by Carla Kelly
“That may depend on what you consider good news,” she replied, and handed him the letter. “Here. I wish you and Joe would read it.”
With a nod to Mr. King, Joe got up from the game-board and sat beside his brother, who had spread out the letter on the table. She watched them both as they read, Thomas becoming more animated by the paragraph, and Joseph more subdued. How different they are, she thought, but how different they had always been.
When he finished reading, Thomas looked at her in triumph. “There you are, Mary!” He smiled at his wife, who was dusting the last of the cookie dough with sugar. “She need not leave her sphere, Agatha.” He shrugged. “It may take a year or two before you are received in the best houses again, Mary, but what is that? People forget.”
Mary looked at Joe, who finished reading and sat back, his face a perfect blank. He stared at the letter, then picked it up. “ ‘… no matter how disgusting the whole affair is to sensible people, the sort I wish to associate with, I will never reproach you with your ignominious birth,’ ” he read out loud. “Mary, he is irresistible.”
Ignoring his brother, Thomas took her hand. “Mary, you are most fortunate. The road is clear south of us. Any letter you write will reach Sir Harry in a mere day or two.”
Joe grabbed the letter. Without a word he crumbled it into a tight ball. “Thomas, I am not sure I even know you anymore,” he said, his voice filled with emotion. “You would have Mary McIntyre, this little lady we watched grow up at Denton, pawn her dignity for a crumb or two? I am surprised at you.”
Thomas stared at him and his face grew red. Mouths open, Tommy and Joshua had stopped their game of jackstraws. Abby held the rolling pin suspended over another wad of dough. Agatha dabbled her fingers nervously in the sugar. On the other hand, Frank King appeared to be enjoying the drama before him. His eyes were bright as he looked from one to another.
“Joseph, Mary is no lady anymore,” Thomas said. “But you are no gentleman.”
Oh, God, Mary thought, and felt her face grow white. The brothers glared at each other. Clarice was already in tears, her face pressed against her mother. What has happened here, Mary thought in the silence that seemed to grow more huge by the second. If ever there were unwanted guests, we have met and exceeded the criteria. She knew that she could not please both men. No matter what she said, it would be wrong to someone, and she would offend people she never wished ill.
Her footsteps seemed so loud as she walked the length of the room and stood between the brothers. “You are probably right, Tom. I will write Sir Harry immediately.”
“Thank God,” Thomas said, his relief nearly palpable.
“I will assure him that even though I am grateful for the honor I think he is doing me, I chose not to further the alliance,” she concluded.
“My God, Mary, do you know what you are saying?” Thomas gasped. “Do you seriously believe you will ever get another offer as good as Sir Harry?”
For the first time that day, or maybe even since Lord Davy had ruined her hopes two weeks ago, she felt curiously free. “Thomas, Sir Harry is a boring windbag. You can’t honestly think he would ever let me forget my origin.”
“But he is so magnanimous!” Thomas exclaimed.
“To trample my feelings?” she asked. “I think not. Honestly, Thomas, I believe I would rather … rather … slop hogs and … and … oh, heavens … milk cows at Muncie Farm than endure life with a man who thought I was common!” She gave him a little push. “How unkind you are to call me common! A woman is only common when the people around her tell her that she is. And I am not.”
Mary looked around her, noting the expressions of wounded reproach on Agatha’s and Tom’s faces. Mr. King winked at her, and she smiled back. To her confusion, Joseph was regarding her with what appeared to be amusement. I should be grateful someone considers this imbroglio humorous, she thought with some asperity. In fairness, he is entitled to think what he chooses. Imagine how glad he will be when the road is open.
“Joe, may I use your bookroom again to write that letter?” she asked.
“Of course.” His expression had not changed. “Did you say Muncie Farm?”
“I did.”
“But your name is McIntyre.”
“Yes. From what I gather, the modiste’s mother was widowed not long after her daughter ran away and later remarried. I gather I am still a McIntyre, though. You have heard of Muncie Farm?”
