Page 75 of The Virtues of Christmas
Chapter Seven
Patience’s sitting room bore a faint odor of bacon, despite the day being more than half gone. Other than that, her surroundings were reassuringly genteel. Megan and her sisters had arranged themselves about their hostess—Charlotte and Elizabeth flanking her on the sofa, Megan and Anwen opposite on chairs a trifle underendowed with padding.
“We were concerned,” Megan said, though, in fact, she was relieved. She’d pictured Patience living in a garret, cobwebs for curtains, mice her only company. The town house was in good repair, not a speck of dust to be seen. The rugs were worn, not tattered; the furniture comfortable, rather than elegant.
Patience was managing, in other words.
The lemon cake, alas, had met its fate.
“I’m sorry for causing you worry,” Patience said. “I became absorbed in the writing, and the cat shredded my columns, and one doesn’t…”
“A cat?” Charlotte prompted, peering about.
“King George. Dougal—Mr. MacHugh—brought him all the way from Scotland. Said George was his first employee. Mice like to nibble the glue in book bindings, though what good is a mouser who likes to nibble paper rather than mice? George also has a taste for cheese.”
Anwen put the last slice of lemon cake on a plate and passed it to Patience. “You’ve been taking meals at the publisher’s establishment?”
Patience set the plate down without taking a bite—of her favorite lemon cake?
“Mr. MacHugh was more than happy to keep me fed while I undertook my little scribblings. He escorted me home at the end of the day. He sent Jake out to the main thoroughfares rather than the nearest corner. He let the lads come up with holiday rhymes.”
Even Elizabeth looked concerned at this recitation. “Holiday rhymes, Patience?”
“You know.” She took a breath. “Deck the halls with tales of folly, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la. Mrs. Horner will make it all jolly, fa-la-la-la-la… How I despise that man.”
Elizabeth slipped an arm around Patience’s shoulders and sent her sisters a bewildered look.
Megan was afflicted with poor eyesight, but her hearing was quite good, and Patience did not sound like a woman overcome with loathing for her publisher. She sounded hurt and lost.
“Patience,” Megan said, “what’s wrong? We’re your friends, and we want to help. I thought you respected Mr. MacHugh and despised that professor fellow.”
“They are the same man!” Patience said, bolting to her feet. “Dougal MacHugh was writing the professor’s columns, purposely creating a competition with me, regularly taking the opposite view of matters to stir up interest among the readers.”
Charlotte took a surreptitious bite of the lemon cake. “Did it work?”
“Yes, it worked,” Patience cried. “If I can believe Dougal, the print runs more than doubled, Mrs. Horner is the talk of the pubs, and Jake nearly sells out before he’s reached the end of the street.”
“But,” Megan said, “your trust in Mr. MacHugh is shaken because he concocted this scheme without letting you in on it. Badly done of him.”
“That’s the worst part,” Patience said, turning a pot of anemic violets in the window. “He didn’t bring me into it, but he did bring himself into my affections.”
Well, thank the angels and celestial ministers of grace.
“One suspected you esteemed your publisher,” Elizabeth said, twiddling the fringe of a pillow that might once have been pink. “If you return his sentiments, where’s the problem?”
Truly, spinsterhood had got Elizabeth in its foul clutches. “Theproblem,” Megan said, “is that if he lied about the professor’s columns, is he also lying about his regard for Patience? Patience has little cause to trust the constancy of the courting male.”
Patience flopped to the sofa and shoved the remaining half slice of lemon cake closer to Charlotte’s knee. “I don’t think Dougal would play me false, but then, I thought I was engaged once before. Do you know what the worst, worst part is?”
“Tell us,” Anwen said.
“I love to write. I love being Mrs. Horner. In her shoes, I feel as if all the vicissitudes I’ve endured, the reversals of fortune, even the dratted engagement to his lordship, have some use. Others can benefit from my experiences, and I want that. I don’t have what I was raised to think is indispensable—a fellow to order me about, provide me children, and require my fealty in exchange for a place in his household.”
Great heavens.“Is that what marriage is supposed to be?” Megan asked. Neither she nor any of her sisters had attracted the affections of a suitablepartiin their early Seasons. Uncle Percy was a duke, though, and the Windham family well-fixed. Megan and her sisters could afford to be choosy, though perhaps Patience had a point.
“Marriage can be unsatisfying,” Patience said. “My mother was helpless to interfere when Papa went out and bought a phaeton we didn’t need. Were it not for my grandmama’s thrift and generosity, my fate would have been sorry indeed.”
In that light, a woman’s fealty might not be to the man she married, so much as to the coin he provided. How un-lovely.
