What a Lady Needs for Christmas (31 page)

“Hartwell strikes me as a good man,” Spathfoy said when Balfour’s bow—by far the best of a bad lot—was complete. “Prudent, hardworking, shrewd, devoted to his children. His sister approves of him.”

And those last two attributes—devotion to children and a sister’s regard—would carry weight with Spathfoy, as well they should.

“He has some odd notions,” Balfour said. Scottish notions, he suspected. “Rather than build up cash reserves, he’s paid down debt.”

“Mortgages are available when cash is in short supply.” Spathfoy gathered up his pile of bound mistletoe, which—let it be noted—was about half the size of Balfour’s.

“Mortgages are available when a business is on solid footing. When trouble strikes, nobody lends a bloody groat, regardless of how much sound management, potential profit, or equity remains to secure the loan. I say we hang some mistletoe in each bedroom.”

“I hardly need mistletoe to undertake kissing in my own bedroom, Balfour. And if you do, then my profound condolences to your count—”

Balfour tossed a bouquet of mistletoe and ribbon at Spathfoy’s chest. “You have no holiday spirit. Dickens wrote a story in which your sort figured prominently.”

Spathfoy rose and deposited Balfour’s missile in a plain wooden crate piled high with beribboned greenery. “You’re saying Hartwell could use some investors.”

“For an Englishman, you’re a quick study. Hartwell is now family to you, your sister’s welfare bound up with his. Before I involve myself, my brothers, or my brother-in-law in his business, I thought I’d give you the opportunity.”

Spathfoy rooted through the mistletoe, selecting a fat bundle bound with red ribbon. “You were being polite, then, allowing me to bat first?”

“What are you doing with that?”

Rather than answer, Spathfoy leaped onto Balfour’s estate desk in a single athletic bound, nearly landing on a stack of bank drafts and correspondence. “Your countess will thank me.” He tied the mistletoe to a lamp hanging over the desk—tied it off center—then hopped down, nimble as a cat.

“For an English galoot, you move quietly. And yes, I think you and your father ought to have first go at investing in Hartwell’s mills. He oversees them himself, lives within walking distance of them for much of the year, and employs mostly women.”

Spathfoy stood back, hands on hips, surveying his feeble attempt at decoration. “I thought it was the hemp mills that restricted themselves to women.”

“And the hemp mills have had a notable lack of unrest among their workers. Hartwell says women are more reliable, they drink less, they’re content with modest wages, and they do better fine work. Why in the bloody hell did you hang that over my desk? I’ll be interrupted the livelong day until the berries are all gone.”

And Spathfoy would sneak down here in the dead of night to hang fresh mistletoe, until Balfour had been kissed to within an inch of his life.

“I’m being generous,” Spathfoy said, picking up the box. “You’re Scottish, so generosity is a foreign concept to you. This way, you need only sit upon your lordly, kilted arse, looking conscientious and businesslike, and you’ll gather up kisses. Let’s be off, shall we? We have at least three dozen bundles yet to hang, and this is a large house.”

“You’ll talk to Hartwell about his mills?” Because generosity was
not
a foreign concept to the Scots, and Balfour had once been a man with few supporters and many mouths to feed.

“Come along, Balfour. The ladies are depending on us.”

“I hate it when you’re coy, Spathfoy. It hardly becomes an Englishman of your self-importance.”

“You’re just jealous.” Spathfoy moved toward the door, the pied piper of mistletoe. “I have consequence and dignity, and better than all that, I have strategy.”

“You have a big, nattering English mouth. You’ll talk to Hartwell?”

“I’ve invited MacMillan to join us for cards tonight, and my countess has taken Miss Hartwell under her wing. You and I are off to hang some mistletoe in the nursery.”

Where Hartwell’s children were corrupting the youth of the Scottish Highlands, and likely aggravating a fat rabbit as well. Balfour followed his lordship into the chilly corridor, hustling to keep pace.

“
Our
niece
is in that nursery, Spathfoy. Fiona and her damned rabbit will tie us to the bookshelves and make us read fairy tales until spring, and Hartwell’s get will assist her.”

