What a Lady Needs for Christmas (13 page)

“
I
don’t care how I address him,” he said, shoving the door closed with his shoulder. The room was warm, a few candles were lit, and a fire burned cheerily in the hearth. “We need to get our stories straight before your brother resumes his interrogation of you.”

“You
need
to put me down, Mr. Hartwell.”

No, he did not. Lady Joan was no sylph, she was a proper armful of feminine curves—unhappy feminine curves.

Dante sat her gently on the high, fluffy bed, and then he locked the door.

***

“Your brother will be after you at breakfast,” Mr. Hartwell said, stalking about the room. He peered out at the darkness past the window, opened and closed the wardrobe doors, opened and closed the drawers to the night table, and generally inspected his accommodations much as his daughter might have. “And don’t be fooled, that wee, cheery wife of his will abet his questioning.”

“Would you please sit, Mr. Hartwell?” For his peregrinations, particularly among the green-and-white plaid decor of the room, were dizzying.

He took a seat next to her on the bed, and his bulk was such that Joan settled against him.

“I wasn’t expecting Tye to be here,” Joan said. “I wasn’t expecting
your
house party to be
my
house party, rather. This complicates matters.”

Mostly, she wasn’t expecting to be ruined.

Oh, that again.

Mr. Hartwell took her hand, his grip warm and unexpected. “Family members excel at the art of the public ambush, lass. We need to think.”

We.
Joan’s regard for Mr. Hartwell rose with his choice of pronouns, and he was right. Tiberius would note the absence of a maid, the absence of baggage, the absence of explanations for those departures from normal expectations.

“My maid did fall ill. Perhaps I’d already joined your party when that happened?”

“Your maid returned to Edinburgh, and her version of events will be different.”

It would. Family excelled at the art of public ambush, as Mr. Hartwell had noted, while Bertha enjoyed excellent and unwavering recall of the truth, also a loyalty to Joan’s mama that was occasionally inconvenient.

“Perhaps I knew your sister was traveling north, and agreed to join her party?”

“Your path never crossed Margaret’s in public before today, for my sister finds Polite Society tedious.”

A point in Miss Hartwell’s favor.

“Who knew you were leaving Edinburgh, my lady?”

Joan tried to turn the gears of her recollection, but the going was made difficult by fatigue and anxiety bordering on panic.

“Everybody knew my general plans. My family has not been together for a winter holiday for several years, and my mother crowed about this year’s plans to all and sundry.”

Edward
knew she was coming north for the holidays and had asked her under whose roof those holidays would be spent—as he’d offered her another drink and sat near enough to her to admire her sketches.

And to leer at the meager treasures in her bodice.

Maybe depression was the exhausted form of self-loathing, for when Joan should have crossed the hallway into her own room, she instead turned her face into Mr. Hartwell’s wool-clad shoulder. The inevitable scent of coal smoke clung to his clothing, but beneath his attire was solid muscle and common sense.

Also, apparently, a goodly quantity of decency.

“Perhaps you and I are already engaged,” Joan said. “Or we have an understanding until you can talk with my family.”

By virtue of a hand anchored at her nape, Mr. Hartwell turned Joan’s face up, so she had to meet his eyes.

He was tired, he lacked the refined appearance and pretty manners of Joan’s peers, and she wanted to kiss him.

“If you bruit it about that we’re engaged, Lady Joan, your reputation will suffer if you have to break it off. You might cast aside a fellow of your own set as a queer start, but I’m…I’m not…an expected choice for such as you.”

Such
as
you.
Mr. Hartwell forgot his host’s title, but he could be delicate when it mattered.

“You own mills,” Joan said, smoothing his hair back, because touching soft things soothed her. “I love to design clothing. Maybe you’re not so unexpected.”

He said nothing rather than remind Joan of his parlous upbringing. She appreciated that consideration too.

“Will you sit by me at breakfast?” she asked.

“I’ll not go down without you.”

He’d wait above stairs until spring for her if need be. Tiberius was equally stubborn, though in a brother—or a father, mother, and sisters—the quality was not half so attractive.

