Had the prim Miss Friendly ever tended a baby? Did she long for an infant of her own, or even a family complete with adoring husband? Self-preservation suggested Dougal ask that question at another time.
“You might think gender alone disqualifies Pennypacker from having anything useful to say,” Dougal replied, removing his spare glasses before they gave him a headache. “But his publisher intends to let him natter on for twelve consecutive days as we lead up to Christmas. Yuletide special editions they’re calling them, the publisher’s holiday gift to the masses, though the gift won’t be free.”
Miss Friendly drew off the spectacles and covered her face with her hands. The gesture was weary, but when she dropped her hands, sat back, and squared her shoulders, the light of battle shone in her blue eyes.
“Twelve consecutive days? That means answering dozens of letters.”
“Sundays off, I’m assuming, but yes. At least three dozen letters answered in less than two weeks. I know it’s a challenge when your friends will be expecting you to socialize and exchange calls.”
Her shoulders slumped. “They will. It’s baking season. Drat.”
When Dougal had opened his publishing house three years ago, he’d faced enormous odds. London had a thriving, highly competitive publishing industry with each house specializing in certain products—herbals, sermons, animal husbandry, memoirs, and so forth. A readership took time to develop, and Dougal’s inheritance was all he’d had to sink into his business.
He’d teetered on the brink of ruin until Patience Friendly had shown up in his office, full of ideas, pen at the ready.
Mrs. Horner’s Corner had rescued an entire publishing house—women were avid readers, it turned out—and when Dougal had moved her column to the top of the front page, the entire business had found solid footing. He was on his way to becoming the domestic advice publisher, and Patience Friendly was his flagship author.
Dougal could not afford—literally—to either coddle her or earn her disfavor. “I know the timing is poor,” he said. “I’m sure you don’t want to spend your holidays ignoring friends and family—but this is an opportunity. If we don’t step into the ring with the professor now, we’ll lose ground when we could take ownership of it. You have the better advice, and the ladies who buy my paper know it.”
“My readers are very astute,” she said, worrying a nail. Her readers, not the customers, not the readers. Hers, just as Dougal had referred to the paper as his. “And yet, they depend on me. Do you know, my laundress discusses my column with my housekeeper, and they both say that at the baker’s, the ladies talk of little else.”
Yes, Dougal knew, because he frequented taverns, coffee shops, booksellers, churchyards, street corners, all in an effort to aim his business where the public’s interest was most likely to travel.
Dougal kept his peace. Twelve special broadsheet editions in fourteen days was an enormous undertaking, but he was determined that his business thrive, and that Miss Patience Friendly thrive too.
He owed this woman.
And he always paid his debts.
* * *
Heavenly choruses, a dozen columns in two weeks!
The part of Patience that loved to be of use, to write, to feel a sense of having made a contribution leaped at the prospect. The part of her who’d had enough of Professor Pontifical was ready to answer every letter in Mr. MacHugh’s stack.
But other parts of her…
Across the table, Dougal MacHugh waited. He was deucedly good at waiting, arguing, persisting—at anything necessary to further his business interests. Patience admitted to grudging admiration for his tenacity, because at one time MacHugh’s determination to build a business had been all that stood between her and a life in service, or worse, dependence on a spouse.
She didn’t like his tenacity. Didn’t like much of anything about him, though he had a rather impressive nose.
He’d taken off his spare glasses, and thus good looks entirely wasted on a Scottish publisher were more evident. Untidy dark hair gave him a tousled look that made Patience want to put him to rights.
He’d probably bite off her hand if she attempted to straighten his hair.
His eyes were a lovely emerald color, fringed with unfairly thick lashes, and his mouth—Patience had no business noticing a man’s mouth. Anybody would notice Mr. MacHugh’s broad shoulders and his height. He was a fine specimen, which mattered not at all, and a finer businessman.
That mattered a great deal.
“You think we can do this, Mr. MacHugh? Put out twelve special editions in two weeks?”
His regard was steady. Patience liked to think of it as a man-to-man gaze, because not even her dear friends regarded her as directly.
“I think you can do this, Miss Friendly.”
Did Mr. MacHugh but know it, his confidence in her was worth more than all of the pence and quid he paid her—and he did pay her, to the penny and on time.
“My compensation will have to reflect the effort involved.”
“Madam, if this goes well, your compensation will result in a very fine Christmas for some years to come.”
Patience longed to pick up the next letter and lose herself in the worries and quandaries of her readers, but she’d yet to agree to take on Mr. MacHugh’s project.
“What do you mean, a very fine Christmas for some years to come?”
He came around to her side of the table, bringing pencil and paper with him. He moved with an economy of motion that Patience associated with cats and wolves, not that she’d ever seen a wolf.
Mr. MacHugh took the chair beside her. “Look at the numbers, Miss Friendly.”
Who would have thought a publisher would smell of apples and pine? That scent distracted Patience as Mr. MacHugh explained about the printer’s pricing scheme, the potential market for broadsheets in London, the publishing houses that had recently closed, and the magnitude of the opportunity awaiting Mrs. Horner’s Corner.
