by Edith Layton
“And the wassail,” Squire said.
“And the mistletoe, I hope?” Skye laughed.
“Which I’ll be sure to keep you away from—unless I’m the only one next to you,” Mirabelle said, making a face. She turned to Robert. “And dancing, music, games, and the best puddings and minces and punch in all England and Wales! Oh do stay, it’s only a few days away and will be such fun!”
“M’family expects me…but did you say dozens of comely cousins?” Robert asked. He basked in the merriment his comment provoked.
“Dozens,” Squire agreed. “Though none are as lovely as our Mirabelle—no matter what she says—many are comely enough to suit any man. And there will be friends—and well-wishers too. Yes,” he said to his wife’s sudden look of apprehension. “Well-wishers, my dear, from near and from far this year. For we’ve had our share of troubles. Our trials are ended and now only joy can ensue.”
His wife glanced at the head of the table where Skye and Mirabelle sat. They were obviously deaf to the company now, and blind to everything except what they saw in each other’s eyes.
“How glad I am that I found you,” Skye was saying softly. “I don’t know what I would have done if I had not.”
“How glad I am that you did,” Mirabelle sighed, “I don’t know how I’d have gone on had you not. You woke me, my love, to more than the day.”
Skye’s gaze caressed her as he dared not in front of all the company. “You woke me to my life,” he murmured.
The longing in her eyes showed him she knew. “You woke me to love.”
“It’s the same thing,” they both said at the same time, and laughed because they had.
“Such a handsome couple,” her mother sighed.
“Aye,” Squire said softly, “made for each other, all right. No matter how long it took for them to find each other. Their love will answer every question, and there will be no shadows. Be of good cheer, my dear.”
She blinked back happy tears and raised her glass to his.
The guests saw the toast and joined it, with quips and congratulations anew. Their laughter rose like the fragrant smoke from the blazing fire in the great hearth. The piney fragrance of it melted into that of all the other kindled hearths in the great manor, joining the scents of roast meats and pies, rising up the many chimneys, dispersing like a cloud of warmth and content into the frosty silent night.
The woman standing in the crooked lane in the depths of the great forest raised her head. She sniffed the air. And smiled. “Roast pig and goose, beef, and venison. And Cook’s pheasant pie. Ah, her steak and kidney pudding too, gingerbreads, brandysnaps, mince, apple and bramble pies. Lovely.”
“Lovely, aye, lovely is as lovely does, though. They didn’t invite thee, lovey, did they, eh?” the old hag at her side snickered.
“They did,” the handsome woman said calmly, “for tonight and the next day and the whole Holiday. But I’ll come on Christmas Day to see how they like my presents. They invited you too, you know.”
“’Cause they feared not to,” the crone sneered.
“No, there’s no harm you can do now, and they know it, for I’ve told them. Wasps have only one sting to them. There are rules. So they’d nothing to fear anymore. They invited you.”
“Well, they can look for me ’til their eyes drop out, for I ain’t goin’.”
“Do as you will. You always do.”
“Oh, Mistress Holy and Meek. Thou doest as thou will too,” the crone said spitefully. “Thee and me, we’re peas in a pod. Only different colors. And thou hast all the luck.”
“Why do you say that?” the other asked curiously.
“Eh!” the old woman scoffed. “Just look at it. It were clever of thee, no matter how it were done, I grant. But it could’ve been ruinous too, thou knows’t that right well. Think on. Had things changed too much, he’d have taken her for a loony and her family for dafties, and gone on his way with naught but a weird tale to tell of his visit to the manor. But no. Thy luck’s in, as ever. It’s still the French they’re fighting! And still in Spain, no less! A hundred years only brought them from one King George to another. And both kings thinking their son George a wastrel, and rightly so, and neither prince caring a fig for his father or what he thinks! What are the odds on them things, I ask thee? It’s thy blasted luck, as ever.”
