Not the Dukes Darling by Hoyt, Elizabeth (29)

Patience’s sitting room bore a faint odor of bacon, despite the day being more than half gone. Other than that, her surroundings were reassuringly genteel. Megan and her sisters had arranged themselves about their hostess—Charlotte and Elizabeth flanking her on the sofa, Megan and Anwen opposite on chairs a trifle underendowed with padding.

“We were concerned,” Megan said, though, in fact, she was relieved. She’d pictured Patience living in a garret, cobwebs for curtains, mice her only company. The town house was in good repair, not a speck of dust to be seen. The rugs were worn, not tattered; the furniture comfortable, rather than elegant.

Patience was managing, in other words.

The lemon cake, alas, had met its fate.

“I’m sorry for causing you worry,” Patience said. “I became absorbed in the writing, and the cat shredded my columns, and one doesn’t…”

“A cat?” Charlotte prompted, peering about.

“King George. Dougal—Mr. MacHugh—brought him all the way from Scotland. Said George was his first employee. Mice like to nibble the glue in book bindings, though what good is a mouser who likes to nibble paper rather than mice? George also has a taste for cheese.”

Anwen put the last slice of lemon cake on a plate and passed it to Patience. “You’ve been taking meals at the publisher’s establishment?”

Patience set the plate down without taking a bite—of her favorite lemon cake?

“Mr. MacHugh was more than happy to keep me fed while I undertook my little scribblings. He escorted me home at the end of the day. He sent Jake out to the main thoroughfares rather than the nearest corner. He let the lads come up with holiday rhymes.”

Even Elizabeth looked concerned at this recitation. “Holiday rhymes, Patience?”

“You know.” She took a breath. “Deck the halls with tales of folly, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la. Mrs. Horner will make it all jolly, fa-la-la-la-la…How I despise that man.”

Elizabeth slipped an arm around Patience’s shoulders and sent her sisters a bewildered look.

Megan was afflicted with poor eyesight, but her hearing was quite good, and Patience did not sound like a woman overcome with loathing for her publisher. She sounded hurt and lost.

“Patience,” Megan said, “what’s wrong? We’re your friends, and we want to help. I thought you respected Mr. MacHugh and despised that professor fellow.”

“They are the same man!” Patience said, bolting to her feet. “Dougal MacHugh was writing the professor’s columns, purposely creating a competition with me, regularly taking the opposite view of matters to stir up interest among the readers.”

Charlotte took a surreptitious bite of the lemon cake. “Did it work?”

“Yes, it worked,” Patience cried. “If I can believe Dougal, the print runs more than doubled, Mrs. Horner is the talk of the pubs, and Jake nearly sells out before he’s reached the end of the street.”

“But,” Megan said, “your trust in Mr. MacHugh is shaken because he concocted this scheme without letting you in on it. Badly done of him.”

“That’s the worst part,” Patience said, turning a pot of anemic violets in the window. “He didn’t bring me into it, but he did bring himself into my affections.”

Well, thank the angels and celestial ministers of grace.

“One suspected you esteemed your publisher,” Elizabeth said, twiddling the fringe of a pillow that might once have been pink. “If you return his sentiments, where’s the problem?”

Truly, spinsterhood had got Elizabeth in its foul clutches. “The problem,” Megan said, “is that if he lied about the professor’s columns, is he also lying about his regard for Patience? Patience has little cause to trust the constancy of the courting male.”

Patience flopped to the sofa and shoved the remaining half slice of lemon cake closer to Charlotte’s knee. “I don’t think Dougal would play me false, but then, I thought I was engaged once before. Do you know what the worst, worst part is?”

“Tell us,” Anwen said.

“I love to write. I love being Mrs. Horner. In her shoes, I feel as if all the vicissitudes I’ve endured, the reversals of fortune, even the dratted engagement to his lordship, have some use. Others can benefit from my experiences, and I want that. I don’t have what I was raised to think is indispensable—a fellow to order me about, provide me children, and require my fealty in exchange for a place in his household.”

