The Virtues of Christmas

by Grace Burrowes

  “Will you at least accept my company as far as the next coaching inn?”

  She shouldn’t. She really truly should not, but he’d surrendered his plum tart and understood the desperation with which she loved her nephews.

  “As far as the next coaching inn,” Henrietta said. “No farther.”

  * * *

  “Mordecai MacFergus, as I live and breathe. What are you doing so far south of a proper Scotsman’s home?”

  Despite the cold, the stingy innkeeper, and the dodgy off-leader, MacFergus’s heart lifted at the sound of his native Strathclyde accents.

  “If it isn’t wee Liam Logan,” he said, extending a hand and striding up the aisle of the stable. “How long has it been? Two years since I laid eyes on your ugly face?”

  Logan shook hands and offered his flask. “At least, and we were on the Great North Road, God rot its ruts to hell. Tell me how your family goes on.”

  In the relative warmth and privacy of the stable, they caught up, as two coachmen will, passing the time happily with news of home and news of others who plied their trade. Like most coachmen, Logan was a healthy specimen, his cheeks reddened by the elements, his face weathered, and his grip crushing.

  “So who’s the fancy gent?” MacFergus asked as the horses munched hay and winter breezes stirred bits of straw in the barn’s dirt aisle. The smell of the stable would ever be his favorite—horses, leather, fodder, and even the occasional whiff of manure.

  Nothing fertilized a garden like good old horse shit.

  Logan made a fancy bow. “You see before you the coachman to Michael, Baron Angelford, and he’s anything but fancy. I’m working for an Irishman, MacFergus, one with a proper estate not forty miles on and a proper title, though he’s an Irishman among the English.”

  The English and the Scots had an uneasy tolerance for each other, while the Irish, who’d attempted a rebellion as recently as 1798, didn’t fare as well on English soil. They had their peers and grand estates, but in the hierarchy of peerages, the Irish duke ranked below his English and Scottish counterparts and was seldom allowed to forget it.

  “Lonely business, being Irish among the English,” MacFergus said. “My lady is no stranger to loneliness. I’ve been driving for Miss Whitlow since she acquired her first coach and team, nearly eight years ago, and you never met a better employer.”

  Logan tipped his flask up and shook the last drops into his mouth, then tucked the empty flask into his pocket.

  “That’s always the way of it, isn’t it? Them as the Quality disdain can be the most decent, while the earls and dukes will leave good horses standing in the cold for hours outside the Christmas ball.”

  A gelding two stalls down lifted its tail and broke wind in staccato bursts.

  “Caspar agrees with you,” MacFergus said. “Your baron was right considerate of my lady, despite Murphy’s pernickety airs.”

  A barn tabby leaped down from the rafters, strutted along a beam, then hopped to a manger and to the floor. Logan picked up the animal and gave it a scratching about the ears.

  “So it’s like that, is it?” he said. “My Mary got by as best she could before we married. Many a village girl does when she comes to London. Many a Town girl does too, and some of the goings-on at the house parties, Morty MacFergus, would shame the devil.”

  Miss Henrietta did not attend house parties, and her household conducted itself properly, but for the comings and goings of the gentleman with whom she’d contracted a liaison. Those comings and goings were undertaken discreetly, which Lucille claimed was a written condition signed by both parties.

  “My lady was a good girl, from what I hear,” MacFergus said, “and then she went into service. Been some time since a gent treated her proper.”

  “A pity that, but the baron’s no stranger to them with poor manners. His own family can’t be bothered to join him at the holidays. He’ll be all alone in the great hall come Christmas morning, and that’s just not right. I’ve had more than a few wee drams with my lord over a hand of cards, though you mustn’t tell any I said that.”

  Coachmen were privy to an employer’s secrets. They knew who called upon whom and who was never at home even when they were clearly within the dwelling. They knew who was invited to which entertainments, who skipped Sunday services, and which gentlemen paid very-late-night calls upon the wives of friends.

  A baron sharing a flask and a frequent hand of cards with his coachman, though… Not the done thing.

