A Season of Love

by Carla Kelly

  “Mrs. Lonnigan, I miss my mother with all my heart,” she began. “This Christmas I want to honor her memory. I know she used to deliver baskets of Christmas food. I told Mr. Cooper I wanted to do something more this year, a really bold stroke.”

  To say that Mrs. Lonnigan looked skeptical would have been an understatement of massive proportions. Lucy did not avoid her glance. Underneath the skepticism, she thought she saw utter life-weariness.

  I must not muddle this, Lucy thought. This is not the time to open my mouth and blather. She glanced at Miles and saw an encouraging nod.

  “I want to do more than just give you a Christmas basket and then forget about you for the rest of the year,” she said frankly. “I … we will start with food, but we will do more.”

  “What, for instance?” the widow asked, still not convinced.

  “You need work that is both steady and honorable,” Miles said. “Let me ask a few questions.”

  “Ask away.”

  He turned to Edward. “Mr. Cooper told us you are fourteen, Edward.”

  “As good as, come January fifteenth.”

  “Edward, what do you like to do?” Miles asked.

  He didn’t seem to understand the question, from the quizzical look he gave Miles.

  “You know, for fun,” Miles coaxed.

  The boy and his mother exchanged a glance that all but shouted, These rich people don’t understand that life is not fun. Mortified, Lucy could see that in their faces as clearly as if they had said it in unison.

  “What do you wish you could do more of in school?” Lucy asked, amending the question, and earning a look of gratitude from Miles.

  This was different. Edward would probably always be of a serious turn, but Lucy saw sudden enthusiasm in his eyes.

  “Numbers! Above all, numbers,” he exclaimed, sitting up. “I love to add and subtract. I am up to three columns and five rows in my head.”

  “Goodness. I feel fortunate to add one column three rows high,” Lucy said. “Numbers, then, for you?”

  Edward nodded. He indicated his younger brother. “Michael doesn’t like to talk much, but if he sees something hurt, he mends it. Show her the bird, Mikey.”

  The younger brother indicated with his head that Lucy follow him to the little stove. She knelt beside him as, with sure fingers, he drew back a clean cloth next to what little warmth there was. She saw a bird with a splint on his wing looking back at her.

  “I want him to get well, but I’m not certain just how it’s done,” he said. “He’s alive though, so that is something.”

  “I can’t even keep a plant alive,” Lucy told him.

  “You add water, miss,” Michael told her quite seriously.

  Before she knew it, the little girl was in her lap. “What about you, Mary Rose?” Lucy asked.

  “I would like to cook, if we had any food,” she said.

  Lucy thought of Honoré and Aunt Amelia fighting over petit fours and the best icing for a groom’s cake and wondered what an always hungry child would make of such silliness. She tightened her arms around Mary Rose, who settled back against her with a sigh. Without words, Lucy rested her cheek against the child’s head and hoped Miles would pick up the conversational strain. Another word, and she would cry.

  “Mrs. Lonnigan, I know you receive a stupidly small pension,” he said. “What else do you do?”

  “I am a seamstress, except that most of the people I sew for don’t have much more than I do.”

  “Are you proficient?” he asked, which made Lucy stare at him. Was he being rude?

  By the set of her mouth and her serious eyes, Lucy saw that Mrs. Lonnigan understood the question. Lucy began to understand Miles Bledsoe better.

  “I can sew a fine seam, make excellent buttonholes, and mend a rip so you wouldn’t know it happened, sir,” she told him, her head up. “Only give me a chance.”

  “That’s what we will do. Lucy, let us go outside for a moment.”

  He took her hand without giving her a moment to think about it, and towed her outdoors into the misty dusk. With both hands on her shoulders, his face close to hers, he said, “Here is your task tonight when we return home: convince the housekeeper that Mrs. Lonnigan’s services are required to put the finishing touches on Clotilde’s trousseau.”

  “I’ve never convinced anyone of anything,” she said in protest.

