Late on a bitter winter evening, Patience delighted in her own personal springtime. The soft breeze of Dougal’s breath at her nape had been her only warning that a man could kiss a lady in places every bit as interesting as her mouth. The sensations that followed had been sweet, surprising, lovely, and so…
Words failed. Patience suspected they’d fail frequently when it came to Dougal P. MacHugh’s lovemaking. His nightshirt bore the scents of heather and lavender, his blue and white quilt put her in mind of the sky on a fine May morning.
He came around the privacy screen, his manly wares on display from the waist up.
Gracious, everlasting angels. “What was the point of combing your hair, Dougal?” She would delight in mussing it up for him.
“To be presentable for my lady. My nightshirt has never looked so fetching. I haven’t a warmer to run over the sheets.”
Patience had cuddled in Dougal’s lap for the better part of an hour, and nothing—nothing at all—compared to the snug, cozy intimacy of his embrace.
“I suspect a warmer won’t be necessary.”
“I wish I had one, though,” he said, starting on the buttons of his falls. “Seemed like an extravagance for a bachelor. For you, I want only warm sheets, fresh sachets, and a steaming pot of chocolate in the morning.”
He might have been reciting the legend of Beowulf for all Patience could heed his words. The tone, though—the intimate, casual tone—did odd things to her insides. The placket of his falls draped open, and he stepped out of his remaining clothing all at once.
He folded his breeches over the privacy screen, giving Patience a good view of his backside.
“I’ve seen statues,” she said. “The Elgin Marbles, for example.”
Dougal, as naked as God made him, banked the fire. “Are you a connoisseur of ancient sculpture, then?”
Patience’s breath had developed a hitch to go with the peculiar leaping about of her heart. “I have a lively sense of curiosity, which I suspect you are generously obliging.”
The viscount certainly hadn’t. He’d fussed about under her skirts, told her to close her eyes, and then commenced slobbering, poking, and muttering mangled French allusions to flowers and honeybees.
“I am a great believer in the power of knowledge,” Dougal said, hanging the cast-iron poker on the hearth stand and facing Patience. “I also favor deliberation over a heedless rush.”
Patience had lost the ability to fix her gaze where a lady should. She’d apparently acquired the eyes of a lover, because every inch of Dougal fascinated her. His arms, his knees, the distribution of hair over his chest, and…elsewhere.
“That ancient sculptor would have needed a deal more clay if you’d been his model.”
Dougal scratched his chest and yawned, looking magnificently male and oh so gloriously comfortable with it. “I beg your pardon?”
“If you were one of those Greek fellows, in the museum. The sculptor would need…perhaps the Greeks were a diminutive lot. I’m babbling. Are you giving me time to change my mind?”
Had Patience been cold earlier? The sight of Dougal in his natural glory pooled heat low in her belly.
He stepped closer. “You can change your mind, Patience. If you ask me to share that bed with you and not touch you the whole night through, I’ll do it. Don’t adhere to an earlier decision out of stubbornness, pride, or some notion that Mrs. Wollstonecraft would approve. Become intimate with me solely because you want to.”
Dougal’s regard was the least lover-like expression Patience had ever seen on a man. He was serious, almost somber.
“You could share a bed with me, having proposed marriage to me, and simply roll over and drop off to sleep?” She didn’t like that idea at all. Her fists were clenched with the effort to not touch him, to not lean in and taste him, not feel him body to body.
“I’d be daft by morning,” he said, threading a hand beneath Patience’s braid. “You might find me lying in the snow stark naked on the roof of the awning, only George to guard my carcass, but if you tell me to keep my hands to myself, I will.”
“I’d rather you made the effort to warm up the bed with me.”
He swept Patience up against his chest and deposited her on the bed, then came down over her.
“Do you have any questions, Patience?”
She loved Dougal for that. For making one last gesture as the man who believed in knowledge, the lover who was determined her role would not be passive.
“When can I take off this nightshirt?”
He shifted to the mattress beside her and pulled the covers up over them. “When the sheets aren’t as cold as the rooftop, I’ll be more than happy to assist you with that nightshirt.”
“You are so warm.” Warm like sunshine on daffodils, like a soft breeze on green fields.
To see Dougal behind his desk, polishing his spectacles, working at his ledgers, or reading the broadsheets put out by his competitors, Patience would not have suspected him of warmth.
But when he left the last of his crumpet for Harry, petted the lazy old cat, or strutted about his quarters in the altogether for Patience’s benefit, she saw a generosity of spirit that kindled both tenderness and desire.
