What a Lady Needs for Christmas (12 page)

“Whose hospitality am I imposing on?” Joan asked, for their arrival was certainly meeting with every courtesy.

“Some earl or other. He’s in shipping and looking to diversify. Lots of interests in the New World and doesn’t socialize much. Supposedly quite wealthy, though I’ve likely offended you by saying as much. Why?”

The day was to end with a small mercy, apparently. “I don’t know any earls with interests in shipping, and if he’s reclusive, then there will be that much less talk about my having to depend on your good offices to see me back to my family.”

Or about her possibly ending up married to Mr. Hartwell, another unfathomable element to this most unfathomable day.

They paused on the front stoop of a house built of mellow gray granite. The footman stood patiently with one hand on the doorknob, suggesting nobody in these surrounds let the night air in for an instant longer than necessary.

“You’re not looking forward to explaining
me
,” Mr. Hartwell said. “Don’t suppose I blame you.”

The footman opened the door, and a rush of warm, piney air greeted Joan. A small crowd was knotted in the house’s entryway, Charlie’s voice piping above a hubbub of greetings and introductions.

A tall dark-haired man in a kilt detached himself from the group and extended a hand to Mr. Hartwell.

“Hartwell, welcome. This must be your wife.”

Their host was broad-shouldered, and his burr was laced with some subtle accent Joan couldn’t fathom. About the eyes and jaw, he looked familiar, and he was much younger than Joan had anticipated, probably about Mr. Hartwell’s age.

She noted these details with the part of her mind adept at social gatherings, while the part of her that had endured a long, hard, bewildering day scrambled for a reply to their host’s error.

“Lady Joan—” Mr. Hartwell began, only to be interrupted by a cultured, very English baritone from over Joan’s shoulder.

“She is most certainly not his wife, for that lady is my own dear sister. Joan, a pleasure to see you—an unexpected pleasure.”

Joan had always viewed the ladies who succumbed to a convenient swoon with amusement, and yet… A varied diet of whiskey, chocolate, self-recrimination, and anxiety did not make for steady nerves.

Mr. Hartwell’s arm, though, was steady indeed. Joan manufactured a brilliant smile, turned, and faced yet another challenge in this endlessly challenging day.

She also lied—convincingly, she hoped.

“Hello, Tiberius. Delightful to see you too, as always.”

Six

Valerian Fontaine had no sense of fashion, and the only figures that turned his graying head were of the mathematical variety. Edward might have forgiven his uncle these shortcomings, but the old boy had no sense of fun, either.

“If you are to take over this business someday, you will have to learn to
work
,” Uncle barked, closing a ledger book with a decisive snap. “You must leave off mincing about the ballrooms and leering down ladies’ bodices, and spend more time seeing to business.”

Uncle came from the practical French side of the family, after which Edward did not now and never would take if he could help it. Times were changing, true, but having a hand in trade was hardly a rose on the family escutcheon.

“Don’t scold the boy,” Mama said as she leafed through Edward’s sketches for next year’s ball gowns. “Where do you think all the latest fashions are to be seen, hmm? Edward is an English aristocrat and must be seen comporting himself as such.”

“Those ball gowns are to be
seen
night after night, the same fashions on the same ladies from the same modistes and the same houses of fashion. The boy needn’t become a fixture in the ballrooms to know that bustles are smaller this year, or larger, or whatever.”

The size of a fashionable bustle was not a
whatever
, and Edward, at twenty-seven years of age, was not a boy.

“Eddie, where are your new drawings?” As always, Mama was composed and lovely. Mama might not be able to design a pretty dress, but she could still wear one to excellent advantage.

“I believe you’re looking at my most recent drawings, Mama.”

And when would Uncle renovate this shabby, cluttered, dingy office? Customers never saw this part of Salon du Mode, but Edward was spending rather more time here of late than he preferred.

“Not these,” Mama said, setting aside hours of Edward’s work, “the ones you did at home, the ones with the different bodices and all that flouncy business about the hems.”

An image flashed into Edward’s mind, out of context, the way recall of a hard night always popped up unexpectedly. Lady Joan had been so eager to show him her sketches, and not very eager at all to show him her other treasures. She’d prattled on and on about seams, flounces, nap, drape, and all manner of subtleties, while Edward had watched her hands moving on the page and become aroused.

