Jack (The Jaded Gentlemen Book 4) (9 page)

“Hang it anywhere you damned please, and don’t expect me to—hold still, madam.”

She tipped her chin up and let him finish unfastening her cloak, then turned so he could peel it from her shoulders.

“You need a new cloak, Miss Hennessey.” Her scarf was a bit tattered as well, and a surreptitious glance suggested her boots weren’t
adequate to the challenge of a fresh snowfall. Her feet had to be even colder than Jack’s.

Miss Hennessey passed him her gloves, as if he were the first footman or the porter. “This cloak was a gift from my Aunt Theodosia, who is nearly as
tall as I am. It was her best, at the time, and is my only cloak. Insult my cloak at your peril.”

“I meant to remark a simple fact. You there—” Jack raised his voice to get the attention of a maid scurrying past with a feather-duster
in hand. “Please ask the kitchen to serve a round of toddies in the servants’ hall, and have mulled wine brought for Miss Hennessey and myself
in the library. I’d also like mulligatawny soup with naan for our luncheon, and that can be served in the library as well.”

Where a roaring fire stood a prayer of thawing Miss Hennessey’s toes—and Jack’s temper.

He tossed her gloves onto the sideboard.

“You must decide where the mistletoe and greenery go,” Miss Hennessey said, as if instructing a  dim little scholar. “The butler
would typically direct the footmen, and Pahdi might lack the familiarity with our traditions to do so knowledgeably.”

“One hangs mistletoe from the rafters,” Jack said, mostly for the pleasure of arguing with her. “Pahdi will figure that much out.”

Miss Hennessey took her gloves from among the mistletoe and stuffed them into the pockets of her cloak, which Jack had hung on a hook.

“Pahdi is dealing with a staff trying to anticipate your mother’s every need. Will she bring a lady’s maid, and where will that worthy
sleep? Does she travel with footmen and grooms, as well as a coachman, or has she hired a conveyance that will turn around and leave upon arrival?”

“She’ll take her traveling coach, which is nearly the size of Prinny’s pavilion,” Jack said, though why hadn’t anybody
bothered to ask
him
these questions previously? “She prefers to impose on her host rather than bring along footmen, though her coachman and
head groom have been with her for years. As for a lady’s maid… we can recruit a maid for that function.”

Miss Hennessey stepped closer, so she was nearly toe to toe with Jack. “Which maid? Do any of them have experience being a lady’s maid? Will
the other maids be jealous? What if your mother finds fault with the person chosen, and the others find out about it? Mrs. Abernathy ought to have foreseen
these difficulties, but she’s too busy criticizing the work of the footmen.”

“Come with me,” Jack said, taking Miss Hennessey by one cold hand. “If you’re reporting a mutiny, then at least do so in the
privacy of the library.”

Privacy,
and warmth.
  

She came along peacefully enough—more deception, for Jack could feel her cocking and aiming sharp retorts as an archer knocks her arrows.

“I will now breach all decorum,” Jack said, when they’d reached the sanctuary of the library, “and remove my boots, lest my toes
become permanently cramped by the cold. I suggest you do likewise.”  

“One does not remove—”

Jack took the chair closest to the fire and yanked off his right boot. “I have seen a woman’s feet before, Miss Hennessey. In India, bare feet
are common, for a certain class.” The left boot followed, and Jack placed them beside his desk.

Miss Hennessey regarded his boots with something like puzzlement. “This is not India.”

“The problem in a nutshell. If we were in India, my mother would not be planning a protracted raid on the garrison. Shall you remove your
boots?”

Miss Hennessey’s hems were damp, though they’d dry quickly enough if she remained near the fire. “I don’t suppose it could
hurt.”

Jack toed on the slippers beneath his desk and busied himself with building up the fire. The library was kept cozy at all hours, which took some doing when
the draperies were also routinely tied back.

“I’ll take your boots,” he said, gesturing with his fingers, when she’d removed her footwear.

“And do what with them?” Miss Hennessey asked, rising from the sofa.

“Put them beside mine, where the heat of the flames won’t damage the leather.”

Miss Hennessey tended to that task herself. “About the mistletoe.”

Jack was saved from the impending skirmish by a soft triple-tap on the door. Pahdi entered bearing a large silver tray laden with soup, naan, a porcelain
teapot, and two glasses of steaming wine.

