Lady Louisa's Christmas Knight (12 page)

Now
he
was watching
her
mouth. “The only other option I see, Louisa Windham, is for you to marry me.” He braced himself for her to whip away, to laugh, to pucker up with the presumption of it. “Say something, Louisa. I mean you no insult, I hope you know that.”

“You think I'd take insult because you raise swine and I am a duke's daughter?”

She still had not moved away, and a distracting olfactory tickle of clove and citrus wended its way into Joseph's awareness. “There is that salient reality, but it's also the case that I must have children, Louisa, there being the matter of that da—deuced title. I could not offer you the cordial union you might seek.”

“By cordial, you mean unconsummated.”

He managed another nod. Merely standing near her, her arm twined with his, their fingers linked—when had
that
happened?—was wreaking havoc with his composure.

She stared past him into the fire, her brows knit. “I like children. They're honest. They might lie about whether they stole the pie, but they don't deceive themselves about enjoying every bite. Children love a good story. They don't twitch their noses at a lively tale because it does not ‘improve the mind.' Eve and Jenny adore children.”

What
was she saying?

“Louisa, I am offering a marriage in truth, though I am not the better bargain.”

This close, he could see the gold flecks in her green eyes. The firelight brought out red highlights in her dark hair, and it was all he could do not to run his fingers over those highlights, to feel for himself the warmth and softness to be had by touching her.

“We kissed once.” She spoke quietly and lowered her gaze. “I esteem you greatly, Joseph Carrington, though I have wondered if my efforts in that kiss were sufficiently unmemorable as to make you regret the occasion.”

He was so busy trying to muster the discipline to let go of her hand and take himself off that her words didn't register immediately in his befuddled mind.

She esteemed him
greatly
? “Louisa, your efforts were not… unmemorable.”

He saw her drop frosty politesse over the hint of vulnerability in her eyes, felt her spine stiffen fractionally—and knew he'd said the wrong thing. He could not abide those withdrawals, however subtle. “Louisa, since we kissed, I have thought of little else, and I esteem you greatly, as well. Very greatly.”

While Joseph watched, a blush, beautiful and rosy, stole up Louisa Windham's graceful neck.

“I have had occasion to consider that kiss a time or two myself,” she said. He thought her voice might have been just a trifle husky.

Hope, an entire Christmas of hope, blossomed in the center of his chest. “Perhaps you would like a small reminder now?”

He would adore giving her a reminder. A reminder that took the rest of the afternoon and saw their clothes strewn about the chamber. Twelve days of reminders would work nicely, with a particular part of Joseph's body promptly appointing itself Lord of Misrule.

He would not push her, but he would get a cane, the better to support himself should random insecurity threaten his knees in future.

Louisa lifted her gaze to his and seemed to visually inventory his features. After suffering her perusal for an eternity, Joseph let out a breath when she twined her arms slowly around his neck. He would not harry her. It would be a chaste kiss, a kiss to reassure—

Louisa Windham did not need
any
reminders about how to kiss a man. She gently took possession of Joseph's mouth, plundered his wits, and stole off with his best intentions. His arms came around her, anchoring her tightly against his body. Following in the path of sincere gentlemanly attentions, lust galloped up on a big, fast horse
flattening
his restraint.

It didn't flatten anything else, though. When Joseph would have angled his body away to avoid offending the lady, she tucked herself against him, breasts and hips, leaving nothing to the imagination.

“Louisa—”

The daft woman used his bid for reason to seam his lips with her tongue. God in heaven, she even tasted like cloves and oranges.

“Kiss me, Joseph Carrington…” She muttered her orders against his mouth, and he obliged. By heaven, he obliged with everything in him—but not with force.

He resorted to stealth, teasing the corners of her mouth with his tongue and sliding his hands down, down to her hips. While she retaliated with a hand tangled in the hair at his nape, he shifted closer, wanting more of the feel of her against him. He loved learning the span of her hips with his hands, loved the womanly shape of her, loved the feel of their bodies pressed so tightly together.

