Lady Louisa's Christmas Knight (17 page)

But then the smile died. Even Wellington's offer to dance with Louisa was likely a tactic undertaken to scotch gossip and scandal. What on earth would the new Lady Carrington think if she learned her knight in shining armor was father to no fewer than twelve bastard children?

“This is a disaster.”

“Don't clench your teeth, dearest.” Jenny's pencil paused in its movement across the page. “What is a disaster?”

Louisa stomped into Jenny's drawing room—it really was a
drawing
room, not a withdrawing room—and tossed herself onto the sofa beside her sister.

“I'm to be married tomorrow. What is the worst, most indelicate, inconvenient thing that could befall a woman as her wedding night approaches?”

Maggie, arrived to Town for the wedding, took a pair of reading glasses off her elegant nose. “Somebody put stewed prunes on the menu for the wedding breakfast?”

Louisa couldn't help but smile at her oldest sister's question. Since childhood, stewed prunes had had a predictable effect on Louisa's digestion. “Eve made sure that wasn't the case.”

“We're to have chocolate,” Eve said, “lots and lots of chocolate. I put everybody's favorites on the menu too, and Her Grace didn't argue with any of them.” She was on a hassock near the windows, embroidering some piece of white silk. Maggie had the rocking chair near the fireplace, where a cheery blaze was throwing out enough heat to keep the small room cozy.

“It's your monthly, isn't it?” Sophie leaned forward from the hearth rug and lifted the teapot. “The same thing happened to me after the baby was born. Sindal looked like he wanted to cry when I told him. I was finally healed up after the birth, and the dear man had such plans for the evening.”

An admission like that from prim, proper Sophie could not go unremarked. “You
told
him?” Louisa accepted the cup of tea and studied her sister's slight smile.

“Have the last cake.” Maggie pushed the tray closer to Louisa. “If you don't tell him, then it becomes a matter of your lady's maid telling his gentleman's gentleman that you're indisposed, and then your husband comes nosing about, making sure you're not truly ill, and you have to tell him anyway.”

Louisa looked from Maggie to Sophie. Maggie was the tallest of the five sisters, and the oldest, with flame-red hair and a dignity that suited the Countess of Hazelton well. Sophie was a curvy brunette who nonetheless carried a certain reserve with her everywhere, as befit the Baroness Sindal.

They were married, and they spoke to their husbands about… things.

“Why can't a husband just understand that indisposed is one thing and ill is another?” Louisa thought her question perfectly logical.

Sophie and Maggie exchanged a look, but it wasn't a superior, “we're married and we understand these things” look, or even an older-sister look. It was more of a “how does one say this?” look.

“Sindal and I share a bed,” Sophie said. “You'd be surprised how easy it is to discuss certain matters when the candles are blown out and your husband has just taken you in his arms.”

They shared a bed, the implication being they shared a bed
every
night
. Jenny's head bent a little closer to her sketch pad, and over by the window, Eve practically had the embroidery hoop against the end of her nose.

“Hazelton and I share a bed, as well. Always have,” Maggie said. “The issue of monthlies hasn't come up yet, but carrying a child has indelicate consequences of its own.”

“And you discuss these things with him?”

“Our parents share a bed.” Eve spoke quietly, her mouth screwed up as if she puzzled over some complicated stitch. “I know they have adjoining chambers, but have you noticed the maids almost never change the linen in the duchess's bedroom?”

“It's the same at Morelands,” Jenny said, glancing up from her tablet. “One can't help but notice when every other bedroom gets fresh sheets so regularly, but not that one.”

Louisa hadn't noticed the sheets, but she had noticed that whenever her parents retired, they used the door that led to the duke's sitting room, never the duchess's. She'd noticed the duchess's hairbrush beside the ducal bed of a morning, and she'd noticed that her mother's reading glasses could often be retrieved from the duke's nightstand.

“There are eight of us born to them,” Louisa observed. “Mama and Papa could hardly have arranged that without spending some time in the same bed.”

“Bed.” Maggie snorted the word and stroked a hand over her rounded belly. “Our firstborn child was conceived on a picnic blanket. Benjamin gets adventurous notions with wonderful frequency.”

