The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows

by Olivia Waite

  “Isabella and Joanna . . .” Griffin murmured. She turned her face up to the sky, her breath making clouds in the chilly space above her muffler. “That sounds more like what Thomas and I had,” she said easily. “Our love was . . . comfortable. Oh, that sounds so tepid when put like that—but it didn’t feel dull. Just—strong. Steady.” Her lips quirked. “I miss that.”

  “Maybe you’ll find it again someday,” Penelope said. The words were soft, hardly more than a whisper.

  Perhaps they were lost on the winter wind, because Griffin made no reply.

  Night had fallen, the clock was about to strike eleven, and Penelope was knocking softly on Griffin’s bedroom door.

  Rustling and light swearing answered her. Then the door was pulled wide. Griffin stood, wrapped in a shawl, her eyes still sleep-softened even as they pinched at the corners. “Already?” she grumbled.

  “We’ll need to hurry to have everything ready by midnight,” Penelope replied.

  Griffin breathed a low curse, but Penelope only grinned in return. Anticipation thrummed through her veins and sizzled beneath her skin. This Christmas Eve tradition was one of her very favorite moments of the year, and she couldn’t wait to share it with her friend. Especially a sleepy, grouchy Agatha Griffin wearing thick-soled boots and an expression of pure suspicion.

  “Too much mystery,” Griffin muttered as they crept down the stairs with only a single candle to guide them.

  Eliza, Sydney, Harry, and John soon joined them in the hall. Voices were muffled and footsteps careful, to keep from waking the rest of the household. “Does everyone have their coins?” Penelope whispered, and was answered by a bobbing round of nodding heads. “Good—let’s go.” She shouldered her pack of supplies and the group slipped out into the night.

  A cold moon had risen, silvering the trees and the long ribbon of the lane. Harry and John led the way in the snug shielding of their woolen pea-jackets, long tested by the Arctic climes they sailed. Griffin had wrapped her shawl over her head for extra warmth, leaving only her eyes free, and Eliza and Sydney were sporting two of the Stanhope brothers’ cast-off felt caps from when they were boys. Nobody spoke: Penelope had cautioned them against it, for stealth’s sake.

  In a silent huddle, they slipped toward the Four Swallows.

  They were not the first to arrive: Mr. and Mrs. Biswas let them into the darkened tavern hall, and helped Penelope begin emptying her pack. Mrs. Bedford was already setting out a bowl of her best cider, and Mr. Scriven was helping to cut slices of cold ham and bread and cheese to set beside Mrs. Biswas’s curried pies. Before long Mr. Thomas, Mr. Kitt, and the Koskinens had all hurried inside, shutting the door carefully to avoid any noise.

  “How long ’til midnight?” Mrs. Koskinen whispered.

  “A quarter of an hour,” Mrs. Biswas replied. By now she and Penelope had, with Griffin’s help, wrapped green-dyed muslin around several lamps, and stretched long swaths over the windows. They fluttered lightly, seaweed-like. Mr. Koskinen brought out the guitar he played only once a year, and Mrs. Biswas handed small bells to Eliza and Sydney, as the youngest in attendance.

  They waited, breathless, until the bells of St. Ambrose’s rang midnight, and Christmas.

  The whole group cheered. Spectral green lights blazed up as Penelope lit the muslin-masked lamps. Mr. Koskinen began singing a carol in an eerie minor key in his rich and resonant baritone. Eliza and Sydney kept time with the bells, a shiver of accompaniment. Mr. Thomas and Mr. Kitt bowed to each other and began dancing, singing along, as Mrs. Bedford handed round cups of cider and servings of bread and meat and cheese, then laughed as Mr. Scriven pulled her into a dance alongside the younger men. Harry and John were quick to make the third couple of the set, as easy on their feet as though the wooden boards beneath were the deck of a familiar ship.

  Anyone passing by outside the tavern would have seen only an eldritch green glow, and shadowy figures flitting through it. Mr. Koskinen’s guitar was imperfectly tuned, and he had a way of sliding his hands along the strings to make it wail in a way that always raised the hair on Penelope’s arms in a most delicious way.

