A Rogue in Winter

by Grace Burrowes

  Mr. Sorenson took Joy by the hand and led her to the table. “What happened at university?”

  He held her chair, and she sat, then waited for him to take the place at her elbow. She’d rummaged for cutlery and table napkins and found the kitchen to be orderly and well supplied.

  “Will you say the grace, Mr. Sorenson?”

  “Might you call me Pietr? We are about to break bread and embark on a mutual lament regarding that blessing known as family. Tell me about Hiram, and then I will burden you regarding darling Clara.”

  “Grace first, please. You are the professional, after all.”

  His expression was fleetingly mulish, then his smile was back in place, and he took Joy’s hand. “Very well. Thank you, Lord, for our dinner. But for Your bounty, we would all be much thinner.”

  “That was awful. Let me try.” She liked holding his hand, which was surprisingly callused. She liked inane conversation about a kitten’s spiritual proclivities, and she liked helping to put together simple, substantial fare.

  “For shelter and compassion in the middle of a cold, dark winter, we are grateful,” she said. “For sustenance of many varieties, we are grateful. For a good game of chess, with victory going to the superior force, we are exceedingly grateful. Amen.” Joy kept to herself an additional prayer: If the Almighty could see fit to send at least another half foot of snow, she’d be grateful for that too.

  Oh, and could Hiram please recover from whatever ailed him—in another three weeks or so?

  “Tell me of your brother,” the vicar—Pietr—said. “And I see you found the cider. Excellent stuff, but be warned: It has a Yorkshire kick.”

  “Hiram will like it, then. It’s as if his course of study at Oxford was vice and venery. He learned to sneer there, to make a quip that was as cutting as it was humorous. He took up wagering and, with it, the related skill of neglecting to pay the trades.”

  “He’ll find his way,” Pietr replied. “It can take a few years of racketing about Town, a trip to the sponging house, a friendship shattered on the shoals of insult. Most of us do grow up, though. Eat something, please, or somehow, though she’s off in York, my housekeeper will know we’ve neglected her largesse.”

  Joy took up a slice of the rolled-up bread with all the nuts, currants, spices, and honey inside. She’d smeared soft white cream cheese over both slices so the result was both sweet and rich.

  “Hiram is only reacting to the family circumstances generally,” Joy said. “I am to make an advantageous match, not so much for my own sake as to revive the family fortunes. Mama and Papa act as if Grandpapa is still steering the family ship on a course of ample and reliable revenue. Hiram knows we are in a precarious state and hasn’t our parents’ gift of blithe indifference.”

  “I’m sorry. Ruin has befallen many a respected family in recent years, but that doesn’t make it any easier when it’s your parents being dunned.”

  The situation wanted condolences, though Joy would never have admitted that.

  “I spend all of my time sewing different flounces and borders on my dresses,” she said. “I have redecorated the same bonnet so many times there ought not to be a pheasant feather left in England. Papa says appearances must be maintained, but I do not understand why we must maintain a theater box we seldom use. A coach and four we cannot afford. Six footmen when we can barely keep two busy. Papa says if we practice visible economies, we will no longer have credit, but I say if we had begun practicing economies five years ago, we would not need that credit.”

  She took a sip of her cider to ease the ache that had started in her throat, for her appetite had deserted her.

  “Lord Apollo Bellingham is to save the sinking Danforth ship?”

  “I am to save the sinking ship by marrying Lord Apollo. A time-honored solution.”

  Pietr ate in silence, while Joy wondered why tears threatened. Lord Apollo was not awful. He was fastidious. He was mannerly. He was well liked.

  “A time-honored solution, perhaps,” Pietr said, “but this solution does not honor you. Does Lord Apollo know your favorite book?”

  “According to Lord Apollo, women who read are only slightly less annoying than women who read and insist on discussing what they read. The whole parlor found that observation worth a laugh.” And Joy had smiled along with them.

