Lady Louisa's Christmas Knight (2 page)

Perhaps he could have used a tot too. His expression was bleak, but then, Sir Joseph's expression was usually bleak. He was not a classically handsome man—his features were saturnine, his brows a trifle heavy, his nose not quite straight, though bold and a bit hooked. He yet managed to be attractive to Louisa for she
had
seen him smile.

Just the once, he'd smiled at his small daughters one day in the church yard, but Louisa had never forgotten the sight. His smile, full of warmth, humor, and affection, made him very attractive indeed.

“Will you be attending the hunt ball, Sir Joseph?”

“One does.”

Yes, one did. Louisa suspected this was more of his unflinching bravery at work. “Shall I save you a dance?”

She regretted the impulse as soon as the words were out of her mouth, though not for herself. Dancing was one social activity she enjoyed, provided her partner was halfway competent. She regretted her question for him. Sir Joseph limped, and Louisa wasn't sure the fellow was even capable of dancing.

He petted his horse again, a soft stroke of black leather down a sleek, muscular crest. “I can manage the promenade. A sarabande or old-fashioned polonaise is usually within my abilities early in the evening. I haven't attempted waltzing in public in recent years and hope to die in that state of grace.”

“The promenade, then.”

As they approached the hunt breakfast, Louisa tried not to think of Sir Joseph growing old without ever again knowing the pleasure of sweeping a lady around the ballroom to the lilting strains of a waltz. If Louisa dwelled on such thoughts, she'd be at risk for pitying Sir Joseph. A man possessed of unflinching bravery, an excellent seat, and a half-full flask would have had no use for her pity whatsoever.

***

Louisa Windham had preserved Joseph from enduring the company of Miss Fairchild and her giggling familiar, Miss Horton, for the duration of the hunt breakfast, and possibly at the hunt ball as well. They'd been looking for him all morning, like a couple of hounds on the scent of the fox: eyes bright, yipping inane compliments to each other, their gazes searching the first flight for their prey, then the second…

While Joseph had the company of a pretty woman with no designs on his person, his purse, or his pork.

He assisted Lady Louisa from her horse, which allowed him the realization that she was not as substantial as her height might have suggested. When she slid to the ground, he collected one other little fact about her: despite the morning's activity, the scent of citrus and cloves clung to her.

Expensive, and in the brisk air of a bright winter morning… Christmassy. He liked it.

He liked her, in fact, though he would never burden the lady with such a confession. In the two years since he'd been turned loose on the local Kentish gentry, he'd spent considerable time on the edges of drawing rooms and dancing parlors, visiting in the churchyard, and tending to the neighborly civilities.

From what he'd observed, Lady Louisa went her own way, as much as such a thing was possible for a duke's unmarried daughter. She spoke her mind and had a saucy mouth.

Also a saucy bottom. He particularly liked her saucy bottom. He enjoyed the way her riding habit revealed a bit more flare at the hips than was fashionable, and the way she made no effort to hide the Creator's generosity with her fundament.

She was a woman a man could get his hands on…

“Sir Joseph?”

He stepped back from her while grooms led their horses away. “May I fetch you a plate, Lady Louisa? Something to drink?”

How long had he been standing there, contemplating her backside in the midst of their neighbors, the hounds, milling horses, and bustling servants?

“I could use some sustenance.”

That she did not demur and swan off in search of her sister surprised him and pleased him. “As could I. Shall we?” He winged his arm at her, more willing to remain at her side than a gentleman would admit.

Though if he again thanked Louisa Windham for using her superior social standing to rescue him from certain capture, she'd likely give him a puzzled look, change the subject, and forget she'd promised him the opening dance.

Which he was looking forward to, oddly enough.

From several places ahead of them in the buffet line, Timothy Grattingly and some other young fellow started arguing about the ideal breeding for a morning horse.

“They would not appreciate Sonnet,” Joseph murmured as the lady added apple slices to the plates he held. “He's good English draft on the sire's side, and pure Spanish on the dam's. A woods colt who saved my life more than once.”