“In coaches?” Sophie asked, sounding as if this was merely a husbandly peccadillo.

Maggie waved a hand. “Coaches, saddle rooms, gazebos… I dare not close the door to the billiards room or find myself in a private pantry with the earl. His creativity on short notice is truly astounding.”

The
billiards
room?

“We have a piano that is just the perfect height,” Sophie mused. “Valentine would be scandalized. And Sindal claims the term ‘folly' originates in the most appropriate use for a secluded little building.”

Valentine would be scandalized? Louisa was scandalized—also intrigued.

“So you do not attempt to gainsay your husbands when they become… creative?”

Maggie started the chair rocking slowly. “Amorous, you mean? Oh, maybe in the first few weeks after the wedding. I had some fool notion propriety entered into things.”

“It doesn't,” Sophie said simply, firmly. “If Sir Joseph can't bring some imagination to that part of the marriage, then it's up to you to inspire him. Sindal positively goggles at me when I'm in the mood to inspire him. I love to make him goggle too.”

Louisa goggled. She'd known these women all her life; she loved them and would have said they were her best friends in the entire world.

In the context of this discussion, they'd become complete strangers to her.

“If propriety has no place in these matters, then how do you know how to go on?” Jenny asked the question Louisa had been burning to voice.

Maggie stopped rocking. “You love your husband. He loves you. You puzzle it out together, and that's half the fun.”

“Half the pleasure,” Sophie added softly.

They were smiling secret, dreamy, thoroughly female,
married
smiles, leaving Louisa to wonder two things.

How did one go on if love were not a factor for either husband or wife, and how on earth was she to explain her indisposition to Sir Joseph?

***

“Your brother should hire out as a toastmaster,” Joseph said, shifting the skirts of Louisa's wedding dress to tuck himself beside her on the coach's front-facing seat. “Westhaven has the gift of a light, warm touch with his sentiments.”

Louisa got up and switched to Joseph's right side, which necessitated more arranging of frothy forest-green skirts. “He also has the gift of brevity, though I'm sure Valentine and St. Just were hoping to get a word in, as well.”

“And Sindal and Hazelton, and His Grace Your Papa, and His Grace My Former Senior Commanding Officer, and old Quimbey, His Grace At Large.”

She grinned at him as Joseph rapped hard on the roof. “We were lucky to escape our own wedding breakfast before spring. We're expected to call on my parents ere we leave for Kent tomorrow morning.”

“Does your mama need to make sure you survive the wedding night?”

Her smile died, but she didn't move away. “Perhaps it's your survival they're concerned for, Sir Joseph.”

There was something different in the way she addressed him as “Sir Joseph” now that they were married. As if he were
her
Sir Joseph, knighted by his wife rather than the Regent. She stripped off her gloves with a similarly self-possessed air and turned a little toward him.

“This leg is paining you.”

Before he could brace himself for the pleasure and discomfort of her touch, she was applying a sure, steady pressure up the length of his thigh.

“Louisa, you don't have to… just because you have four sisters who love to dance… God in heaven…” He gave up on a sigh. “And your mother.”

“Who is saintly but not in heaven.” Louisa dug in a little harder, and the bliss of it, the sore, aching bliss of it had Joseph closing his eyes.

“And don't forget my aunt Gladys. Have you ever considered laudanum for this leg, Joseph?”

“I have not, or rather, I was given enough laudanum when I was injured to know its limits. I rather think I should have tried marriage to you instead.”

Except he'd been married at the time, and the thought let a hovering shadow join Joseph in the coach.

“You needn't toss out compliments, Husband. I'm married to you whether there's flattery to be had from it or not.”

He wrapped an arm around his starchy new wife. “And you need not flinch from sincere appreciation. My first wife could not stand the sight of my injury.” Louisa's hands paused but did not leave his person. “I'm sorry, Louisa. I should not have brought her up. I did not mean to make mention of her now, of all times.”

The blessed stroking of her hands on his thigh resumed. “She is the mother of our children. Of course you will make mention of her. Lionel said she would have been relieved to see you happily remarried, but I concluded he was demonstrating his wedding-day manners.”

