Comfort and Joy

by Sandra Madden

  The teakettle whistled.

  “Good morning,” he said, barely moving his lips.

  From the start, Maeve suspected her husband might be a wee bit priggish, an endearing trait she nevertheless meant to help him overcome. But she could clearly see now, what she’d refused to recognize before. Rycroft’s refined way of speaking and poker-stiff posture spoke of good breeding. The man she’d rescued came from a different world than hers, one of wealth and privilege.

  He stood well over six feet and exuded an air of authority no one could deny. His dark good looks radiated a power and masculinity Maeve found riveting. Clean shaven, she had taken the liberty of trimming his abundant side whiskers while he was still unconscious, his strong, square jaw revealed a man of power and potency.

  Tearing her gaze away, Maeve motioned to the nearest chair. “Sit ye down. I’ll have your tea in—”

  “Regrettably, I cannot stay.”

  “Just where do you think ye be goin’?” Mick growled.

  Charles arched an eyebrow. “Sir? I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  Maeve raised a hand to cover her racing heart. Her father could be a hard man.

  “Me name is Mick O’Malley, as well ye know.” The old man’s eyes narrowed.

  Charles did not blink, although from Maeve’s viewpoint, his jaw appeared to tighten. He extended his hand. “How do you do? I am Charles Rycroft.”

  Only five feet four, Maeve’s father was strong for his limited stature. She knew he could crush a man’s hand. Eyeing the tight clasp and the squeeze he gave Charles’s hand, she held her breath.

  Her husband did not flinch. Maeve felt a gentle heart swell, a fresh surge of respect for him.

  “Where are ye from, Charles Rycroft?” Mick asked.

  “My family has lived in Boston for years,” Charles replied.

  The old leprechaun’s blue eyes lost their luster as they narrowed once again. “Ye one of those?”

  Charles glanced at Maeve. All she could do was lower her head, shaking it slightly in warning.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Look.” Mick turned to Maeve. “Ye can tell by the new way he’s carryin’ himself. By the mask he wears and the dull color of his eyes.”

  “What is that you can tell, my good sir?” Charles lifted his head and drew himself up to his full height.

  Maeve knew instinctively that Charlie was a proud man despite the lowly workingman’s clothes he wore. He must be ill at ease and uncomfortable in her brother’s worn garments. More than that, he was at a dreadful disadvantage, finding himself in strange surroundings with a cranky old man and a wife he did not know nor want.

  Her father, however, had no concern about Charles’s discomfort. “I can tell by the looks of ye that you’re one of those blueblood swells who have no use for little people like me. Ye make your fortunes off the backs of poor immigrants like us who—”

  “Da!”

  “Quiet, lass. I’m speakin’.”

  “Ye don’t know what you’re saying.”

  Her father turned his angry gaze on Maeve. “Ye be mindin’ my words or it’s sorry ye’ll be.”

  Charles Rycroft cleared his throat. “I shall take my leave now, but I will be contacting you—”

  “Do ye be thinkin’ to leave without your bride?” Mick growled.

  Charles turned his attention to Maeve. Silver-gray eyes, the shade of fine pewter, met hers. He raked a hand through his hair, straight and thick; the rich, dark-walnut strands fell to the nape of his neck in helmet fashion. Maeve had taken her scissors to her husband’s head as well as his whiskers, and so much the better he looked for her efforts. If she didn’t say so herself.

  Rycroft stood with his shoulders squared regarding Maeve as if she were a dilemma he must resolve. Although he might not be handsome in the chiseled manner some women preferred, with his aquiline nose and deep-set eyes Charles Rycroft made Maeve’s heart feel a bit lighter, beat a bit faster.

  “Come, then.” Rycroft took her arm and hustled her to the door.

  She snatched her worn woolen coat from the peg.

  Once out on the street, Charles reacted with annoyance when she told him carriages for hire did not abound in South Boston. Maeve patiently explained they must walk to the horse-drawn trolley stop. Every day save Sunday, Maeve took the trolley to Boston and then walked across the Common to the Deakinses’ brownstone residence.

