What a Lady Needs for Christmas (20 page)

“That was probably your first mistake, but I’ve no doubt your countess has disabused you of that tactic.”

Hester loved it when Tye tried to order her about. She usually laughed herself silly, even before she started imitating him.

“Leave my countess out of this. I notice that while Joan was defending her actions with you, you did nothing to take up for her.”

Except allow her to shamelessly cling to his hand.

“That’s the second thing. Joan needed to be the one to tell you—you would not have believed me, and she doesn’t need me to speak for her, in any case.”

“You are a widower,” Tye said, recalling some of the social intelligence Hester had passed along during one of their late night…chats.

“I lost my wife three years ago,” Hartwell said. Nothing more, no manly gazing off into the fire, or sniffing into a handkerchief. Nothing sentimental about Hartwell’s pronouncement at all, which suggested to Tye that the woman’s death had, indeed, been a loss to her husband.

“Joan has been
off
somehow,” Tye said, stalking past Hartwell to spear another chunk of peat onto the fire. “She arrived here early, dragging your entire party with her, no luggage, no lady’s maid. Even my father—not the most devoted student of human nature—has noticed that Joan is unusually quiet.”

“You are absolutely correct that Joan is coping with disappointment,” Hartwell said. “Most women are by the time they’re her age, but Joan has been honest with me. She believes we can have a respectful, cordial union, and I hope she’s right.”

Joan had not been honest with her very own devoted, loving brother. She was apparently determined to marry Hartwell, true enough, but she was not in love with the man.

Tye used a length of wrought iron to jab the fresh peat to the back of the flames. “If you break her heart, I will kill you—socially, financially, emotionally. In every sense save for the criminal, I will end your life. My countess would expect no less of me, and it’s the least I owe Joan.”

“I believe you mean that.”

Tye set the poker aside and replaced the screen over the hearth.

“Always nice to know prospective family has some basic English comprehension skills. When you meet with my father, they’ll come in handy.” With Mama, language skills were of no help whatsoever. “What was the third thing?”

“The third… Ah, yes. A drink, to celebrate the coming nuptials.”

Balfour owned a distillery and served a whiskey that put angel choruses to the blush. Other breweries were blending their whiskies these days, mixing this barrel and vintage with that.

Tye preferred the old ways. And yet, he was enough of a new husband to understand the wisdom Hartwell had shown in this exchange with Joan. Joan had made her choice, and she’d stood by it, even to the point of having the last word with a brother who prided himself on his elocution and rhetoric.

And here Tye had thought her passion was limited to fabrics and stitchery.

“A drink would be appreciated. You’ll want to pour from the decanter under the sideboard—plain, a bit dusty, and full of treasure.”

Hartwell located the decanter and set out two glasses.

Tye moved aside some bank draft or other and appropriated the comfortable chair behind Balfour’s estate desk.

“Some people might think my sister is plain, and that she dresses so magnificently to compensate for her looks.”

Hartwell brought him a drink, saluted, and downed a shot in a single swallow. “Those people would be idiots.”

Tye took a savoring sip of indecently lovely whiskey. “My former admonition regarding your continued well-being stands, Hartwell: murder, in every sense but the criminal if you break my sister’s heart. Other than that, welcome to the family.”

Hartwell smiled and poured himself another drink. “Understood,
my
lord
.”

***

Pandora was the smallest and youngest of the adult Flynns, which in Joan’s opinion had also made her the most stubborn. That stubbornness was all too evident when she stood in the doorway to Joan’s bedroom several evenings after Joan’s engagement to Dante Hartwell had become fact.

“Good evening, Dora.”

“Let us in, or we’ll stand here in the corridor like a pair of drunken carolers until you do.”

“We might even sing,” Mary Ellen added evilly, for though they shared strawberry blond hair, Mary Ellen could sing like a nightingale, while Dora had from earliest youth been encouraged to merely move her lips when the hymns were sung in church.

“How seasonal of you,” Joan said with irony worthy of Tiberius in a foul mood. “It’s late, I’ve had a very trying day—the entire week since leaving Edinburgh has been trying—and I have correspondence to tend to.”

Correspondence to cry over, for Edward Valmonte’s good wishes in light of Joan’s engagement had been among the felicitations to arrive in the afternoon post. Joan tried to push the door closed—her sisters were not her friends and hadn’t been for years—but Mary Ellen wedged her way past Dora and barged into the room.