The scents were luscious, all complicated spices and good food.   

“Thank you, Pahdi,” Jack said, taking the tray from his butler. “When the footmen are half drunk from their toddies, I’ll direct
them in the hanging of the mistletoe. Tying the greenery into swags is usually done in the servants’ hall, and today is a fine day to undertake that
task. The maids are welcome to a seasonal tot, given the nature of the afternoon’s activities.”

Once Mama arrived, they’d all be kept busy with far less enjoyable work.

“Meaning no disrespect to ancient British traditions,” Pahdi said, “but being a simple Indian butler, I do not understand why poisonous
shrubs are a required part of holiday celebrations. I’ll send you James and William when your meal is complete, sir. Their superior English brains
can doubtless manage the challenge of decorating the inside of a house with shrubbery usually found only outside of that dwelling.”

“They’ll need a ladder,” Miss Hennessey said. “And part of that ancient British tradition is that couples who meet beneath the
mistletoe offer one another a kiss in the spirit of the joyous season. You shouldn’t reprimand those who adhere to the tradition, as odd as it might
seem.”

“I had heard of this tradition, but did not know whether to believe such a decorous and worthy culture would indulge in frivolous behavior.”

“Believe it,” Miss Hennessey said, “and avoid standing beneath the mistletoe lest you be accosted by Mrs. Abernathy.”

“Miss Hennessey is teasing you,” Jack said, at Pahdi’s horrified expression. “Mostly. The kissing bit is a silly tradition, not a
general order. Be off with you, before there’s a riot below stairs.”

Pahdi withdrew with a swift bow.

“How long has he been in England?” Miss Hennessey asked from her place before the fire. “Kissing beneath the mistletoe is hardly an
arcane practice.”

“He’s been with me since I came home,” Jack said. “But my household has done little to observe the holidays in past years. Are your
stockings also wet?”

Miss Hennessey had turned before the fire, her skirts brushing the fender, and a bare toe had briefly peeked from a holey stocking.

She adjusted her skirts. “A gentleman wouldn’t notice.”

“A lady would be left in avoidable discomfort as a result of the gentleman’s feigned blindness. Give me your stockings.”

“Sir Jack Fanning, if you think for one instant that I will remove an article of apparel simply to avoid a slight damp—”

Jack was on one knee, his hands under her skirts in the next moment. “I hate the cold, do you hear me? India was marvelously hot. Burning. Heat so
thick it pressed on your very mind. These stockings are soaked, and you’ll have chilblains and an ague and lung fever just as I need you to keep my
mother from—”

He’d untied her garter by feel and peeled the stocking from her calf. He held up the wet wool like a limp pelt.

“Now the other one, Miss Hennessey. Our soup is growing cold, and your feet will not get warm until you do as I say.”

She took the wet stocking from him and hung it over the fireplace screen. “You are daft. The heat of India has scorched the manners right out of
you.”

“Probably,” Jack said, untying the second garter and retrieving another sopping-wet stocking. He wasn’t taking liberties, but neither
could he ignore the fact that he was touching a woman under her skirts for the first time in years.

And enjoying himself,
which was such a relief, Jack didn’t bother apologizing for his presumption
.

“Here,” Jack said, shuffling off his slippers. “Put these on, and you might be spared the lung fever part.”

“What about the mortification part?” Miss Hennessey donned his slippers, though they were a bit too big for her. “These are wonderfully
warm.”

“You’re welcome. Let’s eat.”

Jack nearly missed it as he arranged her second stocking over the screen—the first was already steaming—but Miss Hennessey was smiling at her
feet.

Her expression included pleasure, self-consciousness, and a touch of bewilderment, and Jack wanted to lecture her about employers who allowed their help to
go about poorly shod and badly cloaked.

He settled instead for serving her hot, spicy soup and fresh buttery naan, then enjoying a large portion of the same himself. The wine was hot and spicy as
well, and the result was one of the most satisfying repasts Jack could recall since leaving India.

“About the mistletoe,” Miss Hennessey said when her bowl was empty.

“Hang the mistle—bother the mistletoe, rather. What difference does it make where the damned stuff is?” And why hadn’t Pahdi sent
up any extra wine?

Miss Hennessey took a dainty sip of her drink. “You want to hang some in the places the staff frequent, a little private, but not dangerously
private, and in the front foyer, of course.”

