The Christmas Carriage Read Free

father-in-law is the same way, but good-hearted. My husband and I had to overcome considerable difficulties on the way to the altar. We were all at sixes and sevens, cross purposes, and widdershins.”
    “Widdershins is a word my Frederick would use. You and your husband came right, though, didn’t you?”
    Anna’s smile would have inspired angelic choruses, so beatific was it. “My husband and I have come right. You and Frederick will too, but you must not give up hope.”
    “I’ve tried attending services at our former church, but Frederick hasn’t been seen there in months. I’ve sent a footman to inquire on the street where Frederick kept rooms but nobody will admit knowledge of him. His family was in Aberdeen…”
    So very far away, and this time of year, cold and dark, too.
    Anna’s smile faded, her expression becoming earnest. “Write to him again, then. A holiday greeting, something to let him know you’re thinking of him. Gentlemen often need encouragement but don’t know how to ask for it.”
    The notion was daring, not proper at all, and Anna seemed like such a proper lady, too.
    “I can do that,” Lizzie said. “I can write to him again, but if he’s moved, they’ll just be returned to me, won’t they?”
    “Write anyway,” Anna said. “You don’t know that he’s changed lodgings, and if he loves you, he will not have gone haring back to the north with matters between you unresolved.”
    Lizzie did not argue, though Frederick was proud, and a proud man might not have wanted to endure begging and pleading when he told a woman who loved him good-bye.
    “I’ll write,” she said. “I’ll send one more note, full of holiday greetings. Nothing more.”
    ***
    Mr. Westhaven apparently was the sort of fellow who could nose around at a postal installation and immediately find himself taking tea with the superintendent in his private, well heated office.
    “You getting airs above your station again?” Tims asked.
    Frederick took up a stool at the sorting table. “Of course. It turned out so well last time.”
    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