The Virtues of Christmas

by Grace Burrowes

  “But Mrs. Horner remains in your corner, scribbling away.” Detwiler moved about the room, tidying up. Good editors were born to tidy and fuss, and Detwiler was the best. Fortunately, he was married to a MacHugh and had some notion of family loyalty.

  “Time I walked the lady home, then,” Dougal said. “She’ll be pleased with today’s sales.”

  The clerks came in an hour later on Saturday morning and left at midafternoon, though there had been plenty of time for Jake and Harry to sell out their supplies of broadsheets.

  “Miss Friendly wasn’t pleased that the professor followed us to Oxford Street.” Detwiler went around the room, putting all the quill pens at the same angle in their standishes. “She’ll be furious to learn she’s been working for the professor himself.”

  “You promised you’d not breathe a word.”

  “The door is closed, and as much time as you spend in there with Miss Friendly, I’ll not find you any more alone than you are now. You’re playing a dangerous game, Dougal. What’s to stop Mrs. Horner from going into business for herself? Ladies write entire books when the need for coin is great enough.”

  “Patience hasn’t the coin to compete with me.” Not to mention, she was female, of marriageable age, unwed, and without male relations who might mitigate those unfair realities.

  “You should tell her, Dougal.”

  He should. A woman who’d been played false regarding her entire future would not take kindly to being manipulated, even in the interests of securing greater income.

  “I’ll tell her when we’ve put out the remaining editions. She works wonderfully under pressure and has an instinct for battle. She should have been a barrister.”

  Detwiler settled onto the cushion in his chair and withdrew a pipe and nail from a pocket. “That, my boy, will be twelve editions too late. For Christmas, you will reveal to Miss Friendly that she’s been lied to, played for a fool, taken advantage of, and exploited without mercy. All to put coin in your pocket.”

  “Yours too, and hers.” Especially hers. “I’ve increased the print runs for next week, we’re doing so well.”

  The nail scratched across the bowl of the pipe. “If you say so, professor.”

  “She might never find out.”

  Scratch, scratch, scratch… The world of London newsprint journalism was about the size of a Highland village, and twice as prone to gossip.

  She’d find out. “Take yourself off, Aloysius, and my regards to Cousin Avery.”

  Detwiler tapped his pipe against his palm and tossed the ash into the bin beside the stove. “You and Harry joining us for Christmas dinner this year?”

  For the past three years, Dougal had been the bachelor relation taken in over the holidays as a kindness on the part of his relatives. Where would Patience spend Christmas? With whom? As far as Dougal could tell, she hadn’t even a cat to share her household.

  “I’m sure Harry will devour half your goose, but I’ve other plans, thanks very much.”

  “More for Harry, then. See you Monday.” Detwiler pushed to his feet, got his coat and scarf, and shuffled out into the gray afternoon. London winters weren’t as dark as their Perthshire counterparts, but an overcast December day was still a glum undertaking.

  When a man had a guilty conscience.

  “Has Harry left for the day?” Miss Friendly stood in the doorway to Dougal’s office, his glasses perched on her nose, a folded broadsheet in her hand.

  “Aye, but we can stop at the bakery when I walk you home.”

  Her brows twitched down. “I’m in the middle of a reply, but did you see the professor’s column for today, Mr. MacHugh?”

  He’d written it. “What transgression has the old boy committed now?”

  Patience stomped across the clerk’s office. “You have remarked that he and I often deal with similar situations, and a general discourse follows regarding who had the better advice.”

  A general donnybrook followed, of the literary sort, and the readers loved it. “I’ve wondered if people don’t write to you both, just to see whose advice is superior.”

  She paused at Harry’s table and nudged his pen around in a circle. “You think the readers are playing us off each other? Making up situations to pit the professor against me?”

  “I hope they are. That tells me the readers are invested in your column, like a sweepstakes, or a cricket match they’ve bet money on.”

  She clambered onto Harry’s stool. “My advice column isn’t a sporting match, Mr. MacHugh. I care about my readers. I genuinely want to help them with life’s more vexing challenges. I’m not writing to entertain, I’m writing to educate, to commiserate.”

