What a Lady Needs for Christmas (29 page)

Edward hated Joan for this, clearly, because every design of his own that Joan could recall was for more of those ridiculously wide hoops, contraptions in which a woman could sit only with the greatest of care, and could barely manage to dance at the balls where she wore such finery.

And the Queen was not tall. She was quite, quite short.

“Fine, then,” Joan said, rising. “You may have those designs with my blessing. Not a soul will notice that those dresses closely resemble what my sisters, my mother, and I will wear, right down to the flounces and buttons, and we’ll wear our dresses much sooner than anybody can purchase the ones you stole from me.”

Edward caught her wrist, and while Joan knew she could tromp on his instep and twist away from him—
thank
you, Tiberius, for being a protective brother
—she could not cause a scene two days after her own wedding.

“Please do resume your seat, my lady.”

She cast a meaningful glance at the steam curling from the spout of the teapot, and Edward dropped her wrist. She did not sit down.

“Make your threats, Edward, for clearly, you have more of them up your sleeve.”

Edward rose, as a gentleman must. “Not threats, not to a woman whom I esteem greatly. I will express my regrets that, should you in any way intimate those designs are yours, I will make it plain to the gentlemen in my clubs that a certain lady and I worked on those drawings together, at a time when neither one of us was wearing a stitch. Lovers do that sort of thing, you know.”

They took their clothes off, completely off, as Mr. Hartwell took his clothes off before joining Joan in bed.

Standing toe to toe with Edward, so close Joan could smell his gardenia eau de cologne, Joan missed her husband. Dante did not deal in intrigue and innuendo; he did not sneak about and steal; he did not wear lady’s perfume…

He did not deserve a wife who slunk around, meeting weasels in tea shops when she ought to be shopping for Christmas gifts.

“Keep the sketches, Edward. Your crime will go unpunished, and if you seek to sully my reputation, I am married now, to a man with delightfully old-fashioned notions about those who mean his wife ill.”

“Then his notions about marital fidelity will be similarly old-fashioned.”

The door banged, making a bell tinkle with incongruous cheer, while Joan’s insides turned colder than the air outside.

“I must be going, Edward, or Dora will be here, asking questions about why you’ve lingered in Aberdeen without your fiancée.”

“I’ll expect more sketches by the end of the month,” Edward said quietly, the way a chaperone might inform a debutante of a tea stain on the very bodice of the young lady’s presentation gown. “That gives you weeks to come up with summer ideas, and they don’t have to be finished—just enough that I can—”

Joan cut him off with a wave of a purple glove. “Show your mother, and continue the farce that your creative genius has finally borne worthy fruit. I can’t force myself to create beautiful dresses, Edward. The ideas come or not, without my willing it so.”

Had he any understanding of creativity, he’d grasp that much, but such were Edward’s limitations that he expected beautiful fashions to march onto the page on a schedule.

She nearly felt sorry for him, dwelling in such darkness while his family expected him to be the artistic engine for their house of fashion.

“I’ll want you to do Dorcas’s wedding dress,” Edward said. “Start on that first, and it had better be good.”

What Edward lacked in understanding, he made up for in audacity. “But a wedding dress—”

“Your own was lovely,” he said tightly, trying to take the honest compliment from the words, “and you had little time to create it. I want a wedding dress, Joan, for starters, and then I’ll want some summer dresses, too.”

“
Lady
Joan.”

“The title won’t help you when the rumors fly—nor will they assist Mr. Hartwell to find the funds he’s been trying to drum up between waltzes and weddings.”

Edward leaned closer, as if he’d steal a parting kiss to Joan’s cheek, but that she could not bear. She nudged at his half-empty teacup, and—alas—warm tea spilled down his trouser leg, and the cup bounced off his boot.

“My apologies,” she said as she turned to leave. “And you forgot to wish me happy Christmas. My regards to your fiancée and to your dear mama.”

Fourteen

What did it say about a man that his first wife regarded marriage to him as an occasion for dirty looks, and his second had an assignation with a handsome young lord within two days of her wedding?

