Regency Christmas Gifts (18 page)

“
When she couldn’t,” Miles finished
for her.

She gave him a relieved glance, then clapped
her hands together, breaking her own spell. “And that is why we are
here. I ….”

“
We ….”

She gave Miles her own smile, the one she
thought had earned her the “sturdy bones” and “curly hair” poem. No
danger of poetry from her cousin, she knew. “Aye, then,
we
want to do something Mama would have liked to have done, had she
had the strength. Isn’t that it, Miles?”

He nodded. “Everyone is so busy with Miss
Danforth’s wedding that we are feeling a tad melancholy. Give us a
challenge.”

The vicar regarded them both for a length of
time that would have grown uncomfortable, if she hadn’t know the
man so well. He turned back to his desk and rummaged until he found
a ledger. He ran his finger down one page, tapped it, and closed
the book. In silence, he looked at them, as if measuring their
ability, then wrote. He waved the paper dry and handed it to
Lucy.

“
Mrs. Lonnigan has three children.
Her husband died at Salamanca. She is destitute.”

Lucy looked down at the names—Mrs. Lonnigan;
Edward, thirteen; Michael, twelve; and Mary Rose, eight. She looked
up at her old teacher and her vicar before the current one, who
always wanted to foist sermons on her. “You want much more than a
Christmas basket,” she said.

“
I do, Lucy. Actually, so did your
mother.”

“
You’re saying I only saw the
smallest part of what she did.”

Mr. Cooper nodded. “She was never one to toot
her horn or demand attention. Mrs. Danforth just went about doing
far more good than you knew, I think.”

“
I had no idea,” Lucy told him.
“What will you have us do for the Lonnigans? What would Mama have
done?”

He had a ready answer. “I want you and your
cousin to create a better life for this little family. Shame on our
nation for not giving more than a paltry pension to those who died
in its service. I want you to change their lives. Will you do
it?”

Lucy looked at her cousin, who was already
watching her.
Does he doubt I can?
she thought.
Does he
still see little Lucy, who annoyed him?

“
We will,” she told the
vicar.

“
What should we know about them
before we invade their privacy?” Miles asked.

Mr. Cooper opened his class register again, and
pointed to Edward’s name as they both looked over his shoulder.
“These are Edward’s arithmetic scores. I believe he could teach the
class better than I can.”

“
And Michael?” Lucy
asked.

“
He is a scamp. Transportation is a
distinct possibility for him.” the vicar said, but Lucy saw the
laughter in his eyes. “You’ll think of something for Michael. Mary
Rose loves to read, but there are no books at home.” He closed the
ledger again. “Here is their biggest handicap: the Lonnigans are
Catholic. Lucy, I doubt you are aware of the struggle your dear
mama went through to get the children in school.”

“
I had no idea,” she said again,
humbled to the dust by the woman she thought she knew. “Mama was
such a quiet lady, so calm.”

“
Are you like her?”

“
I want to be.”

A
s Miles had commented, it
may have been her town, but they never would have found the
Lonnigans without the little map Mr. Cooper drew.

“
I have lived here all my life, but
these parts are as foreign to me as the moon,” she whispered to
Miles as they plunged into a regular rabbit warren of twisting,
narrow streets and misery all around them. “You’ll keep me safe,
won’t you?”

“
Entirely. Completely,” Miles
assured her, as he took her hand and tucked her close to him. “If
you tell my uncle where I took you today, he’ll probably send me
away in disgrace. I’d be more surprised if you
did
know this
neighborhood.”

There is so much I don’t know about the
world
, Lucy thought as the dank walls seemed to lean in closer.
She heard children crying—not unusual, of course, except that it
was the exhausted crying of little ones already without hope.
Hollow-eyed children looked at them from doorways. One little boy
held out his hand, as though wanting far more than either of them
could provide.

“
I have lived a sheltered life,” she
whispered to Miles.

“
That is entirely as it should be,”
he replied. “We inhabit a completely different world from this
one.”

“
We can do the Lonnigans some good,
but what?” she asked. “I don’t mind telling you that I am out of
ideas.”

“
That will change, once we get to
know them, and not just in an
it’s-Christmas-have-a-basket-don’t-bother-me way. You heard Mr.
Cooper say he wants us to change their lives.”

She nodded, and clung to his hand. She didn’t
think she could even change
her
life, and the vicar expected
her to change four peoples’ lives. “I’m afraid,” she
whispered.

He pulled her closer and kissed her cheek. “You
wanted Christmas,” he reminded her. “As little as you think I know
about the Bible, I strongly suspect that Christmas is much, much
more than wassail and kissing boughs.”

How was it that Miles Bledsoe knew just how to
give her heart courage? As they hurried along the alley, she
thought of other times he had helped her, mostly without being
asked.

Miles kept his eyes on the row of lookalike
houses. “This one.”

He knocked on the door. After a minute or more,
a young lad peeked out of the window next to the door. He looked
fearful until Lucy waved at him, and then he looked merely
wary.

Miles knocked again. Another long wait, and
then a woman opened the door just a crack.

“
Mrs. Lonnigan?” Miles asked. “Mr.
Cooper from the school sent us to visit with you. May we come
in?”

“
I … I don’t have anything you
would want,” she said, opening the door a crack wider.

“
We don’t want anything except to
meet you and your children.” Miles stepped back. “This is my
cousin, Lucy Danforth. I believe you knew her mother.”

Mrs. Lonnigan opened the door and ushered them
inside. She glanced around the alley, and Lucy knew, with a pang in
her heart, that the Irish woman was looking for her
mother.

“
She didn’t come with you?” she
asked.

“
She died six months ago,” Lucy
said, and not without a quiver of her lips. Here she was trying to
seem grown up and capable, and her emotions threatened to betray
her again.

