If one thing held Patience Friendly back as an author, it was self-doubt. She quibbled over words, commas, responses, and revisions. Some of that dithering was the writer’s delight in every detail of her craft, but much of it was what happened when nobody appreciated a natural talent, obvious though that talent might be.
“Have I ever thanked you for how much you encourage Harry and the other lads?” Dougal asked as Detwiler bundled into a coat.
“I’m the editor,” Detwiler said. “My job is to correct, improve, and admire. The boys are loyal to MacHugh’s, and they are a bright lot.”
Unlike the publisher. The words hung in the air as Detwiler went about putting the quill pens in order.
“Be off with you, Aloysius. The cab is waiting at the door.” Dougal slid into the seat behind Detwiler’s desk, opened a drawer, and withdrew the professor’s final two columns.
At the top of the first page, the overspending housewife—a newlywed in this version of the letter—silently reproached him.
“You tell that poor woman to throw herself on her husband’s mercy,” Detwiler said, tossing a scarf around his neck. “But when it comes to confessing your own transgressions, you’re not half so forthcoming, professor.”
“You have the correcting part off by heart, old man. The cab driver’s horse is standing out in this weather while you sermonize at me.”
“I do admire you, Dougal, and I fancy Miss Friendly does too. Start there—with all that mutual admiration—and the transgressing takes on a different perspective. If a housewife can admit she’s bought a few too many holiday tokens for her loved ones, can’t you admit that your ambitions for a talented author got away from you?”
Dougal’s ambitions for Patience hadn’t merely got away from him. They’d gone completely to Bedlam.
“That’s the problem,” Dougal said, staring at the words marching across the page. Schoolteacher words, very articulate, but lacking the warmth Patience brought to her advice. “Patience will think all I admire is her writing ability. She’ll think I’ve engaged her affections merely to use her talent for my own ends.”
Detwiler jammed a newsboy’s cap on his head. “You are thinking too hard, being too much the academic fellow and not enough the callow swain. There’s a flask in the bottom drawer. May it bring you the comfort and joy my common sense cannot.”
A gust of cold air wafted in as Detwiler shuffled through the door.
Somewhere in Detwiler’s haranguing, Dougal sensed a kernel of wisdom.
A schoolteacher learned the value of judiciously praising ability and honest effort. He also saw the nearly irreparable harm done when both were ignored for too long. How was a woman to have confidence in her abilities when for her entire upbringing she was trained not to bring notice to herself?
Dougal hurt for Patience and promised himself he’d remedy the harm done to her self-confidence, assuming she spoke to him, wrote for his publications, and gave him the time of day once she learned that the entire Christmas project had been based on a lie.
He read over his columns one last time and put them back in the drawer, then put his feet up on the corner of the desk and indulged in a pastime from his youth: reading the dictionary. For each letter, he read the entry for the first word his gaze landed on.
Admire. Patience was a gifted author, and she had a keen instinct for the publishing business. Dougal admired that about her.
Besotted. Dougal was, in fact, besotted with her energy, her intellect, her kisses, and her determination. She’d made the best of a trying situation, when she might have thrown herself on the charity of distant family, or accepted the proposal of any doddering opportunist who came along.
That thought gave him a very bad moment, indeed.
Callow. Patience would have no interest in the attentions of a naïve, unfledged boy. She deserved a man who’d stand toe-to-toe with her, give as good as he got, and yet, grasp that fostering her confidence would be a delicate undertaking.
Dougal had made it past o-is-for-obligation and onto p-is-for-passion, when a signal truth beamed up at him from the pages of the lexicon.
He owed Patience Friendly for giving him the foundation upon which he could grow his business.
He also loved her.
The realization put something fundamentally right with him, because love was the word that encompassed all he felt for Patience. Affection, desire, respect, protectiveness, friendship, all tied up with a bow defined as love.
And with that realization, he grasped as well how to unravel the problem he’d created with the fictional Professor Pennypacker.
For Christmas, Dougal would offer Patience all that had been tendered to her previously—a future, a husband, a lover, security, a family of her own. At some point, years and several babies hence, Dougal would find a casual, merry moment over breakfast and mention that he might have penned a column or two as Professor Pennypacker.
Patience would be surprised and amused, and tell him she’d speculated as much—might he please pass the teapot?—and they’d share a laugh as they recalled how well the whole plan had worked.
Dougal continued to leaf through the dictionary, pleased with the reply he’d fashioned to the conundrum of his situation with Patience. He didn’t read any more words, he simply enjoyed the feel of the lexicon in his hands, the sound of each page turning.