“What drawings?” Uncle asked, for even Uncle understood that a clever design yielded profit, of which there had been too little for too long.

“I have them in my case,” Edward said, because he had spent hours trying to imitate the innovations Joan had tossed off in a few moments of sketching. “Might we have a tea tray sent up?”

“Show them to your uncle,” Mama said, waving her hand languidly. “They’re your best work so far. When you apply yourself, you astonish me, Eddie.”

The hour was late enough that Edward ought to be dressing for his evening’s entertainments—Uncle’s misguided notions of
work
meant long hours spent on the business premises. Edward was hungry, bored, and—

The sense of his mother’s words registered. “Those sketches you were looking at at home are not mi—”

Between one heartbeat and the next, Edward came smack up against a choice. Lady Joan had left her designs behind in Edward’s parlor, only a few of the many brilliant ideas she was unfairly endowed with. He’d wanted her help without having to ask for it—the reason for the entire debacle—but he hadn’t strictly planned to appropriate her work.

She wouldn’t miss the sketches, and she certainly wouldn’t be asking for them back.

Would she?

A man must take charge of his destiny.

“Those sketches are not my best work, though some of them have potential,” Edward said, untying his portfolio. He carried the leather case with him so that all and sundry might know that his contribution to the family venture was artistic, and nothing so pedestrian as arithmetic or ledgers.

That would be
ungentlemanly
. Also tedious, and in Edward’s case, doomed to failure. Then too, a portfolio was a good place to stash a spare handkerchief, a comb, some mints, and a sheath or two.

“I’m still refining most of them,” Edward said, passing Joan’s sketches across the table to his uncle—and pray God the man would not turn them over to see the signatures.

Uncle dressed like a latter-day Puritan, and his grasp of women’s fashion likely matched Edward’s grasp of ledgers. What mattered was that Mama had liked the drawings.

“Damned lot of fabric involved,” Uncle muttered. “Though they’re quite fetching. Silk, I suppose?”

Silk was expensive; Edward knew that much. “Well, perhaps we might use—”

“Of course, silk,” Mama said, turning the stack to consider a drawing. “Nothing else drapes quite like silk, and it’s warm without being heavy. Spring nights are the very devil for being chilly.”

How could a woman be chilly when wearing all those confounded layers? Lady Joan had certainly worn layers beneath her skirts—Edward recalled that much—and each one had been soft, delicate, and complicated—also mouthwateringly pretty.

“Matching capes and shawls then,” Uncle groused. “More damned silk.”

“Matching stockings,” Edward said. A silly notion, one that had both of his relations peering at him. Joan had worn purple silk stockings, the sight of which on her slender calves had parted Edward from his next-to-last shred of common sense.

“Brilliant,” Mama cried.

“Costly,” Uncle countered. “I suppose we can charge exorbitantly for them if they’re dyed to match.”

Mama nattered on, while Uncle offered a counterpoint in dolorous estimates and dire predictions, and Edward wrestled with what amounted to purloining Lady Joan Flynn’s sketches.

The sketches she’d abandoned when she’d stolen from Edward’s embrace in the dead of night.

“These aren’t final designs,” Edward said, though neither Mama nor Uncle appeared to heed him. “I said, these still need some work. I’m not finished with them.”

Because with a flounce here and a puffier sleeve there, Edward might obscure the fact that he’d committed larceny in addition to trespassing on a good woman’s virtue.

While Mama and Uncle went blithely about another of their many arguments, Edward tied the portfolio ribbons closed. It would not do for anybody to catch sight of what he carried about where pencils, paper, charcoal, pastels, and erasers should be.

***

A big dark-haired fellow came sauntering past the crossed ceremonial claymores gracing the first landing, his unsmiling gaze fixed on Lady Joan. He looked ready to launch into lectures Dante was too tired to tolerate.

“Are Dora and Mary Ellen with you?” His tone was more inquisitive than concerned, and beside Dante, Lady Joan stood taller.

“They made separate arrangements.”

“Lady Joan traveled out from the station with my family and me. I’m sure her day has been quite taxing.”

The confused quality of the other man’s scowl reminded Dante that—heaven help him—they had not been
introduced
.

