Chapter 8 #2
She’d try to settle for that much, anyway.
A request to embark on a courtship should stand alone, untethered from holidays, family occasions, and other distractions.
As Joshua ran the warmer over the sheets of Hope’s bed, he realized that he also wanted this courtship to commence free of the grief that Maureen’s and Eric’s deaths had cast over Yuletide in the past.
The New Year was soon enough for stirring declarations and rehearsed speeches, assuming Hope would like to hear them.
As certain as Joshua was that he wanted a future with her, he was not certain of her. A similar, nigh instant conviction had befallen him with Maureen, but she’d leapt to let him know his sentiments were reciprocated.
“You’re sure?” Hope asked, sitting at the rickety vanity. “I don’t want to impose.”
“Impose.” Joshua nearly burst out laughing.
“Madam, you may impose upon me as often and passionately as ever you wish. You have imposed laughter, affection, trust, physical safety from the elements, kindness, a few tart lectures, and some delicious cooking on me. The mind boggles and the heart reels to consider what manner of imposition you might contemplate in this bed.”
“You mean that.” She began removing pins from her hair. “I do believe you mean that.”
The pins went into a small tin that had probably held soap or tea.
Joshua watched the little ritual Edwin Burdette would never see again.
He hoped the brilliant inventor had appreciated the sheer domestic loveliness of a woman taking down her hair before bed.
Joshua had, for a time, then Maureen’s nightly routine had become merely that, as his quotidian going-to bed sequence had for her.
He put his hands on Hope’s shoulders. “Allow me, please.”
She nodded, and Joshua searched out the last of the pins, undid her braid, and brushed her hair into a shiny auburn cascade down her back.
What ensued after he’d refashioned her braid was not a jolly romp, and neither was it the height of amatory virtuosity on anybody’s part. Hope was ticklish, Joshua sneezed at a particularly inopportune moment, and laughter limned desire with a tenderness neither party had expected.
Or perhaps they had foreseen the dangerous advent of that tenderness and had known enough to be cautious as a result.
That Christmas Eve, there might not have been peace on earth, but in Hope’s bed, there was joy and pleasure. Joshua allowed himself to believe there might also have been love, for the love was certainly present in his heart.
Christmas had been a gray, bitterly cold day that had thrown into greater relief the indulgence of toddies, a memorable dinner of roast goose courtesy of the chop shop, and a sizable serving of plum pudding.
Christmas night was concluding in the kitchen, with Joshua, Hope, and Holly gathered around a deck of cards at the worktable.
For Hope, taking Joshua to bed had changed much…
and little. He was still the dear, patient man who’d left the largest plums for Holly to pluck in her first game of snapdragon, plums he’d just happened to place at the very edge of the shallow bowl of flaming brandy.
He still had a fine baritone singing voice and a faulty memory for the proper lyrics of the Christmas carols.
While shepherds washed their socks by night…
Joshua was also Hope’s lover. He sent her brooding looks and naughty smiles at odd moments and inspired her to stare at nothing while fending off memories of laughter, pleasure, and an aching sense of homecoming.
“Mama is thinking again,” Holly said, picking up a card. “She thinks she ought to be working on Mrs. Colchester’s sampler.”
“That project is nearly finished,” Hope replied as Holly turned over a seven and a nine, then placed them facedown again. “Amazing how much can be accomplished while you and Joshua practiced pitching snowballs at the garden wall.”
“Holly has good aim.” Joshua studied the cards covering the kitchen table. “The next step will be hitting a nonstationary object.” He turned over two sevens. “Lucky, lucky me.”
Said in all innocence, with a lowering of his lashes that held a stocking-full of innuendo.
“I vote you serve as Holly’s first moving target. You are very fit and have excellent stamina.” Amazing stamina.
“Quite a compliment, coming from one who boasts plenty of the same gift.”
“Mama, choose your cards.”
Hope turned over the nine and three.
“My turn!” Holly crowed.