Great heavens. “Is that what marriage is supposed to be?” Megan asked. Neither she nor any of her sisters had attracted the affections of a suitable parti in their early Seasons. Uncle Percy was a duke, though, and the Windham family well-fixed. Megan and her sisters could afford to be choosy, though perhaps Patience had a point.

“Marriage can be unsatisfying,” Patience said. “My mother was helpless to interfere when Papa went out and bought a phaeton we didn’t need. Were it not for my grandmama’s thrift and generosity, my fate would have been sorry indeed.”

In that light, a woman’s fealty might not be to the man she married, so much as to the coin he provided. How un-lovely.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Megan asked.

“I forgot my common sense,” Patience said, sitting very straight. “Mr. MacHugh has ambitions for his establishment, and my columns figure in those ambitions prominently. I shouldn’t blame him for making the most of the talent he had at his disposal.”

“You’d never heard of Dougal MacHugh three years ago,” Megan said. “How did you manage?”

“I wrote pamphlets on deportment, tutored young ladies in their French and pianoforte, walked Mrs. Hutching’s pug on rainy days, and practiced economies.”

“You didn’t need Mr. MacHugh,” Megan concluded. “You still don’t. Mrs. Horner can write for one of MacHugh’s competitors, she can put out her own broadsheets, she can write a book, or do all three. You have managed, Patience—you, not your settlements, your husband, a kindly uncle, or some dashing swain. You. You have a home, a profession, and a bright future thanks to your own hard work.”

“She’s right,” Elizabeth said. “In some regards—I will deny it beyond this room—I envy you.”

“You envy me?” Patience said. “I reuse my tea leaves. I forego a fire in my bedroom most nights. I tune my own pianoforte rather than pay somebody or allow a man into my home for the purpose.”

“Your tea leaves,” Charlotte said around the last mouthful of lemon cake. “Your bedroom, your pianoforte, your home. And you manage all of this with the coin you earn with your wits and wisdom. No wonder Mr. MacHugh is enthralled with you.”

Now there was a lovely word: enthralled.

“He wasn’t honest with me,” Patience insisted. “And he proposed marriage to me.”

“How dare he?” Anwen murmured—with a straight face.

Charlotte hit her with a pillow. “One shouldn’t make light of a man offering marriage.”

“Was the marriage proposal honest?” Megan asked, because that mattered.

“I’ll never know, will I?” Patience replied. “Was he offering marriage to secure Mrs. Horner’s ability to earn coin, or offering himself, in good times and bad? Dougal is very shrewd.”

Heaven help the man if his suit rested on shrewdness. “We are at your disposal, Patience, if you need assistance in any regard.” Megan rose, and her sisters did likewise. Anwen looked preoccupied, Charlotte disgruntled—Charlotte was frequently disgruntled—while Elizabeth’s gaze as she peered around the cozy parlor was wistful.

“We’ll visit again next week,” Megan said. “Perhaps Mrs. Horner will have some advice for you by then that will resolve the situation with Mr. MacHugh.”

“Perhaps,” Patience allowed, seeing her guests to the front door. No butler, no porter, no footman—no man—mediated between Patience and those who called upon her.

What must that be like? The entire street of widows and spinsters likely operated the same way, and Megan guessed they looked out for each other. They gossiped too, but mostly, they looked out for each other.

Patience was handing around scarves and holding cloaks when a knock sounded on the door.

“I have no company for years, and now I’m Piccadilly Circus North,” she said, opening the door.

A young woman stood on the stoop, a baby in her arms, a valise by her side. “I’ve come to call on Mrs. Horner. Is she home?”

“I’m home,” Patience said. “Please do come in. My guests were about to depart.”

“Patience?” Elizabeth murmured, but what harm could a woman and an infant do?

“Thank you very much for the call, my friends,” Patience said, kissing four cheeks in turn. “You’ve given me much to think about, and I’ll look forward to seeing you again next week.”

A farewell, rather than a dismissal. Megan got Charlotte by the arm and steered her sister out to the street. The Windham coach waited at the corner, though none of Megan’s sisters moved in its direction.

“I think we should pay a call on a certain publisher,” Elizabeth said.