“I’m having my cousins knit you some proper stockings,” Dougal said, working an arm beneath Patience’s neck. “Your feet are…they wake a man up.”
“Sorry.”
He cuddled her close. “I wouldn’t change a thing about you, Patience. If you’ve cold feet, I’ll warm those up too.”
Too? Well, yes too. Dougal rolled to his side and recommenced the kissing at a lazy, daundering pace. At first Patience tried to hurry him, to urge him on. She went so far as to put his hand on her breast—surely that was part of it?—but Dougal made no move to…move.
“I think the sheets are quite comfortable now,” Patience said as Dougal traced her eyebrows with his nose.
“I think you are in much too big a hurry. We haven’t a deadline here, my love. If, for example, you wanted to touch me—my chest, say—you have as much time to do that as you like.”
My love. What a delightful pair of words. “Touch…your…chest.”
The sheets were toasty by the time Patience realized that Dougal had presented himself as an assortment of sweets. She could select the curious textures of his chest—springy hair, odd little nipples, solid muscle, and a steady heartbeat—or she might prefer the satisfaction of sinking her fingers into the silky abundance of his hair and clutching tightly, the better to delight in his kisses.
Or those kisses might be her choice—soft, tender, passionate, playful. Dougal’s kisses were like spices wafting from a busy kitchen. Tantalizing, heady, exotic.
So much he offered her, and so generously.
This is how lovemaking is supposed to be. In the midst of this abundance, Patience felt both anger and sorrow for the young woman who’d been willing to settle for a mere prancing title.
“They lie to us,” she whispered. “The parents, governesses, and dancing masters. They lie, Dougal. And thus we lie to ourselves, until the truth is so obscured, a young woman dares not recognize it.”
Dougal shifted over her. “My feelings for you are honest, Patience. I love you. All that I am, all that I have will be yours forevermore.”
She kissed him, for having listened to her, for the very deliberation that had so frustrated her earlier.
“If you don’t get me out of this blasted nightshirt, Dougal, I will—”
He sat back, a rearing lion of a healthy male. “Sit up, then, lass.”
Patience wiggled to her elbows, and there was an awkward moment when her breasts were first bared to her lover. The awkward moment didn’t last, because she was too busy studying the part of Dougal that would now require far more clay than those puny Greeks in the museum had.
“Touch me,” Dougal said. “I adore your curious mind.”
They touched each other. Patience learned the contours and textures of the aroused male, and Dougal obliged her with all manner of caresses and kisses to her breasts. She also learned that lovemaking could happen in a variety of positions—Dougal claimed most of his knowledge was theoretical, which diplomatic untruth she allowed him.
No man who brought a lady this much pleasure was working entirely from theory.
And Patience was through with testing theories anyway.
“Enough talk,” she panted, for Dougal’s attentions to her breasts left her breathless. “Enough Latin, cant, and anatomy. Are you laughing at me?”
“I’m delighting,” Dougal replied, bracing himself on his arms above her. “It’s no’ the same thing a’tall.”
His burr grew thicker, along with other parts of him. Patience positively reveled in that knowledge.
“Make love with me, Dougal. There’s a deadline now. A tight, pressing deadline.”
“Never that,” he said, hitching closer. “This is the easy part, Patience. We take all the time we please, maybe even have a wee discussion as we go.”
“This is not an editorial meeting, Dougal, in the name of all that is—oh, that’s lo-ve-ly.”
A woman who made her living with words did not speak in syllables, but as Dougal joined with Patience, she lost even that ability. Sighs were all she had left, along with soft moans, kisses, and all manner of caresses.
The sensation as Dougal joined with her was one of fullness, of intimacy so overwhelming and right, Patience gave up trying to label it and surrendered to the glory of being an adult female at her pleasures. Dougal’s stubborn unwillingness to hurry became a determination to cherish, and how Patience treasured him for that.
“Patience, stop thinking. Feel the rhythm, be with me.”
Dougal punctuated his words with a particular emphasis to his thrusts, and celestial choirs could not have distracted Patience from the resulting sensation. She met him the next time, went seeking that same exclamation point of arousal, and found it.
Again, and again, and again, until she was the one creating the rhythm, and all she knew was that to find where it led, she must be closer to Dougal.
Pleasure coalesced where they joined, a bright, astounding, precious sunburst. Dougal didn’t leave her hovering in view of the beautiful vista either. He stayed with her, knowing somehow exactly how to make the joy last, how to be both the breeze that held her aloft and the connection that let her fly free.
