The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,80

the liquid assets are tied up at the moment, and he can’t go moving things from one branch to another without a lot of pains and paperwork.”

“Even when I offered to help him with the paperwork,” John agreed, and sighed. “That’s when he said he’d set me up as a clerk for one of his other enterprises, if the whaling was getting as dire as that.” He looked across the room at Harry. “But I won’t leave ship until the captain retires.”

“And I’m not the retiring kind,” Harry purred in response.

Penelope’s face flamed.

“Gentlemen,” Griffin interrupted. “Are you really going to argue about bank accounts on Christmas Eve? You haven’t even given Mrs. Flood her gifts yet.”

Harry slapped a hand to his forehead. “Damn if the lady’s not right—skewered us right through the heart, sharp as any harpoon.” He bounced to his feet and waved at John. “Come, there’s at least two armfuls to bring down—maybe we won’t make Pen open them yet, but we might as well pile them on the table to be admired, since Kitty did such lovely things with the wrapping of them.” He bounded out of the room, John trailing after with one wry glance at Penelope.

Griffin shook her head. “I see why you might feel overwhelmed.”

“Do you?” Penelope asked.

“Certainly. Harry’s rather a whirlwind, isn’t he?” Griffin rose and brought over the brandy, adding a healthy dollop to Penelope’s glass of eggnog. “Are all your brothers like him?”

“More or less,” Penelope replied. She took a sip of her drink and sighed, as the brandy cut through the thickness of the cream in just the way she liked. “Harry was only the second most talkative, until we lost Owen.”

Griffin’s mouth tightened. “That’s right, you’ve mentioned losing a brother.”

As Griffin had, too, Penelope remembered too late. She hid her face in her cup. “I imagine it’s easier to lose one when you have six to begin with.”

Griffin only shook her head and said gently, “Of course it isn’t.”

“No.” Penelope stared into her drink, rolling the thick liquid around and watching it slide down the side again.

“Was Owen also involved in the family business?” Griffin asked.

Penelope’s lips curved up. “Oh no,” she said. “He was a poet.”

Griffin sat straight up in her chair. “You have a poet in your family tree and you never warned me?”

Penelope’s smile widened into a grin. “Well, technically Owen was a vicar—he held the St. Ambrose’s living before Mr. Oliver did—but he was always writing and reading verse of some kind. He liked the Church because he said prayer was a kind of poetry.” She leaned her head back against the chair, remembering. “His sermons were some of the most beautiful I’ve ever heard. Even if Harry always said it was just an excuse for Owen to get in an extra hour’s talking on a Sunday.” She smirked. “As I said, Harry was only second most talkative.”

Harry himself now returned as if conjured, his arms weighed down with boxes and packages in brown paper and ribbon, John following hard on his heels. “Where do you want these, Pen?”

“In the window seat, I should think,” Penelope replied. “We’ll open them tomorrow after church.”

Harry strode across the room and began arranging gifts to show to best advantage. John, blushing, went to help. They argued at great length and volume about which one to stack where, but if you ignored the words and the tone it was easy to see how their movements mirrored one another, as if they were merely two extensions of the same soul, rather than two separate people.

As if they had a little bubble of happiness, which wrapped around the pair of them, and left everyone else out in the cold. Penelope didn’t know why it should suddenly bother her so much.

Griffin set down her glass with a clink, the sharp sound cutting through the deep burr of Harry’s wind-roughened voice. “I was thinking about going over to Mrs. Stowe’s,” Griffin said comfortably. “Would you be up for a walk, Flood?”

Griffin had been right: the whole tangle of Penelope’s loneliness and worry came loose with a single pull.

She wasn’t alone. She had a friend. It was simple, but not small.

“I would enjoy that,” Penelope replied. “I have a jar of blackberry honey to bring to Miss Coningsby—her favorite.” She set her empty glass aside and rose from her chair. “Harry,” she called in a louder voice, “Mrs. Griffin and I are heading out for a little while. Will you and John be alright