And thus Christmas night proceeded, until several eternities later, bedtime for Holly arrived. When Hope had duly tucked her daughter in, the child demanded a story from Joshua, who claimed he was too tired to read, leaving Hope to do the voices for Androcles and the Lion.
“Next Christmas, I want a lion,” Holly murmured, eyes closing. “And a unicorn, because the unicorn is the only creature in the whole forest who can tame the lion.” She yawned contentedly, turned on her side, and promptly dropped off to sleep.
Joshua remained in the rocking chair, and Hope sat on the corner of the bed.
“How is it,” she said, “that I have barely stirred from this house all day, and I am nearly too tired to rise?”
Joshua stood and offered his hand. “The holidays are wearying, but we’ve made it through Christmas Day. The carols have been sung, the feast consumed, and the tokens exchanged. The rest isn’t as difficult.”
He slipped an arm around Hope’s shoulders, and they returned to the kitchen in a companionable accord that nonetheless held a thread of awareness.
“Holly loves her sketchbook.” Hope loved that Joshua had chosen the gift so thoughtfully. He’d even included colored pencils and erasers and a few sticks of charcoal.
“Holly loves easily and often. I love my stockings.”
Stockings were a quick and simple knitting project, and Hope had sworn Holly to secrecy about them. Hope had embellished Joshua’s holiday gift with stitched mistletoe and made him try them on for Holly to admire.
Pure silliness. The best gift of the day, besides warmth, a full belly, and companionship, had been the laughter.
Though the flirtation had been lovely too.
“I don’t believe you are pondering another round of cards, Mrs. Burdette.” Joshua shifted so his arms were draped over her shoulders. “Do you like your gloves?”
A pair for out of doors, exquisitely stitched, fur-lined, a perfect fit. “Love them. I want to wear them in the house.”
“They are not enough,” Joshua said, drawing her against his chest. “I expected to endure the holidays, Hope, but with you, I have found celebration, and I was long overdue for celebration.”
Hope heard those words as the gift they were meant to be, but also as a prelude to parting. She was unready and unwilling to allow that parting to begin so soon.
“If you can manage to remain awake a bit longer, I thought I’d join you in the parlor before turning in.”
His embrace subtly shifted, becoming more relaxed and intimate. “Please do join me, for as long as you can.”
The whole business took some ingenuity and a bit of maneuvering of furniture, but the joy and the pleasure were worth it. Hope fell asleep snuggled up to Joshua’s chest, with visions dancing in her head of him wearing nothing but a pair of socks.
She woke in her own bed to a brilliant sunny morning, the eaves dripping with sparkling icicles. Joshua’s voice came from the laundry, Holly’s dubious soprano joining him in a verse of “Adeste Free Daylilies.”
As Hope dressed for the day, it occurred to her that the loving had been sweet and languid, and in that, too, she had felt a sense of impending goodbye.
“Behold, I am shorn of my whiskers,” Joshua said, coming into the kitchen, Holly capering at his right, Heifer strutting to his left.
“Mademoiselle Holly has declared me presentable for one more day. Happy Boxing Day.” He kissed Hope on the cheek, bringing with him a whiff of his cedar shaving soap.
“Do you ladies have plans for this morning?”
“Mama, do we have plans?” Holly grabbed Joshua’s hand. “Will we go calling?”
“I hadn’t really thought…” Hope had thought. She’d thought and wished and even daydreamed about Joshua making Boxing Day calls with her and Holly, a little makeshift family observing a tradition that had been neglected in recent years.
“Take some camellias,” Joshua said, swinging the kettle over the coals. “They refuse to stop blooming. In fact, I might collect a few before I go out myself.”
Holly dropped his hand. “Where are you going?”
Oh, exactly. Where was he going, and why must he go there without them? Unfair questions. A holiday truce was not an oath of allegiance.
“Holly, we are not to pry. Perhaps you could choose some fresh flowers for us to take to Mrs. Colchester?”