“I have. In fact, Thomas, rather than be any hindrance to you when you are able to bolt my vulgar establishment, I can transport Mary to Muncie Farm. I could give you directions, but I can easily take her there.” He bowed to them all. “And now, I have some work to do in my shop. Josh? You may come, and Tommy, too. Use my bookroom as long as you need it, Mary.” He bowed again. “Mrs. King, I look forward to dinner at six o’clock.”
Mary returned to the bookroom with an appetite. Mrs. King’s meal, though cold now, took the edge off her hunger quite nicely. She thought she would have to use up reams of paper to find the right words of regret for Sir Harry, but one draft sufficed. After all, Lady Davy had taught her to regard brevity as the best antidote for unreturned love, and quite the safest route. Poor Sir Harry, she thought. You will miss me for a while, perhaps, but I suspect that your paramount emotion will resolve itself into vast relief. Humming to herself, she sealed the letter and set it aside for a brisk walk tomorrow to the inn to mail it.
“Silly,” she said out loud. “Tomorrow is Christmas. It can wait for the day after.”
After a little more thought, and a long time gazing out the window, she took out another sheet of paper and wrote a letter to Lady Davy. It proved more difficult to write, because she found herself flooded with wonderful memories of her childhood. She knew down to her stockings that she would miss Denton, and her brother and sister, and even more, the quiet, lovely woman who had chosen to take her in, keep her from an orphanage or workhouse, and raise her. If events had not fallen out as Mary desired, it was not a matter to cause great distress now. She chose to remember the best parts. She decided then that she would write Lady Davy at least once each year, whether Lord Davy wanted her to, or not. Perhaps a time would come when she would be invited home.
She did feel tears well in her eyes as she remembered how many of her mother’s acquaintances had called her the very image of Lady Davy. I suppose we see what we choose to see, she thought, then rested her chin in her hand. I hope Thomas can see that someday. Joe already seems to understand.
By dinner, the workhouse road crew was shoveling in front of the house. Thomas and Agatha had decided to take dinner upstairs, to Mary’s chagrin and Joe’s irritation. Mrs. King only laughed and assured him that the entertainment the Shepards had provided far outweighed any inconvenience. “Abby and I will take them food. If it is cold, well, that’s the price for being better than the rest of us.” She put her arm around Mary. “If they want seconds, they can come downstairs. It is Christmas Eve, after all, and Mr. King and I are on holiday. Dearie, you lay the table here.”
Mrs. King’s roast beef was the perfect combination of exterior crust and interior pink tenderness. Abby glowed with pleasure when Mrs. King pointed out that the scullery maid had made the Yorkshire pudding. “I may have directed it, dearies, but I think the secret is in the touch, and not the telling. Mr. King, don’t be hoarding the gravy at your end of the table!”
The coachmen joined them, coming into the servants hall snow-covered from helping the road crew. “We met a mail coach coming from York, so the highway is open now,” the Shepards’ coachman told them as he reached for the roast beef. He jostled the King’s driver. “We can all be on our way.”
Mary could not help noticing the worried look that Mr. King directed at his wife, who was helping Abby with the gravy. Her heart went out to him as she imagined what it must be like to wonder every Christmas when the melancholy would strike her, and how long she would struggle with it. She leaned toward Joe, and spoke softly. “I wonde
r, do you suppose a parent ever recovers from the loss of a child through an angry word, or a thoughtless statement?”
He shook his head, and rested his hand on Joshua’s head. “It doesn’t even have to be your own child, Mary, to fear such a disaster. I pray it never happens to me.”
She sat there in the warm dining hall, surrounded by people talking, spoons clinking on dishes, wonderful kitchen smells, and fully realized what he was saying to her. I have a grandmother at a place called Muncie Farm, she thought with an emotion akin to wonder. She has been looking for me. Me! Not to shame me with my shaky background, but to find me, because I am all that remains of her daughter. I have been dreading this, when I should be welcoming the chance to put someone’s mind at rest. It is a blessing ever to be denied the Kings, I fear, and I nearly passed it by. God forgive me.
“You know where Muncie Farm is?” she asked Joe.