“It’s only good over evil, as I’ve always said,” the other woman said, “and so it will always be. History will bend itself to it, Nature will turn herself to it, it’s what the Universe wants and will always strive to get, no matter how many years go by. Squire and his good wife share credit too, making such shrewd preparations. Gathering their loved ones together to stay the course with them, raising Mirabelle so well. Educate a child about the Past and she shall cope with the Present, and be able to face the Future. They did it well. They’re worthy, and deserve their present happiness.
“You should have listened to me,” the sweet-faced woman said, shaking her head. “I tried to tell you, you could have avoided all this trouble and your own frustration. But you will not change! Not your mind, nor face, speech, or attitude! You could! You didn’t have to curse them for not inviting you. My word! With your reputation, after what you did with the princess in the castle all those years ago, what sane family would? People remember such things for generations, and they’re right to. Because you tried the same thing again. Exactly the same way too, venting your spite on them even though it was only a Squire’s beloved daughter this time, only a manor house, and not a kingdom. One would think you’d learn. They have. And I did too.”
But the old woman wasn’t listening. She was scratching her hoary head and muttering. “I had it figgered this time. This time, I knew thou couldst not spite nor stop me!” She counted on her gnarled fingers. “I waited ’til thou gayest thy christening present, so I could be sure there wasn’t a thing thou couldst do to change mine this time. I waited ’til all the others were done giving their gifts too. I made sure of it! I even left out the spindle prick bit, for I noticed maidens don’t spin so much as they used to. I made it clear, I made it easy, with no room to wriggle out. All I said was it would happen on her eighteenth birthday, will she, nil she. Eighteen years, she’d fall into a swoon, and that’d be that. How didst thou get round it this time? I must know. Thou canst tell me, for it’s done, ain’t it?”
“So it is,” the fair woman said, “and so I shall. Remember what I said about learning from the past?
“You didn’t. You minded all, sister…all but for one thing. You left in triumph, but too soon, or you would have known then. Yes, I had no Christening present left to give after I gave her the gift of Laughter, did I? But you forgot. Good will find a way. Christmas was coming, and I remembered though you forgot—if you ever did think of giving presents to gladden instead of sadden, that is. I simply gave her the best gifts for Christmas. Life. And Love. Sleep instead of Death. And love to wake her.”
“Christmas gifts!” the hag raged. “It was a trick!”
“A trick? No one ever said I could only give Christening gifts, did they? And can you think of more fitting Christmas presents?”
She spoke to air. Her sister had vanished into it. And soon, so did she.
But she was smiling. An odd smile for such a sweet-faced creature known for her good deeds. Because it looked positively wicked.
The Amiable Miser
Alfred Minch was an amiable miser. He didn’t kick beggars out of his way when they pleaded for alms in the street. He actually smiled at them. He just never gave them anything. Nor did he dine on gruel and water. He enjoyed a gourmet meal—if someone else bought it, because if it was his own coin being spent, it was on victuals marked down at the last hour of the last day of sale, because one more hour and they would be rubbish. When he did let go of that coin, it was after much thought and with great sorrow. His clothing was neat, but secondhand, his style of life entirely meager. But his pleasures were very expensive, because his only pleasure was
making and saving money. Since he did that very well, he was jolly, he was amusing, he had a grand sense of humor, and was charming, as long as it didn’t cost him anything.
His cousin wished he was a monster.
It would be so much easier, Joy thought sadly as she watched her cousin Alfred readying his shop for business. Then she could despise him. But she couldn’t because although he was definitely mean, he wasn’t mean to her. Smiles and compliments cost nothing, and he was free with them, and good at them, too. That didn’t change the fact that he was a clutch-fist and a pinchpenny. He was a handsome old fellow, tall with white hair and a wide smiling face, with cheeks that turned ruddy with the cold, which they were all winter, since he didn’t like to waste coal.
Alfred Minch is an old purse pinch, Joy thought with rare ingratitude as she busied herself dusting shelves in the cold little shop. But Christmas was coming, and all the other shops on the street were brimming with luxuries, chocked full of delicacies she could only watch being carried off by other people as they hurried past Cousin Minch’s bookshop windows. No matter what preachers said about rewards of the flesh being suspect, she suspected a little luxury would go a long way to warm her heart at Christmastime. And little was exactly what she’d get.
