Patience fished among the detritus on the table for her pencil. “The professor, as you’ve pointed out, has made me a significant sum of money, and you as well. I doubt he’s a gold-plated anything. I know how hard we’re working to get these columns. He has to be putting in comparable effort. Shall we order from the chophouse?”
“I don’t want to order from the blasted chophouse.”
Something was troubling Mr. MacHugh, which made no sense. He was never happier than when the business thrived and he could pit his wits against his competitors. The clerks and newsboys were in a fine humor of late, and the printer had sent around a basket of holiday fruit. Even King George seemed less cranky.
“You are worried this whole scheme will collapse,” Patience said, thinking out loud. “You anticipate that because all is unfolding exactly according to your plan—you’ve increased the print run twice already—disaster will soon strike. This is the thinking of a jilted debutante, sir, and I’ll thank you to put it behind you.”
He ran his hand through his hair, then sat back in one of the poses Patience found most fetching. His ankle crossed over his knee, one arm hooked over the back of the chair. A gentleman would never sit thus before a lady, and a dandy’s breeches would have been too tight to even attempt such a position.
“I’m a jilted debutante? Madam, were you up too late reading that drivel from Mrs. Wollstonecraft?”
Patience had devoured the entire treatise in a single sitting on Monday night.
“You can’t bait me that easily, Mr. MacHugh. I’m speaking from experience. When I realized the viscount had been in love with my settlements, not me, I saw betrayal everywhere. If the coal man made a mistake on his bill, if the pastor failed to greet me personally on the church steps, I was certain they intended thievery and insult.”
He sat forward and organized the loose papers into a stack, then swept the crumbs and trimmings into his palm. “How do you know the coal man wasn’t trying to cheat you, or the pastor trying to cut his association with you?”
“The coal man had never cheated us previously, not in years of service. The pastor was a busy man. They hadn’t changed, I had. You planned on modest success, you didn’t plan on this scheme making you the talk of the town.”
The orts and leavings from the table went into the dustbin. “I’m not a problem to be solved, Patience. What will you do about the lady who’s overspent her holiday shopping budget?”
“Why won’t you let me answer the woman whose husband is drinking away the rent money?”
He lifted the cat off the mantel and resettled in his chair. “I’m working on that one. Give me some time. You can’t suborn petit treason and expect this publishing house to stand.”
A week ago, Patience would have argued this issue too, but since then, she’d seen the publishing house from the inside. Most of the staff was young, just starting out, and if the business failed, they’d face a long, expensive journey home to Scotland. Some of them wouldn’t have the means to make that journey.
Jake was the oldest of six, with another on the way. His father was a groom at a coaching house, his mother took in mending.
Harry aspired to become a man of business.
Mr. Detwiler was old and slow and couldn’t work the long hours the youngsters could, but he knew everything about London publishing and the English language.
“I’ll give you a week to decide how I can help that woman, but she deserves an answer,” Patience said, petting the cat. King George’s purr was the small thunder of feline contentment, though more than she wanted to pet the cat, Patience wanted to touch Dougal.
Running a business was a burdensome ambition. What she’d realized in the past week was that she enjoyed seeing how Dougal met that burden. Instead of penning her columns in solitude on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, the twelve-edition project meant she was at the publishing house daily, ruminating on columns by night and monitoring sales with an enthusiasm she hadn’t previously.
Having a job could give the day purpose. Having people who shared that job meant forming bonds of a sort. Trade, in other words, could be exciting.
How the other debutantes who’d come out with Patience ten years ago would have swooned at such a notion.
“What are you planning now?” Mr. MacHugh asked. “You’re absorbed with some thought.”
“Do you know how boring it is to be wealthy?”
The cat extricated himself from Mr. MacHugh’s arms and strolled across the table.
“I have no firsthand experience with the condition. My cousins are quite well-to-do, and they don’t strike me as bored.”
