an alcove protected from the elements and, at this gloomy hour, from the view of prying neighbors.
Dougal wrestled with the realization that he could kiss her again.
“I’ll wish you a peaceful Sunday,” Patience said, “and look forward to an industrious and lucrative two weeks.”
Industrious and lucrative. Dougal MacHugh, proprietor of MacHugh and Sons, Publishers, should have applauded those sentiments. They were exactly what he’d envisioned when he’d concocted this ludicrous twelve days of competing broadsheets.
Patience offered her hand, and Dougal bowed over it. “A peaceful Sabbath to you too. Miss Friendly.”
Before he could tug her closer, gaze longingly into her eyes, or otherwise make an ass of himself, she ducked through the door and left him alone in the freezing air. Dougal took himself back in the direction of the office, the wind stinging his cheeks and his toes going numb.
Which did nothing—not one thing—to get his mind off the question that had plagued him the whole way to Patience’s doorstep.
If one kiss sent the woman off into flights of cleverness—God rest ye merry, gentlemen, indeed—then Dougal marveled to think what a bout of passionate lovemaking might do for her creativity.