  The early morning air encouraged a swift pace to keep warm. Boston winters were long and brutal. The city was regularly beset by violent northeast storms. Between nor’easters, the sky seemed to remain a permanent grizzly gray and the temperature rarely rose above a piercing, arctic cold. Like today.

  Puffs of white smoke rose from the three-story brick dwellings into the somber gray sky. Predominately Irish, the South Boston streets bustled with activity as the residents left the area to fill their positions as servants and street mongers in Boston proper. Dressed in poorly fitting and worn layers of clothing, men, women, and children greeted each other in their musical accents.

  An accent Charles found pleasing to his ear although he knew it to be a lower-class distinction. He’d been raised with a mind to class, schooled to treasure his heritage and uphold the tradition of the class to which he’d been born. As his mother often reminded him, his ancestors came to America aboard the Mayflower.

  “Maeve, I want you to show me where you found me.”

  “Aye, but first I must let Mrs. Deakins know why I will not be workin’ today.”

  No one ever objected to Charles’s orders for any reason. “I will take care of the Deakinses. Now, do you remember where you found me?”

  If he was not mistaken, Maeve slanted an irritated frown his way before hurrying on. “Aye. We found ye not far from here. Follow me.”

  Charles allowed her to take the lead, wondering fleetingly if she was warm enough in the thin wool coat she wore. His own unfamiliar garments did not protect him from the chill. They had only gone two blocks when he noticed Maeve’s ears and the tip of her nose were red. Her slender fingers extended bare beyond the scratchy mittens that reached only to her knuckles. His heart went out to her, his wife, a poor Irish immigrant. A woman who’d taken him in and shared what little her family had with a him, a complete stranger. Charles had never met such a woman and he admired the courage she showed in taking in a man she thought to be a “bummer.”

  Maeve stopped and looked up at him.

  Charles sucked in his breath. Her blue eyes were as deep and sparkling as a sun-swept sea. Arresting. He was momentarily blind to anything else but those startling blue orbs fixed on him.

  “In there.” She pointed to an alley filled with rotting trash. “Ye were propped against the wall midway.”

  “Why were you in this alley?” he asked, suddenly suspicious.

  “Me brother Shea meets me at the Boston side and walks me home every night when ‘tis dark. Shea’s a boxer, you know, and he is not afraid to take shortcuts when it will take us out of the cold sooner.”

  Charles nodded and moved into the alley. He searched, kicking through unidentifiable trash, not quite knowing what he expected to find. Maeve O’Malley hummed.

  “Is this the spot?” he asked.

  “Aye, more or less.”

  “And you took me home from here?”

  “You would have frozen to death if we had not. And ‘twas Thanksgiving eve, a day we are happy to observe, countin’ our blessings and all. With a roof over my head, and food left over from the Deakins table, it was only right we should take ye home and share our bounty.”

  Bounty? Charles found Maeve’s outlook plainly astonishing. While he wished to explore her intriguing thought process further, he concentrated on the subject at hand. “When you found me, I had nothing? No money? Not even a pocket watch?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Shea said you looked as if you were done over by a professional, a boxer like himself.”

  “I know no boxers, and I have
never been to this part of town.”

  “Where was the last place you remember being?”

  “If I knew that—” he stopped abruptly in mid-sentence. A memory, a fuzzy picture, floated up from the depths of Charles’s subconscious. He recalled leaving Edgar Dines’s gallery on Warren Street in the heart of Boston proper. Slowly the picture in his mind cleared. He’d carried a painting beneath his arm wrapped in brown paper. It was a valuable sketch, an irreplaceable rendering of St. Nick by an artist no longer living.

  Dear God, he’d been robbed of his most precious possession.

