Page 4 of The Virtues of Christmas
Which was not good at all.
“I admire honesty, courage, learning, and determination.”Says the man bent on deceiving a woman who’s done nothing to deserve the slight.“What about you?”
She tore off a chunk of bread, there being no serrated knife on the table. “Honesty is too often counted a virtue, even when it causes an unkind result, and education is largely a privilege of wealthy men. I value compassion, tolerance, and humor. Determination has a place, provided it’s tempered by wisdom. Would you please pass the butter?”
A lady would have waited until somebody produced the proper sort of bread knife and recalled to pass her the butter rather than make do and speak up. Such ladies likely endured much needless hunger and unbuttered bread.
“I’ll trade you,” Michael said, passing over the butter and appropriating the rest of the loaf. “Where do you suppose your companion has got off to?”
Miss Whitlow dabbed a generous portion of butter onto her bread, considered the result, then added more.
“Lucille is exhausted from packing up my household, getting the new tenant settled, and organizing my remove to Oxfordshire. I suspect the poor dear is fast asleep on the sofa in your parlor. I can fetch her down here, if you would rather we have a third at the table.”
She turned the same gaze on him she’d treated the innkeeper to: feline, amused, and subtly challenging. No wonder princes and dukes had vied for her favors.
“I’m sure, Miss Whitlow, that my virtue, or what’s left of it, is safe in your hands. Unless you’re concerned that my behavior will transgress the bounds of your tolerance, we can allow Lucille her rest.”
She popped a bite of bread into her mouth. “Your virtue, and the virtue of the male of the species generally, is safe from my predation. I’ve retired from that game, not that I ever had to stalk the poor, defenseless male. Behave how you please, provided you don’t expect me to allow the soup to get cold.”
Henrietta Whitlow had retired?Michael belonged to several clubs, though not the loftiest or the most expensive. He owned gaming enterprises among other businesses, rubbed shoulders with journalists and Bow Street runners, and remained current on all the gossip as a matter of business necessity.
Also, old habit, and he’d heard nothing of her retirement. “Am I the first to learn of this decision?” He’d known she was journeying to Oxford for the holidays, as she had every year for the past five, but not that she’d removed from the capital entirely.
She gestured dismissively with the buttered bread. “My comings and goings are hardly news. The soup is good, compared to some I’ve had. Mr. Murphy apparently respects your custom.”
“Or my coin,” Michael replied, taking a spoonful of steamy beef broth. “May I ask what precipitated your decision to quit London?”
He ought not to have inquired. The question was personal as hell, and a criminal’s professional detachment was integral to achieving Michael’s objective.
“I’m not simply quitting London, my lord, I’m quitting my profession. My reasons are personal, though boredom figured prominently among them.”
She took a dainty spoonful of soup, when Michael wanted to salute her with his drink. She’d been bored by the amatory attentions of aristocrats and nabobs? Bored by the loveliest jewelry the Ludgate goldsmiths had on offer? Even the king had expressed an interest in furthering his acquaintance with Henrietta Whitlow, without apparent result.
On behalf of the male gender, Michael acknowledged a set-down all the more devastating for being offered with casual humor.
“Maybe you aren’t bored so much as angry,” he suggested.
Miss Whitlow drained her toddy. “My upbringing was such that my temper is seldom in evidence. I do find it tedious when a man who barely knows me presumes to tell me what sentiment holds sway over my heart. Boredom and I are intimately acquainted, my lord. I try to keep my distance from anger.”
She wrinkled her nose at the dregs in her cup.
Michael suspected Henrietta Whitlow’s temper could cinder London, if she ever cut loose, and every red-blooded male over the age of fourteen would line up to admire the spectacle at peril to his own continued existence.
Men were idiots, as Michael’s four sisters constantly reminded him. “Shall I order more toddies?”
“The tea should be along shortly, and my appreciation for a hot, sweet cup of pure gunpowder rivals my love of books.”
Another surprise. “Books?”
“You know,” she said, dipping her buttered bread into her soup. “Pages, printing, knowledge, and whacking good stories. Growing up, my brothers were given free run of my father’s library. I was limited to sermons, lest my feeble female brain become overheated with Mr. Crusoe’s adventures. I’ll have the rest of the bread, if you don’t care for it.”
An Irishman treasured fresh bread and butter almost as much as he favored a good ale. Michael passed her the remains of the loaf.
“What’s your favorite book?”
As they consumed their meal, Miss Whitlow gave up a small clue to her soul: She knew her literature, as did Michael. He’d come late to his letters and had studied learned tomes as a way to compensate for a lack of education. Henrietta Whitlow had a passion for books that had probably stood her in good stead among Oxford graduates and comforted her on those occasions when the Oxford graduates had proven poor company.
The maid arrived to clear the plates, a half-grown boy on her heels bearing a tray.
