Chapter 7 #2
“Yes,” Holly said, spinning around. “I am happy. We sent a bouquet to Mrs. Colchester and the Colquitts for free. ‘Holiday greetings, from Mrs. Burdette and Miss Burdette.’” Holly curtseyed extravagantly.
“Buns said he will change his name to Loaves, because now he can buy a loaf of day-old bread instead of a day-old bun. Slivers said his name should be Loafs because he never does anything useful. They smacked each other, and Gabriel yelled at them.”
“Thank you for the report,” Joshua said, unbuttoning his greatcoat. “One does want to remain informed. Perhaps you could find a place in the kitchen for that lovely bouquet your mother is holding?”
“On the mantel, where Heifer can’t knock it over!” Holly had abandoned any attempt to moderate her volume.
“Here you go,” Hope said, passing over the vase. “Mind you don’t let Heifer trip you on the steps.”
Holly swiped the vase from her mother’s hand. “Heifer never trips me. He only trips people he doesn’t like. C’mon, Heffy-poo.”
Girl and cat whisked off down the corridor, leaving a blessed, sweet quiet in their wake.
Joshua stepped closer at the same time Hope moved toward him. The hug was natural, spontaneous, and as precious as all the previous hugs Hope had shared with Joshua.
This time, she let the embrace shift from a hug to a mutual holding. “You were gone for some time.”
“Went chasing after my trunks, which apparently reside in some dockside warehouse, awaiting the dray I’m to send to fetch them at my own expense.”
“At least somebody knows where they are. We did make some money today.”
Joshua peered down at her. “Enterprising of you. Will you be insulted if I say I’m proud of you? The bouquet was quite pretty, and fresh flowers are an unexpected treat this time of year.”
He was proud of her. How long had it been since Hope had been proud of herself? She leaned against him, absorbing both the compliment and the balm to her soul.
“I missed you.” Where those words had come from, Hope did not know. “Fretted that you would not come back.” Just as Holly had.
“That I’d steal the paintings and disappear? If I disappear, Hope Burdette, I will first pay what I owe you.”
He stepped back and withdrew a pouch of coins from the pocket of his greatcoat.
“Seascapes are apparently all the rage, and an artist whose work I happened to like years ago has rocketed to fashionable popularity.” He put the whole sack in Hope’s hand and whispered a number into her ear. “That’s your half. Have a look.”
Hope opened the sack and beheld a small hoard of sovereigns. Not small change, not small anythings. Beautiful, bright golden sovereigns.
“This cannot be right.”
“What isn’t right is for you and Holly to shiver and fret your way through the holidays. That is the amount you are owed for those paintings, and I kept the same for myself.”
Sovereigns. “To think, all this time, I’ve been late on my mortgage payments, scrimping, and scrounging, counting lumps of sugar…” Relief washed through Hope, leaving her blinking and unaccountably weak-kneed. “We can have plum pudding.”
She could also afford coach fare home to her family, if worse came to worst. A weight of fear and anxiety slid away, and breathing came more easily.
Sovereigns.
Joshua hugged her again, gently resting his chin on her crown. “We can have plum pudding and play snapdragon and exchange tokens. We might even, if we’re feeling particularly jolly, sing a few carols or hang some mistletoe here and there.”
Mistletoe, as in merriment and celebration and…
Hope kissed him on the mouth. “We might. We might at that.” She’d intended the kiss as another gesture of affection and joy, not an overture to seduction, but intentions had a way of lurking at the edges of the heart, and when Joshua brushed his lips over hers, romance certainly joined the affray.
He knew how to kiss, did Joshua Penrose. How to kiss and flirt and tempt. Hope hadn’t had any use for the same skills in quite some time, but moment by joyous moment, they were coming back to her, and soon, she was giving as good as she got.
And then some.
What are you doing? What in the name of Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar are you doing?
This time, the exasperated voice in Joshua’s head belonged to Joshua’s grandpapa, who’d been a jolly soul, but not blessed with abundant patience where wayward boys were concerned.
And the answer was simple: I am kissing a woman whom I esteem and desire, and she is kissing me back.
The result of that activity was glorious. Joshua had forgotten the sheer joy of an exuberant kiss, the leaping of the blood, the quickening of the heart. The wonderful knowledge that desire had not abandoned him for all time, that an estimable woman found him attractive.
Hope eased her mouth away and rested her forehead on Joshua’s chest. “Who needs mistletoe?”
We do. Badly. “A curious tradition. Perhaps the idea with mistletoe is to prevent indiscriminate kissing in myriad locations and limit the enthusiasms to doorways and foyers?”
She peeked up at him. “I fear that’s not quite how it works. Having kissed you once, properly, or improperly, the mistletoe will adorn my thoughts even if it’s not in evidence in the house.”
“And yet,” Joshua said, “you might have to turn me out onto the street come the New Year. This is getting a bit complicated, isn’t it?”
Hope moved away enough to finish unbuttoning his greatcoat. “Will you turn me out if Edwin’s purchase of the home can somehow be invalidated?”
The house was Joshua’s. His sole legacy from Grandpapa, the refuge he’d crossed an ocean for.
