What a Lady Needs for Christmas (30 page)

“You cannot help but add to my burdens,” Dante said. “Now I must wrack my brain to come up with a Christmas gift for you. Please assure me I needn’t buy a token for Spathfoy too.”

“Tiberius would be mortified to accept any gift from you. He holds himself accountable for Charlie’s mishap on the ice.”

She felt him sorting through Charlie’s various mishaps, for the child had several a day.

“Your brother is an idiot, though he grows on one. Shall I make love with you, Mrs. Hartwell?”

The question was quiet and casual, punctuated with a kiss to Joan’s temple. She liked that too, even as Edward’s attempt to kiss her cheek earlier in the day lingered on the edge of her awareness.

“I would like…you shall make love with me,” she said. “I want us to begin as we intend to go on, as a real couple, enjoying real intimacies.”

“You enjoyed them, then? Our wedding night intimacies?”

She had…and she hadn’t. She sensed that her answer mattered, though, and not every husband would be considerate—or courageous—enough to ask.

“I was nervous.” She was nervous still, for many reasons.

“I was as well. I think we established that. What would set you at ease?”

This question too was quiet and casual, and yet, it bore worlds of significance, about the man Joan had married, about what that man deserved from his new wife.

“I’m nearly on the shelf,” Joan said, tracing the curve of her husband’s ribs. “I
was
nearly on the shelf. I was the older sister, the lady of my father’s house for several years in Mama’s absence, the sibling Tiberius could rely on to help keep family matters organized.”

“You are a formidable lady.”

A formidable lady, defeated by a fool and his schemes.

“Your assessment is generous, and yet, you’re right: I’ve grown used to thinking of myself as competent, and in this wife business…”

Dante shifted, wrapped his arms around her, and heaved up, so Joan was—just like that—straddling her husband.

“Listen to me, my lady. The genius of the institution of marriage is that husband and wife enter the race from the same starting line at the same time. We’re fumbling around in this marriage together, hoping good luck, good faith, and time will mature our union into a partnership. I’m hoping that, at least.”

Another question, delicately put. “I am too, desperately.”

He cradled her cheek against a warm, callused palm. “I believe you, so we must have frequent negotiations, about how to go on, about how not to go on. You will have notions about Charlie and Phillip that haven’t occurred to me, and I might have a few ideas about this baby you’ll find worthy of your consideration.”

He was asking Joan for permission to hope that their marriage could become a partnership in every way—and deftly reminding her that children,
a
baby
even
, depended on Joan’s ability to have these negotiations with her new husband.

“For Christmas, you want a real wife,” Joan said, which she desperately hoped she might be for him.

“A wife, a lover, a mother for my children. Yes, I’ve been a good boy, Joan Hartwell, and my hopes for this Christmas are high.”

While Joan hoped to placate Edward with a few drawings—for now. She curled against her husband, felled by the realization that after summer fashions, Edward would clamor for autumn dresses, and so on.

She had
not
been a good girl, but she was damned if she’d allow Edward’s venery to blight her entire marriage.

“Tell me about the lover part,” she said. “I had the sense that our wedding night, as pleasant as it was, was not the great passion the poets allude to, and that the fault for this may lie with me.”

Or with her husband’s consideration of her?

“Pleasant.” Dante groaned the word. “Pleasant is a place to start, but we can aim much, much higher.”

Joan expected a discourse from her husband on what he sought from his wife under intimate circumstances. Mama had suggested that ordering one’s spouse about in bed was one of a marriage’s great pleasures, and Joan was willing to be ordered.

Such was her sense of indebtedness to her husband.

Mr. Hartwell’s notions did not exactly comport with Mama’s views.

“Make free with my person,” he said, placing Joan’s hands on his chest. “And allow me to make free with yours in any manner that brings you pleasure.”

Merciful saints. “Your chest feels like…” Not like any fabric Joan had touched previously. He had a dusting of springy hair, but then came warm skin, resilient muscle, and unyielding bone. Under her palm, his heart beat in a slow, steady rhythm.

“While you feel like heaven,” he said, gliding his hand over the silk of Joan’s nightgown. “Do you like it when I touch your breasts?”