Marriage. Good old, traditional, happily-ever-after marriage. The notion, worthy of the learned Pennypacker himself, left Dougal feeling so rosy and replete, he started humming Christmas carols.
* * *
A rough, warm sensation against Patience’s wrist woke her.
“George.”
The cat paused in his licking, squinted, then resumed taking liberties with Patience’s person. In the darkness, the beast’s eyes glowed like nacre, giving him a predatory beauty he lacked when lounging above the hearth.
The fire had burned down to little more than coals, and outside, all was darkness.
“Oh dear. I suppose I must thank you. The columns are complete.” Very good columns they were too. Patience put them in Dougal’s top drawer, King George having proven himself a menace to paper, if not to mice.
The next challenge was extricating herself from Dougal’s chair. Her back protested, her feet were cold, and her eyes gritty. She detected neither light nor sound from beyond the office door. Dougal would never have left her alone on the premises, and yet, business hours had apparently ended.
Patience lit a carrying candle and went to the clerk’s office. The air was noticeably cooler, and because the heat source was a parlor stove, the room was without illumination other than her candle. Dougal sat at Detwiler’s desk, his feet propped on one corner, a book open in his lap. His arms were folded, and his chin rested on his chest.
“Oh, you poor dear.” Patience took a moment to memorize the sight of him, the ambitious publisher asleep amid the trappings of his empire. His weapons were the quill pens and foolscap neatly stacked on each clerk’s high table, his mission to relieve ignorance and boredom at a reasonable price.
She gently lifted the book from his lap—a dictionary, of course—and then unhooked his spectacles from his ears.
As a younger woman, she would have pitied the lady whose lot was to be courted by a man in trade. A merchant or professional was all very well for those born to that strata, her papa had claimed, but better families could look higher.
“What higher purpose is there,” she murmured, “than to enlighten and enliven the lives of those who do the actual work in this life?”
Dougal’s eyes opened. “Is that a quote?”
Patience handed him his spectacles. “We can make it the MacHugh and Sons business motto.” His gaze was tired—this project had demanded quite a bit from him too—but even weary, he was attractive.
He sat up and rubbed his eyes, then put his glasses back on. “Patience, why didn’t you wake me? It’s dark out.”
“I fell asleep too. George woke me, probably to tend his personal fire. Are we alone here, Dougal?”
He rose and stretched, hands braced on his lower back. “But for George, I suppose we are.” He flipped open a pocket watch, the gold case gleaming by the light of the single candle. “God in heaven, Patience, it’s nearly nine o’clock.”
Patience rummaged around in her emotions for dismay, alarm, some vestige of the young lady’s fear of ruin, and found only anticipation. Ruin lay ten years in her past, but to be alone with Dougal at such an hour inspired all manner of fancies.
He was at the window, scowling down at the street. “There’s two feet of snow on the ground and more coming down. It will take ages to get you home in this mess.”
“Dougal, don’t be daft. Nobody has shoveled the walkways at this hour, and the only people abroad are those preying on the unwary. I wouldn’t let you walk me home tonight for all the crumpets in London.”
“You’ve grown bored with crumpets,” he said, letting the curtain drop. “This is not a good situation, Patience. If anybody learns that we’ve been alone for this long, under these conditions, your good name is compromised beyond recall, and so is mine.”
“Your safety matters more to me than my good name, Dougal, and so does my own welfare.”
She expected him to argue, and looked forward to it, in fact. Lately Dougal had passed up every opportunity for confrontation, and she’d missed his logic and his unshakable confidence in his own perspective. He was a worthy opponent and thus a worthy ally.
“Your safety matters to me more than my own,” he countered. “I haven’t seen a storm like this since coming to London. After this much snow, the temperature can plunge drastically. The Thames will likely be frozen by morning, or very nearly.”
While Patience’s heart was melting. Tired, worried, and rumpled, Dougal was ten times the man the viscount had ever aspired to be. Happy Christmas, Happy New Year, happy rest of her life.
“You’re often the last one here at night, aren’t you, Dougal?”
“Aye. I own the place. If it fails, I own that too. Are you hungry?”
Starving. “A bit, also chilly. I should keep a shawl here.”
He looked at her, a direct, considering gaze, the first in many days. “I can get you warm. Let me see to the fire in the office, and we’ll assess our situation over a pot of tea.”
“For a cup of strong, hot tea, I would write you an entire column at no charge, Mr. MacHugh.”
