What a Lady Needs for Christmas (8 page)

“I always listen, but be patient with me. Margs sprang the nursery maids before we’d even reached Edinburgh. My nerves are delicate right now.”

His patience was delicate, for Hector’s very competence grated. Dante opened the parlor stove and used the wrought iron poker to redistribute the fresh coal.

“It’s only a house party,” Hector said, helping himself to another chocolate. “You eat and drink, flirt a bit, dance and sing, play cards, and casually mention that the mills are doing well enough to support a few more investors.”

Dante closed the stove, the poker still in his hand.

“Do you ever think maybe those old fellows with their claymores and targes had an easier time of it? No mincing and flirting involved—you wielded your sword against any who opposed you, plain and simple. No investment opportunities, just life and death with a wee dram now and then.” He made a few passes at thin air with the poker, then felt silly at Hector’s pitying expression.

Dante would feel equally silly dancing and flirting away the coming weeks, much less playing cards night after night with men he’d likely never see again.

“Edinburgh was worth a try,” Hector allowed charitably. “I don’t suppose Miss Margaret met anybody there?”

“She met plenty of fools sniffing around for her dowry, and an equal number of well-bred ladies I wouldn’t turn my back on. Maybe MacGregor will have a spare relation who might catch her eye.”

Though the children would miss Margs terribly if she married and moved away.

“Maybe MacGregor will have a relation who might catch
your
eye.”

“That would at least quiet the gossips I left snickering behind my back in Edinburgh. If she were a well-dowered relation, then she might spare me all that mincing and toasting and caroling too.”

Also warm his bed, which notion a tired, single, and possibly lonely fellow shouldn’t be blamed for contemplating wistfully on a cold, snowy afternoon.

Hector’s pencil paused in its journey down the right side of a page of notes.

“Maybe marriage and money ought not to be on the same ledger page. The English aristocracy has bound up matrimony and wealth for generations, and look how they’re turning out.”

Lady Joan was an English aristocrat—a rather pretty one—though the woman had a peaked, pinchy look to her Dante couldn’t approve of.

“I hate it when you make a good point. Move over and pass me the chocolates.”

Four

When silence descended not fifteen minutes out of Aberdeen, Joan missed the chatter of the children and Miss Hartwell’s gentle clucking and scolding. One of the nursemaids was coming down with a sniffle, so both had been banished from the parlor cars for the duration of the journey, lest the children take ill too.

A lady did not pace.

A lady did not worry the lace at her cuffs, much as a child might compulsively stroke a corner of a favorite blanket or doll’s dress.

A lady did not allow herself to become inebriated by strong drink, then overcome by a man’s illicit passions.

The sheer shame of Joan’s folly with Edward Valmonte threatened to choke her and had her heading for the platform between the train cars. As she opened the door to one car, Mr. Hartwell opened the door to the other. He had in his hand the box of chocolates Joan had stashed in her bag before making a hasty departure from Edinburgh.

“My lady, where is your cloak?”

Cloak. She’d come outside in the dead of winter on a speeding train without her cloak. A lady probably didn’t do that either.

“I forgot it.”

Something shifted in his regard, though his stance on the swaying platform was utterly solid. Feet spread, chocolates in hand, he looked to Joan as fixed as the enormous trees dotting the white landscape whizzing by.

“Were you going to jump, my lady?” he asked gently.

“No.” Her reply lacked conviction, though Joan had no more intended to jump from the speeding train than she’d intended to become inebriated in Edward Valmonte’s company.

Mr. Hartwell reached past Joan to open the parlor door behind her. In the limited space of the platform, that brought him near enough that Joan could catch a whiff of his heathery, piney scent.

“Let’s get you back inside. You’ll catch your death taking the air out here.”

Her teeth had begun to chatter. Mr. Hartwell took her by the arm and steered her back into the cozy light of the parlor car. He sat Joan down at the small settee, then came down beside her and passed her the chocolates.

“I ate all the almond ones. I think you had better tell me what’s amiss.”

No, she had better not.

“I wanted air. My insides are unsettled.”