But how could she complain? She flicked her feather duster across the gilded spines of Literary Criticism, and tried to brush unkind thoughts away, too. Cousin Minch had given her a roof over her head when her parents died. Feeding an extra mouth and heating an extra room cost a man money. And he was a man who hated to part with money. It was true she had to work to earn the protection of that roof as well as clothes, soap, and such “fribbles,” as he called them. Also true, her parents would rather have died than to see her working.…
But they had died, and if it weren’t for Cousin Minch, Joy would have gone to Aunt Augusta, and that would be worse, because her aunt would have married her off to her hideous stepson, and then merely breathing would have been work. An only child with no one to look after her, Joy knew she should be thankful to Cousin Minch. Her parents had left her banks of fond memories and a fine education, and not much else. Both youngest children of younger sons, her parents had good names and slender fortunes. Father had been profligate with money. Mama had thought the good times would never end. But they had ended when they met their untimely deaths in a coaching accident.
Joy sighed as she moved on to attack History. It was past time she accepted her life’s lacks and learned to live with them. But even after seven years it was difficult.
She’d come to London at seventeen, a frightened girl who’d never ventured far from the village where she’d been raised. She’d come to London filled with apprehension. She needn’t have worried. Nothing much had happened since then. She was twenty-four now, and looking down the aisles of years could see that nothing much would change as she trudged on toward sixty-four. Nothing really changed here in Cousin Minch’s bookshop. Volumes came in, volumes went out, spaces on the shelves emptied and filled, but the years only placed her more firmly on the shelf.
There were worse fates than working in a bookshop, she thought as she climbed higher up the ladder to give Geography a dusting. So what if it was small, cramped, and dim, the air old and stale as the contents of the ancient tomes? So what if the crowded shelves made the place even smaller than it was? It was a lot better than Cousin Frederick’s damp clutches, or the workhouse, or some unimaginable other place homeless females wound up in.
It was also preferable to working as a servant, a governess, or companion to strangers. Because if she had little, Joy still had her dignity. That was priceless. Just as well, she thought, if it cost anything, Uncle Minch would have said he couldn’t afford it.
But her lot was harder for her to bear than it had been when she’d first come to Cousin Minch. Because now spinsterhood no longer loomed. It had arrived. It didn’t help that the year was ending and the growing bleakness of the days matched the growing gloom in her spirit.
Christmas was around the corner, but she couldn’t look forward to holiday pleasures. It would dawn sensible and frugal as it always was under her cousin’s roof. She’d wake to find Father Christmas had consulted with Cousin Minch, and then brought her a handkerchief, a boiled sweet, and best wishes of the season. Later, after helping put together a Christmas dinner, she’d get a tot of rum to usher in the glad season, a charming compliment on her looks, and a caution to go to bed so she could retain those looks and still be up early for work the next day.
At least she didn’t have to do all the work; she wasn’t Alfred Minch’s only pensioner. He had three unfortunate females under his wing. One to run his shop. One to order his house. And one to keep it free of mice. Clara, his widowed sister, acted as his housekeeper to earn her way. She’d give Joy something pretty for Christmas, something she couldn’t afford, to make Joy merry. As ever, it would make Joy feel guilty. The other female under Cousin Minch’s wing was Boots, a battle-scarred old tabby who slept in the shop. She’d let Joy scratch behind her torn ears, and maybe, in the spirit of Christmas, she might not, for once, scratch back.
In truth, even a lavish Christmas couldn’t hide the fact that another year was lurking behind Yuletide, ready to pounce on Joy. Marriage was not. How could she meet eligible men? The thought of Cousin Minch offering her a Season was ludicrous. The idea of him offering a dowry would be amusing, if it weren’t so sad.