“So the professor has chosen an excellent time to cast a wider net,” Mr. MacHugh concluded. “I’d suspect him of being a Scotsman, his maneuver is so exquisitely timed.”
Patience picked up the page, half covered with numbers and tallies. Impressive tallies. “Not all keen minds are Scottish, sir.”
Patience wasn’t feeling very keen. Her earnings had crept up, true, but she’d used the monthly windfall to pay off debts and set aside a bit for leaner times. What would it be like to know she had enough when those lean times came around?
For they inevitably did.
“You hesitate to spoil your holiday season with too big an assignment.” Mr. MacHugh stuck his pencil behind his ear. “I can’t blame you for that, it being baking season and all.”
He lowered his lashes in a manner intended to make Patience shriek, his tone implying that crumpets would of course hold a woman’s attention more readily than coin.
“Without a steady income, Mr. MacHugh, there can be no crumpets. My concern is that the work you put before me must meet the standard I’ve set over the past two years. Perhaps the professor can churn out his drivel at a great rate, but my efforts are more thoughtful.”
“Your efforts are very thoughtful.”
Mr. MacHugh knew how to deliver a compliment that was part contradiction, part goad. Rather than toss his own spectacles at him—they were fine eyeglasses—Patience got up to pace.
“Christmas falls on a Saturday this year,” she said. “If we’re to publish twelve editions, the last on Christmas Eve, that means—”
“The first edition should come out this Saturday, December eleventh. The twelfth and the nineteenth being the Sabbath, that means—”
“This Saturday! That means we go to the printer’s four days from now.”
“Aye. Glad to see your command of the calendar is the equal of your ability with words. Can you do it?”
Could she give up the baking, the buying last-minute tokens for Elizabeth, Charlotte, Megan, and Anwen? Hustle past t
he glee clubs singing in the holidays on London’s street corners when she longed to linger and bask in the music? Give up sitting quietly at church just to hear the choir rehearse the holiday services?
Upon reflection, yes, she could. Putting aside holiday folderol for two weeks to secure a nest egg was the practical choice.
“You hesitate,” Mr. MacHugh said, tossing his pencil onto the table. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build Mrs. Horner’s Corner into an institution, and you hesitate. What are you afraid of, Miss Friendly?”
Of all Dougal MacHugh’s objectionable qualities, his perceptivity ranked at the top of the list. Were he not also unflinchingly, inconveniently, relentlessly honest, Patience could not have endured his acuity.
When her writing was weak, he told her. When the solution she proposed was poorly thought out, he told her. When she was repeating herself, preaching, making light of a problem, or otherwise missing the mark, he told her.
And worst of all, when he was wrong—a maddeningly infrequent occurrence—he admitted it.
Patience took her seat beside him, where the fire threw out the most warmth. “What if I can’t do this?”
“Failure is always a possibility, but we minimize it with planning and hard work.”
“You haven’t left me any time to plan.”
“Opportunity looks like inconvenience to the indolent.”
She wanted to stick her tongue out at him. “Must you be so Scottish?”
“I am Scottish.”
“You needn’t make it sound as if that’s the most wonderful status a man could boast of. Back to the matter at hand, please. If I attempt this twelve-edition madness and fail, it’s worse than if I’d let the professor bore everybody for two weeks straight. The readers will say I’ve exceeded my limits and overtaxed my dim female brain.”
“Your brain, while admittedly female, is anything but dim. Think like a general. What do you need for your campaign to succeed?”
Generals were not female… except some of them were. Patience had learned from the same tutors hired to instruct her brother—Papa had seen no reason to also pay governesses—and throughout history, some generals had been female.
There were female deities, female saints, and female monarchs. All the best tribulations in mythology had been female too. The Medusa, the sirens, the furies.
“I’ll need help,” she said. “I’ll need immediate editorial reviews, somebody to run errands for me, and crumpets. Lots and lots of crumpets.”
She’d surprised him. How Patience loved that she’d surprised the canny, competent, Scottish Mr. MacHugh.
“There’s a bakery on the corner for your crumpets. Detwiler will be happy to edit material as you complete it, and I will be your personal errand boy. Shall we begin?”
Gracious warbling cherubim. Patience knew the bakery well—she walked past it every time she dropped off her columns. Mr. Detwiler was as fast as he was competent, but as for that other item...
Apparently, Mr. MacHugh could surprise her too.
“We begin now, and your first assignment as my errand boy is to fetch me a batch of crumpets.”
* * *
Chapter Two
* * *
Dougal set a package of warm crumpets on the worktable. “I had a thought.”
“You had a thought.” Miss Friendly lifted the parcel to her nose and inhaled without even untying the bow. “Does that unprecedented development require a broadsheet alerting the masses to your good fortune? Perhaps we might refer to it as a seasonal miracle.”
“You’re quite on your mettle, Miss Friendly.” Surrounded by letters, with the cat napping on the mantel behind her, she looked a little less wan, a bit less weary than she had when she’d arrived for the monthly meeting more than an hour ago.
“You brought me warm cinnamon crumpets.” She tossed the string toward the hearth, though it caught on the screen. “How could I not be inspired?”
