The Christmas Carriage Read online

  Tims’s smile turned sympathetic. “You still miss her?”

  “With every beat of my heart.”

  They fell silent as Harlan Bickerman came trotting over, his green visor set low across his brow. “You’re late, MacIntyre. Do you think because you’ve been racketing about with a duke’s son you’re no longer subject to the same work hours as the rest of us?”

  “I don’t know any duke’s son, sir,” Frederick said, noting that the toes of Bickerman’s fine boots were still wet, suggesting Westhaven had been right: Everyone had run late that morning.

  “He who comes in late must stay late,” Bickerman pronounced. “It’s not like you’ve a wife and kiddies to go home to, is it? But then, I forget. You hail from the north, and no proper London girl is likely to have you.”

  Across the table, Tims’s jug-ears were turning red.

  “You’re exactly right, Mr. Bickerman. I’ve nobody to go home to.”

  “So you won’t mind doing some extra sorting,” Bickerman said, He hefted a large canvas sack onto the sorting table. “There’s a bag of Christmas cheer, no doubt, none of it directed at you. Don’t leave until you’ve got it all sorted, or I will have your position.”

  As Bickerman’s heels beat a receding tattoo against the floorboards, Frederick stared at a bag twice the size of the usual sorting load.

  “The man’s an embarrassment,” Tims said, though quietly. “I saw him dump a load of dead letters into a sorting bag. I’m guessing it’s that lot there.”

  Dead letters were a sorting clerk’s worst nightmare. They required checking endless lists of forwarding addresses, trying to guess at awful handwriting, using the quizzing glass on smudged ink…

  “He’s right,” Frederick said. “I have nobody to go home to, and the only London girl I fancy apparently does not fancy me.” To be fair, it was Lizzie’s father who had not fancied him, but Lizzie was always going to have the same father.

  Frederick reached for the bag.

  Twenty minutes later he’d confirmed Tims’s dire prediction involving dead letters as a cheery, “Happy Christmas, Mr. MacIntyre!” rang out across the sorting room floor. Westhaven stood side by side with the superintendent, who was apparently walking his impromptu guest to the door.

  “Happy Christmas, Westhaven!”

  Westhaven offered Frederick a parting wave. “Give your Lizzie a kiss for me beneath the mistletoe!”

  “Will do, sir! And the same to your lady.”

  Tims watched this exchange in puzzlement. “So who is he? He’s dressed a damn sight better than any postal clerk will ever be.”

  “Mr. Westhaven’s lady appropriated his carriage, so he was forced to take a cab. We shared the ride over from Knightsbridge.”

  Tims was quiet for a moment, but like any good clerk, he could sort and gossip at the same time. “You still looking for your lady, Fred?”

  Frederick had taken rooms in Knightsbridge because he was still looking for his lady. “She liked to shop there. Said the quality was as good as Mayfair, but the prices weren’t as outrageous, though for all I know, her family has moved to Bath.”

  They spoke of the weather, of Tims’s sweetheart, Christobel, who was meeting him for a rum bun at supper. The pile of letters on Tims’s side of the table eventually became a few score, then a few dozen.

  As the oldest clerks shuffled out in the darkening evening, Bickerman came strutting by. “Haven’t made much progress with your sorting, have you, MacIntyre?”

  “Some,” Frederick said. “What a letter to Berwyck was doing in a bundle from Bristol is anybody’s guess.”

  Bickerman glanced pointedly at the eight day clock that stood like a warden in the prison yard in one corner. “Don’t waste coal tonight. I’ll expect that bag to be sorted when I arrive in the morning.”

  The sorting room was chilly at best. Frederick wiggled his toes in his boots. “I thought I’d attend services tonight.”

  Across the table, Tims took eternities to fasten six buttons.

  “That is between you and the Almighty, but don’t think piety will excuse a lack of punctuality if those letters aren’t on their way come morning.”

  He stomped off, but not fast enough.

  “Happy Christmas, Mr. Bickerman!” Tims bellowed. He winked at Frederick, who couldn’t help but smile.

  “Yes, Mr. Bickerman, Happy Christmas, and to Mrs. Bickerman too.”