  She watched as the realization dawned on Agatha Griffin’s face, transforming it from wary puzzlement to sheer, mischievous pleasure. “It’s the ghost Christmas,” she said. “Jack Calbert’s pirate treasure.”

  “The very same,” Penelope said with a wild laugh. “Now empty your pockets!”

  The pile of coins on the table grew and gleamed in the marine light, as they ate and sang and danced for a good hour. Then, as soon as the bells struck one, they hurried to snuff out the lamps and pull down the gauze and slip home as quietly as they could.

  Mr. Biswas would pretend to discover the coins as a mystery when the tavern opened the next day, and the money would be distributed to those in sharpest need.

  “It’s Mrs. Biswas’s family tradition,” Penelope explained in a whisper to her guests on the walk back. “Been doing it a hundred years, at least—every Christmas Eve in the Four Swallows, at midnight. It’s how the season always begins, for us.” She flicked a glance at Griffin, whose grin was shining like the moon. “That’s why people can never agree on the number of ghosts,” she said. “There’s always one or two who can’t make it from year to year—times when Harry and John are at sea, or when Mrs. Bedford goes to visit her family on the coast.”

  “Did the ghost story come first, or did the feast?” Sydney whispered.

  “Only the dead know,” Penelope breathed, and chuckled when the boy shivered.

  He rolled his eyes, scorning to be scared, but she’d had him for that moment and he knew it.

  They doffed coats and hats and crept up the silent stairs. Penelope was stopped at her bedchamber door when Griffin put a hand on her arm. The candlelight on her face was stark and slanting, only one hawklike eye and the stern arch of her nose visible above the soft plane of her cheek. Half a smile curved the reluctant length of her mouth. “That was marvelous, Flood,” she breathed in an undertone, low enough to set Penelope’s veins buzzing. “Thank you for sharing it with us.”

  Penelope swallowed hard and nodded. Griffin vanished into the bedroom—just one room over, so nearby. The whole house was asleep, or would be soon enough. The sheets on Griffin’s bed would be cold, and perhaps make her shiver as she slipped between them.

  Penelope had heat to spare. Her heart was racing and her blood sang wildfire in her veins. She shut the door softly, leaned back against it—and bit hard into her clenched fist until temptation passed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Everyone in Melliton wore their finest for Christmas services. Mr. Koskinen looked uncomfortably scrubbed and ruddy, Mr. Thomas and Mr. Kitt were elegant in blue and bottle-green, and Mr. Scriven had trimmed his whiskers so fiercely that he was nearly unrecognizable to the general populace. Even Mr. Buckley the deacon, who normally abhorred any kind of fashionable show, had carefully brushed his black coat for the day. But even with everyone looking their best, Viscount and Lady Summerville were the most opulent, resplendent in ivory silk and green velvet and a ridiculous amount of fur.

  Mr. Oliver’s sermon touched the usual notes: Christian charity and faith and hope for the savior’s birth. Penelope rather lost the thread, too busy staring at the way the winter light fell through the one window of colored glass that had survived the Puritans (because nobody at the time had wanted to be responsible for smashing the window showing the Abington coat of arms). But toward the end, a stir in the pews and a sudden tension in the air brought her abruptly back to earth.

  “—such success in organizing support for our slandered Queen,” Mr. Oliver was saying, “that it would be a shame for such zeal not to find a proper, pious outlet. Lady Summerville therefore desires me to announce the formation of a Melliton Auxiliary Branch of the Society for the Suppression of Seditious Libel and Mendacity.”

  A murmur of response ran through the congregation. Lady Summerville bowed her head like a royal accepting obeis
ance.

  Mr. Thomas was whispering something urgent in Mr. Kitt’s ear, while that gentleman sat stiff and nervous and unhappy in the pew.

  Mr. Oliver continued: “This organization proposes to stem the rising tide of sedition, libel, obscenity, criminality, blasphemy, and impurity that threatens the peace and order of our fair village. The power of the press, which ought to be turned to the spreading of the Gospel and the bringing of divine light to barbaric mankind, has been perverted to strike at the very foundations of decent civilization. Men of humbler ranks have been poisoned against their natural protectors: greedy inflamers and agitators have stirred up trouble in much greater proportion than their numbers warrant. Such machinations are dangerous to us all, and their seedlings must be pulled up by the roots before they choke our better harvests. I look forward to assisting Lady Summerville in her work, and trust all good patriotic members of our hamlet will follow her most Christian example.”