Dora, of course, followed, but remained near the door. “We are here to tell you that you needn’t marry this Mr. Hartwell for our sakes.”

“Are you really? Thank you for those sentiments, and now I bid you good night.”

Dora and Mary Ellen exchanged a look that included rolled eyes, exasperation, and the conspiratorial condescension of younger sisters who know they hold high cards.

About which Joan honestly cared not one single, bent farthing.

“You may bid us good night when you understand that we’re in earnest,” Mary Ellen said. “Mr. Hartwell is a handsome enough fellow, if you fancy the kilted sort, but if you think you must marry him so Dora and I aren’t overshadowed by your continued…marital
availability
, then we can’t allow you to make that sacrifice.”

Though she was petite, Dora was in some ways most like their father. She said what she thought, regardless of the consequences, and while she wasn’t precisely nasty—sibling relations excepted—she was blunt.

Mary Ellen, by contrast, had retreated into the role of disinterested diplomat.

“Thank you,” Joan said, though the sincerity of their sentiment upset a balance that had emerged between the sisters in adolescence.

An unhappy but stable, even rigid, balance.

“I’m not making a sacrifice,” Joan went on. “One tires of being leered at by the same bachelors and having one’s feet trod upon by the same tipsy baronets. Mr. Hartwell needs a mother for his children, a hostess, and a chaperone for his sister as she makes the acquaintance of Polite Society. Those are all worthy projects, and I find his company congenial.”

Oddly enough, this was all true.

Dora snorted and appropriated a seat on Joan’s bed. “You’re hardly in his company at all. Tiberius has appointed himself your guard dog, and Hester indulges him. You’re lucky to sit two seats away from your intended at breakfast.”

And yet, Dante had found quiet moments to squeeze Joan’s hand, to wink at her, to steal a peck on the cheek even when mistletoe wasn’t in evidence.

“What’s really afoot, Joan?” Mary Ellen’s question was soft and held a hint of…worry. “Marriage is a drastic, irrevocable step, and while Mama is trying to put a good face on it, decent people don’t marry far below themselves by special license.”

“You want to know if scandal is in the offing?” They were entitled to worry, for scandal was knocking on the very door.

“You are the most ill-natured creature,” Dora said. “We’re asking for information. Forewarned and all that. And stop pacing. You do it solely to make your skirts swish.”

As Joan considered removing Dora bodily from the room, Mary Ellen came to roost in Joan’s rocking chair.

“She’s ill-natured only around you, Dora, and in all fairness, you’re at your nastiest around Joan. And all over a silly dress? It’s time for the two of you to move beyond that.”

Dora lay back on Joan’s bed, kicked off a pair of pink velvet mules, and crossed her ankles, as if getting comfortable for a nice long squabble.

“That dress was not silly,” Joan said, recalling a green carriage dress with the loveliest peacock blue underskirt and a darker green gathered overskirt. That outfit was the first time she’d realized the potential of nacre buttons, and with a few plumes of peacock feather arranged both in a brooch and in the matching hat…

“Look at her,” Dora said. “She’s still in love with that dress, and all I wanted to do was borrow it.”

Edward Valmonte was intent on blackmail, holy matrimony with all the intimacies attendant thereto was breathing down Joan’s neck, scandal would likely come calling by Christmas, and Dora wanted to have this old argument?

Joan ceased her pacing before the hearth.

“Dora, I do not care that you typically spill coffee on every item of apparel you’ve worn for fifteen minutes. I do not care that I’d worked for weeks on that dress, for every moment was a labor of love. I do not care that you were in the act of borrowing it without my permission—which activity the law has unpleasant names for—when I came upon you trying to take up the hem. I do not even care that you ruined the dress for me when you went snipping away at it. I care very much that you would have looked ridiculous in that dress.”

Dora sat up, her mouth open as if to fire off a retort.

“I told you,” Mary Ellen interjected. “Joan isn’t mean, she simply doesn’t know how to express herself outside the sewing room.”

Mary Ellen wasn’t mean either, precisely, and yet, her comment—as insightful as it was—stung.