  “It’s time you learned. I’m going back in there to tell Mrs. Lonnigan, who hasn’t had a good day since Salamanca five years ago, to be at your house tomorrow morning, ready to work,” he told her. “Mary Rose, too, because you’re also going to assure Honoré that he needs another girl in his kitchen.” He took a deep breath. “One who would like to cook if she had any food.”

  He gave her shoulders a little shake. “This is your work. I have plans for the boys that will require some letters, which I will write tonight while you are busy convincing everyone.”

  “I don’t know if anyone will listen to me,” she said again, wanting to feel ill used, but unable to, not if she was going to honor her mother. “Miles, no one listens to me!”

  He gentled his tone and touched his forehead to hers. “It’s high time they did. You want to make a difference? Make a difference right here and show me.” He put both arms around her and drew her closer than she had ever stood with him before, closer even than a waltz. She loved it.

  “While you’re at it, my girl, get rid of Aunt Aurelia. She’s starting to get on my nerves.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  U

  Lucy did as he said, telling Mrs. Lonnigan and Mary Rose to be at Number Five Mannering Street at eight of the clock tomorrow morning. Her knees practically knocked together and set her dress rustling as she put on the bravest face she possessed and assured them of work through the wedding, and maybe afterward.

  While she talked, Miles took the boys with him into the dark and returned in a few minutes with a greasy bag of pasties from the food cart man. He also handed three roses to Mrs. Lonnigan, who burst into tears and clung to him. He patted her back and told Mary Rose to put the roses in a little jar.

  “You’ll eat better than this soon,” he assured them as they stood at the door. “Lads, be ready for a little journey tomorrow. Bring them with you to Mannering Street, Mrs. Lonnigan.”

  Miles held her hand as they hurried along through the twilight. “What have we done?” Lucy asked.

  “Ask yourself that tomorrow after Mrs. Lonnigan is sewing and Mary Rose is cutting up carrots,” he said, sounding un-Miles-like. His voice had lost its teasing quality. He was a man in dead earnest. “I am going to write to the counting house in London where we Bledsoes keep our money. I also have a friend working at the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth who is going to get a letter from me. I’ll send them by post rider tonight. We’ll leave tomorrow morning.”

  Slowing down, he put her arm through his and became more the cousin she knew. “Your father wouldn’t mind if you came along with me and the boys to London, would he?”

  “Probably not,” she said. “London? It’s so big it scares me.”

  “I’ll be with you. In London, I intend to find an apprenticeship for Edward so he can count money to his heart’s content. In Portsmouth, there will be much good for Michael to do.”

  “Why do you need me?” she asked.

  “For company. For courage. I’m not used to all this exertion, either, cousin.” He patted her gloved hand. “Just think: you can be out of the house when Lord Masterton arrives.”

  “Capital notion,” she said. “Cousin, you are a genius.”

  They walked back to Number Five Mannering Street in silence, hand in hand. Lucy’s mind was whirling with how she would approach Mrs. Little, the housekeeper, with news that a destitute Irish woman would be showing up for work in the morning. She could only assume that Miles was going through a mental list of things he would write in his letters. All she knew was how grateful she felt that he kept his hand in hers.

  Lo
oming even larger was Miles’s admonition to get rid of Aunt Aurelia, who was only upsetting Clotilde and turning Honoré into a Frenchman fit for Bedlam.

  She didn’t know how it was possible, but Milsap met them at the door looking both older and grayer than he had a mere two hours before.

  “Miss Danforth is nearly in hysterics because of some new crisis,” he said.

  “Which one?” she asked, not wanting to know.

  “Whatever is the latest disturbance,” he replied. “I have quite lost track. I hate to be the bearer of further sad tidings of no joy, but she insists that you come to her room the moment you return.”

  “I think I will not,” Lucy told him.

  “A wise choice,” the butler said with a slight bow.

  “Any such news for me, Milsap?” Miles asked.

  “You, sir, are a most fortunate man. No one is requiring your presence.”

  “Such good news! I think I will remain a perpetual guest throughout my life, which means no one will expect much.”