He set the sweets aside on one of the fussy, scaled-down tables beside the settee. “Charlie lies better than you do, though falsehoods don’t sit well with her, either. Whatever is bothering you, it’s not worth jumping from a train.”

Margaret and the children were napping behind a closed door not twelve feet away, and yet, outside, darkness had all but fallen, suggesting they’d remain asleep as long as the train kept moving.

“I had no intention of jumping.”

“How about if you have no intention of trusting me, but you give it a try anyway? Nothing is so desperate it can’t be shared with a friend.”

The wind had disordered his hair, again. Joan searched for a way to remind him that he and she were not friends.

“I need a spouse,” came out of her mouth. “Rather desperately. Before the holidays would do nicely, but I’m off to join family, where the prospects will be lamentably l-limited.”

How could she become so chilled in a few short moments out of doors?

“Damnedest thing, needing a spouse,” Mr. Hartwell said. “They get thrust at you when you’ve no notion one might come in handy, and then when you need one…not a blushing bride to be found.”

Surprise cut through Joan’s misery, accompanied with a frisson of amusement.

“Everybody said you were hunting a wife in Edinburgh. I couldn’t credit why they’d believe such a thing, but I suppose your children need a mother.”

He smoothed the fabric of his kilt over a large male knee.

“True enough. I was also hoping Margs might see a fellow she could tolerate, but we made no headway on that score either. Spouse hunting is a dismal business, probably invented by the English.”

Joan’s situation remained unchanged. She was still horribly compromised, and quite possibly in anticipation of a troubling event, and yet, Mr. Hartwell’s commiseration comforted.

“I was so stupid.”

He produced his dented silver flask, then offered it to Joan, who shook her head.

“I know of nobody else who’s ever been stupid, my lady. I myself have been a paragon of common sense and prudence, as any will tell you. This sojourn into the mountains to cavort for weeks among strangers only
looks
like sheer, bleeding folly.”

His foul language relieved Joan of an urge to air similar vocabulary.
Sheer, bleeding folly
, indeed
.

“You’ll manage, Mr. Hartwell. The holidays are a merry time.”

He put his flask away and patted her hand. “Tell me his name. I’ll pass along my compliments.”

The hand covering Joan’s knuckles would close into a delightfully formidable fist.

“That won’t help anything, and it might try the gentleman’s meager store of discretion. I was
exceedingly
stupid.” Though Edward was vain as a peacock with four hens, and a few ugly bruises were the least he deserved.

“
Exceedingly
stupid. You have an English way of making that sound dire indeed. I suppose the bastard kissed you?”

Bastard was such a hard word. Joan’s free hand went to her belly, which had calmed a bit, while her other hand remained in Mr. Hartwell’s warm grasp.

“I do recall kissing.” Enthusiastic, naughty kissing, at first, for Joan had been curious and surprised by Edward’s overtures.

Then there had been struggling. She had struggled, and now recalled this for the first time.

“Doesn’t sound like he got the kissing bit right. You poor wee thing.”

Joan was skinny. She would never be wee. “Poor wee, exceedingly stupid thing.”

“Did you mind the kissing so awfully?”

What had that to do with anything? “Not awfully.”

“A spouse will probably expect some kissing, you know.” He gave her fingers a squeeze.

He had been married, and he was a father twice over. He was also not a fussy, proper fellow who’d blush beet red at matters pragmatic and biological. Joan pushed out a question before the tattered remains of her dignity could stuff themselves into her mouth and silence her.

“How soon might a lady experience digestive upset upon conceiving a child?”

He reached into his coat for his flask, his hand stilling short of its goal.

“Some presuming twit needs killing. You must have menfolk who can see to the matter. You said this embarrassment to the male gender was engaged, too, which tells me his death ought to be slow and painful.”

Mr. Hartwell did not sound as if he were teasing.

“As heartening as the notion of justice for my partner in folly might be, that would not solve my problem.” Joan tossed her dignity out a figurative window and seized her courage with both hands. “Such measures would not solve a child’s predicament either.”

The train swayed along through the cold darkness for a few moments, while Joan marveled that she’d confided in a man more stranger than friend.