What he'd been, was standing too close to Joseph's wife, but there had been no point in taking exception to it in front of all of Polite Society. Louisa's brother Valentine had appeared at her elbow long before Joseph could have hobbled to her side, in any case.

“Lionel was a favorite of Cynthia's. He was probably being honest.”

As soon as Joseph made the comment, he wished he hadn't said his late spouse's name, much less in conjunction with dear Lionel's.

“Do you miss her?”

The warm glow of the wedding day evaporated with four little words, bringing instead all the burden and complexity of a new marriage, a marriage undertaken, at least on the lady's part, for less than sentimental reasons.

“Shall I be honest, Louisa? This isn't the most sanguine topic between two newlyweds.”

“You shall always be honest with me, and then I will have the courage to be honest with you.”

He hadn't lit the coach lamps, because their journey was short, only a few blocks. The darkness allowed him to focus not only on the soothing touch of his wife's hands on his leg but also on the beauty of her voice in the darkness.

When she sang, Louisa would be a contralto. She would excel at the lower, warmer registers of the women's range, and her voice would be both supple and graceful—like her body moving on the dance floor.

Reading poetry, that voice would be divine in its beauty and luster.

And he never wanted to hear deception from her, so—to the extent that he could—he accepted the challenge she'd just laid down.

“My—Cynthia—and I married in a fit of patriotic lust, I suppose you could call it. I was young but well heeled, and she was young and, at least to appearances, smitten by a pair of broad shoulders in dashing regimentals. Her family was happy to pass her off into my willing arms, something I did not understand until after the ceremony.”

“You did not suit?”

The prosaic nature of the question, the very bluntness of it endeared Louisa to him. “In the way of young people, we suited well enough to consummate the union, and then I shipped out for the Peninsula.”

Louisa was a bright woman. The manner in which she leaned up and kissed Joseph's cheek assured him that she understood: after he'd rejoined his unit, he and his young wife had not suited so very well at all.

“I'm sorry. My family is likely happy to pass me into your willing arms too, but I am not young, and I do not intend to be an aggravation to you.”

“Nor I to you.”

What a humble exchange of intentions for a pair of newlyweds to make to each other. Joseph found it appealing, though. Comforting.

Attainable and honest.

The carriage turned into the alley that led to Joseph's mews, and he realized he could have spent far longer cuddling with his wife in the dark and cozy confines of their town coach.

“I must be honest with you too, Husband.”

“I would prefer it.”

“I am not in a position to consummate our vows tonight.”

He felt surprise and disappointment, and for an instant considered that for all her affection and pragmatism, all her passion on his hearth rug several nights past, Louisa was consigning them to a white marriage.

Except… her passion had been honest. Her rejoicing in his coming through the duel unscathed had been honest. The smiles she'd sent him across the hordes of wedding guests in the Moreland ballroom had been blazingly honest.

“Why can't you consummate our vows, Louisa?”

Now she withdrew her hands from his leg, his no-longer-throbbing leg. The horses slowed to a walk.

“Louisa?”

She mashed her face against his throat, and against his skin, her cheek felt unnaturally hot. “…Dratted… Blighted… female… Next week.”

Joseph blinked in the darkness. He had been married before. For several long, unhappy years, in fact, but in that odd moment with Louisa tucked close to him in the darkness, those years of marriage enabled him to decipher her meaning and her problem.

He gathered her close and kissed her cheek, when what he wanted to do was laugh—at fate, at his worst imaginings, even a little at his wife's muttered indignation over nature's timing.

“Next week is not so very far away, Louisa Carrington, and I promise to make the wait worth your while.”

She lifted her head, a challenge glinting in her green eyes. “And yours too, Sir Joseph. I promise you that.”

And then they did laugh—together.

***

There should be poetry for the morning after a wedding.

Louisa watched her husband shave. He was careful, methodical, and efficient as he scraped dark whiskers from his face. He kept a mug—not a cup—of tea at his elbow throughout this masculine ritual, shaving around his mouth first so he might sip at his tea.