He nodded and ruffled Joshua’s hair. “We could take you there tomorrow.”
“Then you may do it,” she said, and took the bowl of gravy from the Kings’ coachman, “after we have Christmas dinner here with the Kings.”
Thomas and Agatha did not invite her to attend Christmas Eve services with them at St. Boniface, which troubled her not at all. There would have been nothing comfortable or even remotely rejuvenating in celebrating the birth of a Peacemaker with people who chose so deliberately to divide. When Joe told the Kings that indeed there was a Methodist establishment in town—although not the better part of town, and certainly not close to St. Boniface—she demurred again. She had heard much about Methodism and the enthusiastic choirs that it seemed to produce, but Abby was accompanying the Kings. She wanted that kindly couple to give the scullery maid their undivided attention.
“What do you generally do on Christmas Eve?” she asked Joe, while they were washing dishes. (Joe had insisted that Mrs. King did not need to do dishes, and Mrs. King had not objected too long.)
“What do we do, Josh?” he asked his son, who sat on a stool, drying plates.
“We read Luke Two, because it talks about shepherds, I think,” Josh said. “Then we watch for the carolers.” He looked at his father. “Will there be carolers this year?”
“I rather doubt it, son, considering the depth of the snow.”
“Do you feed them sausage and eggs after they sing?” Mary teased.
“I will have you know, I make an excellent wassail,” Joe replied. He laughed and flipped his son with the drying towel. “The secret to living here is to maintain low expectations.”
When the other guests had left the house—the Shepards by carriage and the Kings on foot—Joe and Joshua made wassail. They carried it outside to the road crew, which was beginning work now on the side streets of the village, now that the main thoroughfare was open for travel. As she watched from the sitting room window, a steady flow of traffic worked its way in both directions, coaches full of travelers anxious to be home by Christmas, or failing that, Boxing Day.
She thought she would find the house lonely, but she did not. She took her copy of Pamela into the bookroom, made herself comfortable in the chair where she already fit, and began to read.
As she read, she gradually realized that she was waiting for the sound of Joe returning with Joshua, and then the Kings coming back, probably to sit belowstairs, drink tea, and chat. At peace with herself, she understood the gift of small pleasures. It warmed her heart as no other gift possibly could, during this season of anxiety for her. She smiled when she heard them finally, realizing with a quick intake of breath that she was as guilty as Joe of thinking and speaking as though she were part of the family. We have to belong to someone, don’t we? she asked herself. If we don’t, then life is just days on a calendar.
She closed the novel when they came into the bookroom, bringing with them a rush of cold, and the fragrance of butter and spices. Joe carried a pitcher and a plate, and Josh dangled the cups by their handles. “We had a little wassail left, and Father purloined the biscuits from belowstairs,” Josh said as he sat down beside her on the hassock. He held out a cup while Joseph poured, and handed it to her. “Father says I am to read Luke Two all by myself this year, but if I get stopped on a word or two, he will help me.”
Joe handed him the Bible and opened it to the Book of St. Luke before he sat down with a sigh and stretched his long legs toward the fire. He closed his eyes while Joshua read about governors, and taxes, and travelers, and no room. Mary watched his handsome profile and felt some slight envy at the length of his eyelashes. This is a restful man, she thought, not someone tightly wound who is never satisfied. She wondered what he was like in spring and summer, when his life in the fields and among the grain brokers probably kept him in motion from early light until after dark. Did he become irritable then, restless like his brother? She decided no, that Joseph Shepard was too wise for that.
“ ‘And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.’ ” Joshua had moved closer to the fire to see better, his finger pointing out the line. He leaned against his father’s legs.
As she watched him, Joe opened his eyes and looked at her. He smiled and reached across the space between them to take her hand and hold it firmly, his fingers intertwined in hers. She almost had to remind herself to breathe. You keep watch over your own little flock, don’t you, sir, she thought. You even care about your unexpected guests. It was a wild notion, but she even dared to think that he had been caring for her for years, in his own way. She tried to dismiss the notion as patently ridiculous, but as he continued to hold her hand, she found herself unable to believe otherwise.