“See for ourselves,” Charlotte added. “If he’s a dunderhead, we’ll know it.”

“Even if he’s not a dunderhead,” Anwen said. “He’s probably feeling like one.”

“We’re only three streets away,” Megan said. “Come, ladies. I’ve never paid a call on a publisher before.”

The lads had straggled in as the morning wore on. Even Detwiler had made it in before noon, but nothing about Dougal’s day had gone right. He’d had to fetch George down from the top of the awning, Jake had slipped and cut his knee on a patch of ice, and the bakeshop had remained closed.

“For Mrs. Horner to take the day off was brilliant,” Harry crowed, swinging into Dougal’s office uninvited. “Every other broadsheet I had has already sold out, and folk are clamoring for her final column tomorrow. They’re more interested in our advice than in Father Christmas’s visit.”

Harry had been a font of nervous cheer since assuring Dougal that Patience had arrived safely to her home and that she’d taken breakfast with her.

“I’m not angry with you, Harry,” Dougal said. “I was dishonest, and that’s ungentlemanly. Sooner or later, Patience would have learned my middle name.” At the altar perhaps. What a drama would have ensued then.

Harry took the seat opposite Dougal’s desk. “Why did you lie to her, Dougal?”

George hopped up on the desk and spread himself out on the blotter. The cat’s expression was more critical than curious. Yes, why lie to the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with?

“I have no excuses. I made an expedient decision last summer in the best interests of the business—and its employees—and then didn’t rectify the situation. I don’t blame Patience—”

“Excuse me, Mr. MacHugh,” Detwiler said from the doorway.

“Yes?”

“You’ve callers, sir. Ladies.”

What else could go wrong on this blasted day? “Send them in, Detwiler. Harry, see if the bakeshop is open yet. We could use some crumpets.”

Detwiler ushered in the single greatest concentration of female beauty the offices of MacHugh and Sons had ever seen. Four red-headed females assembled in Dougal’s office, four fine young ladies. They weren’t individually stunning, but each woman was attractive, and everything, from her bonnet ribbons to her gloves, to the trim on the collar of her velvet cloak, murmured of good taste and excellent breeding.

“Dougal P. MacHugh, ladies,” he said, bowing and coming around his desk. “Won’t you have a seat? I’ve sent the boy for sweets, and I’m always—”

“Don’t bother attempting to charm us, Professor Pennypacker,” said one of the ladies. She wore blue spectacles and the plainest cloak of the four. When she’d taken a seat, the others did likewise.

Dougal remained on his feet, for these lovely creatures were ladies. They weren’t Patience, though, and Dougal wanted to pitch the lot of them into the snow and go find his lady. If he’d made Patience cry…

“May I ask who has the pleasure of reproaching me?”

The women exchanged a look, then George leaped into the lap of the one wearing the spectacles.

“What a delightful creature,” she said as George’s purr reverberated across the office. “We are just come from a call on Miss Patience Friendly, sir, and as her friends, we must express concern regarding your dealings with her. Because no one is on hand to see to the civilities, I will introduce myself. I’m Megan Windham, and these are my sisters, Elizabeth, Charlotte, and Anwen.”

Dougal bowed to each in turn, while in the back of his mind an ominous bell tolled. A publisher knew London Society, though he rarely mingled among its titled members. Windham was the family name associated with the Moreland dukedom, and these people were Patience’s friends.

Her very unhappy friends.

“Ladies, what may I do for you?”

“Do have a seat,” said Miss Charlotte Windham. “We’re intent on a thorough scold.”

“I deserve a thorough scold.”

“You do,” Miss Elizabeth Windham said. “If not a birching and pillorying. Have you any idea the extent to which Patience’s trust was abused by her former fiancé?”

Dougal could dissemble again, could puff up with male pride and mutter about not discussing Patience behind her back. Fat lot of good such a course had done him before.

“I am aware of that history, and believe that in my way, I may have exceeded even the viscount’s perfidy.”

The smallest sister, the one with the unusual name, peered at him. “Whatever will you do about it? For matters in their present posture will not serve, Mr. MacHugh.”