  “My lady travels to see her family at the holidays,” MacFergus said, “and they barely welcome her. She stays at an inn rather than with any of them and calls on her brothers as if she were some distant cousin. Her own father won’t stay in the same room with her, though my lady never complains of him.”

  Lucille, usually as taciturn as a nun, ranted about Squire Whitlow’s treatment of his daughter. As the holidays came closer, Lucille became more grim, for nothing would dissuade Miss Henrietta from her annual pilgrimage to Oxfordshire.

  “Damned rotten English,” Logan said. “My oldest—you recall my Angus?—has three girls. He’d never treat one of his own so shabbily, much less at Yuletide, or my Mary would serve him a proper thrashing and I’d cut the birch rod for her.”

  Quiet descended, underscored by the sound of horses at their hay and the cat purring in Logan’s arms.

  “Logan, we’re a pair of decent, God-fearing men, aren’t we?”

  Logan set the cat down and dusted his hands. “You’re about to get me in trouble, Morty MacFergus, like that time you suggested we put that frog in Mrs. MacMurtry’s water glass.”

  “You’re the one who came up with that idea.” Always full of mischief, was Liam Logan. “Your baron is lonely, my Miss Henrietta is lonely, and they’re rubbing on well enough as we speak. All I’m suggesting is that we take a wee hand in making their holidays a little brighter.”

  “No coachman has wee hands.”

  “And nobody should be alone at Christmas.”

  “Can’t argue with that.”

  “We’re agreed, then,” MacFergus said, slinging an arm around his friend’s shoulders. “I have a few ideas.”

  “You have a full flask as well, or my name’s not Liam Patrick MacPherson Logan.”

  “Aye, that I do.” MacFergus passed the flask over. “Mind you attend me, because we’ll have to be subtle.”

  Caspar broke wind again as the two coachmen disappeared into the warmth and privacy of the harness room.

  * * *

  Most of Michael’s travel on the Continent had been aimed at gathering intelligence while appearing to transact business. An Irishman, assumed to be at odds with the British crown, had a margin of safety his English counterparts did not, and Michael had exploited that margin to the last limit.

  Missions went awry all the time, and this encounter with Henrietta Whitlow had just gone very awry indeed. The dratted woman had scrambled his wits, with her smile, her ferocious love for her nephews, and her wary regard for all assistance.

  “Shall we transfer your trunks to my vehicle?” Michael asked.

  Wrong question. Miss Whitlow tossed a wrinkled linen serviette onto the empty table. “I see no need to impose on you to that degree.”

  “I have sisters and know that a lady likes her personal effects about her. Even if the next coaching inn is more obliging, you might spend a few days there, depending on the availability of a blacksmith.”

  Michael could have reset a damned shoe, provided a forge was available. He’d been hoping his quarry would either spend the night at Murphy’s establishment, where she’d broken her journey before, or bide long enough to allow a thorough search of her effects.

  A loose horseshoe was a metaphor for the course of most missions—good luck mixed with bad, depending on perspective and agenda.

  “I’ll fetch a small valise of necessities,” Miss Whitlow said. “Give me fifteen minutes to rouse Lucille and assemble our immediate needs.”

  Before M
ichael could hold her chair, she rose and swept from the room. In her absence, the little chamber became cramped instead of cozy, the peat fire smoky rather than fragrant. In future, Michael would have more respect for Mrs. Murphy’s toddies, and for Henrietta Whitlow’s legendary charm.

  He paid the shot, summoned his coach, and gave instructions to his grooms to prepare for departure. By the time those arrangements had been made, Miss Whitlow and her maid stood at the bottom of the inn’s stairs, the maid looking no less dour for having stolen a nap.

  “I don’t like it,” Miss Whitlow’s coachman was saying. “The weather is turning up dirty, yon baron has no one to vouch for him, and this blighted excuse for a sheep crossing likely hasn’t a spare coach horse at any price.”

  “Then I’ll buy one at the next coaching inn and send it back to you, MacFergus,” Miss Whitlow said. “His lordship has offered to tend to the purchase if the next inn is as disobliging as Mr. Murphy tried to be.”

