Page 46 of The Virtues of Christmas
She frowned at her half crumpet. “Like some women keep men dangling after them. There are names for women like that, but when a man is flirtatious, we call him a gallant.”
The last of her crumpet met its fate, and an unhappy silence grew.
“Whoever he was,” Dougal said, pushing to his feet, “he was an idiot, and you’re better off without him. I need some tea.”
He left the office not to see to the teapot—the clerks always had one going on the parlor stove in cold weather—but to put distance between himself, Miss Friendly, and thoughts of shared beds. Dougal had no businessspeculatingwhere Patience Friendly was concerned, but he’d long ago given up lecturing his imagination on that score.
As he brought a tea tray back into his office, it struck him that for Miss Friendly, being closeted alone with a man under the age of eighty must be an unusual occurrence. If she’d had a flirtatious swain in tow at some point—a gallant—she wasn’t the daughter of a merchant, schoolteacher, or yeoman.
“Will you answer the letter about the flirting sister?” he asked.
“I can use the letter as a point of departure regarding holiday loneliness and remind the readers that problems admit of solutions when we’re in possession of all the relevant facts. Shall you eat that last half crumpet?”
Dougal set the tray down and regarded the sweet. The part he’d eaten had been delicious. Perfectly baked, between cake and pudding in the center, sweet, spicy, delightful.
“No.”
Miss Friendly reached for it, and Dougal grabbed her wrist. “You’ve had three, madam.”
“It shouldn’t go to waste.”
Someday, Dougal wanted her to look at him the way she regarded that last half crumpet.
“It won’t. Harry!” he called. “Come clear up this mess, please.”
Harry trotted into the office, wrapped the paper around the last half crumpet, and swept the table free of crumbs.
“Anything else, Dougal?”
Before non-family, Harry was supposed to call his employer Mr. MacHugh. “Aye. Send ’round to the chophouse for two plates at half four. The usual portions, and tell the lads they can go home an hour early if the snow keeps up. Fill up the coal buckets before you go and sweep off the steps.”
“Right, Dougal.”
The instant Harry had gone, Miss Friendly was on her feet, hands at her hips. “I can’t believe you just threw away a perfectly good half of a delicious…” Her eyes narrowed. “You saved it for the boy.”
“Nothing edible goes to waste when Harry’s on the premises. Now, about this letter?”
She flounced back to her seat, and then the real arguments began.
* * *
Patience had never spent most of a day at her publisher’s office. The insights gained were fascinating. The pace of the work never let up, with clerks coming and going, errand boys and printer’s assistants adding to the traffic, and packages coming in by the hour.
The bustle was distracting at first, but then it became a sort of music, like a string quartet playing in the background at a Venetian breakfast. Several hours of choosing and discarding letters with Mr. MacHugh also revealed that clerks did not always use refined language, and most of Mr. MacHugh’s staff spoke with thick Highland burrs.
As for MacHugh himself, he was the biggest revelation of all. He was gruff, demanding, tireless, and devoted to his staff.
“You sent your clerks home early,” Patience said, getting up to fetch a cushion from the sofa. “Will you dock their pay?”
“Of course not. They’re paid little enough as it is, and they’d work late if I asked it of them. We should finish up here. We’ve chosen enough letters to last you the first six days, and it’s dark out.”
Patience tossed the cushion onto her chair, then resumed her seat. To blazes with decorum when her backside ached.
“The food was surprisingly good,” she said, surveying the remains of their meal. The chophouse had sent around a hot sandwich, ham and cheese, the cheddar almost melting but not quite, a perfect dash of mustard turning good food into a feast.
At home, dinner would have been soup made from the leftovers of the Sunday joint, but mostly broth, potatoes, and carrots.
“We’re faithful customers at the chophouse,” Mr. MacHugh said, moving the empty plates to the desk. “Shall we be on our way?”