A sense of vindication gilded Patience’s repletion when the soaring moments settled gently back to reality. She’d guessed that lovemaking should have been much more than she’d been allowed to know. The viscount had betrayed her in many ways, but the self-doubt he’d created was at last allowed to die.
He’d been like those statues in the museum. Not enough clay, no real life, no individual features, so thoroughly had privilege and arrogance worn away his humanity.
This lovemaking with Dougal was real.
This was love.
Dougal slowly withdrew, and as Patience held him close, he spent where it would cause no risk of a child. He was being responsible, and yet, a part of Patience resented his self-possession. She wanted the limitless passion for him too. Wanted to be the tether that kept him safe while he soared, whether his passion was conjugal, commercial, or—she suspected he was a fine writer himself—creative.
And she could be that for him. She absolutely could be.
He lifted away from her some moments later. “I’ve made a wee mess.”
“I like it,” Patience said. “It’s a lover’s mess. It’s what consideration and keeping your word feel like and smell like.” Not exactly a fragrance, but to Patience, it was the scent of knowledge.
“God, you are ferocious.” Dougal kissed her nose and retrieved a handkerchief from the nightstand. The tidying up was the work of a moment, and then he subsided to the mattress and pulled Patience into his arms.
“Are ye warm enough?”
“I’m warm enough.” At long last, she was warm enough. “Tomorrow, we’ll talk about a wedding date, Dougal, and perhaps a wedding journey north in spring.”
He kissed her temple. “I’d like that. I’d love that, in fact.”
Patience couldn’t keep her eyes open, so she wrapped her arms around her beloved and surrendered to dreams in which neither Mrs. Horner nor Professor What’s His Name figured at all.
* * *
“Patience is missing baking day,” Megan Windham said, pacing before the hearth, a newspaper rolled up in her hand. “We’ve had not even a note from her. She has shared baking day with us every year for the past dozen at least. We always finish with her lemon cake, so it’s warm for her journey home.”
“We have done holiday baking with Patience since before my come out,” Elizabeth said from a stool beside the music room’s great harp. “Which means the tradition goes back to antiquity. Perhaps yesterday’s foul weather dissuaded her.”
Elizabeth made more and more references to her age, and Megan had no idea what to do about it. Based on the look Charlotte and Anwen exchanged, they didn’t either.
“Patience knows she could have bided with us overnight,” Megan countered. “She’s stayed here before when the weather turned disagreeable.”
“The weather is glorious now,” Charlotte observed from the window. “Blindingly so. Perfect weather for a snowball fight.”
Sun on heaps of freshly fallen snow made the morning brilliant, and yet, Megan was worried. “Patience lives alone, or the next thing to it. What if she’s fallen ill? She could have sent us a note.”
“She has a housekeeper,” Charlotte said, moving away from the window. “Patience enjoys great good health, most of the time.”
She’d had a nasty lung fever the previous spring.
“We should take her some lemon cake,” Anwen said, knitting needles clicking away. “That’s not hovering, not assuming the worst. We’re being neighborly if we bring her some lemon cake.”
Megan considered that suggestion, though as far back as she could recall, Patience had visited them—they did not venture into her neighborhood to visit her.
“Do we have her direction?” Somewhere in Bloomsbury, as best Megan could recall. Not far from Mr. MacHugh’s offices.
“It’s off Holborn, near the museum. I recall visiting her grandmother there, years ago.”
A guilty silence greeted Elizabeth’s admission, but Patience hadn’t been eager to entertain callers. Whether she was self-conscious about a humble dwelling, or too pressed for coin to offer a proper tea tray, the message had come across clearly: Receive me, don’t visit me.
“Patience has been working very hard at a time of year when most of us have less to do,” Megan said, stashing the rolled up broadsheet into the coal bucket. “Mr. MacHugh ought to be ashamed of himself.”
“I think Patience likes her work,” Elizabeth murmured, fingers drifting across the harp strings. “I daresay she likes Mr. MacHugh too—admires his pragmatism, his grasp of mercantile matters. Those broadsheets are selling like hot rum buns.”
Elizabeth was closest to Patience in age, and possibly in perspective. “You think Patience likes Mr. MacHugh?” Megan asked.
“Lemon cake,” Charlotte said. “This definitely calls for a neighborly delivery of lemon cake.”
