Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
“It’s Christmas Eve,” Holly said, “and they have been good boys. We should leave them tokens for tomorrow.”
Hope put the last of her pear tart on Holly’s plate. “Had this generous impulse come sooner, we might have acted on it more easily.”
Hope had awakened that morning to find that the boys had tidied the conservatory from corner to corner and floor to ceiling. The makeshift hen pen had been raked within an inch of its birdie life, and burlap sacks had been folded under fresh straw in the nesting boxes.
The biddies had never looked more content, and they’d gifted the household with four eggs since their quarters had been refurbished by the elves.
“The hens have been good too,” Joshua said, pushing his empty plate aside. “What does a hen consider an appropriate gesture of appreciation?”
He had the knack of engaging Holly’s imagination, a challenge Hope had lost track of somewhere between stitching samplers, fretting over coal, and remitting sums to Mr. Peters.
“They love apple cores,” Holly said, disappearing the pear tart. “Mama, can we feed the girls some apples?”
Hope pretended to consider the matter, though a week ago, the answer would have been a firm, grim, no.
“One,” she said, “and we will cut it up in tiny pieces so even Helga will get a few nibbles.” Helga wasn’t picked on so much as she was shy. Holly had given her a battle maiden’s name in hopes of inspiring the hen’s self-confidence.
“They will be so happy! I’m going to write a poem about Christmas chickens.” Holly had half scrambled off the bench before she came about, sat squarely, and looked Hope in the eye. “Mama, the meal was delicious. May I please be excused to write some poetry?”
“You may be excused. Why don’t you take a stab at sonnet form?”
Holly looked between the adults in puzzlement. “Sonnet form?”
“Make it rhyme,” Joshua said. “We’ll explain meter and other subtleties later. First, make it rhyme, and I know of not one word that rhymes with Helga.”
Holly was up the stairs like a Congreve rocket. “Elga, belga, celga, delga. Delta almost rhymes. Elga, felga, gelga…” She closed the door at the top of the steps decisively, leaving the kitchen in blessed quiet.
“I had not realized,” Hope said, “how subdued Holly had been growing. She has her father’s exuberant nature, but she was losing it. She will work at her poem until she falls asleep.” By the nice, cozy fire in the parlor.
What a difference a few days in the right company could make. What a difference selling a few paintings…
“Have another pear tart,” Joshua said. “I’ll do the dishes. I thought we might leave the boys some cider and shortbread, if nothing else. I bought cinnamon shortbread on my way back from the posting inn.”
“I saw that. You will note that I did not snitch a single bite.” The scent of fresh, buttery shortbread had been tempting, though.
Joshua rose from the bench, swung the kettle over the coals, and began clearing the table. His tasks were mundane, but that Hope allowed him to simply get on with the job while she sat and nibbled a second half of a tart…
His image grew watery.
“Hope Burdette, are you crying?” He was immediately straddling the bench beside her. “Why on earth would you be lachrymose when we are in anticipation of the first sonnet in the history of English literature on the topic of holiday hens?”
“I am trying not to cry, precisely because that happy honor awaits us. She hasn’t written a poem for months, Joshua.
I have had more gingerbread in the past three days than in the entire previous holiday season.
You shoveled the walks, you tend to the mail, you look after Holly and the boys. You do d-dishes.”
He hugged Hope and passed over his handkerchief—clean, probably from the one smallish trunk that had arrived the previous day—then rose and swung the kettle off the fire before it began whistling.
Next, he took peppermint sachets out of the tea drawer that was full for the first time in months and put together a tray.
“You darn my socks,” he said. “You make lentil soup that isn’t too salty, a feat even the great Carême could not emulate.
You saw half a dozen boys properly wrapped up against the elements, probably for the first time in their little misspent lives.
You feed me when I’d pretty much forgotten why I’m supposed to eat. Shall we join Holly in the parlor?”
“We shall not. Set the dishes to soak, and I’ll pour out.”
The weepy moment had passed, but the feelings had not. Gratitude, of course, because Hope’s holidays were turning out much warmer and sweeter than she’d anticipated, but also bewilderment—and more than a little resentment.
“You sold three paintings, Joshua, and my whole outlook has shifted. Why didn’t I sell every sketch and landscape in the place?”
“Mr. Peters advised against it.” Joshua brought the tray to the table. “You were grateful for his advice. Now you suspect him of incompetence?”
