Page 34 of The Virtues of Christmas
Michael Brenner’s image came to mind as Henrietta had last seen him. He’d followed her out to the drive at Inglemere, bowed over her hand in parting, and remained bare-headed at the foot of his front steps, his hair whipping in the winter breeze as the coach had taken off down the drive.
He’d looked lonely. Papa had looked lonely when Henrietta had packed up her coach and taken herself to Thad’s house. Her next stop would be Philip’s, after Christmas, but then…
Would Michael still be at Inglemere when the new year came?
“Has Thad ever broken your heart?” Henrietta asked.
Visiting with Isabel wasn’t so different from visiting with other courtesans. Henrietta had somehow concluded that decent women sat about discussing the weather or recipes for tisanes rather than men and teething babies.
Courtesans had all too many babies, and all too many men.
“He came close,” Isabel said, impaling the second orange with its first clove. “The year after we were married, I thought I was carrying, though it came to nothing, and that unnerved him. He got a bit too close to Penelope Dortmund, who’d been widowed the year before. She had the knack of grieving ever so prettily.”
Henrietta had not been invited to her younger brother’s wedding or any of the christenings. “What happened?”
Isabel jabbed three more cloves into the orange. “I saw them in the livery, literally rolling in the hay, though Thad hadn’t got under her skirts yet. When he came home, I plucked a bit of hay from his hair and told him only a very foolish man would sleep beside one woman while playing her false with another. He barely tipped his hat to the widow after that.”
“Youforgavehim?”
Isabel set the orange aside and took another from the bowl, a perfectly ripe fruit. She tore a section of peel off, then another.
“Have you seen Izzy’s cradle, Henrietta?”
“It’s gorgeous.” The cradle was made of polished oak—a heavy, durable wood that wasn’t easy to work with. The oak was carved with flowers, a rabbit, a kitten, and the wordsMama and Papa Will Always Love You.
Henrietta couldn’t stand to touch it. Another one very much like it lay in the squire’s attics.
“Thad made that cradle. Stayed up late, worked on Sundays. He said it wasn’t labor, it was love for the child I carried that sent him out to his woodshop. He built this house for us. He puts food on my table and coal in my hearth. He’s not perfect, but neither am I. The widow wanted a stolen moment, but Thad asked me for my entire future. For better or for worse means for better or for worse.”
She passed Henrietta a section of orange, then took one for herself.
“You love each other.” The words hurt.
“Mostly. We used to argue more than we do now. Izzy helps. Thad adores that child.”
The baby was fast asleep, an innocent, endlessly lovable little being who years from now might roll in the hay with the wrong man, or disappoint her papa in a fit of indignation. Henrietta hugged the baby close, and that, of course, woke the child.
“She’ll be hungry,” Isabel said, wiping her fingers on a towel. “Give her to me, and you can finish this orange. So will you go to services with us on Sunday?”
Isabel put the child to the breast while Henrietta took up stabbing cloves into the thick rind of the orange.
“I don’t know about attending services. I think so. I’ll scandalize the entire congregation.”
“If they can’t muster a bit of warm-heartedness at Christmas, then they’re not much of a congregation, are they?”
“I wasn’t much of a courtesan,” Henrietta said, wondering why she’d taken ten years to realize this. “Papa never bade me come home, I was ruined, and I simply didn’t know what else to do.” And there Beltram had been, just full of suggestions and bank drafts, when it was clear that a life in service would mean more Beltrams who wouldn’t bother to pay for the favors they sought.
Henrietta was abruptly glad Michael had pitched the bloody book into the fire.
“You’re home now,” Isabel said. “That’s a start. I didn’t realize Thad had taken the sleigh over to Philip’s.”
Henrietta went to the window, because the rhythmic jingle of bells heralded a conveyance coming up the drive.
Not Michael.
“It’s Papa, driving himself, and both Thad and Philip are with him. He’ll catch his death if he doesn’t wear a scarf in this weather.”
Papa was coming to call at a house where Henrietta dwelled. She did not know what to feel, and now, unlike the past ten years, her feelings mattered. Did she want to see her father when he was being such a pestilential old curmudgeon?
