Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
One of the first things Joshua had noticed about Quinn Wentworth was that he’d known exactly how to deal with widows.
He was the soul of decorum with them, always patient, always able to grasp what the black-clad customer had only genteelly implied.
The bereaved ladies had left the quiet opulence of his office feeling respected for stating reasonable needs.
With the families of those same widows, who viewed the lady as greedy, witless, doughty, or worse, simply for requesting access to her own funds, Quinn was the avenging angel of slighted duty.
The grasping, negligent, deceitful, or indifferent sons and daughters, even the nephews, brothers, or uncles, endured such a frigid, succinct scolding that they mended their ways and took their paws off the widow’s mite they had no right to control.
Or the widower’s mite, in a few notable cases.
Joshua was certain Quinn would have dealt thus even on Mrs. Colchester’s behalf, though she was clearly prospering in her bereavement.
Maureen had given Joshua a whole different perspective on a widow’s situation, on the sense of being cast into the role of the unvalued, lonely, sad, and bewildered relict.
Americans did not go in for the most elaborate mourning rituals, but they did expect a widow to retire and live on psalms and sadness for a year or two.
“Your payment,” Joshua said, putting two coins on the table before Hope. He’d come down the kitchen steps and found the ladies tying green candles into bundles with measured lengths of red ribbon.
“I need your finger,” Holly said. “Right on the X.”
Joshua obliged.
“This is twice the price Mrs. Colchester and I discussed,” Hope said, staring at the coins. “I will take half back.”
“You will do no such thing. She ordered another sampler—Let There Be Light. Same style and colors as the first. I suggested that procuring the supplies to make such a creation would be possible amid the holiday rush only if an advance was paid on the project. Your samplers are much in demand, and if Mrs. Colchester expects hers by Twelfth Night, she must reckon with the competition for your services.”
Hope rose and put the coins in a tin on the mantel. The cat roused himself enough to watch her deposit her wages in her makeshift safe, then went back to dozing on the hearth.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you most sincerely. Give me your coat. The hems are damp, and… Where is your scarf, Mr. Penrose?”
“Lost it.” One of Gabriel’s minions had needed it. “What’s for lunch?”
“Food,” Holly said, gathering up four more green candles. “Wonderful, hot food.”
Hope smiled in the way of parents who were both amused and vexed by their offspring. “I thought I’d make ham-and-cheese sandwiches and toast them.”
“Until the cheese melts,” Holly added. “The ham is luscious. Mama let me have a bite.”
“She let that useless disgrace of a feline have a bite too,” Joshua said, handing over his coat. “He is the most spoiled creature in all of England.”
“His presence is sweet and cheering. Heifer might be an angel unawares.” Holly made a beckoning wave of her wrist, and Joshua again surrendered an index finger in the interests of tying a tidy bow.
“Last one! May I hang more snowflakes, Mama?”
“One dozen more, then you get yourself back here, Hollister Ann. You still have sums to do.”
The girl took a dozen pieces of newsprint cutwork from a stack on the mantel, gathered up her cloak, and whisked up the kitchen steps.
“Where is she off to?”
“The conservatory.” Hope unwrapped the loaf of bread, sniffed it, and closed her eyes. “She is decorating for the hens in hopes that cheerful biddies lay more eggs. How did you explain yourself to Mrs. Colchester?”
Hope got to work with a bread knife. Joshua washed his hands at the sink and looked about for something useful to do.
“She did not recognize me. I know her from before her husband went to his eternal reward, and she did not recognize me. She’s nearsighted, which is a metaphor of some sort.”
“The cheese slicer is above the tea drawer,” Hope said. “My late husband’s invention.”
Joshua located what looked to be a device for lifting pieces of pie, except that the thing had a slit near the wide end that opened at a sharp angle. “How does one…?”
“Draw it toward you across the top of the cheese.” Hope demonstrated, scraping a perfect, thin slice of cheese from the fat wedge Joshua had bought earlier.
Hope smelled of the balsam that must scent the candles, and when she stood close to Joshua, he realized she wasn’t as tall as he’d thought. Slippers rather than heeled boots and proximity had her coming up only to his shoulder.
