Chapter 1 #2
He wasn’t in this all-wrong room. A stuffed horse-ish creature on wheels sat near the window, complete with what looked like real horsehair for the mane and tail. A card table was positioned under the other window, sporting a chess set ready for play.
Where to put the…? Joshua draped the girl into a wing chair. She curled up immediately, her cheeks working as if her thumb were in her mouth.
Bare feet, of all the ridiculous… “About Mr. Burdette. If he’s asleep at this hour, I suggest you do not disturb him. Morning will arrive in due course, and that’s soon enough to resolve our misunderstandings. I will be happy with any guest room that boasts a fire.”
The itching was subsiding, leaving Joshua with cold feet in damp, possibly ruined, boots.
“Mr. Burdette enjoys the eternal slumber of the just. You might as well have a seat. I was about to put the kettle on.”
Mrs. Burdette spared the child one look that held both affection and despair, then decamped.
Tea was better than nothing. A warm dry sofa was a great improvement over numbing cold and frozen extremities. Joshua removed his greatcoat and tucked it around the dozing child, taking care to cover those impossibly vulnerable little feet.
He sat to remove his boots and had to pause—sitting—to clear his head.
“A bit muzzy.” He removed both boots and his wool stockings, though that effort left him muzzier still.
The carpeted floor was frigid, of course, so he pulled a hassock over to the sofa, unfolded the knitted blanket hanging over the back of the second wing chair, and tried to make five feet of blanket suffice for more than six feet of chilly man.
As a younger fellow, he might have found the situation comical. Perhaps in the morning, he’d be able to smile about it.
Not likely. He hadn’t done much smiling for the past year.
He gave up on the hassock idea, curled up in a corner of the sofa, and got as much of himself under the blanket as he could manage.
The last thought in his mind before sleep crashed over him like an avalanche was that putting Grandpapa’s desk in an alcove was an abomination against the natural order, as any sensible body ought to have known.
Hope knew the look of a person coping on no sleep, no resources, and no joy.
Mr. Penrose, despite his height and rudeness, fit the description.
The shadows under his eyes looked like bruises, his cheekbones were too prominent, and his fair hair was in need of a trim.
His tailoring was excellent, but everything from his greatcoat to his boots was looser than it should have been.
Hope’s guest enunciated carefully, as if making thoughts audible took concentration when he yearned only for silence.
Hope knew that yearning. Sometimes, when Holly could not stop chattering, silence loomed as the only boon worth begging for.
Mr. Penrose craved quiet. Hope knew that about him instinctively, and she knew he’d been telling the truth about tromping London’s streets.
A fine pair of boots had suffered a soaking in the snow, something only a desperate or heedless man would have allowed.
“If he even is Joshua Penrose,” Hope muttered.
The pantry mouser opened his eyes and yawned.
He was a fat-headed black-and-white specimen who wore a perpetual scowl that hid a sweet nature.
Holly had named him Heifer, despite being well aware that a heifer was a female bovine.
When Holly made up her mind, the celestial powers could not unmake it.
Much like her father.
Hope lowered the pot swing so the kettle was closer to the coals and considered whether she could spare some cheese toast. The cat was passionately fond of cheese. So was Holly.
“This fellow might be impersonating Mr. Penrose.” Hope had to admit that he had a Penrose sort of beak, if the portrait in the foyer was any indication.
The solicitors said the old fellow in the foyer had been a banker of some renown in the last century.
There was still a financial institution carrying the Penrose name.
“Joshua Penrose has waited quite a while to run his rig, if he’s an impostor.”
People grew desperate as the holidays approached. The year’s accounts would soon have to be paid, the worst of the cold still lay ahead, and in many trades, winter wages were hard to come by.
“A few slices won’t matter.” Hope warmed the teapot and filled it half full, then measured out exactly half a pot’s worth of tea from the nearly empty drawer. While the tea steeped, she made two bread-and-cheese sandwiches and warmed them carefully on Edwin’s sandwich toaster.
His contraption was two flat pieces of one-inch wire mesh hooked together with a toasting fork for the handle.
Edwin had been certain he’d invented every kitchen maid’s fondest dream, but nobody had been willing to pay for the idea.
Why not just use the toasting fork for its intended purpose?
One slice at a time was plenty efficient enough.
The pantry boasted some shortbread, courtesy of Mrs. Ingleby, but Hope saved that for Holly. With Christmas around the corner, Holly was trying so hard to be good, and mostly succeeding.
Hope assembled the tea tray—her last two matching cups, as it happened. Half a cream pitcher of milk—no cream had graced the kitchen since Edwin’s demise—and a small bowl of irregularly shaped sugar lumps.
The cat gave her a reproving look when she lifted the tray, which was just too rubbishing bad.
“Eat a mouse, you fraud.” Heifer hadn’t caught a mouse in weeks, probably because that would require leaving the warmth of the hearth and actually doing some work.
He sat up tall and wrapped his tail about his paws, very much on his injured dignity.
“Drat you.” Hope tore a tiny crumb of melted cheese from the corner of a sandwich and dropped it on the hearth at Heifer’s paws. He fell to, and without so much as a hint of thanks.
Hope left him to it—that might be the last cheese Heifer enjoyed for quite some time—and braved the frigid house and shadowed corridors. Candles were dear, coal was dear, everything was dear.
Some memories were dear, and selling this house would make it harder to hold on to them.
But much easier to keep body and soul together. Hope balanced the tray on her hip, lifted the latch on the study door, and executed the half-sidling maneuver that opened the door to the least degree necessary for the shortest possible time.
Warmth was very dear.
“I’ve brought…”
Holly was fast asleep under acres of toasty wool, courtesy of Mr. Penrose’s caped greatcoat. He’d taken care to cover her feet and to tuck the coat into the creases of the cushions lest Holly awake shivering.
Mr. Penrose himself was curled against the corner of the sofa, half slouching, arms folded, his bare feet peeking out from beneath Edwin’s imagining afghan. Some people had considering caps to foster productive thoughts. Edwin had wrapped himself in an imagining afghan.
Hope touched the top of one of those big feet before propriety could stifle maternal pragmatism. The only thing worse than an unwanted houseguest at the holidays was an unwell unwanted house guest.
Ice-cold feet. He truly had walked half the length of London. Would a swindler bother to do that? Would he surrender his coat to keep a child warm?
She built up the fire, held her black shawl up before the leaping blaze, and when the wool was warm, wrapped it around those two large, pale feet. Mr. Penrose was by no means any sort of angel, but he was a stranger, and he was exhausted and hungry.
Even for the sake of respectability, Hope would not turn him away in the middle of a cold, dark, snowy night.