Four-and-twenty and unwed was unfortunate, Joy thought as she brushed by Philosophy. Five-and-twenty and unwed would be tragic. She was lonely and lovelorn; the worst part was that there was no one to be lovesick for.
Not that she didn’t have any suitors. Only impossible ones. Tom Ford always had his eye on Joy. That was all he’d ever put on her, and not because she was as much of a snob as Cousin Minch. But Tom was a butcher who thought a firm red liver was a perfect offering to the object of his affections, and whose conversation ran from meat to sporting matches, stumbling when it ran across anything else.
Plump George Potts’ jokes weren’t as fresh or sweet as the milk he delivered. Mr. C. B. Hatch, the myopic actuary, was dry as the tables he calculated for the firm of Strothers and Blink. Mr. Blink himself, a humorless fiftyish widower with five hopeful children, pretended to buy books as he tried to muster a rakish smile for Miss Joy Ayres. She felt sorry for his motherless children, but not enough to give their father more than a smile back.
Other admirers included every single man who lived or worked anywhere near Alfred Minch, bookseller, and not a few married ones, too. Because Joy was as beautiful as she was educated.
Her father used to call her his “Saxon princess” because of her blond good looks. But Joy didn’t think much of that compliment since most of the girls in her village were fair. What she didn’t see was that few had such intelligence sparkling in clear blue eyes, nor were their eyes framed by such long dark lashes, nor did they have mouths as full and quirked with good humor. Her sheaf of straight flaxen hair was always shining clean, her profile faultless from nose to toes. She was slender yet full bosomed, with a curving waist that current fashions ignored, even if the men didn’t.
But even if by some stroke of fortune she finally did meet someone whose face and form pleased her and whose mind marched with hers, Joy knew she didn’t have money and that was what made for a proper match. As for an improper one—the sort of thing that existed between the pages of the books she sold? Such goings on were not for an Ayres. She mightn’t be as class conscious as her cousin, but she had standards. They were one of the few things she could afford, after all.
“Well, well, well,” Alfred finally said, rubbing his hands together. “Are we ready? Shall I ring up the curtain, my dear?”
Joy managed a smile as she always did. Because he said the same thing every morning.
“Ready, cousin,” she replied. Useless to say it would be nice to bring up the fire, too, she thought as she stepped down from the ladder. It had been warmer up on the ladder, the scan
t heat in the room rising to the ceiling. She rubbed her hands together, too, to get the circulation going.
Cousin Minch unlocked the door. A swarm of customers did not charge in. His business came slow, stayed long, and sometimes left him a profit. A large profit. He knew how to buy cheap and sell high, and make the most of every asset, using his expertise to stock the shop, and Joy as window dressing. As the morning sun rose higher, his customers filtered in.
“Anything new from old Horace?” ancient Mr. Throckmorton joked to Joy as he came in to browse through recent acquisitions.
“P-perhaps you could show me some volumes of p-poetry?” Lord Tully’s new schoolmaster stammered to Joy, his spotted face growing fiery red. “I wish to send Mama a present.”
“Why, I can help you there,” Alfred said heartily. He moved between the fellow and Joy, knowing a young man thwarted was one who’d come back to buy another volume for another excuse to talk.
A timid clerk came in to stare at Joy and leave with an almanac. Mr. Blink stopped by on his way to lunch.
“How are you, my dear?” he asked Joy. “Has my book come in yet?” he asked when all questions about health and weather had been fully explored.
“It has not, I’m afraid,” Alfred put in, frowning. Not because the book hadn’t arrived, but because he’d realized Blink had been clever enough to order a book that would take weeks to locate, weeks during which he had an excuse to look in on Joy every day.
“Colder than a witch’s ti—watchman’s teakettle out there!” Tom Ford laughed, ducking his head in the doorway. “Could you do with a string of fine sausage links, eh?” he asked Joy, his round brown eyes growing soulful. “Got some in that are beaut, fat and juicy as stuffed leeches, hand on my heart. Half price because of your lovely blue eyes, Miss Ayres. Quarter price if you come to tea with me,” he added with a wink.