“Clever,” Joshua said, giving the device a try as Hope went back to cutting bread. “I’ve seen wire used to scrape cheeses, but this creates a uniform thickness in the slice.”
“Edwin patented it. He patented any number of inventions, but they never seem to come to anything. We do have some mustard, though it’s quite vinegary.”
Joshua would not take her last teaspoon of mustard. “Plain will do for me. Shipboard fare takes a toll on the digestion.”
“You truly did arrive only last evening?”
“From New York. Everything everybody warned me about a winter crossing is true, though the food keeps better in the cold. I told Mrs. Colchester I am your lodger.”
Hope stopped slicing. “You told her what?”
The question was quiet, but the inflection portended Significant Female Upset. Any man married for three days knew that tone, and Joshua had been married for eight hundred and twenty-five days. He had been grieving for what felt like an eternity.
“I told her I am your lodger. You have plenty of space. The neighborhood isn’t that fancy, and widows do take in lodgers. Lodgers of the male variety are useful for shoveling coal and snow, we can open stuck flues, and we are very appreciative of even humble cooking.”
“My lodger.” Inchoate upset sounded as if it had deflated to consternation. “One must do for lodgers. Feed them, tend to their washing. I have considered lodgers—women only—but Mr. Peters advised against it.”
“Who is Mr. Peters?” And why would he advise against a scheme that might put Hope on less perilous financial footing?
Hope rewrapped the loaf and put it in the breadbox at the end of the counter nearest the window.
“He is my solicitor. He was Edwin’s solicitor, and he has been kind enough to look after my situation.
He will handle the sale of this house, and he has been quite clear that a furnished dwelling, and a furnished family home rather than a lodging house or rental property, will bring the best price. ”
Joshua fetched the ham out of the window box, took up a meat knife, and began slicing. Not too thin, not too thick.
Shoveling snow had given him time to consider, or reconsider, the situation in his home. His evidence against Hope Burdette was insufficient to convict her of confidence tricks, and more to the point, he did not want to convict her.
“I have tried to convince myself that you are a swindler,” he said. “You might well be trying to convince yourself of the same about me.” He passed Hope the first slice.
She looked at the offering, accepted it, and took a nibble.
“I have. You show up out of nowhere, in weather calculated to gain you admittance, and claim to own the house I’ve lived in for more than two years.
You do bear a resemblance to the old fellow whose portrait is hanging in the foyer, but that could well be coincidence. ”
That she was also weighing evidence rather than making accusations came as an inordinate relief.
“I come home from years overseas,” Joshua said, sawing gently, “and find my house, my home, the refuge I have looked forward to returning to, occupied by some woman of limited means and her daughter. They’ve been dwelling in my house rent-free for some time, if I can believe the woman.
” He took a small slice for himself. “I want to believe you, but I also know I own this place. Paid cash for it.”
Hope popped the last of her ham into her mouth.
“I want to believe you are some merchant returned from far-flung travels, but I know Edwin put every groat we had into buying this house, and I do pay a mortgage, Mr. Penrose. A substantial mortgage. Mr. Peters handles that as well, though the record does admit of some arrearages lately.”
“Joshua, if I’m to be your lodger. Why not sell the art? It’s worth quite a bit.”
She snitched another bite of ham. “I did sell one piece—the oil of that big golden country house—and Mr. Peters was unhappy with me when he learned of it. He claimed the fading of the wallpaper gives away the missing art—he’s right—and that people draw all the worst conclusions about a house with art ghosts in the wallpaper.
I hung a sketch of Holly in place of the landscape—more of a house-scape, really—and haven’t sold anything else. ”
“Chatsworth. Not my favorite. I am less fond of the seascapes than I used to be too. You have my permission to sell those, and we’ll split the proceeds.”
“You sell them,” Hope replied, grinning. “You have a knack for a bargain. Why are we splitting the proceeds of sale?”
“Because you have maintained this property in salable condition without recompense for more than two years. Do you know what happens to abandoned buildings in London, Mrs. Burdette? They are soon occupied by thieves, rats, and beggars. Then the creeping damp starts, and there’s no saving the place. ”
She eyed the pile of sliced ham, and Joshua could feel her hunger wrestling with her inherent self-restraint. He passed her a slice of cheese.