But he cared for
her
too, so he eased away from the kiss and rested his cheek against her temple. She was breathing as fast as he, an observation which yielded him no small pleasure.

“Will you marry me, Louisa Windham? I feel compelled to point out to you that you should not when a better alternative exists.”

Louisa's expression cooled, giving her a resemblance to her mother Joseph hoped was not a prelude to polite rejection, or worse than rejection, a request for time to “think.”

“Your admonitions are very chivalrous, Joseph Carrington, but unavailing. You are handsome, intelligent, and I will not have to spend decades teaching you how to kiss. I'm told these qualities adequately endorse a man for matrimony.”

She had accepted his proposal, she esteemed him greatly,
and
she thought him handsome and intelligent?

As if to deny that such bounty had been surrendered, Louisa regarded him with hauteur worthy of a duchess—a ploy to hide her tender heart, he was sure of it. “You will not allow Grattingly to harm your person, Joseph. You have my permission to teach him a lesson, though.”

A tender and protective heart, then.

“You're the merciful sort. This is good to know.” He kept his arms around her, content to endure any number of lectures and scolds if she'd deliver them while in his embrace.

“I'm practical.” She nuzzled his neck, which hardly seemed the gesture of a practical woman. “Oh,
look
, Joseph, it's snowing again.”

There was wonder and pleasure in her voice, and it nicely gilded the moment. Joseph glanced over her head to the window, where, indeed, big, lazy flakes of snow were drifting down over the damp garden. “I'd best be going then.” He treated himself to a quick taste of her mouth and let her be the one to step back.

Let
her.
As if he could have.

“You will be careful?” Louisa brushed his hair away from his forehead in a gesture that was positively wifely.

“I'm used to snow, Louisa, and my horse is quite reliable.”

Her lips flattened. “I meant with Grattingly. For obvious reasons, I do not trust that man to observe the dictates of honor.”

“I will take no chances.”

“I also don't like you going out in this weather, Joseph. Could you be persuaded to stay for the evening meal?”

An endless meal where he'd sit beside her, trying to both make conversation
and
keep his hands off her? “Perhaps next week. I'll tend to placing the announcement on my way home.”

She looked not pleased, but mollified. “Are we to set a date?”

What
was
this?
“That is usually the lady's prerogative. I am at your disposal in this regard.” He considered briefly going down on his knees to beg her to allow him to get a special license. Getting up would be a problem, one he'd willingly deal with if he thought she'd give her consent.

She studied him with some unfathomable female light in her eyes. “The strategic thing to do would be to wait until next spring, to open the Season not with a ball, but with an enormous wedding breakfast.”

His brilliant fiancée—who esteemed him greatly—could probably tell him the exact number of seconds between now and any wedding date months hence. “A lot can happen in a few months, Louisa.”

“A spring wedding would give your daughters time to get used to the idea, Sir Joseph.”

A suspicion bloomed in the back of Joseph's mind, a suspicion that his intended was even more clever than he'd perceived.

“Are you cornering me into admitting I'd like the wedding to take place immediately?” The idea of having Louisa under his roof for the Yule season lifted a bleakness on Joseph's heart that had nothing to do with teaching his daughters to ride in the dead of winter.

“I will lose my nerve, Joseph.”

That such a magnificent, brave, and dear woman should make this admission to him was far more compliment than insult. She sounded so plaintive, though, so bewildered.

“Common sense ought to dictate some haste, Louisa. I could end up dead, and as my widow, you'd be shown every courtesy.”

She blinked, and before his eyes, she regained her dignity. “You will not end up dead. I will not have it. We will be married at week's end if you can fit a special license and a wedding into your schedule.”

Relief warred with a sense of having queered the moment. “And where shall we marry? I assume we're both members of the parish in Kent.”

“I'd prefer St. George's.”

“Excellent thinking.” Before the holiday exodus, let society see the vindication of her honor right under their noses. “I will leave you to plan the details and trust you to know my own tastes lean toward simplicity and dispatch.”