“If I’m inclined to invest in Hartwell’s mills, that doesn’t preclude you from doing likewise, you know.”

“You’d invest jointly with me?” The question had to be asked, though Spathfoy was fairly leaping up the stairs with his box of mistletoe.

“I never said that, though I cannot speak for my father’s judgment in these matters—or my mother’s. They’re headstrong, those two. They consider you family, and try as I might, I cannot dissuade them from the notion. Mama’s Scottish antecedents might have something to do with her confusion.”

Or with Spathfoy’s pride.

They reached the floor upon which the nursery was located, as was made obvious by the boisterous rendition of “Silent Night” ringing down the hallway.

“The children are in excellent voice,” Spathfoy remarked, heading for the nursery suite.

“And the maids are likely half-swizzled.” Three-quarters, from the sounds of their caroling. “Why are we starting up here, Spathfoy? The footmen come up only to trim wicks, tend the grates, and deal with that damned rabbit. That mistletoe will go to waste.”

“Frederick is a good fellow, Balfour—for a rabbit—and if you’re not a good earl, for Christmas I’ll find Frederick a lady rabbit to keep him company. I might anyway. A lonely rabbit is an offense against the natural order, according to my countess.”

For
God’s sake.
The Lord of Misrule was making an early start on the season. “Have you been at the eggnog, Spathfoy? You’re taking this holiday spirit thing a wee bit too far.”

Spathfoy paused outside the nursery suite door, while the children shifted into a version of “Greensleeves,” which had lyrics children ought not to be singing.

“You don’t want to spend the morning hanging three-dozen sprigs of damned mistletoe any more than I do.”

“Language, Spathfoy. We’re preparing to storm the nursery, after all.”

“And likely to endure the kisses of the nursery maids.” Spathfoy did not exactly need to steel himself to make that sacrifice, judging from his piratical expression.

“And we’ll kiss the little girls, and that damned rabbit, too, but
why
?”

“So that when we turn to our next objective—
the
kitchens
—we will have our reinforcements with us.”

“Because,” Balfour said, helping himself to two sprigs of mistletoe, “if we have the children with us, nobody will be scolded for snitching batter or biscuits.”

“Or for stealing kisses.”

Fifteen

To Hector’s surprise, cards among the wealthy and titled wasn’t much different from cards among the unwealthy and untitled. Men drank, they complained about the cards in their hands, they muttered about the other fellows having good luck, and bragged on their own skill.

Earls, however, lamented not knowing what to give their countesses for a Christmas token. They offered terse condolences to one another upon the misery of having a child in the nursery who was—sorry to hear it, laddie—teething.

Or colicky.

Balfour’s brothers had been at the table, along with Hector, Balfour, and Spathfoy. Connor MacGregor favored singing the old Highland ballads and lays to a teething child, and had gone so far as to share a few verses of a wee tune he’d devised for the very purpose.

Gilgallon thought a child best soothed by slow rocking in a papa’s arms, while Ian MacGregor had found that reciting the 23rd Psalm had a calming effect—on the papa, if not the child.

Mary Frances’s husband, Matthew Daniels, had said little, but had done considerable justice to the decanters.

Daft, the lot of them, though Connor had a beautiful bass-baritone singing voice.

Hector had excused himself as the hour approached midnight, having the sense that play would be for something other than farthing points in his absence.

He made his way to the library, not only in search of a certain bonnie lassie awake past her bedtime, or not exclusively in search of her, but also because something had teased at the back of his mind, niggled, like a shutter banging somewhere distant in a big house on a windy day.

The library was occupied, else there would have been no candles lit on the towering Christmas tree. The entire room smelled like a German forest—brisk, piney, and cozy at the same time.

“You’ll ruin your eyes, Margaret Hartwell.” But what a lovely picture she made, curled in one corner of the sofa, her feet tucked under her, a book open on her lap.

“I’m not reading.” She uncurled and stretched, which made her bodice seams strain. “I was thinking. You’ve been excused from the card table?”

She was less fussy around him since they’d shared a kiss. Hector’s purpose for visiting the library had been to root around on the vast desk, because he had a sense some document or other wanted sending to Aberdeen, or some memo hadn’t been forwarded to its proper destination.