“I’m inspired too,” Dougal said, unwrapping his scarf and hanging it over the hook on the back of the door. “The professor is printing twelve special editions, and that means he’ll have to start on Saturday if he wants to get them all out before Christmas.”
“Why Mr. MacHugh, you’ve learned the days of the week by heart. Perhaps Harry has been tutoring you. Such a dear boy, though somebody needs to let down the hems on his trousers.”
Dougal shook his greatcoat then hung it over his scarf. “The professor’s twelve days begin on Saturday. Ours ought to begin Friday.”
She’d lifted a crumpet halfway to her mouth, and it remained there, poised before her. “Friday? Have you misplaced what few wits you claim, Mr. MacHugh? That means we have to have the first column to the printer on Thursday morning.”
“Which means if you have it written by tomorrow evening, we can edit it Wednesday, and beat the professor at his game.”
She took a dainty nibble of her sweet as cinnamon perfumed the office. The cat woke, stretched, and nearly fell off the mantel before re-situating himself more comfortably.
“You want me to write a column of insightful, kind, articulate advice.” She took another bite of crumpet. “We haven’t even chosen all of the letters yet, Mr. MacHugh. I can’t conjure solutions without time to think them up.”
“We’ll argue them up.” Dougal took the chair beside her, because the day was bitter and his backside craved the warmth of the fire.
“We’re good at that,” she said, nudging the crumpets toward him. “Take more than your share, and you’ll get no columns from me.”
Dougal used his penknife to slice one of the four crumpets in half, took a bite, then gestured with the remaining portion.
“Are these the letters you’re considering?”
“Yes. Don’t get crumbs on them.”
He picked up the first one and scanned it. “The old my sister is making eyes at my husband. Husband’s holiday token ought to be a month of slumber on the sofa, or a stern warning from sister’s husband—and his brothers.”
“Don’t be such a man.”
“I am a man.”
“Don’t be such a crude man. We don’t know if husband is making eyes back at the sister. If he is, there’s a problem. If he’s not, then the sister is simply making a fool of herself. We don’t know if the sister is married, which also matters. The issue, though, is loneliness.”
The issue was lust.
Dougal spoke around a mouthful of crumpet. “How do you figure that?”
“If the sister were content with her lot, she’d not be trying to attract the attention of her brother-in-law, which efforts are doomed to misery, no matter where they lead.”
“True enough.” Though Dougal had yet to have an entirely miserable time sharing a bed—as best he recalled those few and distant occasions—and a shared bed was the logical conclusion to this domestic drama.
“If the wife were secure in husband’s affections,” Miss Friendly went on, “she would not be troubled by her sister’s behavior.”
“Some women are born troubled.”
Sharing that eternal verity with Miss Friendly earned Dougal the same look George gave him when the cat had been put out first thing on a snowy day.
She paused before starting on a second crumpet. “If the husband were entirely secure in his wife’s affections, he wouldn’t strike the sister as a man who could be tempted.”
“Some men like to be tempted. They aren’t interested in the sin itself, they just like to know they could be naughty if they wanted to.”
She frowned at her half crumpet. “Like some women keep men dangling after them. There are names for women like that, but when a man is flirtatious, we call him a gallant.”
The last of her crumpet met its fate, and an unhappy silence grew.
“Whoever he was,” Dougal said, pushing to his feet, “he was an idiot, and you’re better off without him. I need some tea.”
He left the office not to see to the teapot—the clerks always had
one going on the parlor stove in cold weather—but to put distance between himself, Miss Friendly, and thoughts of shared beds. Dougal had no business speculating where Patience Friendly was concerned, but he’d long ago given up lecturing his imagination on that score.
As he brought a tea tray back into his office, it struck him that for Miss Friendly, being closeted alone with a man under the age of eighty must be an unusual occurrence. If she’d had a flirtatious swain in tow at some point—a gallant—she wasn’t the daughter of a merchant, schoolteacher, or yeoman.
“Will you answer the letter about the flirting sister?” he asked.
“I can use the letter as a point of departure regarding holiday loneliness and remind the readers that problems admit of solutions when we’re in possession of all the relevant facts. Shall you eat that last half crumpet?”
Dougal set the tray down and regarded the sweet. The part he’d eaten had been delicious. Perfectly baked, between cake and pudding in the center, sweet, spicy, delightful.
“No.”
Miss Friendly reached for it, and Dougal grabbed her wrist. “You’ve had three, madam.”
“It shouldn’t go to waste.”
Someday, Dougal wanted her to look at him the way she regarded that last half crumpet.
“It won’t. Harry!” he called. “Come clear up this mess, please.”
Harry trotted into the office, wrapped the paper around the last half crumpet, and swept the table free of crumbs.
“Anything else, Dougal?”
Before non-family, Harry was supposed to call his employer Mr. MacHugh. “Aye. Send ’round to the chophouse for two plates at half four. The usual portions, and tell the lads they can go home an hour early if the snow keeps up. Fill up the coal buckets before you go and sweep off the steps.”
“Right, Dougal.”
The Virtues of Christmas Page 12