Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people and also to Heifer!”
Joshua ignored the daft voice in his head and clung to sleep with the determination of the utterly weary. If he awoke, he’d have to move, and think, and—worst of all—leave the blessed, blessed warmth of covers gently scented with balsam.
Was there ever a more pleasing, soothing scent?
“In this day in the city of London,” the voice trumpeted on, “Mama is making breakfast, and unto us fried toast and bacon will be given!”
Something soft swatted Joshua’s temple.
“I am the angel of the kitchen. You aren’t supposed to ignore me.”
He opened gritty eyes and beheld the girl—Hollister Ann of zasperation fame—standing on the rug.
She had what looked like an old table linen wrapped around her shoulders, possibly in dubious homage to angel wings.
In her hand was a copper soup ladle. She wore thick slippers, and equally sturdy black wool stockings covered her legs.
“I am the troll of the sofa,” Joshua growled, “and I am asleep. I eat noisy little girls for breakfast.” Joshua wasn’t sure what fried toast was, but the idea of bacon made his belly rumble.
Then too, nature was calling him rather urgently.
“You are not a troll. You are a stranger. Mama says you have come from a land far away. Did you bring gold, frankincense, or more?”
“Myrrh. It’s a tree sap with medicinal properties, and no, I did not. I brought a satchel.”
The child reached around the end of the sofa and presented Joshua with his kit. “Mama says there’s more snow on the way, and somebody had best clean your boots before they are ruined. I don’t know how to clean boots.”
Joshua did. “Please tell your mother that I will present myself in the kitchen posthaste, but must make my morning ablutions first.”
Holly considered his now dry and water-stained boots. “You want to have a wash?”
“Among other things.”
“The privy is at the foot of the garden. Mama says that’s where all the best privies are found. We wash in the kitchen because that’s the only other warm place in the house. Bye!”
She tapped him gently on the shoulder with her soup ladle and whirled out the door.
Joshua rose and earned aches and pains for his effort. His shoulders were sore, his hips positively creaky, and his left knee—he’d fallen on some slippery cobbles—was doubtless sporting a bruise.
The snow hadn’t stopped but had slowed to flurries drifting down from a low, dark sky. The winter sky in London was always dark, something Joshua hadn’t missed. The New World had forests in unimaginable abundance and was less dependent on coal as a result.
For now.
Joshua pulled on his abused boots and made the trek to the privy. The garden itself was draped in a foot of snow, the sundial sporting a conical cap of white. The crushed-shell paths were mere indications between the remains of herbaceous borders bowed down with snow.
Frigid. Bleak. He’d described the garden in detail to Maureen, but not in its present state. The bluebells carefully nurtured in the dappled shade of the aspen, the roses climbing the east-facing wall, the Holland bulbs announcing spring…
His feet were already cold again by the time he returned to the house.
He nonetheless took a cursory tour of the lower floor and found Grandpapa’s desk in the alcove.
The great icon of Penrose family industry sat exposed to the dust and mice without so much as a linen shroud to mourn its lowered station.
Were Joshua inclined to moods, he’d say the sight of that beautiful, venerable testament to human skill and workmanship collecting dust in a cold corner annoyed him.
Fortunately, he was too tired, still, to be annoyed. Had been too tired since Maureen’s passing. He presented himself in the kitchen, lured by the scent of frying bacon.
“We’ll need a path shoveled clear along the garden walkway,” Joshua said, relishing the warmth to be found nearest the enormous stone hearth. “More snow on the way means the job will only get harder.”
Mrs. Burdette had donned a half-length white apron over her blue dress. She turned the bacon with the deft skill of an accomplished cook. “The shovel is in the gardener’s shed. Good morning, Mr. Penrose. I hope you slept well.”
He deserved that. Maureen would have chided him for his surly manners—and then kissed him out of them. “Good morning.” Because the child was present and listening to every word, Joshua bestirred himself to try. “The bacon smells wonderful.”
“Doesn’t it, though? That disgrace to the feline species on the hearth is Heifer. He will pester you without end if you give him so much as a crumb. Holly spoils him shamelessly.”
“So does Mama,” Holly said, gathering her wings about her like a shawl and perching on the raised hearth. “Papa spoiled him most of all, and Heifer is still mad that Papa isn’t here.”