“That was a beautiful outfit!” Dora said, bouncing off the bed. “The perfect outfit for gaining Nathan Hampstead’s notice—but, no. You would not allow me to wear it even the once, so all I had for the carriage parade was that infantile little cream business, and there he was, jabbering away to Matilda Carnes. He didn’t even recognize me when I waved, and then they were engaged.”

For the first time since childhood, Joan chanced a look at Mary Ellen in the midst of one of Dora’s tirades. Not a conspiratorial look, but a look verifying that Dora was once again sounding sixteen years old, at the mercy of every adolescent insecurity, and passionately in love for the third time in as many weeks.

“Nathan Hampstead is notoriously shortsighted, Dora,” Joan said gently. “He’s also running to fat. Tiberius says the man plays too deep, as well. That cream business was your lucky dress.”

For every girl needed a lucky dress. Joan had been designing hers for years.

“So you say now,” Dora huffed, tossing herself onto Joan’s fainting couch. “I was convinced at the time you wanted him for yourself.”

This was news—also ridiculous. “You’re daft. He’s three inches shorter than I am. Do you know what he gazes at when we dance?”

Dora sat up and considered Joan from across the room. “I hate it when the fellows do that.”

“We all do,” Mary Ellen added. “Is this topic finally behind us?”

Peace on this subject would make a lovely wedding present. Joan knew better than to say as much.

“Dora, deep green does not become you. Your coloring is more genteel than my own or Mama’s. She and I cannot wear the subtler colors, while you and Mary Ellen carry them off wonderfully. If you still want that dress, I’m happy to make it for you all over again, but we’ll choose colors that flatter you.”

“You wouldn’t lend me the dress because I can’t wear green?”

Not
on
your
person.
And yet, how odd to think that Dora—forthright, curvy Dora—could still feel stung by a long-ago sense of invisibility.

“Bad enough we all made our come outs in the shadow of a mama who commands every room she enters,” Joan said, settling on the fainting couch beside Dora. “Much worse if we try to emulate her and fail.”

“Joan was being protective of you,” Mary Ellen translated. “My sisters are dunderheads.”

Rather than acknowledge any dunderheadedness, Dora rose to pace.

“Is more protectiveness fueling this engagement, Joan? We know Eddie Valmonte was in your gun sights, and now he’s to marry that Lady Bon-Bon. I thought you simply liked to talk dresses with him, but Mary El says Eddie’s regard for you was becoming marked. I cannot see you talking about dresses with Mr. Hartwell.”

“He wears the loveliest wool blends. Lamb’s wool, angora, even cashmere.”

Mary Ellen laughed, Dora joined in, and to her surprise—so did Joan.

“He won’t be wearing any of those on your wedding night,” Dora said, bouncing back up onto the bed. “Has Mama mortified you with that little lecture yet?”

“About five years ago,” Joan replied, “but she was surprisingly encouraging about the entire undertaking.” Which left one to wonder vague, uncomfortable things about one’s own parents.

Though here was a difficulty—another difficulty: Would Mr. Hartwell expect to see his wife unclothed?

“First things first,” Mary Ellen said. “What will you wear on your wedding day?”

“I can’t make myself think about that,” Joan admitted, because she had nobody else to whom she might have made such a confession. “I’ll wear something, though I look ghastly in white. Fortunately, not everybody follows the Queen’s example in this, even now.”

“I have a lovely cream carriage dress we could alter for you,” Dora said. “Though I’m fairly certain it’s in London. Possibly Edinburgh.”

Which would not be a problem in this age of miracles. Dante had, in less than a week’s time, procured the special license. To have a dress sent up from London would be no difficulty at all.

“Have you invited Edward?” Mary Ellen asked quietly.

Oh, God.
Just when the day could not have become worse.

“Mama did the guest list, and I’m sure he’s not—”

“You’re sure he
is
on it,” Dora interrupted. “Mama has never avoided a potential confrontation, and never held one in private that could be carried off in public. Blast and damnation. We ought to have said something to Papa.”

“No matter,” Joan said. “If Edward attends, he attends. We’ll talk about dresses, which is all we ever really did.”

That she could recall. His note hadn’t mentioned blackmail, but it had confirmed that Joan’s drawings were in his possession, and were likely to remain there. Edward was a viscount, after all. His coercion would be the smiling, sly variety.