She kissed him—with simplicity and dispatch, also a whiff of cloves and a delectable if fleeting press of her bosom to his chest. “Be off with you, then. I must endure my sisters' good wishes, and for that I need no audience.”

She meant it. Her gaze could not have been more stoic had she been a martyr holding her prayer book.

He kissed her cheek lingeringly—he was not a martyr—and took his leave of her. As he swung up on his horse a few minutes later—swung up easily—Joseph noted with some curiosity that in the last half hour, his leg had stopped paining him entirely.

***

“To a successful marriage.” Westhaven touched his glass to his guest's and took a sip of excellent potation. “Though I must say, I do not care for the circumstances engendering your betrothal to my sister.”

“I do not want a successful marriage,” Sir Joseph said, stepping away and perusing a shelf of books in Westhaven's library. “I want, and your sister deserves, a happy marriage. I believe you would say the same thing regarding your countess.”

He would. Westhaven set his glass aside and considered the man so innocently eyeing some books of poetry.

“Do you doubt Louisa will exert herself toward assuring a happy union?”

Sir Joseph frowned in the direction of a small volume bound in red leather. When he too put his drink aside, Westhaven took up a position leaning against the opposite bookshelf.

“I harbor no doubts regarding my intended. Lady Louisa has a generous heart, for all she shares her mother's ability to view the world dispassionately.”

God in heaven. Few outside her immediate family were privy to the Duchess of Moreland's practical nature. “You've made a study of my womenfolk.”

“If Louisa marries me, they will soon be my womenfolk too, won't they?”

The conversation was not going at all as intended. Worse, Sir Joseph had chosen the small red volume to pluck at random from the shelves. “This is beautiful.”

It was also a disaster bound in expensive leather. “It's just a book, Sir Joseph.”

“The poetry is beautiful: ‘He sits beside her like a besotted god, watching and receiving that laughter which tears me gently to ribbons…'”

“Turn the page, and it takes a very different tone.” Westhaven lifted the volume from his guest's hand—carefully, lest the thing tear. It
was
beautiful poetry, when it wasn't being scandalous as hell. He had read some of it to Anna in the privacy of their bedchamber.

Carrington watched as Westhaven put the book back between its fellows on the shelf. “You enjoy those translations?”

“Some of them. I don't believe the point of our gathering is to recite poetry to each other.” Westhaven infused a dose of ducal condescension into the observation—something he was getting quite good at, if he did say so himself.

Carrington's lips pursed. “No, it is not. We gather to discuss settlements, and I must thank you for sparing me from undertaking this exercise with His Grace.”

“Because?” Though His Grace was also grateful not to have to deal with the business.

“I am not of your strata, Westhaven, I understand this. His Grace does, as well, and to the extent that among your sort marriage is commerce, the negotiation of it must be made complicated and delicate. I neither need nor want a farthing of your wealth to take Louisa as my wife.”

Oh, famous. First the poetry, now the insufferable pride of the merchant class must obstruct Louisa's happiness. “Shall we sit?”

Sir Joseph cast a look toward the blazing hearth, his expression betraying a longing Westhaven found uncomfortable to behold. “Your house is marvelously well heated, my lord.”

“My countess will not permit me to suffer domestic discomfort. I expect Louisa will be similarly vigilant with your hapless person. I advise you to resign yourself to it.”

“Should that be the case, I shall bear up.”

They shared a smile, and as they ensconced themselves in comfortable chairs, Westhaven began to hope that Louisa had chosen well after all. “I will not permit my sister to come to you undowered.”

“Oh, of course not.” Sir Joseph settled a little lower in his chair. “To do so would be to insult the lady. Make whatever arrangements you like, but be aware that upon our marriage, I will donate a comparable sum to the charity of Louisa's choice.”

And now things became delicate, because a man of Sir Joseph's unprepossessing origins was unlikely to understand the magnitude of the figures involved.

“That is very generous of you, Carrington, but might it not suggest to Louisa that you place no value on her jointure and thus none on her?”

Sir Joseph eyed his drink. “It ought to make clear the opposite: I place such value on her, that without any settlement whatsoever, I would be well pleased to marry her.”

