The Mistletoe Kiss Read online

  Chapter 2

  Luncheon ended up a hurried affair. Mr. Fenton had bought warm mutton pies from the pie man and some bread and cheese. Christy saved half of it all and wrapped it in the piece of wax paper the pies came in. It sat in his pocket as he made his way to his mother’s home. It was gone six, and he had stayed at the bookshop as long as he could, but now he had to face the other reality of his life. He walked briskly, collar up against the freezing cold and rain though it did no good. He kept his head down as he made his way across Covent Garden Piazza, past the church, and over towards Seven Dials and on to St Giles. He dodged through the increasingly squalid streets, avoiding the worst areas where gangs roaming meant a fellow could take his life in his hands straying onto the wrong path, and ignored the worst of the stink.

  He left his smart clothes at the shop because it would make him a target, and, if he brought them home, his stepfather would likely sell them. His own coat was threadbare and no protection from the icy wind and rain. The soles of his shoes were so thin that he could feel every stone and his left foot felt distinctly wet. He nipped down the dingy streets, keeping to his well-worn route. The door of the White Hart pub opened and disgorged a pile of men fighting, yelling, and grappling with each other. The landlord shouted from the door, and a woman pushed another man onto the street. He pressed against the wall to avoid them and skirted around, trying not to breathe in the stench of stale sweat and ale. Sheets which hung on a washing line, were going stiff in the frosty air as he pushed past them. He dodged down the tiny alleys until he found the shabby room that his mother now called home. He knocked and opened the door gingerly, peeping in. His step father was snoring in the chair by a fire that was almost out, and his mother sat stitching at the table by a flickering tallow candle that filled the room with a sickly stench.

  “Hello, Ma,” he whispered.

  She glanced up and gave him a weary smile.

  “Where are the little ones?” His mother had married Stanley March earlier in the year, around the time he had started working in the bookshop. A man with six children, whose ages ranged from five to fifteen. He had foisted them upon his mother and promptly buried his head in a bucket of gin. He had never emerged. Some said he grieved for his wife, the mother of his children, some said he was just a nasty bastard. Christy concurred with the latter judgement. March stirred in his chair and farted loudly. Christy watched his mother flinch. Christy knew he wasn’t welcome in the house and March waking to find him there would no doubt set him off in a temper.

  She put her stitching down when March belched and settled back to sleep. Christy could smell the alcohol rolling off him. With luck, he would be out for the night.

  “Mrs. Wainwright took them for a bit,” she said. “They were upsetting him.”

  Christy nodded. Mrs. Wainwright would no doubt feed the children too, thank God, as it was unlikely that there was any food in the house, if one could call the hovel that they now lived in a house. Christy still couldn’t believe it. He had returned from his brief stint in the infantry and the war with Napoleon, flush with success at managing to stay alive, to find his father dead, and his mother on the verge of remarrying.

  He looked at her. She looked weary and defeated. Her fair hair was escaping her cap and her eyes were sunken.

  “Here.” He pulled out the pie and the bread and cheese and passed it to her, one eye on March.

  “Thank you. I’ll put it…” Christy took hold of her arm as she stood to rise. “It is for you. Eat it now whilst he is asleep or I’ll take it away.”

  “But…”

  “No, Mama. It is for you. You give everything to him and the children, this is for you. Please.”

  She reached out and took the pie and her hand trembled. She put it in her mouth and chewed and her eyes slid closed. He watched over her whilst she ate every scrap and then stood and wrapped his arms around her she held him tight for a moment.

  “Your papa would be proud of you,” she whispered.

  He squeezed his eyes tight against the tears that threatened.

  “We need to get you away from here,” Christy whispered into her hair.

  “He’s my husband and the children need me. I can’t leave.”

  “I don’t care if he’s the king. You need to get away.”

  She didn’t say anything. Christy wondered about the children she had lost. He was the only one to survive to adulthood, and he wondered if March’s children were a way of filling the emptiness. The thought made him ache.