  “I thought you had more courage, Mr. Bledsoe,” Milsap said, relying on his own clout as a long-time family retainer who had known Miles since he was in leading strings.

  “Not I! I am off to the bookroom,” Miles said. He kissed Lucy’s cheek and turned toward the bookroom.

  “I am going belowstairs,” Lucy said. “How sits the wind in that direction?”

  Milsap waggled his hand. “At least Lady Aurelia has retreated to her room to vent her spleen on whatever poor soul ventures into her orbit, now that dinner, which you wisely missed, is over. Make sure that poor soul isn’t you, Lucy.”

  She gave Milsap her own wave and loped toward the green baize-covered door to the kitchen. She descended the stairs in more dignified fashion, trying to think of something to say to Mrs. Little, a redoubtable housekeeper and something of an ally.

  Her timid knock brought a booming, “Enter!” Lucy took a deep breath and began her campaign to make a difference this Christmas.

  Good fortune was on her side. Mrs. Little was in the middle of removing her spectacles to rub her eyes. On her lap was yet another petticoat in need of a hem.

  Lucy pulled a chair away from Mrs. Little’s drop-leaf table and seated herself. “How many more petticoats?” she asked.

  “At least five.” The housekeeper raised her hands in a helpless gesture. “Ordinarily, Sally Fenn would be doing these, but she is sewing lace around the wedding dress, and complaining that her eyes are too old for such close work. She is also threatening to retire from domestic service and I think she means it.” Mrs. Little picked up her needle and thread, stared at it like was an alien being, and stuck it back in the pincushion.

  “I can solve your dilemma tomorrow morning,” Lucy said. She picked up the needle and thread and pulled the petticoat from Mrs. Little’s lap. Wait for it, she thought as she began to hem. Just wait.

  “How will you do that?” Mrs. Little asked finally, her hands folded in her lap.

  “I am doing what Mama would have done, had she lived,” Lucy began, knowing her mother’s great affection for the housekeeper. “There is an Irishwoman, a widow whose husband fought with Wellington and died at Salamanca. She needs work, because her pension is too small for a garden gopher to live on.” She kept sewing, deliberately making her stitches wider and more uneven. “I believe she will sew you a fine seam.”

  “On whose authority is she a seamstress?”

  “Her own. I believe her,” Lucy said. “She has three children to support. All I ask is that you give her a chance. Please do it for Mama.”

  Silence. She kept hemming as the clock ticked and Mrs. Little considered the matter. She cleared her throat and Lucy looked up.

  “Miss Lucy, what happened to the blue-eyed flibbertigibbet who only this morning was mooning around because nothing was going right? It still isn’t, but this is a new Lucy.”

  Lucy stopped the needle and gave the matter some thought. “I don’t know,” she admitted. She closed her eyes against the pain of remembering Mama, but she knew that was the issue. For five years she had been going with Mama while she delivered food baskets at Christmas. Mr. Cooper said her gentle mother had fought to get the Lonnigan children enrolled in the village school, even though they were Catholic.

  She chose her words carefully. “I just saw Mama and her baskets,” she told the housekeeper. “How much more good did she do?”

  “Considerable,” the housekeeper said. “She rescued the ’tween-stairs maid from a horrible workhouse. She just went in there and dragged her out before the beadle could say boo. And your father’s favorite gunbearer?”

  “Willie?”

  “The very same. Your mama heard that the chimney sweep in town was abusing his climbing boys. And now Willie is here and safe.” Mrs. Little spread out her hands. “Those are only the ones I know about. I suspect that she had a great deal to do with finding homes for foundlings, and other things of a similar nature that well-bred ladies don’t speak of.”

  “Why didn’t she ever say anything about her good deeds?” Lucy asked, her heart so full that she wanted to run to Miles and rest her head on his knee. The reason why, she couldn’t have told judge and jury, but that was her first instinct.

  “That was part and parcel of what made her a gracious lady,” the housekeeper said. “Come to think of it, she did most of her good deeds at Christmastime. I think they were her gift to herself.”