  “While I,” Pietr said quietly, “find such humor the pathetic bleating of a small man, and don’t rip up at me because I have been honest. To ignore cruelty only encourages its repetition.”

  His tone had taken on an uncharacteristic severity, a hint of anger. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.

  “It’s all my fault,” Joy said. “If I had exerted myself to be more charming after my come out, if I had taken, if I had secured a match… To hear Mama tell it, my wardrobe alone beggared us, and trotting me out for the annual parade has only added to our penury. I owe it to my family to make amends.”

  Pietr picked up her slice of bread and held it out to her. “You demanded an endless supply of new dresses? Insisted your parents host one entertainment after another? Would have only jeweled slippers for your dainty feet?”

  Joy ate, for the food was good, and the conversation good too. Blunt, but good. “I wanted to take over Grandpapa’s business. Papa would not hear of it, and so the enterprise was sold. Our income went with it, and what Papa thought we could manage on, with only a few tenant properties bringing in rent, I do not know.”

  “Did you insist on that coach and four? Insist on sending your brother to university when he could have finished a clerkship by now?”

  “You might have noticed I am not very good at insisting on anything.” She ate her bread and thought about that. What was the price of insisting? Mama got the vapors, Papa retreated into fuming silence, and Hiram went out drinking with his friends.

  But then, on any given day, Mama had the vapors, Papa fumed, and Hiram caroused. What am I doing, planning to marry a man who insults well-read women?

  “Tell me about the cathedral post,” Joy said, “and about your sister, Clara.”

  Pietr put a square of shortbread on Joy’s plate. “First, I will tell you that your family’s circumstances are not your fault. Perhaps bad luck played a larger role than bad judgment, but from no perspective is the situation your fault. That you accept the burden thrust upon you speaks to your nobility of character.”

  Joy finished her cider, which was really quite good, the best she’d ever had. “Is there a but?”

  “But I wish your happiness was of more moment to your family, for it certainly matters to me.”

  “You hardly know me.” And yet, his words, so clipped and fierce, warmed her as the fire in the great stone hearth could not.

  “Do you know how long it has been since I had a real chess match? Not a little exercise in moving pieces about so grown men can avoid admitting to loneliness, but a contest of wits? Do you grasp how absolutely lovely it was to walk in that back door and know I had company waiting for me in the kitchen? Intelligent, charming, and—lest we overlook the obvious—pretty company? You exude calm practicality, you are patient with and protective of your spoiled whelp of a brother, and I wish you had not braided your hair.”

  Joy touched her braids, affixed to her head in a simple coronet. “My hair?”

  Pietr finished his slice of holiday bread, or whatever it was. “Suffice it to say, you are not a pawn to be sacrificed for the sake of the Danforth army. We should take some of this fare up to Hiram.”

  Pietr Sorenson was lonely. Despite his own calm practicality, kind heart, and genuine vocation, he was lonely. The realization comforted Joy in some odd way.

  “We will see to Hiram when we are finished,” Joy said. “Lord knows, he’s willing to bellow for attention when he wants it. Tell me of your family and their ambitions for you.”

  Pietr chewed his shortbread into oblivion. Like the cats, he had the gift of conveying that he was annoyed without saying a word.

  “Clara i
s concerned for my happiness.”

  “Of course she is. Tell me the rest of it.”

  He sighed as he peered into his empty tankard. He regarded the felines now curled side by side on the hearth with the kitten heaped atop them.

  “Clara is very good at insisting.”

  “I don’t know as I’d like her.”

  His smile was bleak. “I’m not sure I like her either, but with family, liking sometimes doesn’t come into it. Let’s split another slice of bread, shall we? Then if you would be so good as to tidy up, I’ll shovel the path to the barn one last time for the night.”

  Anybody who knew him would probably say that Pietr Sorenson was an honest man. The honest man had just changed the subject with all the grace of a beer wagon turning on a crowded street. Joy allowed him that courtesy, because he was right: With family, liking didn’t much matter, but duty did.