“I like you,” Mr. Hartwell said, his pronouncement the sort of gruff, unpolished sentiment Joan suspected hadn’t aided his cause in the ballrooms. “You are honest, and you don’t put on airs. Do you suppose you might stand to kiss me?”

Then he went and said things like that. Joan withdrew her hand.

“I am not wanton, Mr. Hartwell. If I’ve said anything to make you think my favors might be available in the general case, then you’re sadly, severely mistaken. I made an egregious, imbecilic error—one misstep—which I sorely regret and have no intention—”

He put his hand over her mouth, gently. “I meant no insult, ye ken?”

Joan managed a nod, but he’d leaned closer and whispered his question, and abruptly, his company no longer comforted. Mr. Hartwell grew larger with increased proximity, also stronger and more…more masculine.

“My family is on the other side of that partition, my lady. I’ll no’ ravish you in a damned parlor car. If you can’t abide my company, then all you have to do is say so. Before I offer you marriage, we’d best establish that we can tolerate a shared kiss first, aye?”

***

The nobs considered business a dirty, dull, tedious undertaking, but in truth, commerce was exciting. Something close to sexual anticipation attended the rattle and hum of competition, cooperation, and the myriad challenges attendant to keeping three mills profitable.

Wolves and tigers lurked in the jungles of commerce, and a man needed quick wits and courage to avoid disaster and capitalize on good fortune.

Lady Joan’s situation was good fortune; Dante was almost sure of it.

“You would
marry
me, Mr. Hartwell?”

Her incredulity should have been that he’d
presume
to offer her marriage, not that anybody would have her.

“I would,” Dante said slowly, because he was acting on a hunch, on an impulse somewhere between cold calculation and hot instinct. “You’re in want of a spouse; my children need a mother.”

And he needed entrée into the aristocratic strata of investors. What a lovely coincidence. Lady Joan’s people had to include at least an earl, or she wouldn’t be called lady.

Her ladyship fingered the mended lace of her cuff. “Marriage is a serious business.”

“It’s a permanent business,” Dante said. “I do recall occasionally laughing with my first wife.” Not often, and not until they’d rubbed along together for a few awkward years. “She broke me in, I’ll have you know. Put some manners on me, though it was uphill going, I’m sure.”

She’d put a terrible lot of sexual restraint on him, too, though Dante would hardly burden Lady Joan with that truth.

Her fingers slowed as she stroked the mended cuff. “I like you too.”

“Does that surprise you?” For it surprised him—and confirmed his sense that marriage to Lady Joan was a brilliant solution to several problems.

“My husband cannot be titled, because the child might be a boy—if there is a child.”

“I’m in no danger of acquiring a title. Are you sure you’re carrying then?”

She stopped fussing her lace altogether, her gaze going to the darkness beyond the windows.

“I have not had occasion to familiarize myself firsthand with all of the definitive symptoms… That is to say, I might… Or I might not. I don’t know. Yet. I ought not to be discussing this with a gentleman.”

A
gentleman
would pretend that babies arrived from celestial realms with little involvement from the mother, and that such arrivals were attended by angelic choruses instead of a lot of fuss, discomfort, and bother.

“My dear, I’m not likely to be mistaken for a gentleman. You will take that into account when considering any proposal of marriage from me. You would be marrying quite beneath you.”

He was compelled to point that out to her, not because he was a gentleman, but because fair play alone called for such a reminder. Women got muddled when they were expecting. Men grew muddled when their women were expecting, too.

“A failure to marry on my part would occasion disaster for my good name,” she said, “and for my child, while marrying down happens to somebody every day. I suppose we’d best try a kiss.”

Fair play poked Dante hard in the arse.

“Before we endure that trial, you need to understand that I’m offering you a real marriage, not some prissy little formality that sees you in Paris and me in Scotland. You will be a mother to my children, my hostess, the lady of my households.”

He’d expect her in his bed, in other words, which was probably ungentlemanly of him.

“I like to sew.”

“I beg your pardon?” And could they please get to the kissing part, because now that the notion was running loose in Dante’s imagination, he was curious to see if they could manage it.