Anwen’s knitting needles slowed. “Bloomsbury is halfway across London, and the snow will make traffic difficult.”
Could Patience be smitten with her Scottish publisher?
“It’s not like her to miss a baking day,” Megan observed. “We should bring her a loaf of stollen too, in case she might want to share with her friends at MacHugh and Sons.”
All three of Megan’s sisters smiled at once.
“That’s very seasonal of you, Megan,” Elizabeth said, rising. “We’ll wait until after lunch, so the streets have a chance to clear, and then we’ll pay a holiday call on our good friend.”
“And maybe buy a few broadsheets on the way,” Charlotte added. “See what argument Patience and the professor have got into now. Hard to imagine they have anything left to dispute, the way they’ve gone at each other this past week.”
* * *
Patience remained in bed for long, lovely moments after Dougal had risen. He was off to the chophouse to fetch breakfast or possibly lunch, while Patience was trying to find the energy to move.
When, if ever, had she been this relaxed before? This well rested? This happy? The professor’s last special edition would come out today, and she wished him nothing but success with his sales.
Dougal had made love with her again before he’d left the bed, and while he’d been careful, he’d also been playful.
“I am ticklish about the ribs,” Patience announced to the room at large. “So is Mr. MacHugh.”
One of the many revelations of the past two weeks.
Patience shoved the covers aside, pushed her feet into Dougal’s slippers, and finished the cup of tea he’d brought her before he’d left. Dressing was an awkward undertaking, but Patience did the best she could with her hooks—she’d managed without help on many previous occasions—and made her way downstairs to the office. From the street below came the regular scraping of merchants clearing their walkways. Sunshine poured through every window.
“Good morning,” Patience said to George, who occupied his usual spot on the mantel. “I am in love.”
George squinted at her.
“Try to contain your jealousy, cat. You know all manner of details about my beloved that I do not—yet. You know what hour he comes down every morning, when he goes up to bed, how many meals he’s eaten at his desk, and what his favorite poem is.”
So much she and Dougal had yet to learn about each other, but how lovely to look forward to learning it.
The bell on the front door jingled, and Patience’s heart leaped. She patted old George despite his lack of enthusiasm for the day—he was not in love, poor beast—and went into the clerk’s room.
“Harry, good day.”
“Morning to you, Miss Friendly,” Harry said, stomping his boots. “Amazing how quickly the merchants will shovel out when there’s custom to be had, isn’t it?”
“Did you have far to come?” And will you tell all the other clerks that you found me here alone?
“Not far at all. I live down the street, share a room with Wilkens. Dougal offered to let me bide with him, but a man needs a bit of privacy sometimes—and to get away from this place.”
That man being young Harry, apparently. “Mr. MacHugh should be back shortly. He went to the chophouse.”
“And himself didn’t even start the stove,” Harry groused, hanging his cap, coat, and scarf on a hook. “My auntie would box Dougal’s ears for leaving a lady to freeze, but Dougal is ever one to keep his mind on business. That’s a great lot of snow out there, isn’t it? Did you have any trouble making your way here?”
“It was slow going at first,” Patience said, opening the stove and finding only a few coals still burning. “Will the others be in soon?”
She wanted to have the place to herself and Dougal, but she also wanted the professor to know that MacHugh and Sons wouldn’t let a little thing like a snowstorm stop them from publishing their broadsheets.
“Poor old professor,” she muttered, pushing the coals to the back of the stove with the poker. Whatever else might be true of Pennypacker, he hadn’t had as lovely a night as Patience had. “Where are the spills, Harry? This fire will take a little help to get going.”
“I put them in Detwiler’s desk,” Harry said from Dougal’s office. “George gets up to mischief when he’s left here by himself for too long.”
Harry came to the doorway of the office, George cradled in his arms.
“That cat shredded some of my columns, Harry MacHugh, and I rewrote them so I’d have the last word with the professor. We all have to do things we’d rather not.”
“Hear that, cat?” Harry said, scratching George under the chin. “You’re on dangerous ground. Any more bad behavior, and old Dougal P. MacHugh, publisher, will banish you to the tavern next door.”
The cat was no more impressed with that threat than he was with anything else. Patience left off hunting for the spills.
“Harry, what does the P in Mr. MacHugh’s name stand for?”
“P is for Pennypacker,” Harry said, moving off toward the front door. “My auntie’s people are Pennypackers. Have a farm south of Dunkeld. Shakespeare passed through there once upon a time, so they say. C’mon, George. The Bard got all his ideas for The Scottish Play while he was in the area, so my auntie claims.”