  Alas, duty to family mattered a very great deal.

  Clara was good at insisting, so good that Pietr wondered if she didn’t frequently insist herself into awkward corners. She’d insisted that she and the baron would suit, for example, though the union of two strong-willed, proud people had proven a daunting challenge to them both.

  She had insisted that if Pietr took a post in Greater Dungheap, Yorkshire, she would never visit him there. The village—usually referred to as Rothton, when referred to by name at all—was as pretty a hamlet as any to be found in England, and yet, Clara had never come any closer to Pietr’s abode than York itself, and then only twice.

  “My sibling has a knack for passionate, unrelenting argument,” Pietr said as Joy sliced them off another thick serving of holiday bread. “She puts bulldogs to shame, but that doesn’t mean she’s wrong. I did not spend years studying biblical symbolism just to fritter away my seasons judging pie contests. She is right about that much, at least.”

  Joy set the knife in the sink. “Even a blind dove finds the occasional pea?”

  “Clara is no dove. She has been sermonizing at me since I went up to university. I am to make the world a better place, bring glory to the Sorenson name—humble glory, of course—and do well for myself at the same time. Once I’d chosen the Church, she made her variety of peace with my decision, but my prospects have not improved to her liking.”

  Joy wrapped the loaf in linen and tucked it into the bread box, then slathered the slice with cream cheese. Watching her putter in Pietr’s kitchen provoked an ache in his chest to go with the ache behind his falls.

  All this aching was pointless, of course, but still… Was it so very wrong to have enjoyed years of peaceful service here on the edge of the moor? To have cherished the memory of a good, dear woman taken too soon?

  “What of your sister’s ambitions?” Joy asked, bringing the bread to the table and passing Pietr the larger half of the slice. “How has she spent her time when she’s not haranguing you? More cider?”

  “Two fingers will do.” One went carefully with the local cider. Never on an empty stomach, never more than a couple of servings, or the next morning became an ordeal.

  Joy poured the cider into his tankard, took a sip, then set the drink beside his plate and resumed her seat at his elbow. The moment was insignificant, but also domestic, intimate. Another reason to ache.

  “Clara has three children in her nursery. Two boys and a girl, and they are perfectly well behaved. I fear she’d rather have a wayward horde to bring to order, but the children are sweet and clever and little trouble. I visit them every other year, and they grow taller without becoming more rebellious.”

  “And her husband?”

  “He is already quite tall enough.”

  Joy made a face. “Is he perfectly well behaved?”

  “They seem to have reached an accommodation. His lordship tends to his acres and commercial interests, and Clara is the gracious hostess and social partner such a man needs. He does not suffer her to intrude into his business affairs, and she rules supreme at home.”

  Joy took a bite of her bread. “Many couples operate in separate spheres.” She spoke as if reciting a little homily, a reminder to herself not to expect too much from a husband.

  “What is the point of marrying if one’s spouse is to be an intimate in only the biological sense? I lack the fortitude to consign myself to such a union, but then, I am not my sister.”

  Joy took another sip of his cider. “To what extent is your sister hectoring you because her husband won’t put up with her meddling and her children offer her little challenge? To what extent is she managing you because you are one of few pieces still in play on her board? Her children are not old enough to leave the nursery. Her husband has lowered the marital portcullis. I gather your parents are no longer extant, and your cousins reside in another country. She is a queen with very few pawns.”

  Clara would like being referred to as a queen, while Pietr did not like being referred to as a pawn.

  “That I want to argue with you suggests you have put your finger on a difficult truth. Clara is my only sibling and my only immediate family. I alienate her at my peril, and yet, you are also correct: She is a managing woman by nature, and I am available to be managed.”

  Why had he allowed that? When had he made the decision to capitulate to Clara’s incessant dunning? If he became the Archbishop of York, would she lament that he was not yet Archbishop of Canterbury?