“I’ll think of something,” Joan said, “and confer with you before breakfast. I’m too tired to think now.”

Not too tired to feel, though.

Mr. Hartwell patted her hand. “You might tell your family the truth, my lady. That brother of yours looks like he could sort out a presuming twit or two without much trouble.”

“But Tiberius would
know
then, wouldn’t he? He’d know I was ruined, and he’d feel compelled to tell my parents. They’d all smugly conclude that were I not so preoccupied with matters of fashion, I would not have been led astray, and the one thing—the single pursuit I’ve chosen for my own—would be taken from me.”

He kissed her temple, the same way he’d kissed Charlie’s temple hours ago in a chilly rural train station.

“Your dresses are more important to you than honesty with your family?”

What had that to do with anything?

“I’m tired,” Joan said, rising. “You’re tired, and things will look brighter in the morning.”

They would not, of course. By tomorrow, Edward might have already let all and sundry know of Joan’s fall from grace.

Mr. Hartwell remained sitting on the bed. “Shall I unhook your dress?”

This had been a worry, in that small train station as Joan had put Bertha on the southbound train. How did a fashionably attired lady undress at the end of the day if she was unfashionably stranded without the services of a maid?

She could destroy her clothing or accept assistance.

“Lord Balfour neglected to offer me a maid’s services, though I could ring for one.” Who would probably take a half hour to appear.

Mr. Hartwell rose, his expression grave.

“If we marry, my lady, we will marry quite soon and consummate the vows immediately. For the child’s sake, and for yours.”

Understanding bloomed, a blush along with it. “So the child’s paternity might be shrouded in ambiguity?”

He did not so much as nod. “Shall I unhook your dress?”

The second time he asked the question, it bore a significance Joan hadn’t grasped earlier. Mr. Hartwell had been married, and married couples at his strata assisted each other to dress and undress. He’d unhooked any number of dresses, unlaced endless numbers of stays. While Joan’s experience of unclad men was limited to marble statues without faces.

She’d enjoyed kissing Mr. Hartwell, despite all odds to the contrary. Had he enjoyed kissing her?

Joan turned her back to him and swept her hair off her nape. As deft fingers undid her gown, she marveled that with Mr. Hartwell, she was safe even when he was
undressing
her, though with a man she might have considered her equal, she’d been ruined.

“Thank you,” she said a few moments later, more able to breathe than she’d been all day.

He stepped away, his hands behind his back. “Get some rest, and we’ll talk further in the morning.”

Joan headed for the door but had to pause to unlock it. “In the morning, we might become engaged.”

And within the week, they might well be married.

***

Edward stared at the blank stationery before him, one thought filling his awareness: a gentleman should apologize for abusing a lady’s sensibilities, particularly when that lady was connected to a wealthy family, moved much in Society, and possessed prodigious talent when it came to designing pretty dresses.

“You aren’t making much progress with your correspondence, Edward. Are you preoccupied with thoughts of our wedding?” Lady Dorcas asked.

What wed—?
Oh, that wedding.

“Of course, my dear. Have you chosen a recipe for the cake yet?”

Because the cake was the central concern in this blushing bride’s list of wedding details. The dress, she’d confided, would be of her fiancé’s design—God help him.

“I’m debating between vanilla and orange flavor for the cake. To whom do you write, Edward?”

Like most engaged couples, they were given significant latitude beyond the rules imposed on the unattached. Edward’s mother would reappear at some point, though not soon enough, and she’d announce her impending arrival with a song or an overloud proclamation to the footman posted six feet outside the door.

“I’m writing to a friend, trying to word an apology that isn’t too obsequious, and asking for the loan of a…particular walking stick left in my care.”

Dorcas put down her lorgnette. “Apologize for what? You’re a viscount—why should you apologize?”

“My friend and I were a bit naughty—a bit too free with the spirits, you know.”

Was he telling her this as a sort of backhanded confession?

“If he’s careless with his things, you need hardly apologize for looking after them in his absence. I know somebody else who was naughty. Mama’s abigail heard it from her sister, who’s a chambermaid in Lady Quinworth’s household, and the abigail told my lady’s maid.”