“
I am sorry to hear that. She was a
friend to us,” Mrs. Lonnigan said simply.

“
So the schoolmaster told me,” Lucy
replied. “May we sit down?”

She looked around for a place to sit, but there
wasn’t a chair in sight. She saw four neatly tied bedrolls against
the walls and what looked like a blanket on the floor.

“
All I have is the floor,” Mrs.
Lonnigan said and gestured.

Lucy sat on the floor, Miles beside her, not
betraying with even a glance that this resting place was somewhat
out of the ordinary. The children clustered around, looking
interested now, no longer wary.

“
I … I have some tea,” the
widow offered.

“
That would be divine,” Lucy said,
feeling suddenly as calm as if she sat on the floor in a hovel
every other day. “May I help you?”

“
Oh, no. Won’t take a minute.” Mrs.
Lonnigan’s face fell. “We use the leaves over and over, so they are
well-nigh exhausted.”

“
That suits me,” Miles said. “This
way the tea won’t keep us up at night.”

Mrs. Lonnigan went to a corner of the room to a
metal stove that looked almost the size of a replica or a toy. Lucy
noticed a pan of something cooking on the hob. It was a small pan,
and probably held too little for one person’s meal, let along four.
No wonder the Lonnigan children looked smaller than the ages Mr.
Cooper mentioned. She had never missed a meal in her life. She
probably would be painfully thin, herself, if food hadn’t been
available every day, and in satisfying quantities.

The tea turned out to be just a couple of
wilted leaves, but it still warmed Lucy’s insides. So did the kind
expressions of the children.

She knew she was making Mrs. Lonnigan
uncomfortable, sitting there on the floor of a hovel, drinking
almost-tea. Lucy glanced at Miles, hoping he would take the lead,
but his expression—oh, she knew his expressions—told her that this
bit of negotiation was her show. She set down her cup.

“
Mrs. Lonnigan, I miss my mother
with all my heart,” she began. “This Christmas I want to honor her
memory. I know she used to deliver baskets of Christmas food. I
told Mr. Cooper I wanted to do something more this year, a really
bold stroke.”

To say that Mrs. Lonnigan looked skeptical
would have been an understatement of massive proportions. Lucy did
not avoid her glance. Underneath the skepticism, she thought she
saw utter life-weariness.

I must not muddle this, Lucy thought. This is
not the time to open my mouth and blather. She glanced at Miles and
saw an encouraging nod.

“
I want to do more than just give
you a Christmas basket and then forget about you for the rest of
the year,” she said frankly. “I … we will start with food, but
we will do more.”

“
What, for instance?” the widow
asked, still not convinced.

“
You need work that is both steady
and honorable,” Miles said. “Let me ask a few
questions.”

“
Ask away.”

He turned to Edward. “Mr. Cooper told us you
are fourteen, Edward.”

“
As good as, come January
fifteenth.”

“
Edward, what do you like to do?”
Miles asked.

He didn’t seem to understand the question, from
the quizzical look he gave Miles.

“
You know, for fun,” Miles
coaxed.

The boy and his mother exchanged a glance that
all but shouted,
These rich people don’t understand that life is
not fun
. Mortified, Lucy could see that in their faces as
clearly as if they had said it in unison.

“
What do you wish you could do more
of in school?” Lucy asked, amending the question, and earning a
look of gratitude from Miles.

This was different. Edward would probably
always be of a serious turn, but Lucy saw sudden enthusiasm in his
eyes.

“
Numbers! Above all, numbers,” he
exclaimed, sitting up. “I love to add and subtract. I am up to
three columns and five rows in my head.”

“
Goodness. I feel fortunate to add
one column three rows high,” Lucy said. “Numbers, then, for
you?”

Edward nodded. He indicated his younger
brother. “Michael doesn’t like to talk much, but if he sees
something hurt, he mends it. Show her the bird, Mikey.”

The younger brother indicated with his head
that Lucy follow him to the little stove. She knelt beside him as,
with sure fingers, he drew back a clean cloth next to what little
warmth there was. She saw a bird with a splint on his wing looking
back at her.

“
I want him to get well, but I’m not
certain just how it’s done,” he said. “He’s alive though, so that
is something.”

“
I can’t even keep a plant alive,”
Lucy told him.

“
You add water, miss,” Michael told
her quite seriously.

Before she knew it, the little girl was in her
lap. “What about you, Mary Rose?” Lucy asked.

“
I would like to cook, if we had any
food,” she said.

Lucy thought of Honoré and Aunt Amelia fighting
over petit fours and the best icing for a groom’s cake and wondered
what an always hungry child would make of such silliness. She
tightened her arms around Mary Rose, who settled back against her
with a sigh. Without words, Lucy rested her cheek against the
child’s head and hoped Miles would pick up the conversational
strain. Another word, and she would cry.

“
Mrs. Lonnigan, I know you receive a
stupidly small pension,” he said. “What else do you do?”

“
I am a seamstress, except that most
of the people I sew for don’t have much more than I do.”

“
Are you proficient?” he asked,
which made Lucy stare at him. Was he being rude?

By the set of her mouth and her serious eyes,
Lucy saw that Mrs. Lonnigan understood the question. Lucy began to
understand Miles Bledsoe better.

“
I can sew a fine seam, make
excellent buttonholes, and mend a rip so you wouldn’t know it
happened, sir,” she told him, her head up. “Only give me a
chance.”

“
That’s what we will do. Lucy, let
us go outside for a moment.”

He took her hand without giving her a moment to
think about it, and towed her outdoors into the misty dusk. With
both hands on her shoulders, his face close to hers, he said, “Here
is your task tonight when we return home: convince the housekeeper
that Mrs. Lonnigan’s services are required to put the finishing
touches on Clotilde’s trousseau.”