  Because, as every clerk in the installation knew, Bickerman lived with his mother, there being no other lady in London who would have him for her very own.

  ***

  “You’re up late, my dear.”

  Lizzie’s mother stood framed in the library door. By firelight, she was a pretty woman still, though strong sunlight would reveal fine lines around her eyes and mouth.

  “I spent too much time in the shops today,” Lizzie said, appending a signature to her letter—her holiday note. “I’m behind in my correspondence as a result.”

  “The holidays are frightfully busy,” her mother said, advancing into the room. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about the invitations to next week’s dinner.”

  Lizzie opened the top drawer in search of sand for her epistle but found none. “We’re having another dinner?”

  Mama took the seat across from the desk, the same seat Lizzie had taken on the occasion of various lectures, scolds, or announcements from her father. Now she wanted to lecture her mother regarding all these invitations sent out to single, young men—even single, not-so-young men, provided the family had a title.

  “Lizzie, is there no young fellow whom you could see yourself taking an interest in? Many a titled lordling will overlook a girl’s common antecedents if her settlements are generous enough, and you are pretty.”

  Mama offered the last observation with a brisk inspection of Lizzie’s features, as if making sure she were still pretty.

  “Where does Papa keep the sand?”

  “Third drawer,” Mama said. “But why aren’t you using your own sitting room?”

  Lizzie opened the third drawer. “Because Papa will not allow my maid to top up the coals on my hearth after tea time, so the fire goes out each night and we waste more coal laying a new fire come morning—morning in a very chilly room, I might add.”

  “Your father cannot be blamed for trying to conserve resources, Lizzie. I thought the Porringer boy was a pleasant fellow.”

  Lizzie closed the third drawer with a stout thump. “He’s pleasant because he arrives to any occasion half seas over, Mama. There’s no sand—Ah.” She found the ornate little turquoise and gold cloisonné box in the second drawer, all the way back, but when she lifted it out, she spied beneath it a missive addressed in her very own hand.

  “Lizzie, you are not snooping in your father’s desk, are you? Nothing good ever comes of eavesdropping or snooping, I always say.”

  Lizzie barely heard her mother. “What are my letters doing in Papa’s desk?” For she’d found two, both addressed to Mr. Frederick MacIntyre.

  “What letters? If they’re in your father’s desk, I doubt very much they’re your letters.”

  “My letters to Frederick,” Lizzie said, closing this drawer with a bang. “Why does Papa have letters I wrote months ago, letters I very much wanted sent?”

  Mama sat forward, looking not at all pleased. “You wrote to Mr. MacIntyre?”

  “Of course I wrote to Mr. MacIntyre! I love Mr. MacIntyre, and Papa up and moved us to this house without even giving me a chance to say good-bye to Mr. MacIntyre, and now I miss him, and you keep foisting spotty baronets at me, and viscount’s fourth sons, and, and…”

  “Elizabeth, calm yourself. Your father had an offer on our other house that required a hasty remove, this location is perfect, and a proper address means so much to one’s prospects in this world. If your father did not have your letters sent on you must trust that he did so in your best interests.”

  The edges of Lizzie’s vision turned the exact shade of red tha
t Anna had been tempted to purchase earlier that day. “I am of age, Mama. Papa had no right to interfere with my correspondence. If he didn’t want me writing to Mr. MacIntyre, then he should have told me so. This is…” Lizzie clutched the letters, “this is stealing, and I will not have it.”

  Mama rose, looking very tall, but also for the first time in Lizzie’s experience, uncertain. “You do not tell your father what to do, Elizabeth. I’ll have those letters.”

  She thrust her hand under Lizzie’s nose, and Lizzie realized the letters were still sealed. Her father’s perfidy at least had limits, while her mother’s would have none. Lizzie pushed back her father’s heavy, well-cushioned chair and tossed the letters in the fire.

  “If Papa can keep the public rooms of the house cozy, he can afford to heat my sitting room as well. Perhaps then I won’t be tempted to root through that desk to see what other letters of mine he’s also deemed unworthy of the king’s post.”

  Lizzie swept out of the room before she said anything she’d regret—anything more she’d regret—and when she got to her sitting room, she did not build up the fire.