  Michael strode into the foyer, Miss Whitlow’s cloak over his arm. “I understand your caution,” he said to the coachman, “but as it happens, Miss Whitlow and I are both journeying to Oxfordshire, and if need be, I can deliver her to her family’s very doorstep. Your concern is misplaced.”

  He draped the velvet cloak over Miss Whitlow’s shoulders when she obligingly turned her back. The urge to smooth his hands over feminine contours was eclipsed only by the knowledge that too many other men had assumed that privilege without Miss Whitlow’s permission.

  “My concern is not misplaced,” the coachman retorted. “See that my lady’s trust and her effects aren’t either.”

  “MacFergus, the baron has no need to steal my fripperies,” Miss Whitlow said, patting her coachman’s arm. “Enjoy a respite from the elements, and don’t worry about me. Lucille is the equal of any highwayman, and his lordship has been all that is gentlemanly.”

  Lucille smirked at the coachman, who stomped off toward the door.

  “I’ll be having a look at the baron’s conveyance,” he said. “And making sure his coachman knows in what direction Oxford lies.”

  “Don’t worry,” Michael said to the ladies as the door closed on a gust of frigid air. “My coachman is Scottish as well. He tells me two Scotsmen on English soil are under a blood oath not to kill each other by any means except excessive drink. The Irish try to observe the same courtesy with each other, with limited success.”

  “It’s the same with those of my profession in London,” Miss Whitlow said. “My former profession. We never disparage each other, never judge one another in public. Why bother, when polite society delights endlessly in treating us ill?”

  Lucille cleared her throat and stared at a point beyond Miss Whitlow’s left shoulder.

  “Shall we be on our way?” Michael offered his arm, and Miss Whitlow took it.

  Murphy was not on hand to see his guests off, which in any other hostelry would have been rank neglect. As Michael held the door for the ladies, the serving maid rushed forth from the common with a closed basket.

  “From the missus. She says safe journey.”

  Lucille took the basket as the girl scampered back to the kitchen.

  Michael handed the women into his coach, which boasted heated bricks and velvet upholstery, then climbed in and confronted a dilemma. Lucille had taken the backward-facing seat, while Miss Whitlow sat on the forward-facing bench.

  A gentleman did not presume, but neither did he willingly sit next to a maid glaring daggers at him. Michael was on the point of taking the place beside Lucille anyway, when insight came to his aid.

  To eschew the place beside Miss Whitlow would be to judge her, and for Miss Whitlow to sit on the backward-facing seat with her maid would have been to assume the status of a servant.

  What complicated terrain she inhabited, and how tired she must be of never putting a foot wrong on perpetually boggy ground.

  “May I?” Michael asked, gesturing to the place beside the lady.

  “Of course.” She twitched her skirts and cloak aside, and Michael took his seat. At two thumps of his fist on the coach roof, the coach moved off.

  The vehicle was warm and the road reasonably free of traffic. One of the advantages of winter travel was a lack of mud, or less mud than during any other season, and thus the horses could keep up a decent pace. Michael’s objective was simply to learn where Miss Whitlow would spend the night, so that he could steal a certain object from her, one she might not even value very highly.

  He considered asking to purchase the book, but coin carried the potential to insult a former courtesan, particularly one whose decision to depart from propriety had made her wealthy.

  Fortunately, Miss Whitlow had failed to notice that the trunks lashed atop Michael’s coach were her own.

  A soft snore from the opposite bench sounded in rhythm with the horses’ hoof beats.

  “Poor Lucille is worn out,” Miss Whitlow said softly. “She does two things when we travel any distance. Swill hot tea at every opportunity and nap.”

  “What of the highwaymen?” Michael asked. “Who guards you from them?”

  “I guard myself.”

  Michael mentally translated the words into Latin, because they had the ring of a battle cry. “My barony needs a motto. That might do.”

  “Better if your family can say, ‘We guard each other,’” Miss Whitlow replied. “My grandmother certainly tried to guard me.”

