Comfort and Joy

by Sandra Madden

  Always use your napkin before and after drinking. Never cut your bread with a knife, break it by hand. Use your napkin before and after drinking. Never make a display of your napkin.

  A display of your napkin. Whatever did that mean?

  The seating arrangements had Charles at the head of the table, his mother and Stella to his right, and Maeve to his left. Beatrice Rycroft and the pale widow sans her silly dog were already seated.

  Swathed in dusty rose satin and diamonds, Beatrice appeared every inch the grand dame. Despite the deepening lines fanning her eyes and framing her mouth, traces of the beauty she’d once been were evident. Charles’s mother possessed magnificent high cheekbones and perfect bowed lips, rouged to an apple-red.

  Unlike Maeve, she moved in fluid, elegant grace and spoke in soft, modulated tones.

  With barely a flicker of an eyelash, she appraised a quaking Maeve from the top of her head to the hem of her dress. When Beatrice completed her perusal, neither approval nor disapproval registered in her bland expression.

  Although Maeve had dressed with care and presented herself with nary a hair out of place, she knew her mother-in-law must disapprove of her, beyond what the eye could see. With her stomach churning like a storm-tossed sea, Maeve did not hope to swallow a bite of the meal. Instead, she meant to win a small piece of her mother-in-law’s regard.

  “Good evening, Maeve,” Beatrice greeted her with a cool nod before bestowing a brilliant smile on her son. “Charles dear, you look exhausted.”

  “Not quite, Mother.” He held Maeve’s chair before seating himself.

  “I don’t see why you must work. Martin can handle the firm.”

  “I work because I enjoy it.”

  “And you do it so well,” Stella put in. “Even with all the New York publishing houses, Rycroft is as well known in the city as any that are headquartered there.”

  “You may overstate the case.”

  “Oh, no,” Stella protested. “But have you ever thought of moving the company to New York City?”

  “Never. My father founded Rycroft in Boston not long after Little, Brown and Company.”

  “But publishing flourishes in New York City,” Stella insisted, smiling all the while. When she spoke to Charles, her dark cocoa eyes never left his.

  “Rycroft flourishes here.”

  Unlike the amiable man who had come to Maeve’s rooms just a few hours earlier, Charles appeared aloof and conversed in short, curt sentences. Maeve thought there must be something she could say to soothe the conversation. She just could not think what.

  Stella had again chosen a dress with a neckline that amply displayed her cleavage. The azure blue silk pongee with wide lace trim and flounces heightened her delicate appearance. But Maeve feared that if the merry widow sneezed, she would shatter like glass and her mighty bosom would burst from her gown. Maeve had taken to thinking of Stella as the merry widow.

  Having no luck with Charles, Stella turned to Maeve. “You must convince Charles to move, Maeve. In my experience a wife exercises astonishing influence over her husband.”

  Maeve demurred softly. “Charles is a most intelligent man. I respect his business decisions.”

  From the corner of her eye, she caught Charles’s grin. She loved the great, warm grin that transformed his features from aloof to affable. She wished he would smile more often. As Charlie, he seemed always to have a smile on his face. It helped Maeve to remember Charlie, for he was the man Charles could be and might be someday again.

  “Where is your dog this evening?” he asked Stella.

  “Babe is not just a dog, Charles. Babe is a purebred Pomeranian.” The pale woman tilted her head and sighed. “Unfortunately, she’s feeling poorly. Perhaps due to the change in the climate.”

  Maeve wondered if it was too much to hope that the repulsive wee dog’s illness might be more serious.

  Beatrice turned to Maeve, completely altering the course of the conversation. Apparently she cared not if Babe was a sick purebred Pomeranian. “Tell me, dear, do you believe in the afterlife?”

  Taken aback, Maeve could only stare.

  “The spirit world,” Beatrice added.

  “My mother is attempting to communicate with my father,” Charles explained. “Although he died several years ago.”

  Beatrice’s gaze moved slowly around the room as if her deceased husband might be hovering. “Be careful what you say, Charles.”