“You’ve grown light-headed with fatigue,” he said, moving into his office. “Don’t jest about giving your work away, Patience. When your labor is your sole means of earning coin, then nobody should expect you to part with it in the absence of compensation.”
“Are you sure you were a schoolteacher, Dougal? You sound like a preacher.”
He stopped before the hearth. “You are very calm for a woman who’s in the process of being compromised. This situation is serious, Patience.”
Patience went up on her toes and kissed him. Not a buss to the cheek, but not a declaration of unending passion either. He had a point: Her words were valuable.
So were her affections.
“When the viscount tossed me aside, my name went into the ditch along with my prospects. I don’t know if he saw to that, or if polite society—notice nobody refers to them as compassionate, kind, or tolerant society—did me that favor. My true friends stood by me, Dougal, and they won’t quibble because I had the sense to stay out of a dangerous storm.”
“The lads won’t breathe a word,” Dougal said, tucking a lock of Patience’s hair behind her ear. “Detwiler’s discretion is absolute. I only wish…”
In all of Patience’s dealings with Dougal MacHugh, she’d never heard him use the verb wish. “What do you wish, Dougal? My last columns are complete. Your project has earned MacHugh’s the notice of half of London, and the new year promises success to us both. I wish you’d thought to pit me against Pennypacker like this two years ago.”
He took her hand and led her to the sofa. “The time wasn’t right. You were still finding your balance, and there wasn’t a Pennypacker to pit you against.”
They sat side by side, and Dougal kept her hand in both of his. The moment might have been awkward—last week’s kiss was but a memory, and Dougal had been anything but amorous since—and yet, Patience was at peace.
Hard work had won her a measure of security, and though her feelings might not be requited, she’d found a man she could esteem greatly. Dougal was capable of desiring her, for all he seemed reticent to take any further liberties, and that reassured the part of her rejected so long ago.
The problem wasn’t her—the problem had never been her.
“Patience, I account myself an articulate man, but some words elude capture when I need them most. You know I respect you.”
What was this? “You argue with me.” Nobody else did. Nobody else took her opinions seriously enough to differ with her.
“Arguing with you is a certain sign of my esteem. I think you enjoyed our kiss under the mistletoe.”
“I can barely recall our kiss under the mistletoe, Mr. MacHugh, and you’ve shown no inclination to refresh my memory.”
He kissed her knuckles. “I’m glad you’re making me work for this. The prize is worth every effort.”
“I’m not a prize. I’m a talented writer who has a lot to offer her readers, and—” Patience heard the battle cry in her words, heard how easily she’d taken up the cudgels, even in the absence of any threat. “Dougal, what are you trying to say?”
“I’m bungling this. I’d planned to wait, to see how the finances for the year closed, to have more to offer you, so I could take the next steps when it was prudent to do so, but circumstances have changed, and—”
He slid off the sofa, down to one knee. “Patience Friendly, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”
Gracious heavens. Perhaps fatigue had made him light-headed. “Dougal, get up. You’ll get cat hair on your trousers.”
He resumed his place beside her, keeping her hand in his all the while. “Is that a yes?”
Douglas was proposing—proposing marriage to her. As the wind howled outside, and the fire danced in the chimney drafts, Patience savored the moment, and the clasp of Dougal’s hand. This was how a proposal ought to be offered, clearly, calmly, sincerely. Bless Dougal forever, because he’d thrown into high relief the disrespect done Patience by her titled former suitor.
She wanted to say yes, to Dougal, to a future that included love and meaningful work both, to a busy life far from what she’d been raised to expect. The thought that stopped her from giving him the response he sought was: If I marry, I lose my house.
Her grandmama’s legacy, all that had preserved Patience from a dreadful marriage or a life of drudgery. If Patience married, that house became her husband’s. If she married, she gave up even the right to spend her own wages. If she married…if she became Mrs. Horner in truth, then she ceased to be Patience Friendly in any meaningful sense.
“I’ve surprised you,” Dougal said.
Ambushed her, more like. She should have known that his brooding looks and odd distance were symptoms of a scheme afoot.
“I care for you, Dougal P. MacHugh. So much. I hope that’s not a surprise, but I don’t even know where you live. I’ve never met your family, and two weeks ago…”
“Come,” he said, rising and bringing Patience to her feet. “I can show you where I live, and we can talk about the rest.”
He grabbed the candle and led her to a door that Patience had assumed was a closet. A stairwell rose up into darkness, the air frigid.
“It’s not much,” he said, “but it’s mine and quite convenient.”