“Touch them, and I’ll give you a report.”

Her retort provoked a smile, and all manner of touches. Gentle, firm, teasing, cherishing, all through the gossamer barrier of silk. And then his mouth—hot, damp, and disconcerting—drawing on her and causing sensations that…

“How shall I make free with your person, Husband?”

She wanted to kiss him, but he had only the one mouth, and that one mouth was wonderfully busy.

“Touch me,” he whispered as he switched breasts and arched up beneath Joan.

Oh.

Oh.

“Am I to move, then?”

“Move, wiggle, tease, stroke, pet,
fuck
…”

Once, when Tiberius’s horse had stepped on his foot, Joan had heard her brother mutter that same word. Repeatedly. Even the horse had looked abashed.

“Say that again,” she whispered, tugging her nightgown up past her hips so hot skin brushed hot skin. “Say it.”

“It’s vulgar,” he replied, using a particular hard, smooth part of him to stroke over Joan’s sex. “I should not use such language before a lady.”

“I’m your lover,” Joan said, lowering herself enough to trap that same part of him between their bodies. “Make free with your naughty talk.”

“Then fuck me,” he said softly, as much dare as invitation. “Take me in your hand, Joan, and put me inside you.”

And here came a revelation: Joan desired her husband.

She wanted to be a good wife to him, because she owed him that and she’d taken vows, but she also desired, even
needed
, these marital intimacies with him.

She wrapped her fingers around his shaft and positioned him. “Like this?”

And oh, this was
better
.

For as he glided into her body, shallowly, slowly, by maddeningly patient increments, Joan’s husband also dallied with her breasts.

“Move, Joan. Don’t make me do all the work.”

“Move how?” For all she felt was that undifferentiated urge to squirm, though now she also wanted to scream.

He went still.

“That doesn’t help,” Joan said, trapping his hands against her breasts, lest the misguided man cease all his efforts at once. “I prefer it when you move.”

She preferred it
frantically
that he should resume moving.
Frantically
and
immediately.

He curled up and kissed her, hard, a reminder that kissing could be part of this too, which was true enough, but rather beside the—

“You move here,” he said, his hands guiding Joan on either hip. “Pleasure yourself, use me to gratify your passion.”

She wanted his caresses to her breasts, but with his bare hands on her bare hips, he showed her an intimate, interesting rhythm, that took all of her concentration.

“Like this?”

“Exactly like that.”

His hands fell away. Without ceasing her undulation, Joan put his palms over her breasts again. “Please.”

Bless him, he obliged, until sensations began to pile up on each other, resonate, and overlap. Heat and wanting swamped Joan from within, as well as a sense of freedom twined around a longing of the body and the heart both.

“Joan, slow down.” Dante’s hands were back on her hips, trying to still her movements, but she could not allow it. If anything, she wanted more—

“Please, love. I’ll spend if you can’t—”

She kissed him to stop his prattling, because something bright and novel was welling up from inside her, or from
him
, inside her. His grip on her tightened, and he hilted himself hard against her, while all Joan wanted to do was to keep thrashing, until, until—

She could not think until
what
, because her husband had gone still again, breathing hard, his arms wrapping Joan in a fierce embrace.

“Good God, woman.” A hoarse, wondering endearment. “Good God Almighty.”

Her body vibrated with longing, she was breathing hard, and her husband had subsided utterly.

“Are you all right?” Because their previous attempts at marital intimacies had not been as athletic. “Dante? Is anything amiss?”

“I am not all right. I am
married
.”

“You sound pleased.” While Joan was bewildered, for surely this flustered, anxious, dissatisfied feeling was not marital bliss?

“I am slain on the altar of your passions. Again, dammit. Joan, I’m sorry.”

Naughty talk had served her much better than her husband’s silly poetry, for Joan’s passions left her with an inconvenient urge to weep.

“I made free with your person, Husband.”

“My early Christmas present, and yet, I sense your own efforts were not similarly rewarded.” He pushed her braid over her shoulder, a gentle touch that invited Joan to cuddle against him. “Talk to me, Joan. I left you hanging, didn’t I? I left you hanging again.”