  Why did she have to turn up philosophical now? “You’re writing to earn coin, Patience.” Dougal stalked into his office and busied himself banking the fire, but a familiar tattoo of feminine boot heels followed him through the door.

  “I earn coin for helping people sort out their difficulties,” Patience said, a strident note creeping into her voice. “I’m not a dancing bear, writing farce for the masses. A woman who’d poach on her own sister’s marital preserves is not a joke, Mr. MacHugh.”

  Dougal straightened and found himself face-to-face with King George lounging on the mantel. The cat’s expression was superior, even smug. Tell her, laddie. Tell her now.

  “I should put George out,” Dougal said, scratching the idiot cat’s head.

  “Mr. MacHugh. You posit that my advice is not even addressed to real problems. You will please assure me that the letters I diligently sort through and consider each week are received from the post?”

  “They are.”

  “Since when has petting that beast become such a fascinating undertaking that you can’t face me as we have this discussion?”

  Dougal turned. “The letters you respond to are received from the post, Miss Friendly. I can assure you of that. I suspect some might be fabricated.”

  That much truth filled her with consternation. If Dougal had told her the bakery had closed up shop, or he was canceling her column, her expression could not have been more perplexed.

  “How do you deduce such a thing?”

  Because Dougal saw every word of every letter, not only the redactions and paraphrases printed in the broadsheets. “You dealt with a sister making calf’s eyes, and he addresses a brother engaged in the same sort of flirtation.”

  “Exactly!” Patience said, brandishing the broadsheet. “Do you know what his advice was?”

  Yes, Dougal knew. “Tell me.”

  “To ignore the whole situation! To do nothing, to pretend obvious displays aren’t taking place, and a marriage at risk for serious damage is fine, fine, just fine. The professor counsels dignity and forbearance.”

  Dougal took the broadsheet from Patience and laid it on his desk. “While you said without a command of all the facts, devising a course of action was difficult. Sound advice.” Which Dougal had not thought to offer.

  “Boring advice,” she retorted. “I should have told that good woman to accost some handsome man under the mistletoe while her husband looks on. The professor would never have come up with such a bold approach to the situation as that, and the readers would have been impressed with the novelty of a woman taking action.”

  Dougal had gone all day without arguing, but that… that… pronouncement required a response.

  “The professor would never have been so daft. Kissing some callow swain to provoke jealousy is the stuff of the very farce you seek to avoid.”

  She pushed her glasses up her nose, marched up to him, and jabbed at his chest with one finger. “A passing indulgence in a venerable holiday tradition, in which you yourself apparently see no harm, is not a farce.”

  “I told Harry to take that damned stuff down.”

  She smiled, looking very much like King George when Dougal had spilled the cream pot all over the desk blotter.

  “Language, Mr. MacHugh.”

  Dougal might have yet salvaged a resp
ectable argument from the moment, but Patience smoothed ink-stained fingers over his neckcloth, turning victory into a rout.

  “Profanity is the crutch of the linguistically uninspired,” she went on, quoting from one of Mrs. Horner’s most popular articles.

  Dougal was inspired—to sheer foolishness. “You think a kiss under the mistletoe is a harmless holiday tradition?” He took Patience by the wrist and led her from the office. “A mere gesture, of no significance? A quaint tradition, nothing more?”

  “A venerable tradition, but quaint, yes. Mr. MacHugh? What are you—Mr. MacHugh?”

  Dougal led her to the front door, to a spot beneath the offending greenery hanging from its red ribbon.

  He yanked both shades down, gave her the space of two heartbeats to register a protest—which he would have heeded, had any been forthcoming—and then he kissed her.

  * * *

  The heavenly choruses that had appeared to the shepherds in Bethlehem might have inspired the same upwelling of joy Patience experienced under the mistletoe with Mr. MacHugh.

  She’d braced herself for an admonitory lecture of a kiss, having every intention of lecturing Mr. MacHugh right back. Instead of that figurative lump of coal, Mr. MacHugh’s kiss was full of sweetness, tenderness, and delicacy.