  “Mother, you hardly communicated with Father while he was alive. Therefore, it’s difficult for me to understand why you wish to do so now.”

  “I might have said some things in the heat of anger, not knowing he was about to pass, that perhaps I should not have said.”

  “You’re feeling guilty, are you? Looking for forgiveness?”

  “Heavens, no. You may not believe as I do, but you need not be rude. Whatever will Maeve think?”

  Maeve thought her mother-in-law was daft. The very idea that Beatrice believed in ghosts amazed her. Until another thought occurred: perhaps the matriarch played some sort of game, subtly ridiculing Maeve’s lack of worldly knowledge.

  “And what do you think, Maeve?” Charles asked. “You haven’t answered. Do you believe in the afterlife?’’ A silver light danced in his eyes as they locked on hers.

  “I think...I think we should keep an open mind.”

  “There, you see!” Beatrice cried in triumph.

  Charles rolled his eyes.

  “You shall attend our séance,” the older woman declared. “When the moon and stars are properly aligned, Helen Foster, who is a world-renowned medium, has agreed to communicate with Conrad right here in his home.”

  Maeve forced a smile. A séance. She had no idea how to respond. “Thank you. I shall be…delighted to attend.”

  Without heed to the rules of etiquette — not one of which she could remember at the moment — she lifted the gold-trimmed goblet at her place and sipped the fruity wine.

  Until she put the goblet down, she didn’t notice that everyone was watching her. Her insides withered. She couldn’t swallow.

  “Maeve is our heroine,” Charles remarked dryly. “First she saved my life, and now she’s saved my mother’s.”

  “You exaggerate the matter,” Beatrice objected.

  “Forgive my curiosity, but did you marry Maeve only because she saved your life?” Stella asked with a sweetness that belied the cruelty of the question.

  This could not be in Beadle’s etiquette book! How dare Stella Hampton talk about Maeve as if she were not present? Fixing an angry gaze on the wicked woman, Maeve struggled to control her temper. One horrid hot spot burned in her belly. Hoping the wine would put out the fire, she took another long swallow.

  “Of course not,” Charles snapped, slicing his beef with undue vigor.

  “Then just what was it, dear?” his mother asked.

  Charles raised his head and met Maeve’s gaze. If she was not mistaken, a dash of humor glinted in his soft gray eyes. “I believe she cast an Irish spell. Was it something to do with the good fairy, Maeve?”

  Maeve bit back the retort on the tip of her tongue. “No spell was cast,” she assured Beatrice. “I intend to make your son a good wife in all ways, Mrs. Rycroft.”

  “Yes...well, you certainly may attempt to do so.” She shot Stella a knowing look.

  “Maeve, is your family among those I shall meet while I am in Boston?” Stella inquired, quickly picking up the interrogation.

  “I shall be glad to introduce you to —”

  Charles interrupted hurriedly. “Maeve’s father and brother came by the other night. Did we neglect to introduce you?”

  “Your mother was near collapse. I was needed at her side,” Stella explained softly before turning on Maeve once again. “Your family name...is it one I would know?”

  “Have you ever met an O’Malley?”

  “No. I don’t believe so.”

  “You would remember if you had met an O’Malley before I..
.me.” A silent scream tore through Maeve. She couldn’t allow this woman to fluster her! She took another hurried sip of the burgundy wine.

  Because of her father’s disturbing fondness for the stuff, Maeve never touched alcohol. She’d never tasted wine before tonight but discovered she liked the flavor. The more she sipped, the more she enjoyed it. Without the wine, she might have fled from the table.

  In a brazen attempt to claim Charles’s attention, Maeve noticed the cool New York guest played with the beads that fell over her cleavage. Stella’s long, eloquent fingers picked up the beads, twined them, twirled them, and made circles around them.

  But she wasn’t finished with Maeve yet. “How do you enjoy passing time? Do you play the piano, or do needlepoint perhaps?”

  Maeve shook her head.

  “I am seeking to find common ground,” Stella explained to Charles. She cast him a smile that appeared less than genuine to Maeve, but one a man might find beguiling. “I should like to discover that your wife and I share some interests, or friends, owing we are near the same age.”