Holly was doubtless angry at her father for leaving the earthly realm. Joshua did not begrudge the child one iota of her outrage.
The cat had the black-and-white coat pattern of the pied cattle of the Low Countries and Northern Germany. His purr could be heard across the kitchen, and his dignity had gone begging as soon as Holly commenced scratching his head.
“I don’t care for cats in the normal course.”
“Then you must enjoy having mice in your pantries,” Mrs. Burdette replied.
“Heifer isn’t much of a mouser, but even having him on the premises serves as a deterrent to rodents.
” She shifted her attention to a second skillet, where pieces of bread dipped in some sort of batter were frying.
“Holly, you must wash your hands before you come to the table.”
They were apparently to eat in the kitchen. A workbasket suggested Mrs. Burdette did her mending in here, and a stack of books on the scarred table hinted that the kitchen was doing extra service as a schoolroom.
Why didn’t Hollister Ann have a governess? Where were the footmen and maids? And what had become of old Chumley?
“I could do with a basin and towel myself,” Joshua said, though the request felt awkward. The basins were in the butler’s pantry, the towels in the laundry. “Why don’t I see to that?”
“Good idea,” Mrs. Burdette said. “Holly would take it very much amiss if I burned her fried toast, and Heifer would not speak to me until spring if I overcooked the bacon.”
The lady, in other words, was busy.
Joshua collected a basin, poured some hot water into it from the kettle on the hob, and added cold water from a pitcher in the sink. He retreated to the laundry—a frigid, gloomy space that nonetheless had towels and a few tins of soap—and set about getting clean before his teeth started chattering.
A near thing, though not entirely unpleasant. Getting clean was always a pleasure, and even the soap smelled of balsam.
By the time he returned to the kitchen, his brain had started working, and the evidence all around him had coalesced into a conclusion: Mrs. Burdette and her angel-in-training were squatting in his house because the lady was in want of coin.
This reality penetrated his thinking as it hadn’t the previous night.
Of course, the average confidence trickster was short of the ready, but one didn’t associate frying bacon and motherhood with confidence tricksters.
If Mrs. Burdette was a lady, her fall onto hard times had happened some while ago.
She had been without adequate coin long enough to think like a poor person.
To make any space serve as many purposes as possible, just to conserve coal.
To casually inform one of the wealthiest bankers in the realm that he’d have to shovel his own way to the privy.
A bit of irony there. A touch of humor, even.
Joshua retrieved his shaving kit from his satchel and returned to the chilly shadows of the laundry. As he went through the ritual of scraping whiskers from his cheeks, his thoughts circled back to Mrs. Burdette.
She was wearing the same dress she’d had on the previous day, and even in her kitchen, the only real warmth, the only place that approached cozy, was the space immediately before the hearth.
How dare she be desperately poor and under Joshua’s very roof when he needed solitude and quiet? How dare she keep her late husband’s ugly cat when it could not be bothered to pull his weight?
“Holly likes him,” Joshua informed his reflection. “That cat is nobody’s fool.”
Joshua was looking less like a bit of human flotsam cast up on the tide when he rejoined the ladies in the kitchen, but he felt just as unsettled as when he’d arrived to his own home to find Mrs. Burdette in her two tattered shawls.
“Have a seat,” she said, putting a plate in front of him. “We do not stand on ceremony when hot food is to be consumed. Holly, rinse your hands. You may say the blessing.”
The girl ceased splashing in a basin at the sink, dried her hands on an apron hanging from a peg on the crossbeam, and skipped over to the table.
“For what we are about to receive,” she said, wiggling onto the bench beside Joshua, “we are very, very grateful, and God bless the fall heifers and our Heifer too.”
A most unusual grace. “Why the fall heifers?” Joshua asked. Meaning the bovines who freshened in autumn.
“Butter,” Holly replied, her little features earnest. “Butter for the bread and the toast and the spuds and butter, butter, butter. Heifer likes butter too.”
“Is butter good for him?” Did the cat have no sense of his place in creation?
“We don’t know, so we never give him more than a tiny, tiny dab to lick at, but his name is Heifer, so he should like butter. Mama, may I have a lump?”
Mrs. Burdette arranged herself across from her daughter on the opposite bench. “You may have one. Mr. Penrose might like to sprinkle his toast with a bit of sugar as well.”