Hope was… not Joshua’s. As if some angel had whacked him on the shoulder with a copper soup ladle, his well-kissed imagination presented the possibility that he could have both—Hope and the house, Holly and Heifer, happily—for the most part—ever after.
Joshua wasn’t as keen on having a conservatory full of pickpockets, but enterprising young fellows could change careers from time to time.
“You are having to think about this,” Hope said, hanging his coat on a hook. “You were supposed to say, ‘I could never take the roof over your head, much less over Holly’s.’ But you didn’t say that.’”
She sounded more disappointed than offended.
“And you did not say to me, ‘Joshua, you will always have a place in my household,’ because we agreed to a truce only, not an eternal alliance. Do you regret kissing me?”
Her gaze went to the portrait of jolly old Grandpapa. “I should. I most assuredly do not. The situation is confusing.”
“For both of us. I do not regret kissing you, but there’s something you should know.”
She twisted the lock on the front door and made a say on gesture with her hand.
“I went to see my solicitor as I was rambling about Town. His offices were on my route to the docks, and he was alerted to the possibility of my return. I expected him to open the house for me and wanted to know what had become of my instructions.”
“This is Mr. Chumley?”
“The very one. He clerked for Grandpapa, and now Chumley is a senior partner in a solicitor’s practice. I trust him implicitly, but he’s apparently off to the shires to dandle grandchildren and neglect his correspondence. The senior clerk explained that my letter was personal, so nobody opened it.”
Hope ran a finger along the sideboard and examined the tip. Burning coal steadily in only two hearths could make for a constant need to dust.
“Go on.”
“That’s the whole tale. I sought out my solicitor, and he’s out of the office until the New Year.” Well, no, it wasn’t quite the whole tale. “The next time I speak with Chumley, I’d like you to be with me.”
“Why?”
“Because…” Joshua took Hope’s hand. “I want you to hear the same evidence I do. I want you to have the opportunity to interrogate old Chumley as thoroughly as I will. I could never leave you and Holly homeless. I promise you that. My cash reserves at this point amount to less than one hundred and fifty pounds, assuming I can pawn what’s in my trunks, but I have some means, Hope, and I do not abandon my friends. ”
Holly might point out that he’d abandoned friends to travel to New York, and she’d be… somewhat right.
“You have means,” Hope said, worrying a nail. “I have a mortgage. Only owners have mortgages, Joshua.”
“True in the usual case.” Which this might not be. Joshua considered dropping to one knee and requesting permission to embark on a courtship. Hope would think he’d lost his wits, and she might be somewhat right there too.
“Are you concerned that I might leave you homeless?” Hope asked, easing her hand from his.
“I have friends in London who will offer me hospitality if need be, though I would rather not impose on them. You must not worry about my physical safety.” And having called at the solicitor’s office, albeit Joshua’s personal solicitor, word of Joshua’s return might soon reach those friends.
“I wouldn’t turn you out,” Hope said. “Holly and Heifer would never speak to me again, and I would be hard put to speak to myself.”
“Our truce holds?” Even as Joshua asked the question, he knew they already had more than a truce. Walking back across the City, he had noticed his mind had run along the lines of wonder what’s for supper and which story will Holly want tonight.
He’d not been returning to his house, he’d been returning to his home, and the difference lay in the woman who’d tried to evict him a few short days ago.
“Our truce holds,” Hope said, “though our situation grows more complicated, and if you would not mind, I’d like you present when I talk to Mr. Peters too.”
Did she but know it, Hope had just taken a step beyond truce and toward that alliance Joshua had mentioned.
“I would be honored,” Joshua said, “to escort you on any calls, business or personal.”
“What of the kissing?” Hope asked, glancing up at a crossbeam perfectly positioned to hold a sprig of mistletoe. “Was that an error in judgment?”
“I was honored by the kissing too,” Joshua said. “And I do not now, nor will I ever, regard kissing you as a misstep of any kind. I wasn’t sure I would ever…”
Hope nodded. “I wasn’t either. Wasn’t sure it mattered. Do you know something else?”
Please say you’d like to kiss me again. “What else?”
“I am relieved that your solicitor wasn’t in. I want this Yuletide calm, Joshua Penrose. I want a few days of peace and plenty, of merriment and rejoicing. I intend to have them.”
Will you have me? Rather than ask that question, Joshua wrestled with the notion that he was to become Hope’s first venture in the direction of merry widowhood. She was attracted to him, he was convenient, and he was apparently willing, except…
No, he was not capable of dalliance. Not yet, maybe never again.
“We have our truce, then,” Joshua said. “Peace and plenty, and no thought for what the New Year might bring, unless it’s a happy thought.”
“And a few sprigs of mistletoe might liven up the old place considerably. I’d better start supper.” Hope swished off down the corridor, leaving a ringing silence in her wake.
Joshua wasn’t sure what exactly had shifted between him and Hope, though he was fairly certain the shift had been in a positive direction. He was equally certain that the old place would indeed benefit from a few dozen tastefully displayed sprigs of mistletoe.