  March stirred, and they both froze. His mother was the first to move, and she pushed at him. March wouldn’t want to see him in the house. He was only interested in him when he tipped up his wages for him, and even then it was only so he could try and belt him for not earning enough. Stupid bastard. Didn’t he realise he didn’t give him it all? If any portion of it had gone to feeding or clothing his mother, or the children, he would have happily given over every farthing. But it didn’t. March spent it in the Golden Goose on ale, gin, and God alone knew what.

  March was a handsome bastard. Tall, dark haired, still virile at forty-five, and he was very much afraid that his mother was besotted by him because she forgave the most unforgivable of behaviour. Apparently he had wooed her so determinedly that she had fallen in with him. He seemed to offer her a way out of the terror of living as a penniless widow faced with the threat of the St Martins poor house, whose husband left her no money, not even the home they lived in.

  What she hadn’t seen was that he was a nasty tempered bully, and a drunkard.

  Christy fished the pennies from his pocket that he had saved to get himself something to eat and slipped them into her hand, then took the lumps of coal he had from the other and gave them to her for the fire. She put them in her apron and squeezed him tight. He held her and tried to remember something of the life they had led when his father was alive. When they were respectable. Poor, but respectable. Now she was shackled to March it was impossible to imagine ever being that way again.

  Christy settled into his room for the night. He paid little for it, as it was the tiniest attic room he had ever seen, more of a cupboard really with a small, ill-fitting window from where he could peer over the rooftops of London. There was room for a pallet, a hard chair, and a table. What it did have, though, was a fireplace and a chimney so at least he could be warm, and best of all, he didn’t have to share it with anyone. Mr. Fenton often gave him wood for it, or a few pieces of coal. He took the last of the wood he had left, given he had let his mother have the coal, and set the fire, put a pot of water to boil on the stand, and pulled out the book from his pocket Mr. Fenton had asked him to read. Mr. Fenton liked to read the books so that he could recommend them to customers, but he couldn’t read them all. When he had discovered that Christy could read, Mr. Fenton had been eternally grateful for him in reading the books and writing him a short summary of the good points and not so good points. The book he had given him was a work of fiction named Ivanhoe. He poured a cup of hot water, settled his candle, a wax candle, again courtesy of his employer, one that did not fill the room with the vile stench of tallow, and opened the pages.

  Bells tolled midnight and Christy rubbed his weary eyes. Time simply flew in the pages of a book, and he was particularly enjoying this one. He wondered about writing a few comments, but his eyes were weary and his stomach grumbled, so he settled under his blanket and waited for sleep to claim him. He thought of his mother and the children in the tiny room with March and shuddered. No matter how much he begged her to come away with him, she refused, so all he could do was give most of his wages over to March and keep a little back so he had a place to sleep and some coin to feed himself with. Mr. Fenton gave him everything else he needed. He closed his eyes and felt the warmth of Mr. Fenton’s hand on his shoulder, but pushed the feeling away. He’d thought that the attraction he felt to other men would fade as he grew to manhood, that his attention would become drawn to girls as other men’s were, but it had never ha
ppened, and he had pretty much accepted it, but the thoughts he often harboured about Mr. Fenton, who had been nothing but good, respectable, and kind, shamed him more than he could say.

  Lawrence Fenton limped down the stairs in the dark. He gripped his cane with one hand and the bannister with the other, and only breathed out when he reached the bottom. He had to steady himself for a few moments to make sure his leg would hold out before taking the few steps to the room at the back of the shop. As he got older, the hip that had been deformed since birth seemed to get worse. Particularly in the cold.