  A flood of pictures flashed through his mind in lightning-like fashion as the memory of the attack on him returned full force. Charles had been heading toward his carriage, which waited half a block away in front of his tailor’s shoppe. Previous to his appointment with Edgar Dines, he had been fitted for a new suit and several other garments for the upcoming holiday festivities. But he’d not gone more than six feet from the art dealer’s gallery when a blow to the head from behind felled him. All was blank after that.

  For the following five days he’d apparently existed without memory or will. For five days he’d done whatever he was bid—including marrying the girl by his side. Maeve, who stood silently, regarding him with wide, wondering eyes as he searched his memory.

  Surely he’d been missed by someone. A man of his standing did not simply disappear.

  “Were there no posted notices that I was missing?” he asked her.

  “Perhaps. I hardly ever read notices.”

  “You do read?” he intoned, aware for the first time that she might very well not. His wife could be illiterate.

  Maeve reacted with an angry stomp of her foot. Her eyes sparked with indignation. “Of course I know how to read! What do ye take me for? Do ye think me dumb because me name is O’Malley and I’m Irish? And a woman?” Her fists dug into her hips and her midnight curls bounced atop her hatless head. “I’ll have ye know—”

  “Shhh,” Charles raised a finger over his lips to still her. “You’re creating a scene.”

  “Ye insulted me, you arrogant man!”

  “Must you be so loud?”

  “Don’t be thinkin’ ye are better than me because —”

  “I don’t,” he interrupted hastily. “I don’t think such a thing.”

  She appeared somewhat mollified, but a suspicious glint remained in her eyes. She tilted her chin, meeting his gaze. Charles looked away, away from the unspoken accusation, the pain in her deep blue velvet eyes. He turned back to the spot in the alley where she’d found him.

  “Obviously, I was moved from the scene of the attack.”

  “I wouldn’t be knowin’,” she snipped.

  “Was there...did you find a package here?”

  “ ‘Twas no package, only you.”

  “I was carrying a package which means a great deal to me. It was wrapped in brown paper and was about this size.” Charles described the two-feet-by-four-feet package with his hands.

  “We found no package,” she repeated, shifting from one foot to the other.

  He thought she might be lying. The Irish were known to have liars and thieves among them. But then again, how would a young, uneducated immigrant and her boxer brother have any idea of the painting’s value?

  Only the most knowledgeable art collectors would know the piece was the only one of its kind. Charles had searched long and hard for this particular sketch of St. Nick. While he enjoyed collecting art, this acquisition had meant more than any of the others.

  Staring at the cold, hard ground where he’d been discarded like so much garbage, Charles bit down on his lip. A searing mix of frustration and anger shot through him.

  “Could we be movin’ on then?” the little bit by his side demanded. “Me feet is colder than a frost fairy’s toes.”

  “A what?”

  “Never ye mind,” she said with a roll of her eyes and a rueful sigh.

  Charles nodded. He didn’t want to know about frost fairies, whatever the hell they were. Recovering his sketch was a primary concern, and where to take Maeve another. Until he resolved the awkward dilemma of their marriage, he couldn’t possibly let his friends and family know he had wed an Irish maid. The whole town would be talking.

  Maeve O’Malley gazed up at him, waiting impatiently. Her long lashes and jewel-like eyes, innocent and trusting, reached deep inside him and touched his unguarded heart.

  She had saved his life. He must do something special for her. Charles made up his mind quickly. He decided to take Maeve home with him—if only for a day or two. He would have her fitted with a warm new wardrobe and offer a generous settlement. It was the least he could do.

  Before he divorced her.

  Chapter Two

  Charles breathed a bit easier when the hired carriage pulled up to the stately Rycroft residence. The six-story Federal style brownstone was located on Louisburg Square in the exclusive Beacon Hill section of Boston. Although the trees were bare and the square’s lush park greenery had given way weeks ago to the muffled sepia color of winter, the affluent neighborhood retained its charm. Situated in the center of the square, the Rycrofts’ venerable town house, embellished with black wrought iron gates and grillwork at the purple paned windows, had been Charles’s home for most of his life.

