What a Lady Needs for Christmas

Copyright © 2014 by Grace Burrowes

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Cover art by Jon Paul

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Contents

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

MacGregor-Flynn-MacDaniels Family Tree

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

An excerpt from
The Laird

About the Author

Back Cover

For those of us to whom the holidays present a challenge, which is to say, ALL of us, at some point.

One

“But, Papa, we should help the lady!”

The childish soprano carried over the hum and bustle of a crowded train station, jabbing at Lady Joan Flynn’s composure like a stray pin making itself known in her bodice as she swept into the first turn of a waltz.

Joan nonetheless beamed an unfaltering smile at the ticket master.

“Surely you can find
one
seat on the westbound train? I have little luggage and need passage only as far as Ballater.”

Her luggage consisted of a carpetbag clutched in her right fist. That she’d fled Edinburgh without even packing a single trunk of clothing spoke of Joan’s first experience with true desperation.

“Papa,
we’re
going to Ballater. We should help her.” The girl’s voice, if anything, had grown louder.

“Like I said. Nary a single seat left, ma’am. Ye’ll have to step aside now.” The old gnome made his pronouncement with the malevolent glee of a clerk exercising his petty—but absolute—power.

Joan most assuredly did not step aside.

“Christmas is coming. We’re supposed to be nice, Papa.”

The child’s intentions were good, though Joan wanted to turn around and wrap her scarf around the little dear’s face. A soft, rumbling Gaelic burr replied to the girl, while Joan let her smile wobble as she fished a handkerchief from her reticule—the white silk with the holly-and-ivy trim around the edges.

“I’ll ride with the livestock,” Joan said, touching the handkerchief to the corner of her left eye, where tears would, in fact, soon gather. “I must rejoin my family, and they’ll be so worried, and—”

White eyebrows climbed aloft on the ticket master’s pink forehead, then crashed down as inspiration struck.

“Ye canna ride with the beasts. ’Tis against regulations.” He flourished the
r
of
regulations
, then swooped on the
g
, an officious Scot relishing the delivery of bad tidings—rrrreg’ulations. “Ye can buy a ticket for Monday’s train.”

No, she could not. “But I have nowhere to stay until Monday. I have the fare if—”

“Her ladyship will ride with us,” said that same rumbling baritone from directly behind Joan.

“Because we’re going to Ballater,” the child added helpfully.

Joan turned without giving up her place at the counter. “Sir, that’s most kind of you, but if we have not been introduced—”

Except, thank all the angels, Joan
had
been introduced to the man, not three weeks past.

“Lady Joan.” Mr. Dante Hartwell bowed, as much as a man can bow when he has a small child perched on his hip. “You are welcome to travel with us. Charlie reminds me that we’re going as far as Ballater ourselves, and we have plenty of room.”

Charlie was of the female persuasion, though she had her father’s sable hair and a lighter version of his green eyes. He whispered something in the girl’s ear, then pressed a quick kiss to her cheek, which had Charlie grinning at Joan.

Mr. Hartwell’s expression was not nearly so genial.

In Joan’s experience, Mr. Hartwell and geniality were not well acquainted, though if Joan had spoken out of turn at Charlie’s age, her lordly father would not have whispered his scold or followed it up with a kiss.

“Your offer is generous, Mr. Hartwell, but I cannot travel with you unchaperoned.” Or could she?

“You were willing to travel with the beasts,” he shot back. “I smell a bit better than they and can offer you more than straw and a cold loose box for the duration of the journey.”

“Papa smells good,” Charlie supplied, “but not as good as Aunt Margs. She took Phillip ’round back.”

“Madam,” the ticket master interrupted. “Ye’re holding up the line, and ye either travel with the gentleman and his family or ye bide here until Monday’s train. Next!”

Joan had danced with Dante Hartwell and found him lacking many of the attributes she associated with a proper gentleman. He neither gossiped nor flattered nor took surreptitious liberties in triple meter.

In short, despite his many detractors—some called him Hard-Hearted Hartwell—she’d liked him. Little Charlie was also right: her papa smelled good, of wool and heather, unlike the fellows wearing their cloying Paris fragrances in ballrooms already redolent of manly exertion. Mr. Hartwell savored of simple tastes, fresh air, and Scotland. Then too, his hair stuck up to one side, as if Charlie had made free with her papa’s coiffure.

“Your sister is traveling with you, Mr. Hartwell?”