  He needed to get the fires banked and the porridge on before Christy arrived. Lawrence shivered as he raked out the ashes and reset the fire. Once flames began to lick the coals he carefully placed some logs so they would catch, filled the kettle with water, and poured porridge into the pan. As the months turned colder he worried about him. Even to the point where once he had followed him to see where he lived. He wished he hadn’t. The young man sometimes reminded him of a wild animal. Cautiously approaching, but skittering away at the slightest movement. It had taken weeks for him to speak above much, and when Lawrence had hit on the idea of offering him work, the lad’s eyes had filled with tears. He could read. He loved reading. Loved books. It was a perfect solution even if it did stretch Lawrence’s budget at times in the beginning, but as time went on Lawrence could see it was the best decision that he could have made.

  He stirred the porridge and left it to simmer, and then saw to the fire in the shop. As he wiped his hands he wondered about the wisdom of getting someone to help with the housework. Christy had transformed his bookstore from a rather dull, lacklustre business that seemed to be overlooked by most, into a warm, welcoming enterprise that, thanks to Christy’s tireless tidying, clearing, polishing, and organising, was doing rather well. He had raised his wages as much as he could, and tried to make sure that he was at least fed during the day, and now he was actually starting to think about expanding. The first editions were one thing, but he was certain that Christy would have other ideas. Talking to Christy was sometimes difficult, because even the smallest enquiry about his home or personal life made him close up. He didn’t talk a great deal as it was, and that, for Lawrence, was one the things he liked about him. He didn’t feel the need to fill every silence with inane chatter. Some of his most enjoyable moments were when the shop was quiet and they worked side by side in companionable silence. On other occasions though, when they sat in the leather chairs in the back room, either at the start or the end of the day, they talked companionably about books, politics, the world…anything, as long as it wasn’t about Christy and particularly not about his time spent as an infantryman in the army.

  The fire blazed up the chimney and Lawrence struggled to his feet. Damned hip. Thank God for Christy and his nimble legs that could take him up the ladders so quickly and easily. He picked up the bundle of documents that had been drafted for him. They were wrapped in paper and tied with red ribbon. He rubbed a thumb over them with a sigh. He’d asked for them to be drawn up, but at a time when he’d clearly had too much brandy. It was madness. Lawrence shook his head and put them in the sideboard cupboard. It was too much.

  He sat behind his desk in the shop, which also served as a counter, fidgeting until he found a comfortable position for his now aching hip, and picked up his quill. He had barely opened his ledger when the doorbell tinkled and in he came like a glimmer of sunshine in an otherwise bleak world. He glanced up and frowned. The lad looked wet through and frozen half to death again. His coat was hopelessly inadequate, and his hat was ragged. His hair was scraped back against his skull, and Lawrence was certain that if it were to be washed it would be a soft, golden colour. As it was, it was difficult to tell. His eyebrows and lashes were fair though, framing light blue eyes that either brimmed with intelligence and enthusiasm, or wariness and caution.

  “Good morning, Mr. Shaw,” he said, peering over the top of the spectacles he now needed when working with the ledgers.

  “Good morning Mr. Fenton,” Christy said with a grin, and disappeared into the back room to change into his bookshop clothes. The ones that Lawrence had persuaded him to accept on the pretence that he needed a uniform of sorts to work in the shop. He had decided that his next mission was to persuade him that he should take a bath on occasion and use the magnificent copper beast he had stored in the outhouse just for that purpose. Not that Christy wasn’t clean, but…Lawrence cleared his throat and banished the image of Christy in the bath. However, on looking at him it may be that his next mission needed to be to persuade him to accept a new coat and hat, and probably shoes. Usually, Christie would bring him a cup of tea to his desk, but today Lawrence finished his task, and then followed him into the back room. He gave him time to change, though, for he had walked in on him once before and seen the bruises that his step father had left on him and Christy had been mortified beyond bearing. He could hear the clink of china so deemed it safe to enter.

  “It’s a miserable morning,” he said whilst limping over to one of the chairs by the range. Somehow, they had slipped into him using the chair on the left, and Christy the one on the right. He sat in his chair and stretched out his leg with a grimace.

  “Is it paining you?” Christy asked with a look of concern.

  “Like the devil. Seems worse in the cold and rain.”