“Perhaps the libation has muddled me, but what is dangerously private?”

She peered at him over her drink. Such a way with a silence, she had.

“Miss Hennessey, if any fellow in my employment takes liberties beyond those freely offered, he’s turned off without a character.”

“Freely offered is subject to a world of interpretation, Sir Jack, and the interpreting is done by footmen eager for any kiss. Mrs. Abernathy is not
the sort to inspire confidence in the women working for her.”

Miss Hennessey had been beaten daily her first year in service, probably for
not
offering her kisses—or more—freely. Somebody needed
to be flogged in public for that, likely her first employer. Had she let Belmont know what a hell she’d endured before coming to his household?

“I take your point.” Taking her point was becoming a habit. Miss Hennessey was uncommonly sensible, and wearing Jack’s favorite slippers,
she’d acquired a touch of the adorable too.

Perhaps one glass of wine had been sufficient after all.

“Let’s put the footmen out of their misery, shall we?” Jack asked, extending a hand down to her.

She took it—her fingers were warm now—and rose as if the wine might have unsteadied her a bit too.

“My thanks, Sir Jack.”

He kept hold of her hand, and what he did next was a result of pure instinct. Miss Hennessey stood close enough that a whiff of lavender came to Jack over
the scent of the fire in the hearth and the damp wool drying on the screen. Without her boots, she was not quite as statuesque, not quite as formidable.

Perhaps that was what inspired Jack to bend his head and kiss her. Not her cheek, which would have been a better way to convey the simple liking he felt
for her, but right on her full, sensible, rarely smiling mouth.

Her hands rested gently on his biceps, and he and she remained thus, mouths touching, nobody moving, until Miss Hennessey’s grip on his sleeves
tightened, and she stepped nearer.

Whatever Jack had intended—holiday gesture, a moment of affection, or even flirtation—he had no explanation for why he gathered her closer and
let the kiss blossom into intimacy. When Miss Hennessey ought to have slapped him, she looped her arms around his neck and pressed the luscious abundance
of her curves closer.

Desire charged forth at a dead gallop to ambush Jack’s self-restraint. He’d forgotten how intense the sensations associated with erotic
yearning could be, or perhaps his body meant to make up for years of sexual indifference at the worst possible time.

He
wanted
this woman, and that absolutely would not do.

Miss Hennessey recovered first, resting her forehead on Jack’s shoulder. She was the tallest woman he’d kissed, and the fit of their bodies was
marvelous.

She was utterly unlike Saras, who’d been so diminutive Jack had at first mistaken her for delicate.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said, though he was apparently not sorry enough to turn loose of the lady.

“For kissing me?”

She would ask that, and she’d know if he was anything less than honest. “For kissing you without permission. You are under my protection, and I
am the last man who should impose on you.”

Belmont would kill Jack for imposing, if imposing it had been.  

Miss Hennessey stepped back and downed the last of her wine, though it would no longer be hot.

“You would not know how to impose on a woman if your life depended on it. Will you send me back to the Belmonts’ now?”

Jack probably should. His reaction to her had taken him by surprise. No warning shouts had gone out from his breeding organs to his thinking brain, and he
had no explanation for an arguably ungentlemanly impulse.

“Do you want to return to the Belmonts’ household? I wouldn’t blame you.”

But he would… miss her. In a few short days, Miss Hennessey had opened his eyes to aspects of owning and managing a large domicile he’d been
oblivious to. And she kissed… she knew how to kiss, how to hold a man, how to communicate bodily delight in his overtures.

“Do you want me to go?” she countered, gathering up her stockings from the screen.

Jack hesitated to say yes—the sensible answer—and yet admitting he did not want her to go was a risky alternative.

Pahdi’s characteristic triple tap sounded at the door.

“Come in,” Jack bellowed.

“I beg your pardon, Sir Jack, Miss Hennessey, but a large coach is coming up the drive. I thought you would want to know.”

“Battle stations, Pahdi,” Jack said, sitting at his desk to tug on his boots. “Alert Mrs. Abernathy that I’ll be introducing her to
Mama and remove the damned pile of mistletoe from the sideboard in the foyer. Be sure the fires in Mama’s apartments are roaring, and get a tea tray
with shortbread and biscuits ready to go—the best everyday china, and nothing that tastes of lemon. Mama cannot abide lemons.”