“Blindness, perhaps. He sees the pitiful state of my finances, sees how I struggle to pay the mortgage. The most frequent advice J. Bartholomew Peters has dispensed is that I am to be patient. It’s impossible to be patient when the hens aren’t laying, and your child is hungry.”
Joshua fixed her tea with a dash of honey, another little luxury, and he’d used just the right amount.
“You did not tell me your brother dwells in Weybridge, Hope. I could walk that distance in less than a day if the roads were fair.”
Twenty miles or so and half a world away.
“Orson might have moved. I have no way of knowing.” He probably had more children.
He and Alma had both wanted a large family.
“If he doesn’t reply, I will try writing to his wife.
Alma has the biggest heart. She’d toss Gabriel and his minions into the nearest laundry tub, scrub them silly, and turn them into proper schoolboys, all the while stuffing them with good cooking and dressing them in sturdy clothes. ”
“They would not thank her for that trip through the suds. I prefer the incremental-bribery approach when negotiating with barbarians.” Joshua sipped his tea as if seriously considering how to civilize half a dozen junior criminals.
“Very little a boy won’t do for sweets or stories. I bought them a volume of Aesop.”
“That was the parcel in the pantry with the shortbread?”
“It was. Gabriel is literate. He can read to his friends. Why haven’t you written to Alma previously?”
Hope held her mug in her hands, relishing the warmth.
“Fear, I suppose. I have become such a fearful creature—afraid of losing my house, of losing Holly, of losing my wits and my dignity… And the more fearful one is, the less one can see the solutions at hand—sell the paintings, look high and low for a fresh stash of coal, ask for a bit in advance for the next sampler, trade the boys stockings for some chores. I was not helpless, but I felt…”
“Overwhelmed and alone,” Joshua said, stroking his fingers over Hope’s wrist. “Too aware that any action can end up being a mistake.”
“A disaster.”
The pause in the discussion was reflective and peaceful. Hope waited to speak again because she suspected Joshua was also ruminating about choices.
“I sent a note today to my friends, Hope. If you have the fortitude to contact your brother directly, after all his silence and indifference, I can at least let old friends know of my safe arrival.”
“Was that hard?”
He nodded. “Shouldn’t have been, but these are people who never knew Maureen, who knew me for years before I even made her acquaintance. They know the version of me that was never married.”
“Happily married people,” Hope muttered, infusing a little ire into her tone. “Of all the nerve.”
Joshua smiled, a sweet, genuine, conspiratorial smile that yet held a bit of rue. “You have restored my courage, Hope Burdette. Courage has been your Christmas gift to me, and I have never had any finer holiday present.”
She caught his fingers in her own. “Likewise, Joshua Penrose. I am braver for having made your acquaintance.” Also happier, warmer, and better fed.
She would be sad to part from him at the New Year, if part she must, but stronger for having shared the holidays with him.
“Why did we never get around to hanging any mistletoe?”
Joshua’s smile transformed into an expression a bit more mischievous. “For my part, I did not dare.”
Hope considered that smile and considered their joined hands and considered… what she wanted for Christmas.
More warmth, more joy, more Joshua, while she still had his company. Widows, provided they were discreet, were allowed. All of society agreed on that much.
“We don’t need the mistletoe,” Hope said, rising. “Holly will be absorbed with her poem until Twelfth Night. We have both been very good for a very long time. Let’s be brave, shall we?”
He got to his feet. “We ought to discuss the metes and bounds of this bravery, Hope. I am not one to undertake intimacies lightly.”
Hope came around the table and wrapped him in a hug. “Neither am I.”
She could feel him considering, weighing, pondering, even as he rubbed her back in a languorous rhythm that made her bones and her heart melt.
“You’re sure?” he asked, hands going still. “You aren’t in the grip of an overabundance of gingerbread or toddies?”
They were saving the toddy makings for tomorrow. “I am of age, so are you, and my mind is made up.”
“And full of mistletoe.” He kissed her nose. “Very well, but we will talk of next steps and expectations when the moment is right.”
Hope kissed him back—on the mouth. She did not much care what cautions or reminders he wanted to reiterate regarding the house. They would not turn each other out, and beyond that, Hope was more interested in seizing the day and the man than investigating the legalities.
The house was hers. She knew that. She wished the man was hers as well, but she would settle for having him all to herself for the next hour.