What a Lady Needs for Christmas (41 page)
Read What a Lady Needs for Christmas Online
Authors: Grace Burrowes
Tags: #Historical Romance, #Regency Romance, #Historical, #Victorian, #Holidays, #Romance, #highlander, #Scottish, #london, #Fiction, #Victorian romance, #Scotland Highland, #England, #Scotland, #love story
He dabbed at her cheeks with a corner of the sheet. “Women are emotional when they’re on the nest. It’s nothing to fret over.”
She smacked him, which had about as much effect as if she’d smitten him with a swath of lace. “I’m so much more than on the nest. I’m Mrs. Dante Hartwell, and I love you, and I never thought beyond—Oh, you are awful.”
So she kissed him for an awfully long time, all the while sensing patience in him and great good cheer to go along with a rising arousal. When she let him up for air, she was straddling him, her braid coming undone, the covers in a tangle around them.
“You are trying to distract me,” Dante said, tracing a finger along the side of her jaw. “Flaunting your rosy wares, accosting me with your charms. And to think you once valued your modesty so exceedingly.”
He was teasing her, and the matter he alluded to was more complicated than modesty, having to do with trust, self-confidence, pride, and love.
“So say your piece, and then I have plans for you, Mr. Hartwell. We’re not finished celebrating our holidays.”
“No, we are not. I bought you that silly dress shop. I had a bit put aside, and we’ll have some investors in that venture too, at least until we can buy them out. But nobody would hear of me taking a mortgage, and Spathfoy said it would be seen as a hobby for you, an eccentric indulgence, like a collection of teapots, or—please stop crying, Joan. I wanted to make you happy. All I wanted was for you to be happy.”
She mashed her nose against his neck, hard, because tears and joy both had reached proportions too great for one lady to manage.
“I wanted to make
you
happy,” Joan said. “I wanted to be a good wife to you, to be worthy of your respect and affection. I wanted you to be p-proud of me.”
He let her cry, let her kiss the daylights out of him, and cry some more. When she could compose herself, to the extent a woman naked in bed with the most wonderful husband in the world could compose herself, Dante held her, his cheek pillowed against her hair.
“You’re pleased, then, to have a dress shop of your own? We’ll be firmly in trade, whether you’re simply sketching the dresses or handling the ledger books. I won’t have you on your feet greeting customers all day.”
“Of course not. We’ll hire snooty Frenchwomen for that, and this will be the best fun, Dante. Ladies pay dearly for their fripperies, too. Trade can be lucrative.”
He laughed at this profundity. “We’ll have a portion of the profits from the mills, and I have a few other ideas, if you don’t object to ventures involving family. We won’t starve, unless you deny me leave from this bed.”
“We’ve missed tea, haven’t we?”
And this would cause talk and knowing smiles, and Joan could not be less concerned. She stretched atop her husband, luxuriously, having her first experience of that condition known as “not a care in the world.”
“I can fetch you some clothes,” Dante said, hugging her soundly. “What shall you wear to your first dinner as a purveyor of fine ladies’ fashions?”
She would wear a smile, certainly, and it could well be a permanent addition to her wardrobe. “Choose anything, provided I can remove it easily.”
Dante rose from the bed, not a stitch on him, and crossed to the wardrobe. “These aren’t likely to fit you much longer.”
And what did that matter? Instead of patterns and fabrics and lace, Joan’s awareness was drawn to the line of her husband’s shoulders, the sculpted tapering of his ribs, the—
Oh, dear. They were going to miss dinner as well.
Though they did decide one thing before Joan again fell asleep in her husband’s embrace some while later. If the child was a girl, she would be named Joy Babette Hartwell.
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Pre-order Grace Burrowes’s books
in her new contemporary series
Sweetest Kisses
A Kiss For Luck
On sale December 2014
A Single Kiss
On sale January 2015
The First Kiss
On sale February 2015
Kiss Me Hello
On sale March 2015
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If you enjoy romance
set in the Scottish Highlands,
then be sure to read on
for a taste of
The Laird
Book 3
in Grace Burrowes’s
Captive Hearts series
“Elspeth, I believe a Viking has come calling.”