Though as assignations went, a meeting in a tea shop was not particularly clandestine—a cheering detail.

“More buttered peas?” Joan asked.

“Please.” For Dante had worked up an appetite marching around the darkening city, arguing himself out of an old-fashioned duel of honor. What decided him against such dramatics was the fact that Valmonte, having a title, could credibly claim honor prevented him from meeting a man of much lower station.

Then too, Valmonte might kill him, and where would that leave Margs, Phillip, and Charlie?

Where would that leave Joan?

“You seem preoccupied,” Joan said, spooning buttered peas onto his plate. “Are you anxious to get back to your reports?”

He was anxious to shake some answers out of his wife, and yet, by the candles adorning their table, she looked shaken already. Tired, preoccupied, not nearly in the pink.

“I undertook Balfour’s house party to widen my circle of acquaintances among the titled and monied, and that plan has been…delayed.” Though not thwarted, certainly. He was married to a marquess’s daughter now, may God have mercy upon them both.

Joan put her fork down, peas spilling off of it. “I’m sorry. I never considered how marrying me might interrupt your plans. Is it urgent that you have these introductions?”

What was she asking?

“Important, but not urgent, and the holidays were a convenient way to see the goal accomplished. You haven’t eaten much, my lady.”

She organized her peas, tidied them into a corner of her plate the way a man arranged the cards in his hand in anticipation of a round of betting.

“May I ask you a question, Husband?”

No, he would not consider an annulment if there was no baby. Of that, he was certain—though one marriage to a reluctant bride had been one too many.

Christ.

“Ask.”

“Did you marry me for my dowry? If you did, that’s entirely understandable. I should bring something to the union, after all, besides scandal and bad judgment, but if money is—”

She was herding peas at a great rate. Dante took her hand, relieved it of her fork, and laced their fingers.

“Do you want an annulment if there is no child?”

She gripped his hand more snugly. “Certainly not. I want to understand our situation.”

Oh, the delicacy of the aristocracy.

“Come,” he said, drawing her to her feet. “Unless you’re in want of tea or sweets?”

She made a face Dante had often seen on Charlie, an expression that restored a man’s faith in his future—some.

“No tea, thank you. I’m learning to enjoy coffee and chocolate.”

He walked with her to their bedroom, leaving the dishes in the sitting room for the silent, unobtrusive hotel staff to deal with.

“Shall I unlace you?”

“Please.”

The prosaic exchange of a man and his wife at the end of their day, though Dante had every confidence Joan would again use a lady’s maid when they rejoined the Balfour house party.

While he had no intention of hiring a valet.

“Did you and Dora make many purchases this afternoon?” Dante asked as he started on Joan’s hooks. The ladies had come home empty-handed, though the shops would deliver parcels anywhere, for a sum.

“Dora is book mad, the way some people are horse mad, or cannot stop themselves from gambling. She is on a mission to find books for every member of our holiday gathering. What did you do with yourself this afternoon?”

They might have had this discussion over dinner, except Joan had interrogated him about the mills—how many employees, what ages, what hours did they work?

“I walked the city, looking for a place to set up offices near the docks. How many hooks can one dress have?”

“My back is longer than most women’s,” Joan said, as if admitting a fault.

“Your back is beautiful.” A correction more than a compliment, so he tried again. “You are beautiful.” Physically beautiful, but also beautiful in a way that confounded him, and should have been impossible, given what he’d seen at that tea shop.

No reply as her sleeves loosened from her shoulders and Dante resisted the temptation to kiss her nape.

Because he was an idiot, quite possibly an idiot married to an unfaithful wife. Though again, a meeting in a tea shop was not the stuff of adultery per se.

“You asked about our situation,” Dante said, tugging Joan’s sleeves down her arms and untying the bows on her chemise and corset cover. “What exactly would you like to know?”

She stepped away, heading for the privacy screen.

“Where shall we live, for one thing?” Her undone clothing rustled softly as she moved, not the same crisp swish and sway of a lady in public; rather, the sartorial whisper of a woman with whom a man was intimate.

