Page 55 of The Virtues of Christmas
“I hope they are. That tells me the readers are invested in your column, like a sweepstakes, or a cricket match they’ve bet money on.”
She clambered onto Harry’s stool. “My advice column isn’t a sporting match, Mr. MacHugh. I care about my readers. I genuinely want to help them with life’s more vexing challenges. I’m not writing to entertain, I’m writing to educate, to commiserate.”
Why did she have to turn up philosophical now? “You’re writing to earn coin, Patience.” Dougal stalked into his office and busied himself banking the fire, but a familiar tattoo of feminine boot heels followed him through the door.
“I earn coin for helping people sort out their difficulties,” Patience said, a strident note creeping into her voice. “I’m not a dancing bear, writing farce for the masses. A woman who’d poach on her own sister’s marital preserves is not a joke, Mr. MacHugh.”
Dougal straightened and found himself face-to-face with King George lounging on the mantel. The cat’s expression was superior, even smug.Tell her, laddie. Tell her now.
“I should put George out,” Dougal said, scratching the idiot cat’s head.
“Mr. MacHugh. You posit that my advice is not even addressed to real problems. You will please assure me that the letters I diligently sort through and consider each week are received from the post?”
“They are.”
“Since when has petting that beast become such a fascinating undertaking that you can’t face me as we have this discussion?”
Dougal turned. “The letters you respond to are received from the post, Miss Friendly. I can assure you of that. I suspect some might be fabricated.”
That much truth filled her with consternation. If Dougal had told her the bakery had closed up shop, or he was canceling her column, her expression could not have been more perplexed.
“How do you deduce such a thing?”
Because Dougal saw every word of every letter, not only the redactions and paraphrases printed in the broadsheets. “You dealt with a sister making calf’s eyes, and he addresses a brother engaged in the same sort of flirtation.”
“Exactly!” Patience said, brandishing the broadsheet. “Do you know what his advice was?”
Yes, Dougal knew. “Tell me.”
“To ignore the whole situation! To do nothing, to pretend obvious displays aren’t taking place, and a marriage at risk for serious damage is fine, fine, just fine. The professor counsels dignity and forbearance.”
Dougal took the broadsheet from Patience and laid it on his desk. “While you said without a command of all the facts, devising a course of action was difficult. Sound advice.” Which Dougal had not thought to offer.
“Boring advice,” she retorted. “I should have told that good woman to accost some handsome man under the mistletoe while her husband looks on. The professor would never have come up with such a bold approach to the situation as that, and the readers would have been impressed with the novelty of a woman taking action.”
Dougal had gone all day without arguing, but that… that…pronouncementrequired a response.
“The professor would never have been so daft. Kissing some callow swain to provoke jealousy is the stuff of the very farce you seek to avoid.”
She pushed her glasses up her nose, marched up to him, and jabbed at his chest with one finger. “A passing indulgence in a venerable holiday tradition, in which you yourself apparently see no harm, is not a farce.”
“I told Harry to take that damned stuff down.”
She smiled, looking very much like King George when Dougal had spilled the cream pot all over the desk blotter.
“Language, Mr. MacHugh.”
Dougal might have yet salvaged a respectable argument from the moment, but Patience smoothed ink-stained fingers over his neckcloth, turning victory into a rout.
“Profanity is the crutch of the linguistically uninspired,” she went on, quoting from one of Mrs. Horner’s most popular articles.
Dougal was inspired—to sheer foolishness. “You think a kiss under the mistletoe is a harmless holiday tradition?” He took Patience by the wrist and led her from the office. “A mere gesture, of no significance? A quaint tradition, nothing more?”
“A venerable tradition, but quaint, yes. Mr. MacHugh? What are you—Mr. MacHugh?”
Dougal led her to the front door, to a spot beneath the offending greenery hanging from its red ribbon.
He yanked both shades down, gave her the space of two heartbeats to register a protest—which he would have heeded, had any been forthcoming—and then he kissed her.