  The sermon closed; the final hymn was sung; the congregation meandered out of the pews and away for the holiday celebrations to come. There was still a festive tone to the hubbub—but now a thread of unease ran underneath it, a trickling stream made up of sidelong glances and anxious whispers and people biting their lip to keep from speaking their mind. Mrs. Koskinen looked positively thunderous, already muttering objections in her patient husband’s ear.

  Penelope and Harry let the rest head back toward Fern Hall—Sydney was looking absolutely mutinous, and even John had a stony set to his mouth—and turned into the graveyard to visit their parents and Owen.

  Owen Stanhope had been a thoughtful (if loquacious) vicar. His loss had come hard on the heels of their parents’ deaths, and all the Stanhope siblings had reeled from the blow. One by one, they had set out for far-off horizons with fewer memories attached, until only Harry and Penelope had remained.

  Then Harry had left, too.

  “Ave atque vale,” Harry read from his brother’s headstone, as Penelope bent to place a sprig of holly on the grave. “What does that come to again?”

  “‘Hail and farewell,’” Penelope translated.

  Harry snorted. “‘Good day and goodbye’? Truly?”

  “A very famous poet wrote it about losing his brother,” Penelope offered wryly.

  “A little pat, if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t. I asked Owen, and this is what he picked.”

  Harry sighed. “It’s like he was trying to find a way to keep talking from the other side of the veil.”

  Penelope put a hand on Harry’s arm. “I miss him, too.”

  They stood a while, a little pocket of quiet amid the sounds of the holiday around them.

  “I miss his sermons especially,” Harry said at length. “What kind of nonsense was Mr. Oliver about this morning, do you think?”

  Penelope’s mouth went flat as dread took hold. “I think Lady Summerville wants revenge,” she said.

  “For the songs?”

  “For that. For irreverence. For all of us who dared not to take her superiority seriously, and laughed at her.” She bit her lip, sympathy welling up in spite of her anger. “She’s a desperately unhappy woman, I think.”

  “Look at her husband—wouldn’t you be?”

  Penelope’s irritation sharpened to a pinprick, and she pulled her hand back. “I don’t think you or I are in any position to be particular about the state of someone else’s marriage.”

  A much longer and more troubled silence followed. Penelope chewed harder on her lip.

  “I consider John and me married, for whatever that’s worth,” Harry said at last. Very quietly, so only the snow would hear him.

  Penelope’s ire melted at this. “I know you do. And I know he feels the same. It’s just—it’s strange sometimes, to have spoken vows specifically so we could break them.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Do you think Owen knew? About . . . about us?”

  “About our deviant tastes, you mean?” Harry asked. He took Penelope’s hand and tucked it into his arm. Warmth seeped through her gloves and sank into her grateful bones. “I think he had a very shrewd idea. I just think he didn’t mind.”

  Penelope was shocked. “He was a vicar! How could he not mind?”

  “I think he felt himself bound by a higher law than that of the crown, or even the Church,” Harry replied. “Can you imagine any world in which Owen, of all the family, failed to love us?”

  “Impossible,” Penelope said at once.

  “Exactly,” Harry replied.

  Penelope stared down at the headstone. Cool gray with chips of mica that glittered beneath the frost. It looked so cold, when Owen had always seemed so warm. Hair the same honey-blond as Penelope’s—though his would never be streaked with silver, as hers was now. The memory of him seemed dimmer and dimmer every year.

  Not his laugh, though. That stayed clear and immediate, as though the last time he’d ever laughed had lodged beneath her ear like a pearl bob. There’d been so much joy in it, a sound of pure delight and love and warmth.

  If there was anything like a heaven—and Penelope had never been really convinced—but if there was, she was sure it was a place where such sounds were common.

  This world had a ways to go before it deserved such laughter.

  Beside her, Harry cast her a slantwise gaze from beneath the brim of his hat. “Have you never thought about coming with us on a voyage, Pen? We’ve never captained a hen frigate, but we could, if you wanted.”

