What a Lady Needs for Christmas (4 page)

“And I am not the prettiest debutante, am I?”

He was in trade. Even if he had been the prettiest and best dowered debutante, or the handsomest, most charming bachelor, being in trade would follow him everywhere.

“You sought a wellborn wife, I take it? One who could open doors for your daughter and your sister?”

He tugged off his glasses and slipped them into a breast pocket. “I certainly haven’t any need to polish my waltzing skills.”

“You waltz beautifully. You don’t haul a woman about, as if it’s her privilege to smile and simper at your every word while you step on her toes and leer at her attributes.”

She should not have been that honest. She should have asked him which clan plaid was draped over his knees. The pattern was mostly blue and black, with thin intersecting stripes of red and yellow. A hunting tartan, possibly.

“Was one of these leering, stomping idiots involved in your foolishness, Lady Joan?”

The train whistle sounded, and beyond the velvet curtains caught back at the parlor car’s windows, snow had started. The landscape was bleak, and Joan’s mood more bleak yet.

She said nothing.

“I’ll tell you a story, then. Charlie vows I’ve a gift for telling a tale,” Mr. Hartwell said, easing back a fraction against the cushions, as if getting comfortable. “Once upon a time there was a lovely, graceful young woman whose papa was a marquess—an
English
marquess, the very best sort of marquess to be. She was friendly and kind, also every inch a lady—and there were many inches, for she was tall. Along came a young man, probably handsome, full of charm. He’d be blond, for the handsomest young men usually are—also English somewhere not too far back in his pedigree. Does the tale sound familiar?”

Had he already heard the gossip? Not twenty-four hours after the debacle, and even Mr. Hartwell, who could not belong to the best clubs or have the ear of the worst gossips, seemed to know the particulars.

“Go on.”

“The handsome young swain exerted his charm, he made promises—he served the young lady strong drink and stronger compliments, and he made more promises. He took liberties, and the young lady was perhaps flattered, to think she’d inspired a handsome, charming man’s passions to that extent.”

Joan’s head came up. “I wasn’t flattered. I was muddled.” Also horrified.

“You have made a wreck of my handkerchief,” Mr. Hartwell observed, gently prying the balled-up cotton from her grasp.

“I’ve made a wreck of my life.”

***

Nothing good came from a fellow involving himself with damsels in distress. Dante knew this, the way a lad raised up in the mills knows to keep his head down and his hands to himself, lest some piece of clattering machinery part him from same.

Rowena had been a damsel in distress, and look how that had turned out.

And yet, Charlie hadn’t allowed him to ignore Lady Joan, and some vestige of chivalry known to even clerks, porters, and wherry men hadn’t allowed it either. Now that Dante had rescued his damp handkerchief from her grasp, she traced the lines of the Brodie hunting plaid draped across his thigh.

Joan Flynn was a toucher, a fine quality in a woman, regardless of her station. Charlie was a toucher. She had to get her hands on things to understand them, the same way Dante had to take things apart to see how they fit together.

“You have not made a wreck of your life, my lady. The worthless bounder who stole a few kisses will keep his mouth shut about it, and not because he’s a gentleman.”

Gentlemen tattled on themselves at length over their whiskey and port, and called it bragging. Worse than the waltzing and bowing, listening to their manly drivel had affronted Dante’s sensibilities.

“Why should he keep his mouth shut?”

“Because it reflects badly on him that he’d take those liberties. Your papa could ruin the man socially, to say nothing of what your mama might do. Pretty English boys who take advantage of innocent women need their social consequence if they’re to pursue their games.”

Her brows drew down in thought, which was an improvement over tears, and her fingers stroked closer to his knee.

“You are certain of your logic, Mr. Hartwell.”

“I am certain of young, charming Englishmen.” He was also certain that Lady Joan ought not to be cuddled up with him this way, now that her tears had ceased.

And yet, he stayed right where he was.

She wrinkled her splendid nose. “He’s engaged, that Englishman.”

