Page 63 of The Virtues of Christmas
Chapter Five
If one thing held Patience Friendly back as an author, it was self-doubt. She quibbled over words, commas, responses, and revisions. Some of that dithering was the writer’s delight in every detail of her craft, but much of it was what happened when nobody appreciated a natural talent, obvious though that talent might be.
“Have I ever thanked you for how much you encourage Harry and the other lads?” Dougal asked as Detwiler bundled into a coat.
“I’m the editor,” Detwiler said. “My job is to correct, improve, and admire. The boys are loyal to MacHugh’s, and they are a bright lot.”
Unlike the publisher. The words hung in the air as Detwiler went about putting the quill pens in order.
“Be off with you, Aloysius. The cab is waiting at the door.” Dougal slid into the seat behind Detwiler’s desk, opened a drawer, and withdrew the professor’s final two columns.
At the top of the first page, the overspending housewife—a newlywed in this version of the letter—silently reproached him.
“You tell that poor woman to throw herself on her husband’s mercy,” Detwiler said, tossing a scarf around his neck. “But when it comes to confessing your own transgressions, you’re not half so forthcoming,professor.”
“You have the correcting part off by heart, old man. The cab driver’s horse is standing out in this weather while you sermonize at me.”
“I do admire you, Dougal, and I fancy Miss Friendly does too. Start there—with all that mutual admiration—and the transgressing takes on a different perspective. If a housewife can admit she’s bought a few too many holiday tokens for her loved ones, can’t you admit that your ambitions for a talented author got away from you?”
Dougal’s ambitions for Patience hadn’t merely got away from him. They’d gone completely to Bedlam.
“That’s the problem,” Dougal said, staring at the words marching across the page. Schoolteacher words, very articulate, but lacking the warmth Patience brought to her advice. “Patience will think all I admire is her writing ability. She’ll think I’ve engaged her affections merely to use her talent for my own ends.”
Detwiler jammed a newsboy’s cap on his head. “You are thinking too hard, being too much the academic fellow and not enough the callow swain. There’s a flask in the bottom drawer. May it bring you the comfort and joy my common sense cannot.”
A gust of cold air wafted in as Detwiler shuffled through the door.
Somewhere in Detwiler’s haranguing, Dougal sensed a kernel of wisdom.
A schoolteacher learned the value of judiciously praising ability and honest effort. He also saw the nearly irreparable harm done when both were ignored for too long. How was a woman to have confidence in her abilities when for her entire upbringing she was trained not to bring notice to herself?
Dougal hurt for Patience and promised himself he’d remedy the harm done to her self-confidence, assuming she spoke to him, wrote for his publications, and gave him the time of day once she learned that the entire Christmas project had been based on a lie.
He read over his columns one last time and put them back in the drawer, then put his feet up on the corner of the desk and indulged in a pastime from his youth: reading the dictionary. For each letter, he read the entry for the first word his gaze landed on.
Admire.Patience was a gifted author, and she had a keen instinct for the publishing business. Dougal admired that about her.
Besotted. Dougal was, in fact, besotted with her energy, her intellect, her kisses, and her determination. She’d made the best of a trying situation, when she might have thrown herself on the charity of distant family, or accepted the proposal of any doddering opportunist who came along.
That thought gave him a very bad moment, indeed.
Callow.Patience would have no interest in the attentions of a naïve, unfledged boy. She deserved a man who’d stand toe-to-toe with her, give as good as he got, and yet, grasp that fostering her confidence would be a delicate undertaking.
Dougal had made it past o-is-for-obligation and onto p-is-for-passion, when a signal truth beamed up at him from the pages of the lexicon.
He owed Patience Friendly for giving him the foundation upon which he could grow his business.
He also loved her.
The realization put something fundamentally right with him, because love was the word that encompassed all he felt for Patience. Affection, desire, respect, protectiveness, friendship, all tied up with a bow defined aslove.
And with that realization, he grasped as well how to unravel the problem he’d created with the fictional Professor Pennypacker.
For Christmas, Dougal would offer Patience all that had been tendered to her previously—a future, a husband, a lover, security, a family of her own. At some point, years and several babies hence, Dougal would find a casual, merry moment over breakfast and mention that he might have penned a column or two as Professor Pennypacker.
Patience would be surprised and amused, and tell him she’d speculated as much—might he please pass the teapot?—and they’d share a laugh as they recalled how well the whole plan had worked.
Dougal continued to leaf through the dictionary, pleased with the reply he’d fashioned to the conundrum of his situation with Patience. He didn’t read any more words, he simply enjoyed the feel of the lexicon in his hands, the sound of each page turning.