“They aren’t pretty little debutantes whose signature accomplishments are parlor French, a sonata or two, and embroidery. How did I stand it, Dougal?”
Mrs. Wollstonecraft bore some of the blame for Patience’s changed perspective, but so did the realization that Mrs. Horner mattered, she made a difference, not only to Patience’s financial situation, but to others.
Did a waltzing debutante know what it was to matter in any regard except as breeding stock for some titled nincompoop? What could she look forward to, other than a remote sort of maternal involvement in the lives of children raised by nurses, governesses, and tutors?
“I’m guessing you dealt with your boredom by reading a great deal,” Mr. MacHugh said. “I certainly did.”
The cat flopped down among the papers, his front half covering the page of the dictionary beginning with evince. A companionable moment sprang up as Patience stroked George’s furry head.
“I read my papa’s entire library, several times over, and then we sold the bound books. Will you kiss me again, Mr. MacHugh?”
Patience hadn’t intended to ask such a question—a proper lady wouldn’t. But a woman who made her living with words, and presumed to solve problems for others, needn’t be such a ninnyhammer.
“That kiss was by way of argument, Miss Friendly. Not well done of me.”
“I thought it was very well done of you.”
Mr. MacHugh was on his feet and shrugging into his greatcoat. “Back to the profligate holiday shopper with you, madam. I’m for the chophouse.”
Patience scooped the cat into her arms. “Coward.” What a delight to be so honest in her discourse with another, much less with a man whom she’d kissed. But how lowering too, that she couldn’t tempt him to kiss her again.
“Not a coward, but a gentleman,” Mr. MacHugh countered, “in my bumbling fashion. A gentleman making a tactical retreat. I don’t regret kissing you, Patience, but you might one day soon regret kissing me. Shall I stop by the bakery?”
“No more sweets for me. I’ll feast on the knowledge that we’re outselling even your most optimistic projections. I’ll also counsel the holiday shopper to forgive herself for yielding to generous impulses where friends and family are concerned.”
Mr. MacHugh took his leave, though he forgot to don his scarf—a cheerful, bold green and blue plaid.
Patience put George on the mantel and tried to focus on crafting her reply to the shopper who’d disrespected the budget set by her husband. The reply was slow to come and required much revision, for Patience was preoccupied with a question.
Why on earth would she ever, ever regret sharing a wondrous kiss under the mistletoe with Dougal P. MacHugh?
* * *
“You sent Harry along home with your lady?” Detwiler asked, settling on the side of the table nearest the hearth. “Was that wise, Dougal? The boy’s growing, true, but he’s not much protection against thieves or pickpockets.”
“There’s still plenty of light,” Dougal countered, except in his soul, night was falling. Patience wanted more kisses—a fine notion, but for the fact that Dougal wasn’t the man she thought him to be. He was Professor Pennypacker, a braying, useless old nodcock who spouted platitudes and quotes and generally sounded like the retired schoolteacher he was.
“Dougal”—Detwiler glanced at the closed office door—“you have to t
ell her.”
“I can’t tell her now. She’s enjoying herself too much.” As the week had progressed, Patience had thrown herself into her work with an energy that put the youthful clerks to shame. The entire office was more cheerful, more productive, and better. The lads competed to come up with the cleverest holiday rhymes, Detwiler arrived on time most mornings, and even George was friendlier.
Patience blossomed more gloriously with every hour she spent at MacHugh and Sons, while Dougal watched the earnings increase along with his sense of guilt.
“Did you notice Jake has started smiling?” Dougal murmured, propping his feet on a corner of the desk. “The boy has a beautiful smile.” And a smiling newsboy sold more copies, earned more coin, and had more reason to smile.
Patience had done that, with her rhymes, her roving newsboys, her clever wit on the page.
“Any boy enjoying a steady diet of holiday sweets has cause to smile,” Detwiler said, “while you have become positively glum.”
“I’m Scottish. I’m allowed to be glum.”