MacGregor remedied the oversight. “Lord Spathfoy, may I make known to you Mr. Dante Hartwell. Mr. Hartwell, Tiberius, Earl of Spathfoy, whom I consider a cousin by marriage.”

Without giving up his hold of Joan’s arm, Dante bowed to his lordship, wondering what the fellow had done to merit a first name address from Lady Joan. Spathfoy was English, and impeccably turned out, which would matter to Joan.

“Hartwell, my thanks,” said his hoity-toity English lordship. “Now you will please turn loose of my sister that I might inflict a proper greeting on her.”

Sister.
Dante did not turn loose of Joan so much as she eased from his grasp and slipped into her brother’s embrace.

“Is Hester here?” Joan asked, drawing back but not leaving the circle of her brother’s arms. “I have missed you both terribly, and I’m sure my nephew is ready to ride to hounds.”

Spathfoy was fooled by that diversionary tactic—he went into lordly raptures about some baby, and needing rest, and his countess believed this and that about the rearing of a child—but Joan was bluffing.

She was exhausted, anxious as hell, possibly even scared, and her brother wasn’t to know any of it. And yet, the entirety of her miserable day had been given into Dante’s confidence.

Where it would remain.

“MacGregor, if you’d complete the introductions?” Dante asked. “The children in particular have had a long day.”

As had Dante. MacGregor—the earl of Balfour, rather, dammit—said something to his red-haired wife, an American whose name or title or proper form of address Dante would worry about tomorrow, and soon that lady was leading Margs and the children up the curving stairway.

The noise level dropped considerably with Charlie’s departure, and in the ringing quiet, fatigue crept up behind Dante and clobbered him stoutly.

“You’re probably for bed too,” MacGregor—Balfour—said. “Her ladyship will have trays sent up, and the sideboards are stocked in all of the bedrooms. Will you need a valet?”

What Dante needed was to know Joan would be provided the same solitude and comfort MacGregor was offering him.

“I see to myself,” Dante said. “A tray would be appreciated.”

“Joan!” A small blond woman came barreling into the entryway. “Oh, you’ve surprised us! It’s so good to
see
you!”

Dante liked this woman on sight, for her arrival had saved Joan from further interrogations by Spathfoy, and she was effusive in her greetings. She was so petite, however, that Joan’s height looked even greater by contrast.

“It’s lovely to be here,” Joan said, flashing another smile. Her stamina, when it came to facial dissembling, was prodigious. She reached for Dante and drew him forward by virtue of linking their arms. “Lady Spathfoy, may I make known to you…”

Dante bowed over the lady’s hand, while he tried to absorb that this bright, cheery little woman was married to Joan’s lordly brother. Perhaps opposites did attract. And while Spathfoy made sheep’s eyes at his wee countess, Dante renewed his request to MacGregor.

“Might we prevail upon you to show us to our accommodations, MacGregor? I confess I’m about asleep on my feet.”

He could go another twenty-four hours before that was so, and had on occasion, but he was damned if he’d let Joan’s brother get a free shot at her before she’d had some rest.

“This way, then,” MacGregor said, leading them up the stairs and past the claymores. “Spathfoy, Countess, until breakfast.”

They were shown to rooms across the hall from each other, which suited Dante well enough. MacGregor’s ancestral pile sported a modern bathing chamber on the same corridor as the guest rooms. The house was well appointed—the mirrors shone brightly, the sconces sported clean chimneys, the scent of the place was fresh and cedary with a homey undertone of peat.

For all its cleanliness and size, the house fell short of pretentious—and thank God for that, because Dante could not have borne to do business with a Scotsman given to fussiness and airs.

“Lady Joan, I’ll bid you good night,” MacGregor said. “Breakfast is on the sideboard by seven. Any maid or footman can direct you if the scent of bacon isn’t guide enough. Mr. Hartwell, good night.”

He bustled off, kilt swinging, maybe to find his countess, or perhaps to give two weary travelers privacy to seek their beds.

Joan paused with her hand on the glass doorknob. “He’s Balfour, not MacGregor, though Asher is quite the democrat. He didn’t seem to care how you addressed him.”

Her hand dropped without turning the knob. Dante was across the hall in an instant, scooping her up against his chest and carrying her into his room.