  She instead went to bed, and for the first time in months, had a reason to be grateful. Yes, Papa had appropriated two pieces of Lizzie’s private correspondence, lifted them right out of the tray in the front hallway where all the family’s letters sat in anticipation of the footman’s trip to the nearest posting inn.

  Two heartfelt, sincere, pleading letters had never reached Frederick.

  But Lizzie had written three. And seeing those letters had reminded her of something else: She knew where Frederick was employed.

  The sorting room went from chilly, quiet and dim, to frigid, dark, and silent, the only sound the soft rustle of the occasional epistle finding its way to a proper pile of similar letters.

  Frederick was down to the dead letters, and only a few dozen of those, though the hour was late. He sat on his stool, two sorting sacks wadded up into a makeshift pillow beneath his chilly, aching bum.

  “I should just go home.” He flipped the letter over, and read the last lines scrawled on the exterior. The marmalade mouser curled among the sorted letters twitched an ear.

  “Some people don’t put enough effort into their penmanship,” Frederick observed. This lady, for example, did not cross her t’s, and that meant… He reexamined the address, mentally revising the street name from Bellers Road to Betters Road, which happened to be located in Soho.

  “I’m falling asleep on my already asleep arse, and Bickerman will just find some other pile of straw for me to spin into gold, and eventually, he’ll have a pretext for sacking me.”

  The cat yawned, stretched, and resumed its slumbers.

  “I should go home, not to my freezing little room, but to Aberdeen. My family misses me.” And he missed them. “Bickerman will drive me to Bedlam, and for every fellow who gets a promotion, there are twenty who don’t.”

  He picked up the next letter and rubbed his eyes to make sure he was reading the address correctly.

  “I have a dead letter, Cat.”

  Another ear twitch.

  A queer feeling came over him as he studied the address, because he knew that penmanship. He turned up the lamp at his elbow, and with shaking hands, broke the seal.

  “My dearest Frederick…”

  Lizzie had written to him—written to her dearest Frederick—months ago. She’d defied all convention to tell him she missed him, she hoped to hear from him shortly, and hoped her previous letters hadn’t gone astray.

  Previous letters. To her dearest Frederick.

  Frederick read the letter again, and again, until he had it memorized, and still he sat on his stool and stared at it. The cat rose, and used its furry head to nudge at his hand.

  “Back to work, eh?” He folded Lizzie’s letter and tucked it into an inside pocket of his waist coat. “Only a few dozen more letters, right, Cat? I should be able to get through them by morning.”

  Tomorrow was Friday, but on Saturday, Bickerman did not come in, and the superintendent often let the clerks leave a bit early. “I can nip around Mayfair, ask for the Winkleblecks. There can’t be that many Winkleblecks in Mayfair.”

  He’d knock on doors if he had to—kitchen doors, of course. He’d pester the lads in the mews…

  A noise interrupted Frederick’s determined planning, a boot scraping against floorboards.

  “You still here, MacIntyre?”

  The superintendent was attired in a great coat, scarf, and gloves, ready to quit the premises.

  “I came in a bit late, sir,” Frederick said, scrambling off his stool. “Mr. Bickerman asked me to look over some dead letters.” Thank heavens.

  “It’s nigh midnight, lad.” The superintendent came closer, close enough to pull off a glove and scratch the cat under its furry chin. “I see you aren’t entirely orphaned in your labors and you’ve gotten a prodigious amount done.”

  Frederick looked over the sorting table, surprised to see the superintendent was right. “I hadn’t noticed, sir.”

  The superintendent, Mr. North, unwrapped his scarf and gestured to the pile left before Frederick. “Are these what’s left?”

  “I can do them, sir, it’s just that there were a number of dead letters…”

  North pulled up Tims’s stool. “I was a sorting clerk, you know, years ago. It’s not as easy as some people think. You must be quick and careful, for each letter might be some old dame’s only word from her daughter, it might have a father’s final words to his son. What we do is important.”

  The words were muttered, but they struck a chord in Frederick. “My father has said the same thing. The king’s post is the envy of the other nations, he says. Would you like a sack to sit on, sir?”