  Eight servants worked to keep the twelve-room house, and Charles, comfortable. Upon his father’s death three years ago, Charles inherited both the brownstone and the family publishing business.

  His mother, Beatrice, resided with him when the mood suited her. But she preferred New York, where she shared her sister’s home on the Hudson. Beatrice enjoyed the more glorious social season and the abundance of spiritualists and mediums offered in the city. She’d been seeking to contact her late husband, Conrad Rycroft, in the great beyond ever since his abrupt departure.

  Each year, Beatrice returned to Boston for a few months to visit with old friends. Her visits usually occurred in the summer, when she removed to one of the north shore resorts to take advantage of the cooling ocean breezes. This year, however, Beatrice had sent a message announcing she would join Charles for the holiday season. She’d neglected to mention an arrival date but he had immediately put the household on full alert and preparedness.

  Charles hardly knew his mother. Tall and elegant, Beatrice had always been a social butterfly, flapping about in bright, beaded evening dresses with wide satin skirts. Owing to Beatrice’s lack of maternal instincts, a succession of nannies raised Charles. His favorite, Lizzie, served as mother and father to him for the longest period of time. He’d been twelve years old when Lizzie’s gout got to be too much and she retired. His heart had broken. Even though Charles was off to boarding school, knowing Lizzie would not be there when he returned home for the holidays saddened him. His deep, constant loneliness intensified when Lizzie left.

  He conspired to stay in touch with his beloved nanny, sending her funds regularly, disguised as birthday and holiday gifts. A wizened old woman now, she lived with her daughter in the mill town of Lowell. Charles stopped to call whenever he was in the area.

  “Is this where ye be livin’ then?”

  Dear God, she was still with him.

  Charles had momentarily forgotten the little bit of a woman who sat at his side. All hope that he might soon waken from an especially grievous nightmare vanished.

  “Yes. This is my home. Come.” He helped Maeve from the carriage. Her mitten scratched against his palm as he took her hand. But the sweet violet scent of her somehow contrived to soothe and warm him in the frosty morning air.

  Maeve O’Malley’s eyes grew wider as Charles escorted her up the steep steps of the brownstone.

  “I’ve lived here ever since I was a boy,” he said, releasing her hand. Charles knew he must be careful not to give the diminutive creature any reason to think he might continue their unsuitable marriage. He’d married under duress, married in the only way conceivable to a confirmed bachelor. He’d been q
uite out of his mind at the time. Literally.

  “The Deakins house is not near so grand as this,” Maeve whispered. “And sure’n I’ve never walked in through the front door. Aye, and just look at the polished brass nameplate ye have here!”

  “My grandfather built the original house,” Charles told her. “Later my father added two floors.”

  Charles loved his home. The high-ceilinged, paneled rooms smelled of beeswax, lemon, and leather; clean, comforting aromas. He took solace in the evenings reading manuscripts in his study. Bolstered by a fine cigar and brandy, Charles found contentment surrounded by his favorite leather-bound books and treasured art collection. By nature he was a quiet, solitary man.

  Maeve did not move when he opened the door.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “After you,” she deferred in a hushed tone.

  “No, after you. Ladies before gentlemen.”

  She inclined her head.

  Charles leaned to whisper in her ear. “I’m not going to carry you over the threshold.”

  Maeve’s hands went to her hips and her lovely lapis eyes darkened to a deep, stormy indigo. “‘Tis not what—”

  “Please,” he begged, raising his hands in front of his chest as if he expected to ward off a blow. “No public scenes.”

  With a sniff and a tilt of her chin, she marched before him into the foyer.

  Inexplicably amused, he followed.

  A scream went out from the top of the stairs. The upstairs maid, who had been polishing the banister, stood stock still, her hand clapped over her mouth.

  Responding to her cry, Dolly, the housekeeper, and Stuart, the butler, rushed to the foyer, each coming to an abrupt halt. Charles’s servants were clearly shocked to see him.

  “Mr. Rycroft, we’d given you up for dead!” exclaimed Dolly, the ruddy-faced housekeeper.