  She snorted. “You think the best thing for a woman who prefers women is to spend years on board a ship packed full of men?”

  “You’d be surprised,” was the laconic response.

  Penelope shook her head decisively. “There are no beehives at sea.”

  “Ah, well, that’s true enough.” Harry chuckled, and together they nodded farewell to Owen and turned back toward the road to Fern Hall. “But you aren’t too lonely, here by the ancestral hearth?” His gaze was keen again, his mouth just a sliver away from a smile. “You’re finding some use for that warm heart of yours?”

  “My heart, maybe,” Penelope said. She thought of Agatha Griffin, green-lit at a ghost Christmas; Griffin walking the bee circuit in her blue coat, grousing about poetry; Agatha Griffin, half smiling by candlelight. She sighed at the hopeless futility of all that yearning. “Other parts of me, sadly, have yet to be invited to join in the fun.”

  Harry chortled, as she knew he would.

  Mr. Flood’s coat was deep brown wool, and Agatha could imagine exactly how it would fit if she put it on. She knew she’d have to turn the cuffs up precisely twice to leave her hands free to work, and just how many inches of the fabric that fit his broad shoulders would drape down her more compact frame.

  She couldn’t seem to stop thinking of it. It kept her more quiet than she might otherwise have been, on the walk back to Fern Hall.

  Ahead of them, Sydney and Eliza were bent close together. Sydney’s brow was still wracked with anger after that ominous sermon, and Eliza’s anxious gaze occasionally flashed back to where Agatha and Mr. Flood kept pace a dozen yards behind the younger pair.

  “Are you worried about them?” Mr. Flood asked, breaking the silence.

  “I beg your pardon?” Agatha shook herself, and tried to bring herself back to polite attention. “We always worry about the people we love. Isn’t it a mother’s instinct where her child is concerned?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Mr. Flood. “I ran away to sea at twelve, and I hardly remember mine. I do recall a distinct lack of worrying over me, though. Even though some of the trouble I found was . . . worth worrying over.”

  Agatha didn’t want to pity Mr. Flood—it sat poorly alongside her determination to guard Penelope against the worries his presence stirred up. But there was a note in the tenor of his confession that gave her serious pause. It said, rather too plainly, that a lot of that trouble had been done to him, not by him. And that his mother hadn’t cared.

  “Perhaps so
me people don’t worry enough, because the rest of us worry too much. We’ve used it all up,” she said instead. She breathed in a lungful of bracing winter air. “What’s the real reason you don’t want Captain Stanhope to take your ship south to hunt for whales?”

  Mr. Flood grimaced. “Too many answers to that. It’s an extremely strenuous life, and neither of us is as young as we used to be. My joints are constantly stiff and sore, and I don’t do half the work he does on deck, in all that cold.” He jammed his hands into his coat pockets, and Agatha flexed her gloved hands in echo. Mr. Flood stared down at the road beneath his feet. “I’d rather see him retire than work himself into an injury, or worse—but he believes we can only be happy and safe as long as we stay on board ship.”

  “Captains do have a great deal more power at sea than on land,” Agatha countered.

  “Little kings of a wooden kingdom,” John muttered, with a nod. “I think it goes to Harry’s head sometimes.”

  “How unusual in a man,” Agatha said dryly.

  John’s eyes flew open and he laughed. “Spoken like an experienced widow.”

  “Not that experienced,” Agatha countered. “Many a wife feels the same, whether her husband is living or not.”

  Mr. Flood’s mouth quirked at one corner. “You’ll forgive the irony, but I don’t actually have a lot of experience with wives.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Agatha said with a snort. “You sail off for years on end, stabbing hapless fish with long pointy sticks for money—but your very existence creates strictures people hold Penelope to account for, even if you don’t. You have that wooden kingdom where the laws favor you: she has no such escape.”

  “Neither wives nor whales are as hapless as you’re implying, Mrs. Griffin.” Mr. Flood was frowning now, lightly, as if a stone had gotten into his shoe and he couldn’t shake it out again. He paused in the lane and turned to face her square. “Let’s be frank with one another. I’m sure Penelope has told you the truth about why she and I wed. Are you saying I should spend more time putting a polite gloss on our farce of a marriage?”