At Brenna’s puzzled observation, her maid set aside the embroidery hoop serving as a pretext for enjoying the Scottish summer sun, rose off the stone bench, and joined Brenna at the parapets.
“If Vikings are to ruin your afternoon tea, better if they arrive one at a time,” Elspeth said, peering down at the castle’s main gate. “Though that’s a big one, even for a Viking.”
From her vantage point high on Castle Brodie’s walls, all Brenna could tell about the rider was that he was big, broad-shouldered, and blond. “Our visitor is alone, likely far from home, hungry and tired. If we’re to offer him hospitality, I’d best inform the kitchen.”
“He looks familiar,” Elspeth said as the rider swung off his beast.
Brenna had the same sense of nagging familiarity. She knew that loose-limbed stride, knew that exact manner of stroking a horse’s neck, knew—
Foreboding prickled up Brenna’s arms, an instant before recognition landed in a cold heap in her belly.
“Michael has come home.” Nine years of waiting and worrying while the Corsican had wreaked havoc on the Continent, of not knowing what to wish for.
Her damned husband hadn’t even had the courtesy to warn her of his return.
Elspeth peered over the stone crenellations, her expression dubious. “If that’s the laird, you’d best go welcome him, though I don’t see much in the way of baggage. Perhaps, if you’re lucky, he’ll soon be off larking about on some new battlefield.”
“For shame, Elspeth Fraser.”
Brenna wound down through the castle and took herself out into the courtyard, both rage and gratitude speeding her along.
She’d had endless Highland winters to rehearse the speech Michael deserved, years to practice the dignified reserve she’d exhibit before him should he ever recall he had a home. Alas for her, the cobbles were wet from a recent scrubbing, so her dignified reserve more or less skidded to a halt before her husband.
Strong hands steadied her as she gazed up, and up some more, into green eyes both familiar and unknown.
“You’ve come home.” Not at all what she’d meant to say.
“That I have. If you would be so good, madam, as to allow the lady of the—
Brenna
?”
His hands fell away, and Brenna stepped back, wrapping her tartan shawl around her more closely.
“Welcome to Castle Brodie, Michael.” Because somebody ought to say the words, she added, “Welcome home.”
“You used to be chubby.” He leveled this accusation as if put out that somebody had made off with that chubby girl.
“You used to be skinny.” Now he was all-over muscle. He’d gone away a tall, gangly fellow, and come back not simply a man, but a warrior. “Perhaps you’re hungry?”
She did not know what to do with a husband, much less
this
husband, who bore so little resemblance to the young man she’d married, but Brenna knew well what to do with a hungry man.
“I am…” His gaze traveled the courtyard the way a skilled gunner might swivel his sights on a moving target, making a circuit of the granite walls rising some thirty feet on three sides of the bailey. His expression suggested he was making sure the castle, at least, had remained where he’d left it. “I am famished.”
“Come along then.” Brenna turned and started for the entrance to the main hall, but Michael remained in the middle of the courtyard, still peering about. Potted geraniums were in riot, pink roses climbed trellises under the first-floor windows, and window boxes held all manner of blooms.
“You’ve planted flowers.”
Brenna returned to her husband’s side, trying to see the courtyard from his perspective. “One must occupy oneself somehow while waiting for a husband to come home—or be killed.”
He needed to know that for nine years, despite anger, bewilderment, and even the occasional period of striving for indifference toward him and his fate, Brenna had gone to bed every night praying that death did not end his travels.
“One must, indeed, occupy oneself.” He offered her his arm, which underscored how long they’d been separated and how far he’d wandered.
The men of the castle and its tenancies knew to keep their hands to themselves where Brenna MacLogan Brodie was concerned. They did not hold her chair for her, did not assist her in and out of coaches, or on and off of her horse.