“You’re a Scotsman whose coin is multiplying,” Detwiler replied, shifting in his chair. “You enjoy good health, and in Patience Friendly, you’ve found a gold mine. What’s more, she has a gold mine in you. Very few other publishers would have seen her potential, Dougal, much less given her a chance to shine like this. All over London, people are quoting Mrs. Horner and saving their broadsheets to pass on to their friends and neighbors.”
“They’re quoting old Pennypacker too. That was the plan. She’ll hate me if I tell her now, Aloysius.” Dougal nearly hated himself.
“What’s the worst that could happen? You have a rousing spat, and then she sees what a fine scheme you’ve concocted. She’ll settle her feathers and come up with more ways to increase the readership. That woman respects coin of the realm. I suspect there’s some Scots in her, a generation or three back.”
Dougal rose, because he could not stand to be in his office another moment. A subterfuge was in progress on his premises, and every day that went by, the dishonesty he perpetrated bothered him more.
“Patience respects me,” he said, getting into his coat. “I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Where are you off to? I thought you wanted to discuss this letter from the gin widow?” Detwiler brandished a thin, much-folded piece of a paper.
Dougal studied the direction on the letter, jammed his hat on his head, and grabbed his scarf. “Before it starts to damned snow again, I’m going for a walk.”
“Away with you, then, and George and I will manage the lads in your absence.”
“Fire the professor, why don’t you? He’s a pontificating old bore who’s served his purpose.”
Detwiler snorted, and Dougal went on his way. The clerks were enjoying a heated argument about which of the nearby taverns had the best recipe for rum buns, and the printer’s lad was helping himself to an apple from the basket in the window. From the street below, an impromptu glee club had borrowed some of Mrs. Horner’s lyrics for a bit of holiday Handel, and brilliant afternoon sunshine poured in the windows.
All was merry and bright, and Dougal had never dreaded the yuletide season more.
* * *
“How do you endure this?” Patience muttered. “Detwiler claims to be ill, the dratted cat has shredded two days’ worth of work, it’s pouring ice outside, and nobody will buy anything until the weather improves.”
“The lads go from pub to tavern to coaching inn, and they’ll sell a fair amount, despite the weather,” Mr. MacHugh said. “I can buy you some crumpets, if that will help.”
The cat, who’d spent an evening scratching three of Patience’s columns to bits, was draped like so much holiday greenery on the mantel.
“Throwing George out the window might help.”
Mr. MacHugh went to the window and raised the sash. Bitter, coal-smoke air wafted in, though the cold at least revived Patience’s flagging energy.
“Stop being literal, sir.”
He lowered the sash. “I am a publisher. Of course I’ll be literal. George would simply land on the roof of the awning, scramble down the trellis, and come in the back way. He’s a Scottish cat and not as decorative as you might think.”
George’s owner was very decorative. Since kissing Mr. MacHugh more than a week ago, Patience had done little else but notice how thick his lashes were, how lovely his burr, and how the muscles of his forearms flexed when he sat at his desk and wrote. Before the clerks and the trades, he always had his coat on and his neckcloth neatly tied, but in the privacy of his office, he could be less proper.
He was kind to Detwiler, strict but fair with the boys, and scrupulously honest with the printers, authors, and merchants upon whom a publishing house depended.
“I thought a publisher was an idler,” Patience said. “A man who sat about all day, smoking noisome cigars and joining gentleman’s clubs.”
One corner of Mr. MacHugh’s mouth quirked up. “Like a debutante tatting lace? Virtually indolent, but for some light reading?”
“I imagined you could engage in political discourse, which a debutante would never do. Be glad you weren’t consigned to studying fashion plates by the hour, or memorizing Debrett’s.”
What bleak years those had been, what meaningless, empty years. This past week had given Patience the words to describe those years. For nearly a decade, she’d thought the problem had been her failure to secure a husband. The problem was that finding a husband was all young ladies from good families were allowed to do.
