Regency Christmas Gifts (19 page)

“
I’ve never convinced anyone of
anything,” she said in protest.

“
It’s time you learned. I’m going
back in there to tell Mrs. Lonnigan, who hasn’t had a good day
since Salamanca five years ago, to be at your house tomorrow
morning, ready to work,” he told her. “Mary Rose, too, because
you’re also going to assure Honoré that he needs another girl in
his kitchen.” He took a deep breath. “One who would like to cook if
she had any food.”

He gave her shoulders a little shake. “This is
your
work. I have plans for the boys that will require some
letters, which I will write tonight while you are busy convincing
everyone.”

“
I don’t know if anyone will listen
to me,” she said again, wanting to feel ill used, but unable to,
not if she was going to honor her mother. “Miles, no one listens to
me!”

He gentled his tone and touched his forehead to
hers. “It’s high time they did. You want to make a difference? Make
a difference right here and show me.” He put both arms around her
and drew her closer than she had ever stood with him before, closer
even than a waltz. She loved it.

“
While you’re at it, my girl, get
rid of Aunt Aurelia. She’s starting to get on my
nerves.”

L
ucy did as he said, telling
Mrs. Lonnigan and Mary Rose to be at Number Five Mannering Street
at eight of the clock tomorrow morning. Her knees practically
knocked together and set her dress rustling as she put on the
bravest face she possessed and assured them of work through the
wedding, and maybe afterward.

While she talked, Miles took the boys with him
into the dark and returned in a few minutes with a greasy bag of
pasties from the food cart man. He also handed three roses to Mrs.
Lonnigan, who burst into tears and clung to him. He patted her back
and told Mary Rose to put the roses in a little jar.

“
You’ll eat better than this soon,”
he assured them as they stood at the door. “Lads, be ready for a
little journey tomorrow. Bring them with you to Mannering Street,
Mrs. Lonnigan.”

Miles held her hand as they hurried along
through the twilight. “What have we done?” Lucy asked.

“
Ask yourself that tomorrow after
Mrs. Lonnigan is sewing and Mary Rose is cutting up carrots,” he
said, sounding un-Miles-like. His voice had lost its teasing
quality. He was a man in dead earnest. “I am going to write to the
counting house in London where we Bledsoes keep our money. I also
have a friend working at the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth who is
going to get a letter from me. I’ll send them by post rider
tonight. We’ll leave tomorrow morning.”

Slowing down, he put her arm through his and
became more the cousin she knew. “Your father wouldn’t mind if you
came along with me and the boys to London, would he?”

“
Probably not,” she said. “London?
It’s so big it scares me.”

“
I’ll be with you. In London, I
intend to find an apprenticeship for Edward so he can count money
to his heart’s content. In Portsmouth, there will be much good for
Michael to do.”

“
Why do you need me?” she
asked.

“
For company. For courage. I’m not
used to all this exertion, either, cousin.” He patted her gloved
hand. “Just think: you can be out of the house when Lord Masterton
arrives.”

“
Capital notion,” she said. “Cousin,
you are a genius.”

They walked back to Number Five Mannering
Street in silence, hand in hand. Lucy’s mind was whirling with how
she would approach Mrs. Little, the housekeeper, with news that a
destitute Irish woman would be showing up for work in the morning.
She could only assume that Miles was going through a mental list of
things he would write in his letters. All she knew was how grateful
she felt that he kept his hand in hers.

Looming even larger was Miles’s admonition to
get rid of Aunt Aurelia, who was only upsetting Clotilde and
turning Honoré into a Frenchman fit for Bedlam.

She didn’t know how it was possible, but Milsap
met them at the door looking both older and grayer than he had a
mere two hours before.

“
Miss Danforth is nearly in
hysterics because of some new crisis,” he said.

“
Which one?” she asked, not wanting
to know.