Patience subsided into Mr. Detwiler’s chair, struck by the coincidence of her nemesis having the same name as her prospective mother-in-law. The publishing community was close-knit—all of the publishers belonged to the same clubs, and they regularly met for meals, for example. One of Dougal’s competitors could easily have learned of his mother’s antecedents and chosen the name to plague him when devising a nom de plume for the professor.
“Such teasing is a bit juvenile,” she muttered, opening the last of Detwiler’s drawers. A neat stack of paper sat inside the drawer with a layer of spills peeking from beneath it. “Hidden from bored tomcats.”
Patience put the papers on the desk and set about encouraging the fire in the parlor stove back to life. It took kindling, fresh coal, and a trip to Dougal’s office to light the taper, but she managed.
Ten years ago, she would not have known how to light a decent fire, even with all the tools right at hand.
She tidied up the stack of papers she’d taken from Detwiler’s drawer and saw Dougal’s handwriting. He had beautiful penmanship, such as she would have expected from a former schoolteacher. No blotting, crossing out, inserting, or revising. She might have been looking at a final copy of one of her own…
The piece was signed: Professor D. Pennypacker.
Patience was still sitting at Detwiler’s desk several minutes later when Dougal bustled through the door, bringing a gust of cold air with him and the scents of bacon, toast, and coffee.
“You’re up and about. I’m almost sorry—no, I am sorry. Good of you to get the stove—Patience?”
She didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to see the truth in his eyes.
“I found these,” she said, brandishing the pages. “The signature is Pennypacker’s, but the name is your mother’s, and the penmanship is yours. Dougal, how could you?”
He set his parcels on Detwiler’s desk and hung up his coat and scarf, while Patience wrestled with the screaming need to pitch his infernal pages into the parlor stove.
“You’re angry,” he said when his coat was hung just so on a hook next to Harry’s. “I can explain.”
He wasn’t starting with an apology, or with a denial, the two strategies that might have allowed Patience to hold on to her temper.
“You have lied to me, manipulated me, played me for a fool, and probably laughed at me all the way up those stairs, Dougal MacHugh. You are Professor Pennypacker, am I right?”
The doorbell jingled again, and Harry came in, stomping loudly.
“Am I right, Dougal? Did you lie to me?”
“I dissembled,” Dougal said, “but if you’ll listen, I can provide some perspective, and perhaps then you’ll see—”
Patience marched up to him and struck him across the chest with his papers. “I’ll see that I misheard you, I was mistaken, I misinterpreted, I misconstrued, though I have it from the most self-assured authority that my command of English is superb. You never once told me that you were Pennypacker, and this whole exercise has been a farce at the expense of my dignity.”
Harry’s gaze slewed from Patience to Dougal.
“Harry, get out,” Dougal said. “This is a private discussion.”
“Wait for me, Harry,” Patience said, tossing Dougal’s columns at him and retrieving her cloak and scarf from the next room. “I’m leaving, and I doubt I’ll be back. I cannot abide a liar, Mr. MacHugh, much less a man who lies for his own self-interest.”
She nearly ran out the door, leaving Dougal standing alone, his lovely penmanship scattered at his feet. Harry—bless the boy—snatched up the parcels of food and came after her. The streets were a mess, with only narrow paths shoveled clear, but few people were abroad to hamper her progress.
“Harry, you needn’t accompany me. In my present mood, nobody will accost me and live to tell of his folly.”
“If I don’t accompany you, what do you think my chances of surviving Dougal’s temper are, miss?”
“Dougal cannot blame you for a mess of his own creation. He lied, Harry. I know he’s your cousin, but he was not honest with me. This whole exercise, day after day of writing and revising, his lectures about how competition would pique the readers’ interest, all that blather about increasing the print runs—I doubt he increased them, he just wanted me to think…I feel like an idiot.”
Patience felt like a naïve, gullible, gormless dupe, her future in tatters—again.
“You’re not an idiot,” Harry said, nearly losing his balance on a slippery spot. “But I’m seeing you home, and I thought we might fortify ourselves with a bite of warm toast along the way.”
“Touch that toast, Harry MacHugh, and you’ll return to Perthshire in a pine box.”
He passed her one of the parcels. “Yes, miss.”
Patience tolerated his escort as far as her own street, then took the second parcel from him and sent him on his way. Only when Harry had disappeared around the corner did she let herself begin to cry.