“Temperature’s dropping,” Mr. MacHugh said. “We should get you home, Miss Friendly.”
The sky had been delivering a combination of rain, ice, sleet, and snow all day. Ice clicked against the window, though sunset was still a good two hours off.
“If I go home, I’ll be behind. The professor will have the street corners to himself come Thursday, and I cannot possibly allow him to have the last word.”
Christmas fell on Saturday, and Patience had already decided to spend the entire day in bed, swilling tea, and not eating crumpets, or tarts, or stollen. With fresh, free sweets available in quantity, Patience had lost her taste for them. She still sent the boys out for parcels from the bakery, but her consumption was more for form’s sake than out of any craving.
She did fancy another kiss with Mr. MacHugh though.
“So let the professor have Thursday,” Mr. MacHugh said, “and you can put out your final column on Christmas Eve. It’s not the Sabbath, and people will be on the streets visiting back and forth and calling on family.”
Patience rose because her back ached. Her eyes ached, and her head ached, but she had three columns to replace before she’d quit the premises.
Her conscience ached too, truth be told.
“I like that—having the last word,” she said. “I’ll re-create my three columns and then I’ll go. If you need me after today, send Harry ’round to fetch me. You never did let me offer that gin widow any advice.”
And Dougal MacHugh would not have lost track of the letter. He was relentless about details, and that letter was not a detail.
“I’m off to fetch a cab for Detwiler,” he said. “If that old man walks home in this mess, Cousin Avery will report me to the authorities for disrespecting my elders.”
Mr. MacHugh departed, and the silence in his wake was bewildering. He no longer argued with Patience, didn’t contradict her, didn’t instruct her on the finer points of managing a competitive enterprise. She caught him watching her, peering at her over his glasses, leaning against the doorway of the office when she looked up from her writing.
By the time he came back—soaked to the skin—Patience was busily rewriting one of the columns George had destroyed. Mr. MacHugh shook out his greatcoat, droplets of melting snow dotting the floorboards.
One of them hit her on the cheek. She swiped it away and got back to work.
“Patience, the weather is truly foul. Let me get you a cab.”
“I have one more column to go. The rain will let up, and then you won’t need to call me a cab.”
“It’s not raining now. It’s snowing like it means business.”
“Ah! I need another word for business.”
A great sigh gusted from across the room. “Commerce, enterprise, trade, mercantile endeavor.”
Patience considered the walking thesaurus grousing at her from across the room. “I like that last one, mercantile endeavor. I have a question, though, about your own mercantile endeavor. Why name it MacHugh and Sons? You’re not a fundamentally dishonest person, but you are in want of progeny.”
He shook his scarf out next. Some of the shower hit the cat on the mantel. George woke up, glowered at his owner, then went back to napping.
“MacHugh and Sons is poetic license,” Mr. MacHugh said. “If I make a go of this place, then I’ll be free to marry, and the sons might well follow. One wants to sound successful while one is trying to be successful.”
Patience sprinkled sand on the page she’d completed. “Just as I’m Mrs. Horner, a staid, respectable matron with years of domestic experience. Do you suppose Pennypacker is a professor?”
Every time she brought up the professor, Mr. MacHugh’s eyes went bleak. “He knows his books. He’s no match for you when it comes to domestic issues. I’m for some tea. Would you like a cup?”
She rose and came around the desk. “You haven’t been getting enough rest. Is that why you’re so surly lately?”
“I’m no’ surly.”
Mr. MacHugh’s hair had a tendency to curl when damp, and it was a touch longish at the back. Patience liked it longish. She liked him, and she did not like that he was troubled when, for the most part, all was going well. Rather than kiss him, she slid her arms about his waist and leaned close.
“Patience, you mustn’t…”
“This is a hug. H-u-g. Detwiler says we don’t know where the word comes from, but Shakespeare used it, so it has to be good old English. You mustn’t worry, Dougal. Your plan is going brilliantly, and all will be well. Do you miss Scotland?”
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