Page 47 of The Virtues of Christmas
“You needn’t walk me home, Mr. MacHugh.”
He leaned back against the desk, arms folded across his chest. At some point, he’d taken off his coat, and Patience had taken off her boots.
A far cry from the propriety with which she’d been raised, but propriety did not keep the coal bins full.
“Miss Friendly, I conceded to you on the matter of the child who’d pinched horehound candy from the sweet shop. I capitulated regarding the mother-in-law’s awful bread pudding. I compromised regarding the best way to scent tapers without spending a fortune, but I will not allow a woman in my employ to walk alone on the streets of London at night.”
The snow had stopped, but slippery footing was not the worst that could befall a solitary woman on London’s streets, especially at night. Poor women took their chances, while wealthy women never went anywhere unescorted.
Patience would never be wealthy again. “Can’t you send Harry with me?”
“Can’t you accept my company for the distance of a few streets? You’ve spent the better part of a day with me, and we didn’t come to blows.”
“A near thing, and only because I disapprove of violence.”
“You disapprove of me,” he said, pushing away from the desk. “Get your boots on, and I’ll see to it you’re home safe in a half hour. I’ll send Harry around to fetch the first column from you tomorrow afternoon.”
He passed her the boots, which needed new heels, but kept her feet reasonably dry over short distances. The temptation to argue was strong, also unwise. Patience put her boots on, then wrapped herself in her cloak and scarf and let Mr. MacHugh accompany her to the front stoop.
Down near the corner, some elderly soul shuffled along, bent against the bitter breeze, but the thoroughfare was otherwise deserted.
“Let’s be off,” Mr. MacHugh said. “A bit of fresh air is all well and good, but I don’t fancy a lung fever when the work is piling up.” He tucked Patience’s hand around his arm and set off at a surprisingly considerate pace, given the difference in their heights.
Fatigue descended as they walked along, and in the privacy of her thoughts, Patience was grateful for Mr. MacHugh’s presence. The streets were unsafe for a woman traveling by herself at this hour.
And they were lonely.
After all the bickering, discussing, arguing, and debating, the silence of the December night was profound. The new snow muffled even church bells, and the smell—coal smoke on a frigid breeze—was desolate.
They had turned onto Patience’s street when she broke the silence.
“I don’t disapprove of you.”
Mr. MacHugh made a disparaging noise between a snort and a huff.
“I don’t,” Patience went on. “I might not… That is to say, I don’t know what todowith you. I was not raised to be in anybody’s employment. I don’t care for it, but I don’t care to rely on charity either.”
“You’d rather be idle?”
His curiosity was genuine, not a taunt aimed at a class of society for which Mr. MacHugh had little respect. At least he hadn’t asked if she’d rather be married.
“I’d rather be the employer, if you must know. I cannot abide somebody telling me what to do, presuming to know what’s best for me, or how I ought to go on.”
“Especially not a man?”
“Not anybody.”
Patience braced herself for a lecture on the way of the world, the dictates of the Almighty, nature’s laws, and other masculine flights of self-importance. If men were so infernally smart, competent, and ideally suited to ordering creation, then why was most of the Continent constantly at war, and why hadn’t men been chosen to endure the agony of childbirth?
“I don’t care for being told what to do myself,” Mr. MacHugh said. “There are sheep and there are shepherds. I’m not a sheep, and I’m not convinced gender matters the way the preacher claims it does, but that’s just a former schoolteacher’s point of view.”
They’d reached Patience’s doorstep, the only one on her side of the street with a lamp lit.
“You were a schoolteacher, Mr. MacHugh?”
“Aye, and still would be, except my grandfather left me some means. In the schoolroom, I saw what a difference knowledge could make to a receptive mind. I must admit small boys are not always ideal students, while little girls on the whole struck me as cleverer than the boys, more eager for knowledge. I had hoped that as a publisher, I might be able to do more to make knowledge available to receptive minds.”
Mr. MacHugh’s high-crowned hat gave him extra height in addition to what nature had bestowed, and yet, a hint of the small boy remained in his gaze as he studied the lamp post.