Westhaven shot a look at the door then pretended to study the flurries drifting down outside the window. What he
wanted
was to confer with his countess—that lady being at present occupied in the kitchen, overseeing Christmas baking, if Westhaven's nose were to be trusted. Anna would know if Sir Joseph's thinking did indeed comport with those peregrinations of whimsy referred to as feminine logic.

Though it was of no moment, given that a gentleman farmer, even one sporting a knighthood, could not possibly adhere to the scheme Sir Joseph propounded.

Years of reading law gave a man a certain facility with prevarication, upon which Westhaven drew shamelessly. “I will draft something and have it sent around to your solicitors, Sir Joseph.” With enough trusts, remainders, and legal obfuscations, Sir Joseph's pride ought to be spared much of a beating.

Westhaven did not commit himself to a date, since once the marriage was fait accompli, the dickering could be reduced to the status of a family squabble.

“Please yourself, Westhaven, but send the document to me. A mere knight need not admit solicitors to his personal business. What I want to make plain to you and the entire world is that I would have Louisa without a penny from her family.”

“I've been in your home, Sir Joseph.”

Sir Joseph stretched out his right leg, his posture a trifle relaxed considering the nature of the call. “So has half the shire, given the nosiness of the typical denizen of the neighborhood.”

“We are friendly,” Westhaven said. “Cordial.”

“A bunch of gossiping titles by any other name. You can't learn one another's business under the vicar's watchful eye in the churchyard, so you must call on all and sundry. What is your point?”

They
were
a bunch of gossiping titles, which was part of the reason Westhaven's home was in Surrey, not Kent.

“My point is, Sir Joseph, had I not seen with my own eyes that your domicile is sufficiently commodious to house a duke's daughter, then I would have concern for this match.”

Sir Joseph turned his head slowly to study his host. “Any man who does not regard matrimony in the general case with concern, much less the marriage of his own sister, is an idiot. Might I have a bit more?”

He held out his empty glass.

“Of course. I am remiss as a host, for which you will forgive me.” While Westhaven refilled Sir Joseph's glass at the sideboard—and his own—he also revised his thinking. His Grace was correct: Sir Joseph would be a fine addition to the family. The man wasn't cowed by anything as insubstantial as ducal consequence. Such backbone was a necessity for anybody marrying a Windham.

Sir Joseph shared this quality with no less a person than the Countess of Westhaven, in point of fact.

“Let me revise my toast,” Westhaven said, bearing their glasses across the room. “To a long, happy, and loving union, such as I intend to enjoy with my own dear wife.”

Sir Joseph accepted the glass but looked hesitant.
Loving
had been pushing the bounds of nascent fraternal bonhomie, but
fruitful
would likely have caused the man to blush. Carrington took a sip of his drink, and silence spread between host and guest.

Dealing with siblings, parents, merchants, and other aggravations, Westhaven had learned the value of silence. Perhaps raising livestock taught a man the same lesson.

“Sir Joseph, was there something more we needed to discuss?”

“Yes.” Sir Joseph's lips thinned as he frowned at the snow now coming down in earnest. “I'm thinking you'd best fetch that decanter over here.”

A duke's heir did not
fetch
anything, except perhaps his wife's shawl, her embroidery, her favorite book, her hairbrush, or her slippers.

Or her morning chocolate.

“Perhaps you had better enlighten me as to the topic first.”

The smile hovering around Sir Joseph's mouth was almost mischievous, leaving Westhaven to suspect his guest's trespasses against strict decorum had been intentional. Such behavior was worthy of… Louisa, herself. When Westhaven again regarded his guest—with somewhat more respectful eyes—the man was no longer smiling.

“I would like to discuss my daughters and my sons, and the fact that I am in need of a guardian for them all in the event of my death.”

Westhaven crossed his legs at the knee and straightened the crease of his trousers. “I wasn't aware the blessings of fatherhood extended in your case beyond your two daughters.”

“Neither is Louisa, and I would prefer it stay that way for the present.”