  He offered her a cinnamon biscuit of a kiss—he even tasted of cinnamon—offer being the operative verb. His attentions were beguilingly gentle and his palms cupping Patience’s cheeks warm and cherishing.

  “I don’t know how—” She didn’t know how to kiss, where to put her hands, what to do, and her ignorance was a terrible burden.

  Mr. MacHugh solved those dilemmas by putting Patience’s hands at his neck and stepping closer.

  “There’s no wrong way to kiss, Patience. A kiss doesn’t have to be constructed with consistent tenses and agreement of gender, number and case. Kissing is for moments beyond words.”

  Mr. MacHugh gave her a treasure trove of such moments when he stroked the backs of his fingers against her cheek, when he cradled her head against his palm, when he traced his tongue over the seam of her lips.

  She retaliated—reciprocated, rather—and his lips parted.

  Oh, gracious. Oh, Happy Christmas, Happy New Year. Where to put a comma—a most excellent premise for a discussion—had nothing, nothing on the complexities of how to turn a kiss into a conversation.

  Patience shifted and accidently trod on Mr. MacHugh’s toes. She stepped back, horrified to have put an end to such a rare delight, and found Mr. MacHugh beaming down at her in the dim foyer. He held out his hand, an invitation, and the festivities recommenced next to the unlit sconce.

  Mr. MacHugh braced his back against the wall, and Patience bundled in for another round of affection, exploration, and—heavenly choruses in the happiest of keys—arousal.

  This was what it felt like to be intimately interested in a man, to desire him, not the secure future his proposal offered, not the protection of his name, or the dream of children to love, but him.

  Patience smoothed her hand over broad shoulders and a muscular back, then sank her fingers into thick, dark hair. Mr. MacHugh’s flavor was spicy, sweet holiday treat, his textures were varied—silky hair, whiskery cheeks, lean angles, soft lips, hard…

  Patience had inspired Mr. MacHugh to arousal as well, to the heat in the blood, the catch in the breath, that signaled two adults susceptible to passion for each other.

  The joy of that, the startling, gleeful satisfaction of it, had Patience leaning against him, all her attention centered where his arousal pressed unapologetically against her belly.

  “Tell me, Patience. D’ye still think advising a kiss beneath the mistletoe is in keeping with Mrs. Horner’s signature common sense?”

  She wiggled, and he sighed. The cloved orange bobbed against her elbow, and Patience could not recall a time when she’d been so utterly, completely, unexpectedly happy—or glad to be wrong.

  * * *

  Dougal could not recall a time when he’d been so utterly, completely, inexcusably dunderheaded—though happily dunderheaded.

  He’d stolen a kiss, and Patience Friendly had stolen his every good intention, not that the lady was accountable for his actions. She was untutored in the art of kissing, but a damned fast learner. Her kisses were as eager as they were inexpert.

  And God above, the passion in her. As dedicated as she was to her writing, as exacting and demanding as she was about the written word, her kisses were ten times more… more.

  “I have an idea,” she said, her hand trailing over Dougal’s chest.

  Perhaps this idea would involve the sofa in his office, in which case Dougal would have to pitch himself out the window into the nearest snowdrift.

  “I’ve always admired your nimble mind, Patience.” And her ink-stained hands, which Dougal wanted to kiss. Her curves were delightful too, as was her vocabulary and her ability to reduce a complex problem to its simplest form.

  “I’ll write holiday couplets for Jake to sing when selling the broadsheets.”

  Dougal made himself focus on assembling her words into a sentence he could comprehend, for the weight of her against him was perdition personified.

  “Holiday couplets?”

  “Yes! The clerks can help with them.” She whirled away, back into the clerk’s office. “You know, ‘God rest ye merry, gentlemen, here’s a broadsheet you can read/Mrs. Horner has a clever solution to your every single need.’”

  “That sounds naughty.” Memorable, though. Very memorable.

  She stopped short and patted Dougal’s cheek. “You’ve been disporting under the mistletoe, Mr. MacHugh. Try to focus on the issue at hand.”