“I have houses in Edinburgh and outside Glasgow, and rooms in Newcastle.” The rooms were his. The town house was Charlie’s, the country house, Phillip’s. He started on a circuit of the room, turning down lamps. “Each dwelling is comfortable enough.”

“Where are your mills?”

“Outside Glasgow, not far from the Clyde.” Not far from the house, either.

“Do you weave cotton or linen?”

He was tall enough to see over the privacy screen, so he knew Joan was poised with her hands braced on the washstand, head down, as if a great weariness beset her. He turned to the wardrobe and began disrobing rather than intrude further on her privacy—or be caught staring, for Joan was tall too.

“We handle some linen and some cotton, but mostly wool. We’re dependent on the Americans for the cotton, and that bunch hasn’t sorted themselves out yet. Linen is less risky over the long term, but wool we have in abundance right here. Leave me some wash water, if you please.”

“Of course.”

Until they were in bed—Joan in her silk nightgown, of course—it went like that, a question from Joan, an answer from her husband, and no questions at all in the opposite direction.

“You asked about our situation,” Dante said, blowing out the last candle and climbing onto the bed. “May I assume you want to know how we’re fixed?”

“Yes.”

How to explain it?

“In one sense, we’re wealthy. The mills are profitable and worth a great deal. We keep our equipment and premises in excellent repair, and we turn out a good product. None of it—not the land, the looms, the facilities, the houses—is mortgaged.”

“And in another sense?”

Well, damn. Joan lay on her back, reclining amid the pillows, hands folded over her middle. Dante had seen tombs decorated with saints in such a pose.

“My side of the bed is a bit chilly,” he said, which was an utter untruth
in
one
sense
. “Would you mind paying a call on your husband?”

Was that a smile threatening her saintly impassivity? By the limited light of the banked fire, Dante could not be sure, and yet, Joan shifted and rolled and boosted herself across the bed and tucked herself against him.

“Hello, Husband. Can’t have you taking a chill.”

He wrapped his arms around her, arranged her braid so it wasn’t trapped between them, and endured the slide of silk over his thighs as Joan got comfortable.

“In another sense,” he went on, as if a woman’s nearly naked body were not pressed to his, “we are cash poor, the same as any old duke trying to live off his land rents. I made the decision years ago to pay off the debt on the mills rather than amass personal assets, and that means any major difficulty—a roof collapsing, a strike, a fire—and we don’t have the capital to rebuild.”

This had been a perpetual argument between him and Rowena.

“Have you insurance?”

Insightful question, and Dante’s best counterargument. “Of course, but there’s no insuring against a strike.”

Joan scooted around again, her arm draped over Dante’s belly as if she’d keep him from pitching away in a high wind.

“Nobody can prevent strikes, though your Christmas baskets are a form of insurance, however small. I doubt my brother has explained as much of the family finances to his countess.”

He nuzzled her crown, because her hair was tickling his cheek. “You’ve mentioned that your mother takes an interest in commerce.”

“She used to. Now, I’m not so sure what occupies Mama’s time. Ordering my father about, mostly. I’m not a spendthrift, Mr. Hartwell. I will manage within my pin money handily. We will have household budgets, and I’ll manage within those too.”

To reply to those brisk assurances with a declaration of love would not do, but Dante was that grateful for Joan’s insight.

“I worry about money,” he admitted softly. “I’m the son of peasants, many people depend on me, and I worry about money. You have married down, Lady Joan.”

Though he was learning that other concerns could eclipse money on his list of anxieties.

“I married well,” she said, kissing his jaw. “Of this you may be certain, sir: I will not add to your burdens and worries.”

He cuddled her closer rather than tell her she already had.

***

Tell
him.

Tell
your
husband
Edward
Valmonte
is
threatening
you, your marriage, possibly even your husband’s business prospects.

Dante’s cheek was not as smooth as it had been the past two nights, and Joan liked that. She did
not
like the sense that in addition to possibly carrying a child, she had brought the potential for her husband’s ruin into the marriage.