“If we must call on Mrs. Colchester,” Holly retorted, “I want Joshua to come with us. He is our lodger.” In Holly’s lexicon, that apparently elevated him to the status of permanent family fixture.
“If you can wait until later in the day,” Joshua said, “I will be happy to accompany you. The truth is, I have an apology to make to some friends who have probably worried about me. I want to have a Christmas token or two in hand when I make that call, and I have not yet found anything appropriate. I thought I’d nose through the shops on my way to Mayfair. ”
Mayfair? The most exclusive neighborhood in London?
Holly glowered up at him. “If they are your friends, you say sorry and don’t make them worry about you again.”
Joshua knelt down. “I have not seen them for years, Hollister Ann. They missed me, and after a time, I barely wrote to them. A simple ‘sorry’ won’t do.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Are they mad at you?”
Joshua rose. “Likely, they are, but they are too kind to show it. I have behaved badly.”
“Will they act all zasperated and call you Joshua Ann when you try to apologize?”
“Something along those lines. Might you wait for me to join you on some afternoon calls?”
“Mama, can we wait?”
“We can wait, and make bouquets, and maybe draw some flower sketches to give to our neighbors.”
“Ohhhh, sketches!” Holly pelted up the steps. Stopped halfway along the staircase and turned. “Don’t forget to say sorry. You have to say it.”
“And never disappear on them again,” Joshua murmured, half smiling. “You are raising a formidable female there, Mrs. Burdette.”
Holly closed the door at the top of the steps with a decisive bang. Heifer took up his post on the warm hearth.
“I’d go with you if you asked me to,” Hope said. “Mrs. Belchamp wouldn’t mind watching Holly for a couple hours.” She would not mind much.
Joshua took the kettle off the fire. “If you came along, Jane would make a lovely fuss over you—as well she should—and recruit you onto one of her charitable committees, have your whole life history in a quarter hour, and send you home with a basket of treats sufficient to spoil every meal until Lady Day. The rest of the conversation would be about the weather on my crossing, the weather today, and the hope for an early spring.”
“You know them well.”
“They know me well, which was part of the problem. I will lose my nerve if you come with me, and then I will eat too many anise biscuits just to keep my mouth occupied.”
“Easy to do.” My love goes with you. Hope didn’t say that, though it was true. “Grief can derange us in little ways. The little ways all add up and befuddle even those who love us. I expect your friends know this.”
“You know it. That has mattered to me a great deal, Hope Ann.”
She busied herself at the window box. The last time he’d called her Hope Ann, she’d been flat on her back, smiling dazedly into the darkness.
“You need not make this pilgrimage on an empty stomach.” She extracted cheese, eggs, milk, and butter from the chilly depths of the window box. “The thrilling prospect of tea with Mrs. Colchester means you won’t tarry among your friends.”
“The thrilling prospect of escorting you and Holly about the neighborhood means I will certainly hurry home.” Joshua set about slicing bread for toast, which he did particularly well.
Breakfast was on the table shortly thereafter, a coordinated task that resulted in fluffy omelets, golden toast, hot tea, and sliced oranges.
What a difference a bit of coin had made.
What a difference Joshua’s company made.
“Let’s leave the artist undisturbed for a few more moments,” Joshua said, settling on the bench. “For what we are about to receive and for the peace and quiet with which we receive it, we are pathetically grateful.”
Hope took the opposite bench with a murmured amen and tucked into her meal.
“Excellent omelet,” Joshua said between bites.
“Perfect toast.” And thus it went, but between might I have the salt and would you like more jam, Hope came to a realization.
If she had to choose between the house or a future with Joshua Penrose, the house, which she’d scrimped and fretted and lost months of sleep trying to preserve, would not be her first pick.
The house was a dwelling, shelter from the elements and a fixed abode. Certainly important in anybody’s life.
But if she lived in the finest palace on earth without Joshua, Hope would miss him more than any fancy art, elegant molding, or imported wallpaper.
Much more.