“
Whatever is the latest
disturbance,” he replied. “I have quite lost track. I hate to be
the bearer of further sad tidings of no joy, but she insists that
you come to her room the moment you return.”

“
I think I will not,” Lucy told
him.

“
A wise choice,” the butler said
with a slight bow.

“
Any such news for me, Milsap?”
Miles asked.

“
You, sir, are a most fortunate man.
No one is requiring your presence.”

“
Such good news! I think I will
remain a perpetual guest throughout my life, which means no one
will expect much.”

“
I thought you had more courage, Mr.
Bledsoe,” Milsap said, relying on his own clout as a long-time
family retainer who had known Miles since he was in leading
strings.

“
Not I! I am off to the bookroom,”
Miles said. He kissed Lucy’s cheek and turned toward the
bookroom.

“
I am going belowstairs,” Lucy said.
“How sits the wind in that direction?”

Milsap waggled his hand. “At least Lady Aurelia
has retreated to her room to vent her spleen on whatever poor soul
ventures into her orbit, now that dinner, which you wisely missed,
is over. Make sure that poor soul isn’t you, Lucy.”

She gave Milsap her own wave and loped toward
the green baize-covered door to the kitchen. She descended the
stairs in more dignified fashion, trying to think of something to
say to Mrs. Little, a redoubtable housekeeper and something of an
ally.

Her timid knock brought a booming, “Enter!”
Lucy took a deep breath and began her campaign to make a difference
this Christmas.

Good fortune was on her side. Mrs. Little was
in the middle of removing her spectacles to rub her eyes. On her
lap was yet another petticoat in need of a hem.

Lucy pulled a chair away from Mrs. Little’s
drop-leaf table and seated herself. “How many more petticoats?” she
asked.

“
At least five.” The housekeeper
raised her hands in a helpless gesture. “Ordinarily, Sally Fenn
would be doing these, but she is sewing lace around the wedding
dress, and complaining that her eyes are too old for such close
work. She is also threatening to retire from domestic service and I
think she means it.” Mrs. Little picked up her needle and thread,
stared at it like was an alien being, and stuck it back in the
pincushion.

“
I can solve your dilemma tomorrow
morning,” Lucy said. She picked up the needle and thread and pulled
the petticoat from Mrs. Little’s lap.
Wait for it
, she
thought as she began to hem.
Just wait
.

“
How will you do that?” Mrs. Little
asked finally, her hands folded in her lap.

“
I am doing what Mama would have
done, had she lived,” Lucy began, knowing her mother’s great
affection for the housekeeper. “There is an Irishwoman, a widow
whose husband fought with Wellington and died at Salamanca. She
needs work, because her pension is too small for a garden gopher to
live on.” She kept sewing, deliberately making her stitches wider
and more uneven. “I believe she will sew you a fine
seam.”

“
On whose authority is she a
seamstress?”

“
Her own. I believe her,” Lucy said.
“She has three children to support. All I ask is that you give her
a chance. Please do it for Mama.”

Silence. She kept hemming as the clock ticked
and Mrs. Little considered the matter. She cleared her throat and
Lucy looked up.

“
Miss Lucy, what happened to the
blue-eyed flibbertigibbet who only this morning was mooning around
because nothing was going right? It still isn’t, but this is a new
Lucy.”

Lucy stopped the needle and gave the matter
some thought. “I don’t know,” she admitted. She closed her eyes
against the pain of remembering Mama, but she knew that was the
issue. For five years she had been going with Mama while she
delivered food baskets at Christmas. Mr. Cooper said her gentle
mother had fought to get the Lonnigan children enrolled in the
village school, even though they were Catholic.

She chose her words carefully. “I just saw Mama
and her baskets,” she told the housekeeper. “How much more good did
she do?”

“
Considerable,” the housekeeper
said. “She rescued the ’tween-stairs maid from a horrible
workhouse. She just went in there and dragged her out before the
beadle could say boo. And your father’s favorite
gunbearer?”