  North accepted the offer, and folded it with the same efficiency Tims would have used, then reached for half the stack of unsorted letters. “Bickerman’s being transferred, though I’ve yet to tell him.”

  What had Westhaven said, about the season of miracles? “He’s very dedicated, and he’s been with the post for years.”

  Frederick sorted three letters before realizing the last cache was not dead letters, but rather, another few dozen pieces of regular correspondence.

  “Now this is not your common name,” North muttered. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be, you’d better have a look.”

  The queer feeling was back, radiating from Frederick’s chest to his very fingertips as he accepted a piece of folded, sealed foolscap from Mr. North. “It’s… Winklebleck, sir. Henderson… P… Winklebleck.” And there, right in Frederick’s hand, was the rest of the address.

  “Winklebleck? Gracious, I’d never have puzzled that out.” North went back to flicking envelopes into piles—sorting methodology apparently hadn’t changed much over the years, while Frederick gaped and stared and gaped some more.

  “You know, MacIntyre, I didn’t say Bickerman was being promoted. He’s being transferred. He has no wife or kiddies to uproot, so he’s the logical candidate.”

  Frederick continued to regard the most lovely address in all the realm. “He has a mother, sir, and she depends on him, I’m sure.”

  “Bickerman’s sister married well, and she dotes on the old girl. Bickerman is entirely free to enjoy a remove to Wick. I’m told it’s lovely this time of year.”

  Frederick blinked, and wanted to shake his head, though North, who’d about completed the sorting, would think him daft. “Wick? In December?” Wick was North of Aberdeen by a considerable margin.

  “Just so. Looks like we’re about done, if you’ll part with the Wanderback’s epistle?” He held out a hand, and Frederick passed him the letter.

  “Winklebleck, sir. They’re a very nice family.” Lizzie was nice, and her sisters were, too.

  “I hear my carriage. Don’t suppose you’d let me give you a ride home? You Scots are so damned hardy, you hardly notice the cold. My grandmother was a Scot, and her shortbread was beyond compare. She lived
to be ninety-four, and I fully intend to do likewise.”

  “A ride home sounds lovely, sir, if it’s not out of your way.”

  They left the sorted mail to the guardianship of the sleeping cat, and though Frederick was exhausted in his bones, he also felt a lightness in his spirit that had been missing for months. His prospects had not improved, but he knew where his Lizzie was.

  And she had written to her dearest Frederick.

  “Is there a young lady whose family you will join for Christmas dinner this year, MacIntyre?”

  “No, sir, not likely.”

  They climbed into a snug coach, one made cozy by heated bricks set into the floor. “Then you must join Mrs. North and myself. We gather with my brother and his wife—he’s a bookseller—and any of my unmarried supervisors who have nowhere else to go. Makes us older fellows feel more convivial if you younger gents are on hand to hear our stories.”

  Frederick was nearly asleep on his feet, both euphoric to have found his Lizzie, and vaguely anxious: Should he confront her, write back to her? Leave her in peace to find a man whose prospects suited her family’s expectations?

  The horses moved off, their hooves muffled against the snow. “Will you join us, MacIntyre?”

  “Beg your pardon, sir?”

  North muttered something about Wick not being far enough north, which made no sense. “I said, will you join me and a few of the other fellows for Christmas dinner? My wife loves to cook for hearty appetites, and you should get to know the others because you’ll be working with them.”

  North was trying to tell him something, but the warmth of the coach, the toll from hours of sorting in the cold and dark, and the miracle and terror of having found Lizzie’s direction made Frederick’s brain slow.

  “I am always grateful for a good meal, sir, but I wouldn’t want anybody to think I had pretensions above my station.”

  North passed him a flask—now, where had that come from? “I certainly did.”

  Frederick took a cautious nip. “Beg pardon?”

  The stuff was lovely, as smooth a Highland whiskey as ever a homesick fellow from Aberdeen might have tasted.

  “I got notions well above my station. Married the superintendent’s daughter, and applied for every promotion that came along, until I had this assignment, which is far beyond the expectations I was born with. My lady likes Town life, so here I shall stay. I assume you’ll take the position? The scenery can’t compare with Aberdeenshire, but your family will cheerfully come visit here, I’m sure.”