  Where were her father and brothers when she had needed guarding? “My grandmother was the fiercest woman in County Mayo, excepting perhaps my great-grandmother. Grannie lived to be ninety-two, and not even the earl upon whose land her cottage sat would have gainsaid her. You put me in mind of her.”

  The coach hit a rut, disturbing the rhythm of Lucille’s snores and tossing Miss Whitlow against Michael’s shoulder.

  “In mind of her, how?”

  “She was independent without being needlessly stubborn, and she judged people on their merits, not their trappings. Could quote Scripture by the hour, but also knew poems I doubt have been written down. You and she could have discussed books until the sun came up.”

  Michael’s recitation purposely mentioned no aspect of Miss Whitlow’s appearance, though Gran had been ginger-haired in her younger days.

  “My grandmother was rumored to be part Rom,” Miss Whitlow said. “My father denied it, which only makes me think it more likely to be true.”

  For a woman who’d been self-supporting for nearly a decade, Miss Whitlow mentioned her father rather a lot. Josiah Whitlow lived in Oxfordshire, not five miles from Michael’s property, which was what had given Beltram the idea of sending Michael after the damned book in the first place.

  Three months ago, Beltram had invited himself to tea with Henrietta and had seen the tome tucked among some risqué volumes of poetry in her sitting room. With any luck, she’d tossed Beltram’s scribblings into the fire when dissolving her household.

  “Was your grandmother a lover of books?” Michael asked.

  “She was passionate about literature, in part because she taught herself to read after she’d married. She stole out of bed and puzzled over her son’s school books, then got the housekeeper to help her. She loved telling me that story.”

  “I learned by puzzling over my younger brother’s books too, then an uncle whose fortunes had improved stepped in and off to public school I went.”

  Public school had been awful for an Irish upstart with no academic foundation, but Michael had guzzled knowledge like a drover downs ale at the end of a long summer march.

  Miss Whitlow studied the snow intensifying beyond the window. “Will you tell me the same lie all titled men tell about public school, and claim you loved it?”

  Titled men probably told her worse lies than that. “I learned a lot, and also came to value information in addition to learning. Did you know that James Merton, heir to the Victor family earldom, wet his bed until he was fourteen?”

  “Wet his—? Really?
” She purely delighted in this tidbit, and who wouldn’t? Merton was a handsome, wealthy, horse’s arse who fancied himself an arbiter of fashion.

  With a glance over at Lucille, Miss Whitlow leaned closer. “He’s also afraid of mice. Screams like a banshee at the sight of one and has been known to climb a bedpost if he thinks one is under the—oh dear.”

  She sat up as straight as she could in a moving coach. “I should not have said that. Not to you, but his mistress told me that herself, and I have no reason… I should not have said such a thing. I do apologize. You must never repeat it, or a woman I consider a friend could lose her livelihood.”

  Mary Mother of Sorrows, what an impossible life. “I will tell no one, but Henrietta, you have retired, and any who hold the occasional humorous reminiscence against you are fools. What sort of man calls himself a woman’s protector, then shins up the bedpost at the sight of a wee mouse?”

  “He had other shortcomings, so to speak. Gracious,”—she put a gloved hand to her lips as if she’d hiccupped in church—“that didn’t come out right.”

  “One suspected this about Merton,” Michael said. “I hope your friend was well compensated for the trials she endured in his company.”

  “She recounts an amusing tale about him,” Miss Whitlow said, her posture relaxing, “but one doesn’t joke about disclosing a man’s foibles. His friends might make sport of him, his family might ridicule him in public, but a mistress must be loyal, no matter the brevity of the contract.”

  Not a relationship, a contract.

  “So you’d never publish your memoirs?” The question was far from casual.

  “Of course not. A naughty auntie might eventually fade from society’s view, but not if she memorializes her fall from grace for all the world to read.”

  “Doubtless, half the House of Lords would be relieved at your conclusion.”

  Perhaps if Michael conveyed her assurances to Beltram, the viscount might release Michael from the obligation to plunder her luggage in search of a single, stupid book.

  “Not half the Lords,” she said quietly. “A grand total of six men. We are in the middle of some serious weather.”