  “You aren’t eating your bread,” Joy said. “I was hungrier than I realized, and this is delicious fare.”

  Simple fare, but good. “My housekeeper likes to bake, and I like to eat. It’s a good system, but if I’m not to acquire the dimensions of a plow horse, I’d best do some shoveling.” Then too, another dose of cold air was in order. Watching Joy eat with her fingers and purloin sips of cider was playing havoc with Pietr’s imagination.

  “I will tidy up and make a tray for Hiram. He cannot sleep forever.” She rose and gathered the plates, as if a woman intending to marry into a titled family regularly did duty as a scullery maid.

  “Thank you,” Pietr said. “For the company, for the conversation, for everything.” For making him think, for making him see Clara’s situation in a different light. A more complicated light and probably more accurate too.

  “Nobody will steal the snow, Pietr. You need not shovel the whole path tonight. I’ll wait for you to come in before I go up to the study.”

  “It’s a short path, and I’ve kept after it.” Some symbolism lay in that pronouncement, but Pietr was too muddled and aching to parse it out.

  He hung a lantern on the lamppost at the back door, the light revealing that the footsteps he’d made earlier were already drifted over with new snow. He shoveled off the back terrace, shoveled the path to the barn, and for good measure shoveled the path to the spring house as well, though the kitchen had a pump, and nobody actually made much use of the spring house.

  All that shoveling moved a lot of snow, but did nothing to ease a profound and pointless desire for Joy Danforth. She was to make a sacrificial marriage, though she probably did not use that term even in the privacy of her thoughts.

  A marriage to a man who ridiculed literate women.

  “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,” Pietr muttered, propping the shovel by the back door. He unhooked the lantern, stomped the snow from his boots, and made a decision.

  “You are serious about your shoveling,” Joy said, draping a towel over a wooden tray that held a teapot, sweets, an apple, and some cheese. “I watched you. You know what you’re about.”

  “Shoveling snow can be meditative. Shall I carry that tray upstairs?”

  “Thank you.” She unfolded the blanket she’d been wearing in the study and draped it around her shoulders. “I don’t want to leave this cozy kitchen.”

  “But you are a dutiful sister, and so up to the study you will go. I will look in on the patient with you and check on the fires in the bedrooms.”

  Pietr did not want to leave the kitchen either, but if he remained here w
ith her, he’d tease from her more details of her situation with Lord Apollo. Vicars learned to extract confessions from the unsuspecting, if not the unwilling.

  And then Pietr would torture himself with the information Joy revealed. He did not know Lord Apollo, but he knew of him. Lord Apollo’s papa was a marquess, an exalted personage indeed, and Apollo was the spare, two years behind an unmarried brother. Joy Danforth might well become a marchioness one day, and a rural vicar had no business wishing her anything but great happiness as she turned her feet onto that path.

  She banked coals that had already been thoroughly covered in ashes and pushed to the back of the hearth, then preceded Pietr up the steps. The sconces were lit, though Pietr knew his way through the house in pitch darkness.

  When they reached the chilly foyer, he set the tray on the sideboard. “May I ask you to tarry with me for a moment, Joy?”

  “You may.” She rubbed the condensation from the window and peered out across the green. “The inn looks so cozy, but I can’t see the path anymore.”

  “Joy?”

  She turned a puzzled expression on him. “Pietr?”

  “I would like to give you something, but only if you can accept it as a gift rather than endure it as a presumption.”

  “This sounds serious.”

  And Pietr had not meant to be serious. “I would like to kiss you. I would like to offer a gesture of esteem, of masculine regard, but not if you will be offended.”

  Her brows knit, and he wanted to trace them with his nose.

  “I will not be offended.”

  “You must not also be forbearing, Joy. Don’t tolerate a kiss from me. I want you to enjoy it, to enjoy yourself. I want you to have one moment for pleasure. You deserve at least that, and—”

  She put her fingers to his lips. “I understand.”

  He wrapped her hand in his. “You do?”