“How do you know about abandoned buildings?” she asked, munching the cheese and taking down from the crossbeam some sort of wire tray device with a long handle.
“I have bought and sold plenty of real estate.” Joshua helped himself to a bite of cheese as well.
“My grandfather had this house built, my late uncle lost it, and I bought it from his creditors. London is growing too fast, and solid structures are not as plentiful as they ought to be. This is some sort of toasting rack?”
“Exactly. The best toasting rack ever devised. It lets you cook four pieces at once rather than one at a time on the end of a fork. Edwin swore this would make us rich. Works best over a bed of coals.”
She fashioned sandwiches of meat and cheese, arranged them just so between the racks of wire, and handed the lot to Joshua.
“I will make the tea and slice the apples,” she said. “Mind you don’t burn so much as a corner. Holly will not touch burned toast.”
Joshua grasped, as he hadn’t for a long time, the need to take care with what amounted to a meal for three. They had a bit of coin leftover from the shoveling money, and Hope’s sampler had added to that meager store, but other than that…
Joshua scraped coals to one side in the big hearth and started toasting the sandwiches. He could take himself to the bank—half the metropolis away—and demand any amount of coin.
Why not do that?
“You are staring at the toast as if it holds all the secrets of eternal life.” Hope tossed an apple core into a bucket and passed Joshua one-quarter of an apple.
“I have friends here in London. I could stay with them.” The first side was browning nicely.
“You don’t want to stay with them?”
Quinn and Jane were wonderful, lovely people and true friends. “They are besotted. Been married for years, and still… His letters sang panegyrics about her and conversely. I used to not mind it. I thought it foolish.” And a bit annoying.
More than a bit.
“Mind the toast.”
Joshua flipped the rack to start on the second side. What was he going on about?
“I do have lodgers, you know,” Hope said, measuring a scoop of tea into a little sieve-like device.
“Gabriel and his crew sometimes bide in the conservatory at night. The kitchen hearth goes right up through the conservatory—the bricks are exposed on the conservatory level—and that keeps the surrounds on the inside wall of the conservatory above freezing even if there’s no fire in the conservatory hearth itself. ”
“Grandpapa’s design. A conservatory in Town was an extravagance, but he made it a useful extravagance. Those boys have nowhere else to go?”
“Nowhere safe would be my guess. I hear them talking sometimes, and the sound is a comfort.”
The sandwiches were golden on both sides, and Hope had sliced one and a half apples into twelve portions fashioned in a circle.
She was arranging mugs on a tea tray—not the fussy little cups they’d used before—and Joshua felt a pang for the departed Edwin Burdette.
He was missing this. Missing the domestic chat that every couple casually enjoyed.
Missing the way Hope’s brows knit when she was working on a mental puzzle.
Missing how she deftly parented a lively, intelligent, energetic daughter.
“I met my late wife when I sought to take a room in her lodging house,” Joshua said, apropos of exactly nothing. “She lectured me sternly about muddy boots and being late to meals, and by the time she was warning me about watching my language in front of her son, I knew I wanted to propose.”
Hope cut each sandwich into quarters, making a mess of crumbs on the counter. These she collected in her palm and also dumped into the bucket.
“Edwin swept me off my feet too. I wanted nothing in life so much as I wanted to become Mrs. Edwin Burdette. My family wouldn’t hear of it.”
“And yet, here you are, Mrs. Edwin Burdette, mother to Hollister Ann Burdette.” Joshua rose, wondering what the conversation had accomplished. A cease-fire perhaps. An agreement to disagree. “What do you want most in life now?”
Hope put the sandwiches into an artful stack and brought the plate to the table. “Lunch, I suppose, but if I’m to be your landlady, you may, when we are not in public, address me as Hope.”
Joshua put away the ham and cheese while Mrs. Burdette—Hope—saw to the tea tray. She bellowed up the steps for her daughter, and when Joshua did partake of his meal, he declared them the best sandwiches he’d ever eaten anywhere in his whole life.
And he was not exaggerating even a little.