  Of course, Lucy thought. “Mrs. Little, when I was old enough, I used to ask her what she wanted me to give her for Christmas. She always said she had everything she wanted.”

  The two of them looked at each other. “I believe she did,” Mrs. Little said.

  “And now you want to do what your mother would have done and rescue an Irishwoman and all her children?”

  Lucy nodded, unable to speak. Worlds seemed to be hinging on the housekeeper’s reply.

  “I can think of no higher honor than to call you, Lucinda Danforth, your mother’s daughter. Certainly the woman may come.” Mrs. Little looked at Lucy’s horrible stitches and gasped. “Just in the nick of time, I might add.”

  “My strengths lie elsewhere,” Lucy said with some dignity.

  “I expect they do.”

  “There’s someone else,” Lucy said, after a moment’s pause. “She has a daughter eight years old who would like to cook, if she had any food.”

  After that declaration, no words necessary. Mrs. Little rummaged in her sewing basket and managed to dab at her eyes without anyone noticing except the only other person in the room, who was busy tugging on her uneven hemming stitches and sniffing.

  “Get them both here tomorrow morning,” Mrs. Little said finally. “If I have to flog Honoré, there will be room for her in his precious kitchen!”

  “Let me go reason with him,” Lucy said, feeling flush with victory, but even more, wanting to escape the room to blow her nose and wipe her eyes.

  “There is no reasoning with a Frog,” Mrs. Little said with finality, “but do try. I’d come along, but …”

  You want to blow your nose, too, Lucy thought, as she let herself out of the housekeeper’s room.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  U

  Above all, Lucy knew that for Honoré to allow Mary Rose into his sanctum sanctorum, even to peel potatoes, the little girl needed to be his idea. She stood a moment outside Mrs. Little’s closed door, then walked into the servants’ hall.

  There he sat, Papa’s prince of a chef, lured from Lord Elwood’s kitchen by a sum of money that Papa never dared disclose to Mama. Honoré leaned forward at the table, his face hidden in his hands. At a loss, Lucy sat beside him.

  The chef started at her footsteps, then moved his hands. His was a look of desperation, the sort of expression that usually meant a letter of resignation would be forthcoming.

  What would Mama say? Lucy asked herself. “Honoré, I fear you have had a distressing day. May I help?”

  The chef waved his arms wildly about
as though he were directing an orchestra of two-year-olds. “Lady Burbage will either drive me into an early coffin, or resignation,” he said, his voice more mournful than angry. “Everything I suggest, she vetoes. She clears her throat in that irritating way and demands—demands—that I change my plans to suit her. And Clotilde just wrings her hands and weeps.”

  Lucy took his hands in hers, wondering at her effrontery. “And still you soldier onward, Honoré! I have never met a man as brave as you.”

  Her words, quietly spoken, seemed to sink into the chef’s heart, if his expression was any indication. “I do try,” he said finally.

  “Especially when the honor of France is at state,” Lucy told him. “If only other Englishmen had any idea how brave you are to cook during these times of national emergency.”

  She couldn’t think of any current national emergency, now that Napoleon was at his leisure on St. Helena. As she thought, she remembered something she had wanted to tell their cook. In the confusion and distress of Mama’s death, she had forgotten. She remembered now.

  “I meant to tell you this months ago,” she began, and then the familiar tears welled in her eyes. When would she ever get over those betrayals of her innermost feelings? She took a deep breath. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being so willing to fix Mama those little favorites of hers,” she said, not trusting herself to look at him. “I … I know it was inconvenient at times, but when she just took a bite of something, it was a bit of a victory. Merci.”

  “I never met a better woman,” he said, when he could speak.

  “Nor I.”

  They sat in silence, until she began to speak of Mama’s annual Christmas gifts to the less fortunate in the village. “I want to continue Mama’s gift, and here is how: there is a Mrs. Lonnigan, a widow whose husband died at the Battle of Salamanca, defending us from those evil Frenchmen who usurped your own country.”