A merchant family often lived above or behind the shop. Why shouldn’t Dougal do likewise? His apartment was at the top of the stairs, his sitting room cozy, much like the one Patience had inherited. A velvet sofa sat before a brick hearth. A dry sink held china and glassware—also a pair of decanters.
“I didn’t realize you had quarters up here.”
“This apartment is part of the reason I bought the place,” Dougal said, kneeling before the cold hearth. “Starting a business calls for long hours, and the less time spent gadding about the streets, the more time spent on productive labor.”
The distinguishing feature of the room was the number of books. Shelves along one wall included classics, novels, atlases, histories, poetry, and herbals.
“You do love to read,” Patience said as Dougal coaxed a fire to life. “You speak French?”
“I was a schoolteacher. Once you have the Latin, you’ve a toehold on French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek. I like the look of you here, Patience, among my books and treasures.”
No longer Miss Friendly. “Show me the rest.”
He dusted his hands, replaced the fireplace screen, and bowed her through the door into the second room.
A sanctum sanctorum. In the corner stood a very large bed—neatly made, a blue and white patchwork quilt over the whole. More books graced another set of shelves, and a large desk occupied the corner nearest the windows. The table beside the bed held three books, one of them open, and on the desk the standish, stack of foolscap, and blotter sat in the same arrangement as on the desk one floor below.
A faded carpet of cabbage roses covered the floor, and a pair of large, worn slippers were positioned by the bed.
Those slippers would be exquisitely comfortable.
Patience peered behind the privacy screen and confirmed that Dougal was a tidy man, even in his private quarters. His wardrobe was similarly arranged, everything in order.
He wouldn’t expect her to pick up after him, and he’d set that example for their children.
That mattered, but still, Patience could not find the words to tell Dougal she’d marry him. She’d said yes once before—clearly, unequivocally—and hadn’t ended up married.
Perhaps instead of words, deeds might do.
She crossed the room and stood before Dougal. “I care for you a very great deal, Dougal P. MacHugh, publisher. I esteem you greatly, and circumstances have conspired to give me an opportunity to esteem you intimately as well. Take me to bed, Dougal.”
His brows rose, suggesting she’d surprised him, and then he raised her hands and kissed them, one after the other.
“Are ye sure, lass?”
“I’m sure,” Patience said, stepping into his embrace. Mrs. Horner and the professor would be scandalized, the Windham sisters might not understand, and Patience wasn’t entirely sure of her own motives, but she knew exactly where she wanted to spend the night, and with whom.
* * *
The part of Dougal that reveled in words worried that Patience hadn’t explicitly said yes to his proposal. Perhaps he should have asked permission to court her, which was how the Quality went about an engagement, except he wasn’t a true gentleman, in the strict definition of the term.
And yet, Patience was kissing him as if he were the crown prince of her every dream.
Dougal kissed her back, because she was the crown princess of his every dream, also the queen of his mercantile ambitions and the empress of his good fortune.
Patience shivered, and Dougal recalled that his bedroom was damned near freezing. “Come with me,” he said, leading her into the front room. “Swing the kettle over the fire, and I’ll get a blaze going in the bedroom. There’s bread, cheese, and apples in the window box. I’ll be but a moment.”
He needed that moment to regain his self-possession, then gave up the exercise for hopeless when all he could think of was Patience warming up the bed with him. He turned down the covers, traded boots for slippers, made sure the fire was off to a good start, then prepared to persuade a lady to accept his proposal.
Patience sat on the sofa, staring into the fire. “There’s much I don’t know about you,” she said. “How old are you?”
Dougal took the place beside her. “I’ll be thirty-two on St. David’s Day. What else do you want to know?”
“You don’t care how old I am?”
“You’ve reached the age of consent. A few years one way or the other aren’t relevant. I would like to know what day you were born.”
She drew her feet up under her skirts. “The viscount valued my youth.”
Him again. “The viscount was a shallow, greedy, arrogant young fool. Cuddle up, Patience.”
The dubious glance she shot him confirmed that in addition to many other failings, the viscount hadn’t bothered to share simple affection with the woman he’d proposed to. Dougal hefted Patience into his lap and drew his grandmother’s quilt around her.
“Like so,” he said. “Cozy and friendly. Ask me more questions.”
“When will you take me to bed?”
“Your enthusiasm for this venture warms my heart, Patience. May I remind you, you haven’t eaten since noon. If we’re to put that bed to its best use, you’ll need your strength.”
She straightened enough to peer at him. “You’ll need yours too.”