“I excused myself. I’ve never endured such a herd of nannies fretting over their charges. What were you not reading?”

She held out the book, which necessitated that Hector approach the sofa. “Miss Austen. She has a bracing wit.”

“I tried reading some of that stuff,” he confessed, setting the book aside and taking the place beside Margs. “At first I thought she didn’t like men very much, and then I thought she didn’t like
anybody
very much—though she did enjoy wielding a skilled pen.”

“If you like English prose.” They shared a look, one that agreed that English prose was a lesser class of discourse than Scottish prose. “I wonder if I’ll end up like Miss Austen.”

Whatever tugged at Hector from the depths of the desk would keep. “You’ll pen sniffy novels and content yourself without husband or children?”

The notion gave him a pang. Margs was a natural with children, and they adored her. She had the gentle knack of inspiring compliance without giving orders.

“I’ll be the family spinster, visiting this or that relative over the holidays, confiding my petty woes and wants in a tidy journal that nobody will read until some niece or other finds it two decades after my death, and thinks what a funny old thing Aunt Margs was.”

The fire gave off a nice peaty warmth, and the candles on the tree added to a sense that the entire world had left Hector these few moments of privacy with a quiet, pretty woman who was in need of…reassurance.

“Your brother has married well, my dear. Lady Joan will see you matched with some wealthy fellow, one who can look after you properly.”

“I suspect Dante married in part for me and the children.”

“He might have,” Hector said, rising lest he take Margaret in his arms and offer something other than reassurance. “He also married her because she could open doors for him that all the waltzing and card playing in Scotland could not.”

To give himself something to do, Hector took up the brass candlesnuffer from the mantel and carefully put out the candles on the tree, one by one.

“Do you think so? I’d rather they married because of a sudden, overwhelming attraction.”

Half the candles were out, which was a fine way to occupy a man when his thoughts were turning to mistletoe and futile dreams, but the room grew darker with each candle snuffed.

Rather like Hector’s dreams.

“You’re a romantic, Margaret Hartwell, if you believe in sudden mutual passions. Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”

As was she. One indulgence, one kiss, could be forgiven as a lapse inspired by wassail and mistletoe, but for Hector to again take advantage of the late hour and the solitude would be ungentlemanly.

“My secrets are safe with you, of course. My person is probably safe with you as well, as is, of course, my antique and useless virtue.”

The homey fragrance of beeswax and candle smoke joined the peat and pine of the library as Hector snuffed the last candle. “You sound unhappy to be assured of honorable treatment.”

She sounded peeved, in fact.

“Was Balfour courting your loyalty, Hector? Was he making subtle overtures to entice you away from Dante?”

He set the candlesnuffer down on the mantel, but didn’t pay enough attention, for it went clattering to the hearthstones. “Was Balfour
what
?”

“Was he exploring whether you might come to work with him? Might tell him Dante’s secrets, so he could purchase Dante’s mills the next time the women are of a mind to strike?”

He set the snuffer on the desk—a reminder to explore the desk later, because something still nagged at him.

“What are you going on about, Margaret? The card game was merely friendly, or as friendly as a card game can be when Daniels and Spathfoy must be so English, and the MacGregors so Scottish.”

Though they
had
asked him a number of questions about the mills, and about Dante’s role in running them. Casual questions.

About Hector’s role.

He sat abruptly.

He
wanted to run a mill, true. Wanted the day-to-day decisions, the balancing of profit with practicality and decency. Wanted to know that some far-off child was trudging to services warmly wrapped in wool that Hector had had a hand in making available to the child’s family at a reasonable price.

And he wanted…

“I’m loyal to my employer, Margaret Hartwell. Doubt whatever else you like, but not that.”

Though if he had his own mill, he’d certainly not waste his limited time discussing business with Margaret.

“Damn you men.”

Hector had time to think, “
Margaret
never
curses
,” before a surprisingly strong shove sent him over onto his back, and a not particularly happy female straddled his middle.

“I shall be an old maid, and you’ll be writing up Dante’s reports, and all the while, Hector MacMillan…”