  “Maeve is only nineteen years old.”

  For an instant, in a tightening of her lips and a sharp flash in her eyes, Stella revealed her displeasure. “I am not so much older.”

  “Indeed, Stella is at the age where the impulsiveness of youth has passed,” Beatrice offered in her friend’s behalf. “Which is to be admired.”

  “What charity do you attend, Maeve?” Stella, obviously anxious to depart from the conversation on age, abruptly resumed her questioning.

  Maeve did not understand the question, but knew it was another designed to belittle her. Hoping it would help, she took another long sip of wine. It didn’t.

  She burned to give Stella a piece of her mind, a lash of her Irish tongue that would not soon be forgotten. In the face of the pale beauty’s lack of manners, Maeve’s blood ran hot. If she held her temper another moment, she surely would explode.

  “Maeve has been much too busy to engage in charity work,” Charles replied for her.

  “Except for the orphanage.”

  Charles, Beatrice, and Stella stared at her.

  “I knit garments for the children at the Essex Orphanage. Sometimes I go by to play with them. It’s a hard life they have.”

  Charles gave her a lopsided smile that made Maeve’s heart skip and thump. His light charcoal eyes shone with what appeared to be delight, or pride...or perhaps both. For an infinitesimal moment, she could not catch her breath. For one frozen moment in time no one else existed at the table for Maeve but Charles. Locked in his gaze, she was alone with him.

  “You don’t knit in public do you, dear?”

  The moment passed.

  “No, Mrs. Rycroft. I should never knit in public.”

  Charles chuckled aloud.

  His mother’s eyes narrowed on him. “Did I miss something humorous?”

  “Not at all. Maeve is the model of propriety, Mother. You need not worry about what she shall do in public.”

  Maeve almost giggled aloud. Instead she covered her amusement by sipping more wine. Her glass seemed always full. She supposed one of the servants filled it when she was not looking.

  Dinner was just slightly less sumptuous than the feast offered at Stella’s party the night before. Maeve wondered how four people could consume the courses of partridge pie with truffles, boiled codfish with oyster sauce, tenderloin of beef, boiled potatoes, and stewed tomatoes. She knew many families, including the children at the orphanage, who had never seen this much food on one table. She felt guilty not eating. Even though the wine she’d sipped through dinner had relaxed her a bit, Maeve almost applauded when dessert was served. Dinner was coming to an end.

  Feeling somewhat dizzy, Maeve declined servings of chocolate cake, fruit, and hot apple pudding. From the start of this extraordinarily long dinner, in deference to an unsettled stomach, she’d simply been pushing the food around on her plate.

  “Do you have a problem with your weight?” Stella asked sotto voce. With a coy, sidelong glance at Charles, she added, “Forgive us just a moment of women talk.”

  Maeve would rather have died on the spot than admit she would like to be thinner. But then, looking as bony as Beatrice Rycroft, or as pale and slender as Stella, did not appeal to her either.

  She decided to brazen it out. “Weight problem? Not at all. My husband likes me just the way I am... don’t you, my love?”

  Charles appeared momentarily stunned. But he recovered nicely, although his lip twitched slightly. “I should weep if you ever change.”

  Stella’s lips were so tight they’d turned white.

  Maeve swallowed hard. What had made her make such a bold statement? It must have been the wicked fairy again — or the wine.

  “Tea, perhaps?” Beatrice asked.

  “No, thank you.” Maeve daintily wiped her lips with the soft linen napkin. Always use your napkin before and immediately after drinking. “We must be off now. Charles and I are going for a sleigh ride.”

  “How wonderful!” Stella declared, making a remarkable rally. “It’s a perfect night. I should love to go for a sleigh ride, too!”

  “You don’t mind taking our guest along with you, do you, Charles dear?”

  * * * *

  Charles sat wedged between Maeve and Stella in the open sleigh like a stiff-spined, scholarly text between two soft leather-bound first editions. Damned uncomfortable. The two women could not see each other without bending forward to peer around his body, which was the better part of the arrangement.