“Aye. Is this your only bag?” He appropriated the carpetbag from Joan’s grasp.

“Aunt Margs has lots of bags,” Charlie said. “I think our Christmas presents might be in them, but Aunt says it’s all her dresses.”

The ticket master had apparently had enough. “Madam, I really must insist that ye—”

“Stow it, MacDeever,” Mr. Hartwell said. “
Lady
Joan
travels with us, and ye’ll no’ be spoutin’ off about yer pernicious regulations if ye want my continued custom.”

The eyebrows climbed halfway to the North Pole, but MacDeever remained silent.

“Thank you, Mr. Hartwell, and thank you, Charlie,” Joan said, for it appeared she was to share a compartment with Mr. Hartwell and his family. How she’d travel from Ballater to Balfour House, she did not know, but surely hacks, drays, and other conveyances could be had for a few coins at a busy train station.

Because a few coins was all she had.

“Aunt Margs!” Charlie bellowed, waving madly as they tromped out onto the platform. “We’re being good. Papa says Lady Joan is to travel with us because we’re going to Ballater and she only has one bag.”

The girl had shouted directly in her father’s ear, and yet, Mr. Hartwell simply stood in the freezing wind, his bare knees exposed by his kilt. As rescuers went, he was an unlikely specimen. Pine swags draped over the station’s entry luffed above him; he had Joan’s purple brocade traveling bag in his big hand, a child affixed to his hip, and a grouchy expression on his face.

A petite woman approached, leading a small, dark-haired boy by the hand. Her cloak was a nondescript green with an unevenly stitched hem, though the wool was passable quality.

“Dante, has someone joined our party?” She spoke with the soft, broad vowels of the native Scot, and while her brother was tall, dark, and lean, Margaret Hartwell was short, fair, and comfortably rounded.

And smiling. Margaret had the sort of open, friendly smile that would put any guest at ease and warm any heart.

“Lady Joan Flynn, may I make known to you my dear sister, Margaret,” Mr. Hartwell said, his tone as close to warm as Joan had heard from him. “The rascal by her side is my boy, Phillip. Phillip, make your bow.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” the child piped, flopping over at the waist.

“Miss Hartwell, Master Phillip, the pleasure is mine.” Particularly when it was Margaret’s presence that allowed Joan to accept Mr. Hartwell’s kind—if begrudging—offer.

As for the “boy”—a gentleman of more refined breeding would have referred to the child as his son—he looked entirely too angelic. Dark hair in need of a trim framed green eyes too serious for such a small child, but then, what did Joan know of small children?

Much less than she needed to.

As Joan cast around for small talk, Mr. Hartwell strode off toward the back of the train.

“We’d best hurry,” Margaret said. “Dante likes to oversee the loading of the luggage, and he’ll forget that Charlie shouldn’t be out in this weather any longer than necessary. Normally Dante would make this journey in a single day, but with the children…”

She bustled off after her brother, though why Mr. Hartwell had to oversee the porters, Joan could not fathom. Her brother, Tiberius, would have, because Tye was the most responsible fellow ever to stand in line for a marquessate, but Mr. Hartwell’s prospects were nowhere as daunting.

Mr. Hartwell was
in
trade
, a fact Joan had heard whispered behind fans, mentioned at card tables, and casually brought up in the course of numerous dances. The longer Mr. Hartwell had gone without stumbling on the dance floor, insulting the hostesses, or showing up for a Society ball in riding attire, the more frequently Joan had heard of his plebeian antecedents and unfortunate preoccupation with commerce.

A whistle blast signaled those milling on the platform to board their respective compartments, and at the end of the train, Mr. Hartwell, the child on his back now, oversaw no less than three porters stowing bags in the last car.

“Should we find our compartment?” Joan asked as she caught up with Margaret and Phillip.

“We’re in here,” Margaret said, gesturing vaguely toward the passenger cars. “Dante, that child should be out of this weather. You will put her down this instant.”

“I’m helping,” Charlie said, clearly enjoying her perch on her papa’s back.

The girl might have weighed less than a sparrow for all the notice her father took of her.

“The fools put the small trunks in first,” Mr. Hartwell groused, “which means the largest trunks have nowhere to go but atop the heap, and that isn’t the most stable—”

He broke off and leveled a look at Joan.

“Take Charlie.” He peeled the girl off his back in a smooth display of one-armed muscle and more or less threw her in Joan’s direction. “Charlene, mind Lady Joan while I—”