“I live in that hope.” Dougal also hoped he’d be able to restrain his passion enough to please his lady, and he further hoped the snow didn’t let up for a few days, because recovering from his good fortune might take that long.
“Tell me about your family, Dougal.”
Over tea, cheese toast, and sliced apples, he obliged as Patience pulled pins from her hair. MacHugh the saddlemaker was his cousin, as was MacHugh the stationer. MacHugh the fishmonger wasn’t related as far as they could tell, but the trail was promising, three generations back on the Irish side.
Cousins Hamish, Rhona, Colin, and Edana might visit London in the spring, though Hamish had no use for city life. Dougal’s younger sister Bridget was walking out with the blacksmith’s son.
“So many people,” Patience said around a yawn. “Do you suppose the bedroom has warmed up?”
“Aye. I do admire your ability to focus on a topic, Miss Friendly.”
She was back in Dougal’s lap, a warm, lovely weight of female cuddled in his arms. She’d put away a good quantity of food, while the wind had rattled the windows and spindrifts of snow had whirled from the rooftop.
“I like this,” she said. “I like that you’re affectionate. I suspect I am too.”
Please, may it be so. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
Dougal rose with Patience in his arms and carried her to the bed. For all that she’d asked after his relations, his education, his favorite books, and whether he knew how to ride a horse, she still hadn’t officially, entirely, unequivocally accepted his proposal.
He settled her on the bed and closed the door, the better to keep in the heat. “Do you need help with your hooks and stays and whatnot?”
“Hooks, yes, but I favor jumps,” she said, pushing off the bed and giving him her back. “I have experience, you know. The viscount saw to that.”
She swept her braid away from her nape and stood before Dougal, her back to him, a tender, private part of her exposed for the most mundane reasons.
“You must not tell me the viscount’s name,” Dougal said, starting on the three thousand hooks marching down the center of her back. “Not ever.”
“You can’t call him out. He’s a titled gentleman, and he’d decline to meet you, owing to the differences in your stations. That tickles.”
“I’m not about to give some useless prat of a title a chance to injure me,” Dougal said, “but between the MacHughs, the MacQuistons—my mother was a MacQuiston—the MacDuffs, and the MacPhersons, all of whom I claim as relations, the viscount’s every debt, inane blunder, stupid wager, or expensive mistress would soon become common knowledge if you tell me his name. My competitors would pay dearly to publish that sort of tattle.”
Patience peered at Dougal over her shoulder. “You don’t publish tattlers. Why not?”
“It’s not my calling. How do you ever get dressed in the morning?”
“My housekeeper assists me, and not all my dresses are this impractical.”
Her chemise was a surprisingly frothy, frilly affair peeking up over her jumps. Dougal was not a connoisseur of lady’s underlinen, but he wanted to see Patience some fine day wearing only that chemise and a smile.
Though stockings might be a nice touch too. White silk with red garters.
“All done,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist. “I haven’t a sheath, Patience. Do you know what that means?”
He felt the heat of a blush rise over her skin. “It means the apothecary on the corner is a gossip, among other things. Can’t you…wait?”
Dougal kissed her nape. “Withdraw, you mean?”
“Is that the term for when you don’t spend?”
Her blush would have scorched the entire West End. “Coitus interruptus gets the notion across as well. The idea is to prevent conception. I’ll withdraw.”
He paused between kisses in case she had any other comments, questions, or pithy observations to offer, but the lady had gone quiet. Dougal acquainted his lips with the soft skin below her ear and the pulse beating beneath that.
The simple act of kissing her neck had him aroused. He slid a hand down over her derriere and gave her a gentle shove in the direction of the privacy screen.
“Use my tooth powder, and I’ll heat you some wash water.”
Patience moved off to the privacy screen on a soft rustle of fabric, her braid swinging gently above her fundament.
Dougal went into the front room, opened a window, and breathed in a half-dozen lungfuls of frigid air. He was considering whether arctic air wafting over his open falls might aid his flagging self-restraint when God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen floated from the bedroom on a soft hum.
He warmed an ewer of water from the steaming kettle on the pot swing, sent up a prayer for fortitude, then brought Patience her wash water.
“Will you undress, Dougal?” she called from behind the screen.
He passed her his nightshirt over the top of the screen. “In a moment.” Will you become my wife?
Tonight, he would become her lover. For now, that was Christmas gift enough. By morning, he had every intention of becoming her fiancé.
Though for that to happen, she’d have to say yes to his proposal, wouldn’t she?