Dorcas had a certain practical charm, for all she thought more of cakes than dresses, and she had a fiendish memory for gossip.

Edward tossed his pen down and took a place on the love seat beside his intended.

“We’re to be married, my dear, and that means we should be in each other’s confidence when it comes to juicy gossip.”

For why should he be the only one making the occasional, entirely understandable, hardly-his-fault misstep?

“Lady Joan Flynn’s maid went north with her yesterday—very little luggage, no tickets purchased in advance, bad weather closing in—and came back without Lady Joan before midday. The family is sending the maid off to spend the holiday with her sister in the south.”

Of all the names that might have come out of Dorcas’s rosebud mouth…

“Lady Joan was to spend her holidays at some house party in the hills, I believe.” At the Earl of Balfour’s house party, a coveted invitation extended to a select few, and those mostly MacGregor family connections.

Wealthy MacGregor family connections.

Dorcas’s expression was indulgent. “Edward, Stirring Up Sunday is tomorrow. Nobody starts a Christmas house party this early, particularly not in the frigid and dreary Highlands. The maid came back
alone
, which means Lady Joan apparently met somebody to the north, or traveled on without any accompaniment. One is left to wonder why she fled, or whom she met.”

“I thought you liked Lady Joan.” Edward liked Joan—when he wasn’t trying to cadge kisses and sketches from her.

“How could I like a woman who manages to look wonderfully turned out despite having a long nose, no figure, and far too much height? Badly done of her, if you ask me. She’s overdue for a comeuppance. Do you favor vanilla or orange?”

Sweets in general had no appeal for Edward. “I’ll favor whatever you choose, my dove. So Lady Joan is courting scandal?”

Dorcas picked up the lorgnette and went back to studying her recipes.

“A woman who values her wardrobe as much as Joan Flynn would never part with her maid when in her right mind. Joan was going to meet a lover is my guess, and the maid figured it out and wanted no part of such debauchery. Skinny women get desperate.”

Joan was not skinny, not where it mattered. “Maybe her ladyship was
fleeing
a lover.” Or fleeing the announcement of a lover’s engagement, which had been all over the morning papers—bad timing, that.

“One doesn’t flee a lover,” Dorcas said, wrinkling her nose. “Whoever heard of a chocolate wedding cake?”

Joan
had
been
fleeing, though, suggesting…

“Chocolate might be a nice change,” Edward said, kissing his intended’s plump cheek and returning to the escritoire. “Sometimes, one needs to set trends, not follow them.”

“Chocolate with orange frosting? Very pale frosting, with maybe a hint of orange and peppermint?”

Edward’s stomach churned at the notion. “I must be guided by your judgment in all culinary matters, my dear.”

While Dorcas billed and cooed over frosting, icing, and candied flowers of various descriptions, Edward considered his situation. He’d indulged in some illicit affection with a woman not his wife, and she’d left a few sketches in his care. Now that woman was using bad judgment, scampering off as if she were hurt or insulted or…

This was why the apologetic note had been so hard to write, because an apology was not how a man seized his destiny or dealt with women who sought to use their feminine wiles for commercial profit.

For that’s what Joan had been about—Edward was nearly sure of it. She had probably wanted him to commission designs from her—a scandalous notion in itself, given her lofty birth.

He picked up his pen and wrote a note that contained not one hint of apology, while Dorcas rhapsodized about how clever her future spouse was, and about peppermint and orange with a hint of lavender.

Seven

Lady Joan looked better for having slept through the night, and yet, she was wearing the same purple dress she’d had on the previous day. Her brother would notice that—or the brother’s wife would.

Dante had tapped on her ladyship’s door, his empty belly unwilling to tarry above stairs any longer than necessary.

“Mr. Hartwell, good morning.” Hovering in the doorway, she was so pretty, and so scared. What would it be like to wake up to this woman across the breakfast table each morning? To sleep beside her each night?

“Might you call me Dante?”

She opened the door a few more inches. “For the fellow who wrote all that verse about hell?”

“He wrote about heaven, too, my lady.” Also purgatory.