  As he trailed Patience into his office, all Dougal could focus on was the twitch of her skirts. “Couplets aren’t a bad idea, but a whole chorus would be better.”

  “One aimed mostly at the women.” She ensconced herself behind Dougal desk. “Let the professor sing to the men. I also think we should collect up the holiday columns and publish them as a pamphlet, Mrs. Horner’s Help for the Holidays. Has a nice ring to it. Let the printer know now, so ours will be ready to go days ahead of the professor’s feeble reprise. Toss in a bonus column on difficulties surrounding celebration of the new year.”

  One kiss, and the woman was on fire.

  One kiss, and Dougal had made a delicate situation impossible. “Patience, we’re alone here.”

  She extracted a penknife from one of the desk drawers. “I know, else I shouldn’t have kissed you.” She pared a fresh point on his best quill pen, her movements economical and practiced.

  “You kissed me, did you?”

  The penknife paused. “I thought I did a passably good job, for being out of practice.” A hint of vulnerability infused her words. She put the knife away and took a fresh sheet of foolscap.

  Dougal banked the fire, though George’s tail dangled about his head all the while. “If that’s your idea of a passably good kiss, then heaven defend the man who’s on the receiving end of your polished efforts. I’m walking you home, Patience. Now.”

  She brushed the quill across her mouth, and Dougal had to look away.

  “I believe your nerves are overset, Mr. MacHugh. Perhaps it’s best if we do take some air. Based on your discourse regarding Mrs. Wollstonecraft, I’ve arrived at a few insights regarding the dictates of propriety.”

  Yes. Frigid, fresh air. Just the thing. “Mrs. Woll—? Oh, her.”

  “Does George go out?”

  “I’ll come by on my way to services tomorrow and put him out for a bit. He guards the castle at night, or that’s the theory. Mice can do a lot of damage to paper and glue. Your cloak, madam.”

  How could she do this? Maintain an animated focus on literary affairs while Dougal wanted to toss Mrs. Horner’s Corner, the professor, and the entire yuletide problem into the nearest bowl of Christmas punch.

  So he could resume kissing Patience.

  She prattled on for the length of thre
e London streets about how the rules of propriety were a subtle scheme to protect not the young lady, but the fortune that accompanied her hand in marriage. Women of lesser station received much less protection, but their relative poverty also gave them more freedom.

  This theory was just outlandish—and logical—enough that Dougal could pay some attention to it. Not as much attention as he gave to the way Patience spoke with her hands when impassioned by a topic, or to the memory of those hands smoothing down his back.

  Next time, she might venture a bit farther south.

  God help me. There must be no next times.

  “You’re not inclined to argue with me?” she demanded as they turned onto her street.

  “I’ll consider your theories as we take our day of rest tomorrow.” Dougal would spend that day furiously drafting the professor’s last few columns, with apologies to the good Presbyterian pastor in Perthshire, who’d be horrified at such industry on the Sabbath. “Why has nobody lit a single lamp yet on your entire street?” London homeowners were subject to regulations requiring porch lights.

  “We’re thrifty in this neighborhood,” Miss Friendly said as they approached her doorstep. Her building was fashioned so the first floor overhung the doorstep, creating an alcove protected from the elements and, at this gloomy hour, from the view of prying neighbors.

  Dougal wrestled with the realization that he could kiss her again.

  “I’ll wish you a peaceful Sunday,” Patience said, “and look forward to an industrious and lucrative two weeks.”

  Industrious and lucrative. Dougal MacHugh, proprietor of MacHugh and Sons, Publishers, should have applauded those sentiments. They were exactly what he’d envisioned when he’d concocted this ludicrous twelve days of competing broadsheets.

  Patience offered her hand, and Dougal bowed over it. “A peaceful Sabbath to you too. Miss Friendly.”

  Before he could tug her closer, gaze longingly into her eyes, or otherwise make an ass of himself, she ducked through the door and left him alone in the freezing air. Dougal took himself back in the direction of the office, the wind stinging his cheeks and his toes going numb.