“Which he neglected to tell you as he was leering at your bodice.” Her attributes. She’d used the more delicate word. The woman beside him wasn’t overendowed. Even in her feminine attributes, Lady Joan had a tidy, elegant quality. “That little omission on his part had to hurt.”

She left off patting his knee—a relief, that—and worried a nail. “The announcement was in this morning’s papers. I was an idiot and I panicked.”

Whoever the English Lothario was, he’d upset a good woman, and done it dishonorably. Many a man had stolen a kiss, but not when promised to another, and not by using cold calculation to muddle the lady.

“You were an innocent, and I suspect you still are. Nobody can tell, you know.”

His blunt speech had her sitting up.

“I beg your pardon?” Her tone was curious rather than indignant, and Dante was glad he didn’t know which mincing fop had taken liberties with her.

“Nobody can tell which favors you’ve bestowed on whom. Maybe you kissed him witless; maybe he put his hands where only your husband’s hands ought to go. Maybe he saw treasures no other fellow has seen. If it was only you and he on that darkened balcony or in that unheated parlor, then it’s your word against his regarding what transpired. If he threatens gossip, you threaten some of your own.”

She fingered her lacy cuff, which wasn’t torn exactly, but the drape of the lace was disturbed by the mishap with the snagged buttons. “A lady doesn’t gossip.”

He was in the presence not only of goodness, but innocence. May his daughter grow up to be just like Lady Joan.

“Many ladies seem to do little else but gossip,” he said, “and the gentlemen can be just as bad, because they apply spirits to their wagging tongues.”

He retrieved his arm from around her shoulders, though that did nothing to take her delicate, feminine scent from his nose, or the warmth of her along his side from his awareness.

“What sort of gossip would a lady bent on revenge start?”

He liked that for all her soft, velvety elegance, she’d ask such a thing, and he liked more that she’d ask
him
.

“His charming young lordship can’t kiss worth a damn. He gambles indiscriminately. His hands are clammy, his breath stinks.” Because the damned fool fellow had it coming, Dante added, “He makes odd noises.”

Auburn brows flew up. “How ever did you guess? He makes whiny little moans, and it’s distracting, and not very manly, the same sounds his lapdog makes when in urgent need of the garden. I’d forgotten his moaning.”

Oh, Dante liked this woman. He liked her very well.

“If he has a lapdog, you’re well rid of him.” The blighter probably had a tiny pizzle, too. If Dante told the lady to bruit that about, she’d likely leap from the train.

Though Dante would catch her.

“Perhaps I am well rid of him.” The first hint of a glimmer of a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. Not a pleasant, social smile, such as she’d bestow on shop clerks and churchyard acquaintances, but a true, warm, merry smile, such as she’d share with a friend. “Perhaps I am well rid of him at that.”

Dante loved that he’d made her smile, loved that she wasn’t as upset as she’d been, and all because he’d spent a few minutes talking with her—and letting her pet his knee.

So he smiled right back.

***

Mr. Hartwell was honest, friendly, and kind, which to Joan was a significant improvement over handsome and charming. He also smelled good—of heather and cedar—and he wore the most marvelous merino blends.

Over thighs that put Joan in mind of the mahogany table under the window. Smooth, warm, hard.

Gracious
heavens.

“What has you traveling into the mountains at this time of year, Mr. Hartwell?”

His smiled faded but didn’t leave his eyes, suggesting he was permitting Joan to change the subject.

“The same thing that has me getting up most mornings and ruining my eyes with a lot of reports most nights: business.”

“You’re in textiles.” The polite version of the ballroom
on
dits
.

“I’m in
trade
,” he said, rising. “I’m not ashamed of working for my bread, Lady Joan. I’m responsible for three mills, and they turn out fine products. They do, however, require both management and capital on a regular basis. Capital being money.”

Tiberius was always going on about capital.

“My mother has ensured that I have a thorough grasp of economics, Mr. Hartwell. Your mills also require land and labor, among other things.” Without his bulk beside her, the train car was not quite so cozy, though it was a good deal more proper.

Mr. Hartwell wedged himself into the bench at the small table, looking momentarily puzzled. “Your mama educated you thus?”

