“We’ve sold out?” Dougal asked.
“The professor and Mrs. Horner have both sold out,” Detwiler said, settling into the chair across from Dougal’s desk. “The printer is doing an extra run as we speak, and the name of Dougal P. MacHugh is on the lips of every publisher in London. They’re all saying you’re brilliant, and next Christmas, they will conduct an epistolary courtship by broadsheet.”
“Let them,” Dougal said, taking off his glasses. “This time next year, I might well be teaching school again in Upper Achtermachtaltiebuie.”
“Is there an Upper Achtermachtaltiebuie?”
“Go home, Detwiler. I’ll see you Monday, no earlier than noon.”
Detwiler pushed to his feet. “I’m sorry, lad. You tried your best. Hell hath no fury like a spinster—”
Dougal rose and leaned over the desk. “Patience Friendly is not a spinster.”
Detwiler braced his hands on the desk. “Spinster, the proper legal definition for a woman as yet unmarried. Old maid. A woman past the usual marriageable age, rarely applied to men in the same situation but sometimes used to designate the occupation of one who spins.”
Dougal leaned nearer. “Patience Friendly is a writer, a brilliant literary talent with a genius for the publishing business. She is an excellent editor and a woman of unshakable integrity, whom I am proud to have associated with this establishment. She is also my fiancée until she tells me otherwise.”
“You needn’t shout,” said a familiar female voice. “Though your sentiments do you credit.”
Patience stood in the doorway, but not a version of Patience whom Dougal had seen before. Even holding George in her arms, this woman outshone the Windham sisters for self-possession, and though her ensemble was several years out of date, the quality and style were unmistakable.
“Detwiler,” Dougal said. “Happy Christmas.”
“Oh, right. Happy Christmas to all.” Detwiler took his time shuffling out the door, and when he paused to pet the cat, Dougal nearly howled.
Patience kissed the old buzzard’s cheek, sashayed into the office, and deposited George on the mantel.
“Mr. MacHugh, we have business to discuss.”
Dougal did not want to discuss business, but if Patience had asked him to recite Tam O’Shanter backward, he would have given it a go. He was so damned relieved to see her on her mettle, ready to give as good as she got, while he was damned if he had the first inkling—
Inspiration struck. “I have crumpets.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Speaking as a brilliant literary talent, I’m not interested in your crumpets, sir. Shall we be seated?”
Dougal came around the desk and gestured to the table, then held Patience’s chair for her. He’d missed the scent of her, the rustle of her skirts, the energy she brought to the office—and that was before she’d metamorphosed from Mrs. Horner into this, this force of nature.
“You smell like lemons and spices,” he said, taking his own seat.
“This is a business discussion, Mr. MacHugh. Has the professor sold out?”
“Aye. In record time. Mrs. Horner right behind him.”
“Mrs. Horner has a reply for him.” She passed over a sheet of foolscap. “She’ll beat his record.”
My dear Professor Pennypacker,
While I appreciate the gracious sentiments contained in your epistle, I must take issue with two of your assumptions, for they will otherwise trouble my holiday exceedingly.
Firstly, you assume that I cannot appreciate a point of view differing from my own, which foolishness I attribute to an excess of delicate gentlemanly sensibilities. A woman who holds the public’s trust takes upon herself a great responsibility. Knowing that you will step forth with well-considered criticism from time to time eases the burden of that responsibility for me.
Nobody is right all the time. Nobody goes through life without an occasional error. What a dull world we’d have if we permitted each other no room for foibles, thoughtful discourse, or respectful dissension.
Secondly, you assume that our readers cannot enjoy offerings from more than one writer, as if their appetite for succinct wisdom was limited, rather than expanded, by our mutual efforts. The good citizens who enjoy my column should be encouraged to find others they like as well. When do we ever have too much wisdom, too many insights?
So I must thank you, Professor, for your contribution to an enjoyable and enlightening exchange. My holiday wish is that we shall have many more differences of opinion and that you shall offer the benefit of your thinking whether it agrees with my own or respectfully conflicts with it.
My wish for the readers is that they will take comfort and pleasure in the knowledge that not one, but two, articulate and compassionate authors are available to address their difficulties and concerns.
I look forward to the day when our swords figuratively cross again, Professor. Until that day, I remain, with all best wishes, your good friend,
Mrs. Horner
Dougal read the letter twice, finding not a single comma he could bear to move. “Mrs. Horner and the professor are good friends now?”
Patience tugged off her gloves and took the sheet back. “Very is such a weak word, but good friends struck the balance between dignified and warm, don’t you think?”
Dougal took the letter back and set it carefully aside. “Patience, I want to be much more than your good friend. I am exceedingly sorry I lied to you. It won’t happen again.”
“You were being my publisher,” she said. “You fed me crumpets to inspire my productivity, and you fed me a challenge when my readership was ready for one. Had I known the professor was a creature of your imagination, my responses might not have been so vigorous.”
Well, yes, and yet, a lie was a lie. “Are you making excuses for me?”