The lady’s family was immensely powerful, and her observation might quietly threaten the ruin of Dougal’s business. More to the point, however, these women would be disappointed in him, and that, added to Patience’s disappointment, was unbearable.

A panting, red-faced Harry appeared in the door, holding up a parcel as if it were a trophy.

“Would you ladies care for some crumpets?” Dougal asked, rising and taking the parcel from Harry.

“No, thank you,” said Miss Megan Windham. “We have come here for answers, Mr. MacHugh. You have wronged our friend, and we will hold you accountable.”

Dougal stashed the parcel in a drawer. “Ladies, you needn’t hold me accountable. I hold myself accountable.”

“Pretty words,” Elizabeth Windham snapped. “What will you do, Mr. MacHugh?”

“I’m a publisher. I publish words.”

George left Miss Megan’s lap and took up residence two sisters down the row, on Miss Elizabeth’s lap.

“They had better be the right words,” Miss Megan said.

An idea came to Dougal as he surveyed these gorgeous, fierce women. They were what Patience should have become—secure in the knowledge of wealth and station. Before these women—before all of London—Dougal could assure Patience of his regard, and his remorse, and perhaps that would be enough.

“I’d thought I’d start with, ‘I’m sorry,’” he said, “and repeat it thousands of times. Ten thousand times, at least.” The printer would have a fit, but he’d find the means to fill the order.

Miss Megan flicked a cat hair from her sleeve. “That’s rather a lot of apologizing. Quantity of sentiment alone is merely melodrama. What qualities will these words convey?”

Patience had sent the mother and baby on their way, the loaf of stollen with them. The woman had refused coin, saying she had enough, thanks to Patience.

Christmas Eve arrived after a sleepless night—not quite sleepless, because Patience had dreamed of Dougal returning to Scotland, George silently reproaching Patience all the way up the Great North Road.

Christmas Eve dawned, a bright, drippy, un-merry business, though Patience’s housekeeper filled the kitchen with more chatter than a flock of newsboys discussing the next special edition.

“The coal man showed me his copy of the professor’s column,” Mrs. Dingleterry said. “I read it twice to be sure, then ran right out and bought us our copy. You must be very pleased, Miss Patience.”

The professor’s last column had come out yesterday.

Patience was not pleased. She wanted bacon, toast, and coffee, hot from the chophouse. She wanted to hear Wilkens and Harry arguing about what the words to a Robert Burns poem implied about young women who sang down by the burnie-o, and she wanted…she wanted badly to see Dougal.

Which was ridiculous. Dougal had wronged her. Period. The end. Stop the press.

Patience left off staring at the teapot. “What did you say about the professor’s column?”

“There it is, right there,” Mrs. Dingleterry said, setting a broadsheet down by Patience’s elbow. “He wishes Mrs. Horner a fine holiday and thanks her for all of her wisdom. Poor man’s in love, and all of London will be waiting on the reply from our Mrs. Horner, though her column today is just more of her usual good sense. I’d give anything if his letter were real, Miss Patience. Believe me, I would. I know how hard you work and how much your readers mean to you.”

Patience pulled the paper closer, her teapot forgotten.

“That wretch!” Patience shot to her feet. “That fiend. He’ll sell twenty thousand copies of this. Callow swains will study it as a perfect apology, and the readers will deluge him with letters. Where is my cloak?”

“In the front hall, miss. The same as always. Are you well?”

“I am…I am…I am about to provide the professor a holiday greeting he will never forget.”

“But you haven’t had anything to eat!”

“I’ll get something at the chophouse. Why don’t we ever decorate for the holidays, Mrs. Dingleterry?”

“Because you say it’s a silly, sentimental expense?”

“And you listen to me?”

“The professor says you’re wise and kind and all that other. Shall I buy some greenery, miss?”

Patience fished in a pocket and produced some coins. “Yes, and invite all the other ladies over to help you decorate. You might bake some lemon cake too, because the scent is divine.”

And if Patience could not find a way to make peace with Dougal, she’d need at least a consolatory slice or two—or three—of lemon cake. And hearty servings of stollen, crumpets, and tarts too.