  A light snow blanketed the moonlit night. The bite of the winter breeze and the wet sting of snowflakes as they nipped at his skin were not to blame for Charles’s discomfort. Although a truly good reason eluded him, Charles resented Stella’s intrusion.

  The snow warden would be out soon, but for now the sleigh bells jangled merrily as the high-stepping Andalusian carriage horses pulled the Rycroft sleigh smoothly down the snow-packed street. Pine garlands and red bows decorated the gaslight poles on Beacon Hill. As he watched the snow fall gently under the golden light, Charles regretted the loss of a ride alone with Maeve.

  She’d behaved in a far more civilized manner during dinner than either his mother or Stella.

  To his right, Maeve slouched, silently fuming. Every so often she would let loose a petulant sigh. Each time, due to the cold, a small cloud issued from her mouth reminding Charles of a tiny dragon breathing fire and smoke. He had little doubt Stella’s presence displeased her. It displeased him. But Charles had to credit Maeve for keeping her anger at bay as the sleigh slid through the snowy streets.

  On his left, Stella’s teeth chattered. Cold as a cod, his mother’s friend.

  This isn’t what Charles had planned.

  After discovering Maeve’s love of books, he was interested in knowing more about what types of books she read and what she enjoyed. He hoped he hadn’t made a mistake with the Jules Verne book. His small companion’s strange beliefs tickled Charles’s curiosity as well. Why did a young woman of seeming intelligence believe in faeries? And Charles wanted to know how Maeve felt when forced to marry him, a complete stranger?

  There were many things about this beguiling creature who was his wife that he did not know and that somehow had become important for him to know.

  The sweet scent of violets drifted up from Maeve. Charles breathed deeply of her. She promised spring in the midst of winter. To his relief, her heated sighs lessened as she took an interest in the passing scenery.

  Another fragrance assaulted him. Stella’s thick, spicy perfume threatened to clog Charles’s throat. She looked up at him, her dark brown eyes all dewy and dreamy. What had his mother been telling her guest about him?

  Actually, he didn’t want to know.

  “It’s cold, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Aye!” Maeve chuckled. “ ‘Tis always cold on a December night.”

  Ignoring Maeve for the moment, Charles turned to Stella. “W
ould you like to return?” he asked hopefully.

  “Oh, no. But how is a girl to stay warm?” Finding her own answer, Stella snuggled closer to him.

  “Let’s just pull the blanket up higher,” Charles suggested, sliding more of the wool sleigh blanket Stella’s way and shifting toward Maeve.

  Maeve wiggled away from him.

  Damn.

  He did not understand the little Irish beauty at all. She did not feel his glare. Her gaze never wavered from the passing buildings. In profile, her nose turned up at the tip in a quite enchanting way. Charles felt an involuntary, almost overwhelming urge to kiss the dainty tip of Maeve’s nose, reddening quickly from the cold.

  But he practiced self-restraint. Charles prided himself on his ability to be dispassionate when other men grew angry or anxious or frightened.

  At least Maeve looked warm in the new coat Mrs. Potts had fashioned for her. The dark meadow green color complemented her fair complexion. Both the cape of the coat and hem were trimmed in gleaming sable. Her hands were warmed within a thick sable muff instead of scratchy half-mittens. Charles especially liked her saucy green hat trimmed with the same rich sable. The small wool hat covered her ears and tied under her chin at a rakish angle. The way she looked tonight, Maeve could pass as a young woman born and bred on the Hill.

  Stella, in her navy blue, only managed to look like death in an open sleigh.

  “Do give us a tour, Charles,” the widow pleaded. “Where are we now? Are those government buildings?”

  “That’s the state house to the right.”

  “I do so favor Gothic architecture. Don’t you, Maeve?”

  Maeve giggled. “No.”

  Charles experienced a sinking feeling in his gut.

  “What do you like then?” Stella pressed.

  “I like...no, I love the wide blue sky above my head. I want to feel the green, green shamrocks beneath my feet. I loathe walls!” she cried passionately. “I love the sea and the mountains and ...” Maeve’s voice trailed off and she simply stared into space.