  Christy poured the tea and brought it to him.

  “Thank you.” He took a sip. “Perfect. Just perfect.”

  Christy smiled.

  “If your clothes are wet, put them over the maiden.” Lawrence glanced upwards and nodded to the contraption above the fireplace, pulled up high, so that, when lowered, it could be used to drape clothes over to dry in the heat of the fire without scorching them. Christy glanced at his wet belongings and grimaced.

  “Here. Let me.” Lawrence put down his cup and heaved himself up, ignoring Christy’s protests. He went to the rope that tied the maiden up and lowered it to allow Christy to drape his things.

  “They will be warm and dry for when you leave.” He pulled the rope and hoisted the contraption up so that Christy’s clothes hung like flags above their heads.

  “Would you pour us both a bowl of porridge?” he said whilst tying the rope and then giving it a tug to test its steadfastness. Christy jumped as though startled, but gathered a couple of bowls and ladled steaming hot porridge into both. He sprinkled both with a little sugar and added a careful drop of milk and then they sat facing each other and ate the porridge by the warmth of the fire.

  “What did you make of Ivanhoe?” Lawrence asked after a little while.

  Christy’s face broke into a smile. “I haven’t finished it yet, but I am loving it. I think I would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone.”

  “Well, that’s good to know.” They ate in comfortable silence until he scraped the last of the porridge from the bowl, and when he glanced up, Christy appeared to be staring at his hands with something like longing in his blue eyes. Lawrence paused. “Would you like more porridge?” he asked, wondering if he was perhaps still hungry.

  Christy flushed. “No thank you. I’ll get to work.” He put his dish in the sink by the door and bolted for the shop. Baffled, Lawrence added his bowl and then followed him.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Christy said when Lawrence settled himself at his desk and picked up the large leather-bound ledger. Today was accounts day. Lawrence hated accounts. He sent Christy a questioning look.

  “I wonder if we should offer customers a cup of tea, or a cup of coffee?”

  “A cup of tea?” Lawrence frowned and shook his head. “Ah…why?”

  Christy put down the book he had been shelving and turned to him, excitement warring with worry in his blue eyes. “Well, it is so cold out I don’t think people want to spend much time browsing. We have the fire in the shop now and if we were to add a chair or two with some cushions, we could offer customers who want to browse a warm drink.” He paused, seemingly probing Lawrence’
s face for some kind of response. He clearly found something encouraging because he continued.

  “People might then head for the bookstore because they know they can sit by the fire a while as well as spend time looking at the books.”

  “Wouldn’t they go to the coffee houses for that?”

  “Yes, but whilst they are in the coffee house they wouldn’t be surrounded by all these tempting books, would they? If they drank their coffee or whatever here, they might buy a book or some papers too.” He waved a hand, encompassing all the books and looked triumphant. His cheeks were a little flushed.

  “Well…”

  “I know we, I mean you, don’t have a lot of room, but if we just…” Lawrence watched him gesturing to the shelves, indicating how he’d move things about, “…so that a reading nook could be created by the fire with space for a couple of chairs, a table for periodicals…we could advertise the first editions too?”

  Lawrence’s heart swelled. Christy was the perfect protégé.

  “I don’t have time for anything like that.” Christy’s face fell, so he continued swiftly. “But if you would like to take it on as a project and see how it fares, then I would be happy for you to do so. Do you intend giving the refreshment gratis, or charging a small sum?”

  Christy’s mouth opened and then closed and a look of intense concentration settled on his countenance, a look that Lawrence had seen several times when he was thinking seriously about something. “Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that.” He rubbed his chin and walked over to the desk where Lawrence sat. “I had thought of giving it for nothing, but if we were to make a small charge, perhaps less than one would pay in a coffee house…” He paced a little, clearly warming to his subject. “Enough to pay for the tea and make a small profit? Do you think that would work?”

  He scowled, tapped his quill against his lips for a moment, and then looked Christy in the eye.