“
Willie?”

“
The very same. Your mama heard that
the chimney sweep in town was abusing his climbing boys. And now
Willie is here and safe.” Mrs. Little spread out her hands. “Those
are only the ones I know about. I suspect that she had a great deal
to do with finding homes for foundlings, and other things of a
similar nature that well-bred ladies don’t speak of.”

“
Why didn’t she ever say anything
about her good deeds?” Lucy asked, her heart so full that she
wanted to run to Miles and rest her head on his knee. The reason
why, she couldn’t have told judge and jury, but that was her first
instinct.

“
That was part and parcel of what
made her a gracious lady,” the housekeeper said. “Come to think of
it, she did most of her good deeds at Christmastime. I think they
were her gift to herself.”

Of course
, Lucy thought. “Mrs. Little,
when I was old enough, I used to ask her what she wanted me to give
her for Christmas. She always said she had everything she
wanted.”

The two of them looked at each other. “I
believe she did,” Mrs. Little said.

“
And now you want to do what your
mother would have done and rescue an Irishwoman and all her
children?”

Lucy nodded, unable to speak. Worlds seemed to
be hinging on the housekeeper’s reply.

“
I can think of no higher honor than
to call you, Lucinda Danforth, your mother’s daughter. Certainly
the woman may come.” Mrs. Little looked at Lucy’s horrible stitches
and gasped. “Just in the nick of time, I might add.”

“
My strengths lie elsewhere,” Lucy
said with some dignity.

“
I expect they do.”

“
There’s someone else,” Lucy said,
after a moment’s pause. “She has a daughter eight years old who
would like to cook, if she had any food.”

After that declaration, no words necessary.
Mrs. Little rummaged in her sewing basket and managed to dab at her
eyes without anyone noticing except the only other person in the
room, who was busy tugging on her uneven hemming stitches and
sniffing.

“
Get them both here tomorrow
morning,” Mrs. Little said finally. “If I have to flog Honoré,
there will be room for her in his precious kitchen!”

“
Let me go reason with him,” Lucy
said, feeling flush with victory, but even more, wanting to escape
the room to blow her nose and wipe her eyes.

“
There is no reasoning with a Frog,”
Mrs. Little said with finality, “but do try. I’d come along,
but ….”

You want to blow your nose, too
, Lucy
thought, as she let herself out of the housekeeper’s
room.

A
bove all, Lucy knew that for
Honoré to allow Mary Rose into his sanctum sanctorum, even to peel
potatoes, the little girl needed to be his idea. She stood a moment
outside Mrs. Little’s closed door, then walked into the servants’
hall.

There he sat, Papa’s prince of a chef, lured
from Lord Elwood’s kitchen by a sum of money that Papa never dared
disclose to Mama. Honoré leaned forward at the table, his face
hidden in his hands. At a loss, Lucy sat beside him.

The chef started at her footsteps, then moved
his hands. His was a look of desperation, the sort of expression
that usually meant a letter of resignation would be
forthcoming.

What would Mama say?
Lucy asked herself.
“Honoré, I fear you have had a distressing day. May I
help?”

The chef waved his arms wildly about as though
he were directing an orchestra of two-year-olds. “Lady Burbage will
either drive me into an early coffin, or resignation,” he said, his
voice more mournful than angry. “Everything I suggest, she vetoes.
She clears her throat in that irritating way and
demands—DEMANDS—that I change my plans to suit her. And Clotilde
just wrings her hands and weeps.”

Lucy took his hands in hers, wondering at her
effrontery. “And still you soldier onward, Honoré! I have never met
a man as brave as you.”

Her words, quietly spoken, seemed to sink into
the chef’s heart, if his expression was any indication. “I do try,”
he said finally.

“
Especially when the honor of France
is at state,” Lucy told him. “If only other Englishmen had any idea
how brave you are to cook during these times of national
emergency.”