Louisa Windham aimed an impatient glance at the young men and their escalating disagreement. “Sonnet has a good set of quarters on him, good bone, and he's sane. I don't see that much else matters. Where shall we sit?”

Where the hounds would not find him, where he could enjoy more of Louisa Windham's tart common sense and sweet fragrance. “A little quiet wouldn't go amiss, in the sun and out of the breeze.” The weather being nippy, even in the sheltered environs of their host's stables.

She shot him a tolerant smile, suggesting the lady had divined his strategy. “There,” she said. “That bench.”

Louisa had chosen a wooden bench flanking a dry fountain and a bed of dead asters. While Joseph remained standing with their plates, Louisa set their drinks on either end of the bench, unpinned her hat, rearranged her skirts, and otherwise caused the kind of fuss and delay natural to women.

He ought to have resented it, as hungry as he was, as much as his leg was starting to throb. Instead, he noticed that when Louisa pulled loose her hat, a lock of her dark hair abandoned its intended location to coil along the column of her neck.

She did not seem to notice or care, while he could not stop noticing.

Perhaps a trip to Town—to the fleshpots of Egypt, as it were—was not entirely a bad idea. A gentleman farmer who'd behaved himself the livelong year could do with some recreation at Christmas, after all.

“I'll take those.” She reached up and plucked both plates from Joseph's grasp, gesturing with her chin for him to sit.

His preoccupation with the flawless, pale, and possibly clove-scented skin of her neck, or the exact feel of that fat, dark curl of hair against his fingers vanished as he realized he was going to have to get his arse on the bench beside her. A graceless moment awaited him. After he'd ridden for several hours, the joints of his right leg were not strictly reliable in their functioning.

He managed. It was a matter of moving stiffly, stiffly, then for the last few inches, nigh collapsing onto the bench, like an old man too stubborn to make proper use of his canes.

“Does riding bother your injury?” Lady Louisa started munching on a slice of apple after delivering her inquiry.

“There's a balance. If I ask too much, it worsens; if I ask too little, it worsens.”

“And nobody asks you about it, do they? Care for a bite of apple?”

He enjoyed apples. He wasn't sure he enjoyed talking about his injury—now that somebody
had
inquired.

“War wounds are old news.” He accepted a slice of apple from her hand. They'd removed their gloves to eat, of course, which meant he noticed the contrast: His hands were callused and bore a scar, a white slash that made a hairless track across the backs of all four fingers of his right hand. Her hands might have belonged to a Renaissance tapestry virgin stroking some fool unicorn's neck.

She frowned at his hand as a three-legged hound went loping past, sleigh bells jingling merrily on its collar. “Another injury?”

“An attempt by a French soldier to relieve me of the reins. He was not successful.”

Thank God. Joseph slammed a mental door on the memory—something he'd become adept at—and accepted another bite of apple from the lady beside him. “Are you ever bored, Lady Louisa?”

She paused in a rather purposeful effort to clean her plate, glancing up at him with a puzzled frown. “What brought that on?”

No tittering reply, no simpering or casting lures, and the lady had both a kind heart and a lovely appearance. Better still, Joseph would open the evening's dancing with her for a partner.

Joseph waved his scarred hand. “Talk of injuries puts me in mind of boredom, perhaps. The recovery was a greater challenge than the initial harm. One does wonder what a duke's daughters find to amuse them.”

“I have wondered the same thing. We make calls, we have charitable endeavors, we correspond with our sisters, sisters-by-marriage, and cousins. We attend social functions, and when in Town, ride or drive in the park. It's all quite…”

She fell silent, leaving Joseph with the sense he'd just glimpsed a hurt that wasn't healing all that well. He patted her knuckles. “I read.”

Another look, much more guarded. “One assumed you were literate.”

He read to his pigs, more often than not. “I read more than just the journals and classics, Lady Louisa. I am left to my own company a great deal, and winter nights are long and cold.”