She rose and went to the window, and even her posture struck Dougal as more regal. “I understand what you did, Dougal. I might wish you’d brought me in on the scheme, but I suspect you initially lacked confidence in it. The professor was an experiment, a lark, a private risk. I tried selling my watercolors once upon a time—I signed them Placido Amadeus. When few people bought them, the failure belonged to a fictitious Italian man, not Patience Friendly.”
“Exactly,” Dougal said, getting to his feet. “What if the professor’s words garnered ridicule? What if you demolished him in a single column? What if he took a position that revealed his ignorance of all matters parental and domestic? Where would his publisher be?”
Patience turned to face him. “I wrote to the professor.”
“I beg your—” Her words weren’t difficult to decipher, and yet, Dougal’s mind stumbled over them. “You wrote to Pennypacker?”
“I wrote to you,” she said, striding away from the window. “If I wasn’t confident of my response to a reader, if I wanted to test my judgment, or offer the reader a choice of approaches, then I’d put a comparable situation before the professor.”
“The philandering brother-in-law was you? I thought the readers were pitting us against each other.”
“I changed my handwriting, my tone, my everything, lest my letter sound too much like Mrs. Horner to a man who’d read every word she’d written. I meant what I wrote in my letter, you see. To bear sole responsibility for guiding a reader through a difficulty is a heavy burden. The professor was the only person I could turn to, and he never failed to share the load.”
“You wrote to the professor…” Dougal caught her hand as she marched past him. “You fanned the flames of controversy on purpose. You considered Pennypacker your colleague. You, you—”
“I mispresented myself. I lied. I’m sorry, Dougal. I’m—”
He caught her up in his arms. “You’re a genius! You’re brilliant. You’re the most clever, insightful, delightful—” Dougal kissed Patience on the mouth, and a few other places, and then set her back on her feet, but kept his arms around her. “You beat me at my own game, Patience.”
She sighed, then slipped free. “No, Dougal. I’ve thought about this. Mrs. Harmon Dandy came to see me.”
“Who? Oh, her.” The gin widow. “She didn’t learn your direction from me.”
“She followed me home earlier this week. She wanted to leave a note for me here at the office, but then saw Harry walking me home and suspected that I am Mrs. Horner. You did a fine thing for her, Dougal, but you might have told me.”
Dougal had the nagging sense that his brilliant, ingenious, though not always entirely honest, author was maneuvering toward a conclusion.
“I sent her to my cousins in Perthshire, Patience. They have a large household and won’t mind making accommodations for a new mother who’s an accomplished seamstress.” Thank goodness for wealthy relations who weren’t above the occasional charitable act.
“You probably saved that baby’s life, if not the mother’s too. I’m endlessly grateful, but we must learn to trust each other, Dougal. We must be partners pulling in the same direction. We each have strengths and abilities, but we’re stronger together. You can’t write as Mrs. Horner does, and I can’t browbeat the printer into doing a special run on Christmas Eve.”
“He refused you?”
Patience nodded. “He said the professor had used up the entire crew’s store of holiday generosity and for no amount of money would they stay late on Christmas Eve. You would have talked him ’round, wheedled, negotiated. You’re a fine publisher, Dougal, and I’m a literary genius, but we cannot succeed without being in each other’s confidence.”
“I will make a fine husband as well, Patience, if this trust you speak of can go both ways. I think Harry should read law, but he’ll never listen to that suggestion from me. He might if you brought it up.”
Her brows knit, her expression suggesting Mrs. Horner was on the job, figuring the best way to pass along advice so it might be heeded.
Dougal ran his finger down the center of her forehead. Mrs. Horner hadn’t solved the greater problem Dougal had created, but Patience had. He would always love her for that, for giving a promising piece of work one more polishing, for making it the best it could be, despite all the effort involved.
Patience trapped his finger in her own. “Did you mention crumpets earlier, Dougal?”
What did crumpets have to do with—? “Fresh from the bakeshop. Shall we share them, Patience?”
“The lads have all gone home?”
“And Detwiler. I heard him lock up on the way out.” Thus earning a Christmas bonus.
“Are we to be partners, sir? MacHugh and MacHugh?”
Oh, that sounded lovely. Dougal stuck out his hand. “Partners, MacHugh and MacHugh. Might I suggest we take the crumpets upstairs to further discuss our plans for the new year?”
Patience took Dougal’s hand in both of hers. “We might have to add another MacHugh to the name of the business, Dougal. Would that fit with your plans?”
Dougal snatched the parcel of crumpets from the drawer and tossed them to her. “We can add as many junior MacHughs to the name of the business as you like, Patience, but how about we enjoy our crumpets first?”
“Upstairs,” she said. “At a meeting of the senior editorial board. I quite like that idea.”
Dougal liked it too, enough to carry his senior editorial director up the stairs and forget all about the crumpets until at least an hour later. The meeting continued, intermittently, well into Boxing Day. They took a break to admire Mrs. Horner’s response to the professor when it sold out in minutes early that afternoon. By then, the bakeshop had run out of crumpets.
And stollen.
And tarts.
The senior editorial board never ran out of agenda items, though, and both members thereof had a very, very fine Christmas—every year.