He released her hand when Joshua finished, and took his dead wife’s son on his lap, holding him close. “Well, Josh, we have almost rubbed through another year,” he said, his voice low and soothing. “What do you say we go for another one?”
Joshua nodded. Mary had to smile as she realized this must be a tradition with them.
“What about you, Mary? Will you go for another one?” Joe asked her suddenly.
“I … I do believe I will,” she said. Even if it means things do not turn out as we wish, some hopes are dashed, and the future looks a bit uncertain, she added to herself. “We are all dealing in futures, eh?” she asked.
He reached for her hand again. He held it until he heard the Kings returning, when he got up to become the perfect host, and carry his son to bed. When he returned to the bookroom, she was standing by the window, admiring the snow that the moonlight had turned into a crystal path. He stood beside her, not touching her in any way, but somehow filling her completely with his presence. When he spoke, it was not what she expected; it was more.
“I loved Melissa,” he told her, his eyes on the snow. “I have to tell you that in some measure, I think I loved her because she reminded me of you.” He glanced at her quickly, then looked outside again. “I’m not completely sure, but it is my suspicion. I … I’ve never admitted this to myself, so you are the first to hear it.”
He took her hand, raised it to his lips, and kissed it. “I am quite sober tonight, Mary McIntyre, so I will say Happy Christmas to you, and let it go at that for now.” He shook his head and laughed softly. “Oh, bother it, I would be a fool to waste such a celebratory occasion.” He kissed her cheek, gave her a wink, and left the room. In a moment she heard him whistling in the hall.
The Shepards left as early as they could in the morning, Thomas just happy to be away, and Agatha shaking her head and apologizing for the rush, but wouldn’t it be grand to be in York with grandparents before the day was entirely gone? Of the two, Mary had to admit that Thomas’s attitude, though more overt, at least had the virtue of honesty. Joe must have felt the same way. As they stood in the driveway and saw the Shepards off, he turned to Mary. “My brother is honest, even when he says nothing.”
Joe declared that his Christmas gift to the Kings was breakfast. “Mary and I will cook eggs and sausage for you, my dears.” He wink
ed at Mary. “And do I see some presents on the table? That will be the reward for eating my cooking.”
By keeping back two presents she had ordained earlier for Thomas and Clarice, Mary had gifts for the children: a sewing basket with a small hoop and embroidery thread for Abby, and a book with blank pages for Joshua. “This is your journal for 1816,” she told him. “And let us pray it is a more peaceful year than 1815.”
“It usually is in Edgerly,” he assured her, which made Joseph look away and cough into his napkin.
Mr. and Mrs. King presented both children with aprons, Abby’s of pale pink muslin that had probably been cut down from one of Mrs. King’s traveling dresses, and Josh’s of canvas, which turned out to be a prelude for his present from his father of carpenter tools. “I saw what ’e was giving you yesterday, lad. Every man needs his own carpenter’s apron,” Mr. King said.
Nothing would do then but they must all troop out to Joseph’s workshop to see the bench Joe had made for Joshua that did not require a box to reach, and the tidy row of tools with smooth grips right for an eight-year-old’s hand. While they were there, Joe pointed to a hinged box held tight in a vice. “That is for you, Mary,” he told her, and his face reddened a little when he glanced at the Kings. “I will have it done by Twelfth Night and bring it to you at Muncie Farm.” He smiled at her. “Provided you are still there. I was thinking of painting it pale green, with a brass lock, unless you have a better idea.”
She shook her head, unable to trust her voice. She thought of the presents she had received from Lord and Lady Davy through the years, not one of which had been made by hand. “I … I … wish I had something for you,” she stammered when she could talk.
Mrs. King was merciful enough to distract them all by throwing up her hands and admonishing Abby because she was faster on her feet to rush back to the kitchen and remove the sponge cake from the Rumford before it turned into char. Mary followed quickly enough herself, happy to leave the men in the workshop, comparing notes on the construction of a miter box.