Mama was notorious for her financial skills, at least in Polite Society. Mr. Hartwell couldn’t know that.

“She educated all five of her children regarding money, and Papa thoroughly—if quietly—approved.”

To the extent Papa approved of anything.

Mr. Hartwell retrieved his spectacles from his pocket and picked up a sheaf of papers from a stack on the table.

“Do you mind if I read, Lady Joan? When I reach my destination, I will have little time to acquaint myself with these reports, and a successful negotiation always starts with a thorough grasp of the pertinent facts.”

“You’re not traveling for pleasure, then.”

She had withheld specific permission to read, and Mr. Hartwell must have grasped that subtlety. That’s how desperate Joan was to avoid what memories she had of the previous night.

He put the papers down and stared into the middle distance. “Had I any other choice, I’d not make this journey. I’m invited to spend the holidays with acquaintances too wellborn to dirty their hands in trade where anybody might notice, and because they cannot abide the notion I might raise such a topic where polite ears could overhear, I’m enduring the fiction that I’m a guest at a house party.”

House parties could be delightful—though they were usually tedious in the extreme and at least a week longer than necessary to make that point.

“If you’re not a guest, then what are you in truth?”

Bleak humor crossed his features. He took out a second plain handkerchief and rubbed at the lenses of his glasses.

“I’m an opportunity.”

A shaft of cold tricked into Joan’s belly. Edward had said something similar about Joan, though the exact words refused to show themselves from the undergrowth of her memories.

“That doesn’t sound very pleasant.”

“It’s business.” He held his spectacles up to the window, as if inspecting for smudges. “I understand that, and they are an opportunity for me. The land can no longer support the aristocracy in the manner they prefer, and trade is a means of diversifying revenue—of making money in more ways than one. I don’t suppose a lady enjoys talk of the shop, though.”

Gracious heavens, Mama would have Mr. Hartwell’s suppositions for dessert. “Diversification requires a greater management effort, though it ideally spreads risk.”

Drat and a half, she ought not to have said that. Pronouncements along those lines—which Joan had heard at the family dinner table since she’d put up her hair—made gentlemen smile as if their baby sister had just recited a piece of the royal succession—without a single error!

Or the fellows would wince and see somebody else they had to speak with on the other side of the ballroom.

Immediately.

Mr. Hartwell unwedged himself from the banquette and knelt before the parlor stove. “Diversification ideally spreads risk. Explain yourself.”

“Risk has to do with the probabilities and eventualities,” Joan said. “With how likely it is that matters could go awry, or succeed wildly. If you have invested in one solid venture, then your profits are likely to be more reliable than if you invest in two risky ventures. Over time, however, one of the risky ventures might do quite well.”

Risky ventures could also, however, see a lady precipitously ruined.

He added coal to the fire, closed the stove door, and dusted his hands, but remained kneeling, as if he could watch the flames dance through the cast iron.

“I do not believe I have ever heard another female use the word
probability
regarding anything other than a marriage proposal.”

The greatest risk of all. Joan tucked her feet up under her and came to two conclusions.

Mr. Hartwell had noticed that she might be cold, and rather than ring for the porter to tend to the stove, he’d seen to it himself. Trains were messy and smelly, even as far from the engines as this car was, and yet, Mr. Hartwell had dirtied his hands without a second thought. This suggested he was heedless of strict decorum, but not of the consideration due a guest.

The second conclusion was that Joan’s lapse into territory through which Mama gamboled with heedless abandon had not put Mr. Hartwell off, but rather, had
interested
him.

“You have the right of it,” he said, rising lithely and bracing himself on the narrow mantel over the stove. Somebody had draped pine swags from the mantel in another nod to the approaching holidays—or possibly in an effort to cut the stench of coal smoke permeating any locomotive. “Diversification can mean greater management effort, so when my betters seek to diversify, they expect me to provide the management, while they reap the profits.”

As if he were a shop clerk, and not owner of the very mill. “You would manage anything in your keeping responsibly.”

He rolled up the pine rope, unhooked it from whatever held it up, and pitched the entire fragrant bundle out the door at the far end of the parlor car.