He was already threatening to slip from her body, and the sensation underscored a sense of emotional emptiness. “I don’t know what you mean.”

And they would soon make a mess of her nightgown.

“Here.” He snatched a handkerchief from the night table. “To catch my seed.”

More vulgar talk, though not half so inspiring as his earlier pronouncements.

“I don’t know as I’m fit for this aspect of being a wife.” She made use of his linen, and found some consolation curling onto his chest.

“You are fit for this,” he said, patting her silk-clad bum in a manner that had to be husbandly. “You most assuredly are. The fault lies with me. My self-restraint is out of practice, but I’ll make amends. I promise I’ll make frequent, sincere amends. You deserve to find your pleasure, but I hadn’t expected such passion in a new wife. My delight renders me…incompetent. I’m sorry, and I’ll find my balance soon.”

His apologies were heartfelt and comforting, though Joan still wasn’t exactly certain what he apologized for. Dante Hartwell was many things—honest, pragmatic, honorable, passionate, and hardworking—but incompetent was not among them.

He continued to stroke her backside, which soothed the riot inside Joan, and yet, she fell asleep wondering: If she were honest with her new husband, if she confided her situation to him, and explained to him exactly how great a liability he’d taken on when he’d married her, would he have any interest in making those frequent, sincere amends?

Would he have any interest in remaining married?

***

“You allowed your sister to marry a man whose finances you hadn’t thoroughly investigated?”

Asher MacGregor, Earl of Balfour, could not resist an opportunity to needle the oh-so-competent Tiberius Flynn, Earl of Spathfoy. Petty behavior, true, but Spathfoy was an English lord much in need of needling, and a host’s holiday generosity compelled Balfour to tend to the oversight.

“I hadn’t time to investigate Hartwell’s finances,” Spathfoy said, tying a crooked pink bow on a sprig of greenery. “And though you Scots might do it differently, in England, a girl’s papa is the one looking over her suitors.”

“I’ve found something at which you do not excel,” Balfour remarked, snatching the mistletoe from Spathfoy and untying the bow. “Who dresses you, Spathfoy? Your bows positively droop.”

“My countess dresses me, and undresses me, and she has no complaints about anything drooping. Your bow isn’t much better than mine.”

“Mine is jaunty, yours droops. Where shall we hang this?”

“I don’t see why we’re the ones assigned this task,” Spathfoy groused, picking up another sheaf of mistletoe and choosing a red ribbon. “The footmen would be happy to take it on, and the maids would cheerfully direct them.”

Balfour rose to poke up the fire in the library’s enormous hearth. “In the first place, the ladies assigned this task to us so we wouldn’t be underfoot in the kitchens. No less personage than the Duchess of Moreland has passed down her family recipe for some German sort of holiday cake, and nothing will do but Hannah must teach it to the ladies of the assemblage.”

“So when are we to raid the kitchen?” This bow was no better than the last, though Spathfoy appeared to admire his own handiwork.

“The stuff has to bake, Spathfoy.”

“No, it does not. Have you never eaten cake batter, Balfour? Never dipped a larcenous finger in the sweet, creamy— You’re not tying your share, old man. Stop wandering about and get back over here.”

Balfour heeded the scold because it was deserved. “More droopery. He can steal cake batter like a schoolboy, but a simple bow eludes him. What shall we do about Hartwell and your sister?”

The only bows left were white, which meant they were reaching the end of this inane exercise.

“I’ve threatened him with worse than ruin if he trifles with Joan’s affections. I think this is my best one yet.”

“For God’s—” Balfour left off wrestling a sheaf of mistletoe and a ribbon that wouldn’t stay snug about the stems. “A charming effort. There’s hope for you, Spathfoy, and while I approve of some judicious threatening when it comes to one’s sisters’ suitors, I invited Hartwell here in part to explore some business opportunities with him.”

A large, blunt, half-English finger came down on the half hitch of Asher’s bow. “It works better this way, though if you try to entrap my finger and take liberties with my person, my threats will all be reserved for you, Balfour.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m getting your countess eyeglasses for Christmas. You’d best enjoy her misguided attentions while you have them, Lord Droopy Bows.”