"Oh, I say, Maggie, that was rather cruel. Wasn't it, Saint Just?"
Saint Just looked to Maggie, who had been in the act of rising to one foot with the aid of the walker. "Maggie?"
She sat down once more. "I'm sorry, Sterling, sweetie. You're real. You really are. And I'm a pig."
Sterling, who had risen to his feet as Maggie tried to stand up, then subsided onto the facing couch when she plopped down, got to his feet once more. "No, you're not. Police are pigs. I remember distinctly."
"Alex?" Maggie pleaded, looking desperately at Saint Just.
"With pleasure, my dear," he said, bowing to her. "Sterling, pigs was a term often used in the Regency Era to describe the local constabulary. Bow Street Runners, Bow Street Pigs. The term was considered offensive then and it is deemed to be even more offensive now. Please do not employ it again."
Sterling's eyes squinted behind his spectacles. "But Maggie just used it."
Saint Just inclined his head slightly to the love of his life. "Punting to you, my dear, as they say."
As Maggie tripped over her own tongue, explaining to the very literal Sterling the ins and outs of modern day slang, Saint Just watched his friend in some amusement.
Dear, dear Sterling. His short, pudgy, balding counterpart, the perfect counterpart, in point of fact, to the sometimes sarcastic, arrogant Saint Just. The foil, the comic relief, the human part of the Saint Just Mysteries. Why, the man had a quite impressive online fan club.
Sterling. The innocent. The always kind, fiercely loyal, never judgmental, Sterling.
They weren't, Saint Just had decided, exactly Batman, Robin, and Batgirl, but, together, the three of them were actually a rather formidable force.
"So you can say you're a pig, or call someone else a pig, but only if that someone else isn't a member of the police force? Like Lieutenant Wendell?"
"Exactly," Maggie said, looking at Saint Just. "And, speaking of Steve, he phoned this morning to tell me that he and his girlfriend are driving up to Stowe for the holidays. They're going skiing, and asked if we wanted to go along. Fat chance of that, huh, with this thing stuck to my leg?"
"And with your parents expecting you at Christmas dinner, yes," Saint Just said, picking up the mortgage application one more time and handing the papers to her. "We really need you to fill these out before we leave for Ocean City."
"We? What we needs me to fill out these papers? You and me, we? You and Kiki, we? The kingly we? What's the hurry, Alex? I checked the listing online again, and the house has been on the market for over eighteen months. That's unheard of in Manhattan. Nobody's going to buy it out from under us a few days before Christmas. It's not like anyone could tuck it up in a stocking, as a last minute Christmas gift."
Women had never been a mystery to Saint Just, until he'd joined Maggie's world. "Pardon me, my dear, but wasn't purchasing this house your idea?"
"I know, I know. But now that I've had time to think, I'm wondering why Kiki jumped at the price you offered."
"Loathe as I am to bring this up again—I am fairly persuasive."
"Oh, shut up. Granted, you're cute and all, but business is business. And Kiki was in a mighty hurry. Did you try turning on the water, Alex? Or the lights? I was so busy being impressed with the size of the place, the woodwork, the stained glass, that I didn't jump up and down to see if the floorboards squeak, or check for faulty plumbing. There's something wrong with the place, right? It's a lemon."
"But that's a fruit."
Maggie wrinkled up her nose. "Sorry, Sterling. Yes, a lemon is a fruit. I think it's a fruit. Maybe a vegetable. No ... no, a fruit. So, maybe the house is a dog—scratch that, too. Alex, do you think something's wrong with the house?"
Saint Just took back the papers. "Perhaps it's haunted?"
"Yes! It could be—no, Sterling, don't look like that. Alex is kidding. Alex, tell Sterling you're kidding, for crying out loud. You are kidding, right?"
"I was being flippant, Sterling. My most profound apologies. And, as I don't believe we're making very much progress here, I think I'll just toddle off to your bedroom, Maggie, and pack for you, as Sterling has performed that kind office for me. Not quite a gentleman's gentleman, definitely not on a par with Sterling, but I believe I'll manage."
Maggie hastily grabbed the walker, struggled to her feet. "The hell you will! Stay out of my drawers!"
Chuckling, and repressing an insane urge—a suicidal urge, actually—to retort that it was too late for that particular warning, Saint Just entered the bedroom a good minute ahead of Maggie and her now gaily decorated walker, and was removing delicate undergarments from her top dresser drawer when she bounded into the room, hopping so fast she ended by falling onto the bed on her back, to glare up at him.
"Comfortable, my dear?"
"I'd be a lot more comfortable if you were in China," she groused. And then, to his profound relief, she burst into tears. He'd been waiting, less and less patiently, for her finally to give in to her emotions.
He was sitting beside her in an instant, stroking her hair back from her face. "And more than time for a good cry, my dear," he told her. "He phoned me this morning, as well."
She stopped crying to look up at him, her Irish green eyes awash in tears. "Dad? My dad called you?"
"After he spoke with you, yes. He's quite maudlin."
Maggie reached for something to use to wipe her eyes, then saw that she was using a pair of lovely ivory-colored silk unmentionables and threw it toward a corner of the room.
"He's going to be all alone for Christmas. Mom disinvited him to Christmas dinner. Maureen barely talks to him, Erin refuses to return his calls. And Tate is just as bad—worse, because he's supposed to be the fair-haired boy. Yeah, right. This is going to be the worst Christmas ever, Alex—and that includes the three years I spent the day with stomach flu. Cripes, my mother took video of me throwing up into the box my Barbie Dream House came in, and she shows it every damn year. I can't go home. I don't want to go home. And now ... now I have to hop there."
Saint Just retreated from the bed long enough to take a box of tissues from the dresser and hand it to Maggie, then sat down beside her once more, bending to place a kiss on her forehead. "He did have an affair, my dear. Not many women can forgive such a thing, not when you Americans all believe in marriage for love, not simply convenience."
Maggie pushed away his hand and sat up. "That was Regency England, Alex. That was rich dukes marrying penniless young beauties and then the two of them falling madly in love by Chapter Twelve. We're not talking fiction, we're talking about my parents. My parents! My own father! He goes bowling. He watches sports on TV. Last time I checked, Mom still trimmed the fat off his meat, for crying out loud. He doesn't have affairs."
"If I recall correctly, Evan only indulged in the affair because he'd learned that your mother had succumbed to the thrill of an ... well, of an adventure outside the marriage vows some years ago."
"Please don't keep giving me creepy mental pictures that will keep me up nights. And that adventure of hers was about, what, ten years ago? Probably a menopausal aberration, and why she finally decided to tell him about it last month amazes me. Happy wedding anniversary, Evan—I had an affair a decade ago. Jeez. Still, wasn't it a little late of Dad to be playing the game of payback's a bitch? These are people in their middle sixties, for crying out loud. I didn't think people in their sixties even had sex anymore. Fat lot I know, huh?"