She perused the contents of her plate, which spared him any more inquisitions from dark green eyes. “They are. Jenny spends them sewing or painting—she must create. Sophie was our chief baker until she married Sindal, Eve is Mama's boon companion for the social calls, and Maggie frolics with her account books when she's not making calf eyes at Hazelton.”

“I correspond with your-sister-the-countess regarding business matters.” He also noted that Louisa's little recitation included no activity of choice for herself.

“With Maggie?” Another pause in her eating. “She would be so bold as to correspond with a single gentleman and no one the wiser.
Droit
du
spinster
, she'd call it. I used to think Mags had a pound sign where her heart was supposed to be. Little I knew.”

She tore off a bite of Christmas stollen with particular focus, suggesting there was Family Business lurking at the edges of the conversation. Joseph took a sip of his punch then set the glass aside.

“Drink with caution, my lady. There's some turned cider somewhere in the recipe.”

She studied her bite of holiday bread. “It's always like this, isn't it? At the hunt meets we bundle up in our finest, slap on our company smiles, fill our plates, and yet, there's always something… sour punch, a horse that has to be put down, a neighbor retching in the bushes while his half-grown son tries not to look hopeless.” She put her mostly empty plate aside. “I'm sorry. I should perhaps find my sister.”

Joseph had never considered himself more than passingly bright, but his powers of observation had been sharpened by the inactivity occasioned by his injury. Pretty, kind, titled, and well dowered Lady Louisa was dreading her next trip to Town, maybe all her trips to Town. She had no hobbies or pastimes she'd mention in public, and both of her older sisters were married.

And yet, she'd ridden to the rescue of a man she barely knew, perhaps because she heard the hounds in full cry all too often herself.

Joseph got out his flask. “Life can be like that, tarnished around the edges.”

Mostly to divert her, he reached over and tucked the errant curl behind her ear, finding her hair every bit as silky and pleasing to the touch as he'd imagined. He could write a sonnet to that single lock of hair.

Perhaps he would.

“It's true as well, my lady, that we're both in good health, we have friends and neighbors who will miss us when we're gone, we have food to eat and warm beds to sleep in, and Christmas will soon be here.” He did not mention that they'd be sharing the promenade.

She hadn't flinched at his touch. She studied him from serious green eyes. “You learned this while at war too, didn't you? You learned to be grateful.”

“Perhaps I did.” He'd learned something—how to content himself with agriculture, solitude, and good literature, perhaps. Almost.

“His Grace says you are also leaving for Town tomorrow, Sir Joseph, though one wonders why.”

Her query was too insightful and made him abruptly reassess her with her serious
pretty
green eyes, lovely scent, and silky hair. “The same reason we all go up to Town. I must socialize occasionally if I'm ever to find a spouse. Would you care for another nip?”

“Yes.” She accepted his flask and held it to her lips. While Joseph again admired the graceful turn of her neck, she tilted the flask up, as if she were intent on draining it of every last drop.

***

“Why would Sir Joseph Carrington be in need of a wife?” While she spoke, Louisa accepted a mug of mulled wine from one of the footmen circulating around the ballroom. There were little bits of cinnamon floating on top, a display of holiday extravagance on the part of the family hosting the hunt ball. Mistletoe hung in the door arches, and wreathes festooned the doors. The fragrances of evergreen and beeswax lurked under the scent of too many bodies that hadn't bathed since the morning's ride.

Eve waved the footman away without taking any wine for herself, though Jenny was too polite to decline.

“Maybe Sir Joseph seeks a wife because he has children,” Jenny volunteered. “Little girls need a mother.”

“Maybe because he's lonely,” Eve suggested. “He's a comely man. He can't be much more than thirty, and Maggie says raising swine is quite profitable. He doesn't seem inclined to the usual male vices, so why not have a wife?”

Louisa sipped her wine, recalling Sir Joseph at Sunday services with the two little minxes who called him Papa. “You think he's comely?”

Eve Windham, the youngest of the ducal siblings, rarely ventured an opinion about any member of the male gender. She collected hopefuls and followers and even proposals with blithe good cheer, but never gave a hint her heart was engaged by any of them.