Lady Louisa's Christmas Knight

by Grace Burrowes

  “This leg is paining you.”

  Before he could brace himself for the pleasure and discomfort of her touch, she was applying a sure, steady pressure up the length of his thigh.

  “Louisa, you don’t have to… just because you have four sisters who love to dance… God in heaven…” He gave up on a sigh. “And your mother.”

  “Who is saintly but not in heaven.” Louisa dug in a little harder, and the bliss of it, the sore, aching bliss of it had Joseph closing his eyes.

  “And don’t forget my aunt Gladys. Have you ever considered laudanum for this leg, Joseph?”

  “I have not, or rather, I was given enough laudanum when I was injured to know its limits. I rather think I should have tried marriage to you instead.”

  Except he’d been married at the time, and the thought let a hovering shadow join Joseph in the coach.

  “You needn’t toss out compliments, Husband. I’m married to you whether there’s flattery to be had from it or not.”

  He wrapped an arm around his starchy new wife. “And you need not flinch from sincere appreciation. My first wife could not stand the sight of my injury.” Louisa’s hands paused but did not leave his person. “I’m sorry, Louisa. I should not have brought her up. I did not mean to make mention of her now, of all times.”

  The blessed stroking of her hands on his thigh resumed. “She is the mother of our children. Of course you will make mention of her. Lionel said she would have been relieved to see you happily remarried, but I concluded he was demonstrating his wedding-day manners.”

  What he’d been, was standing too close to Joseph’s wife, but there had been no point in taking exception to it in front of all of Polite Society. Louisa’s brother Valentine had appeared at her elbow long before Joseph could have hobbled to her side, in any case.

  “Lionel was a favorite of Cynthia’s. He was probably being honest.”

  As soon as Joseph made the comment, he wished he hadn’t said his late spouse’s name, much less in conjunction with dear Lionel’s.

  “Do you miss her?”

  The warm glow of the wedding day evaporated with four little words, bringing instead all the burden and complexity of a new marriage, a marriage undertaken, at least on the lady’s part, for less than sentimental reasons.

  “Shall I be honest, Louisa? This isn’t the most sanguine topic between two newlyweds.”

  “You shall always be honest with me, and then I will have the courage to be honest with you.”

  He hadn’t lit the coach lamps, because their journey was short, only a few blocks. The darkness allowed him to focus not only on the soothing touch of his wife’s hands on his leg but also on the beauty of her voice in the darkness.

  When she sang, Louisa would be a contralto. She would excel at the lower, warmer registers of the women’s range, and her voice would be both supple and graceful—like her body moving on the dance floor.

  Reading poetry, that voice would be divine in its beauty and luster.

  And he never wanted to hear deception from her, so—to the extent that he could—he accepted the challenge she’d just laid down.

  “My—Cynthia—and I married in a fit of patriotic lust, I suppose you could call it. I was young but well heeled, and she was young and, at least to appearances, smitten by a pair of broad shoulders in dashing regimentals. Her family was happy to pass her off into my willing arms, something I did not understand until after the ceremony.”

  “You did not suit?”

  The prosaic nature of the question, the very bluntness of it endeared Louisa to him. “In the way of young people, we suited well enough to consummate the union, and then I shipped out for the Peninsula.”

  Louisa was a bright woman. The manner in which she leaned up and kissed Joseph’s cheek assured him that she understood: after he’d rejoined his unit, he and his young wife had not suited so very well at all.

  “I’m sorry. My family is likely happy to pass me into your willing arms too, but I am not young, and I do not intend to be an aggravation to you.”

  “Nor I to you.”

  What a humble exchange of intentions for a pair of newlyweds to make to each other. Joseph found it appealing, though. Comforting.

  Attainable and honest.

  The carriage turned into the alley that led to Joseph’s mews, and he realized he could have spent far longer cuddling with his wife in the dark and cozy confines of their town coach.

  “I must be honest with you too, Husband.”

  “I would prefer it.”

  “I am not in a position to consummate our vows tonight.”

  He felt surprise and disappointment, and for an instant considered that for all her affection and pragmatism, all her passion on his hearth rug several nights past, Louisa was consigning them to a white marriage.

  Except… her passion had been honest. Her rejoicing in his coming through the duel unscathed had been honest. The smiles she’d sent him across the hordes of wedding guests in the Moreland ballroom had been blazingly honest.

  “Why can’t you consummate our vows, Louisa?”

  Now she withdrew her hands from his leg, his no-longer-throbbing leg. The horses slowed to a walk.

  “Louisa?”

  She mashed her face against his throat, and against his skin, her cheek felt unnaturally hot. “…Dratted… Blighted… female… Next week.”

  Joseph blinked in the darkness. He had been married before. For several long, unhappy years, in fact, but in that odd moment with Louisa tucked close to him in the darkness, those years of marriage enabled him to decipher her meaning and her problem.

  He gathered her close and kissed her cheek, when what he wanted to do was laugh—at fate, at his worst imaginings, even a little at his wife’s muttered indignation over nature’s timing.

  “Next week is not so very far away, Louisa Carrington, and I promise to make the wait worth your while.”

  She lifted her head, a challenge glinting in her green eyes. “And yours too, Sir Joseph. I promise you that.”

  And then they did laugh—together.

  ***

  There should be poetry for the morning after a wedding.

  Louisa watched her husband shave. He was careful, methodical, and efficient as he scraped dark whiskers from his face. He kept a mug—not a cup—of tea at his elbow throughout this masculine ritual, shaving around his mouth first so he might sip at his tea.

  “You missed a spot on your jaw, Husband.”

  Husband. Her very own husband.

  He turned, flecks of lather dotting his visage, and held his razor out to her. Not quite a challenge, but something more than an invitation. The moment called for a shaving sonnet.

  Louisa set her tea aside—tea Joseph had prepared for her—and climbed off the bed. She took the razor from him and eyed his jaw. “Were you trying to spare my sensibilities last night?”

  “You were indisposed.”

  They both fell silent while Louisa scraped the last of the whiskers from Joseph’s cheek. She appropriated the towel he’d draped over his shoulder and wiped his face clean.

  “I know I was indisposed, but you blew out all the candles before you undressed. I’ve seen naked men before.” She’d never slept with one wrapped around her, though. Such an arrangement was… cozy, and inclined one toward loquaciousness.

  “You’ve seen naked men?”

  There was something too casual in Joseph’s question. Louisa set the razor down and stepped back. “Growing up, there was always a brother or two to spy on, and I think they didn’t mind being spied on so very much, or they wouldn’t have been quite as loud when they went swimming. I attend every exhibition the Royal Society puts on, and the Moreland library is quite well stocked.”

  He kissed her, and by virtue of his mouth on hers, Louisa understood that her husband was smiling at her pronouncements. He gave her a deucedly businesslike kiss though, over in a moment.

  As Louisa lingered in her husband’s arms, sneaking a whif
f of the lavender soap scent of his skin, she wondered if married kisses were different from the courting kind.

  “I have married a fearlessly naughty woman,” Joseph said, stroking a hand down her braid. “And to think I was concerned that I was imposing by asking you to share my bed last night.”

  “You needn’t be gallant. I talked your ears off.”

  And he’d listened. He hadn’t fallen asleep, hadn’t patted her arm and rolled over, hadn’t let her know in unsubtle ways that the day had been quite long enough, thank you very much.

  “You had an interesting upbringing. Not many women study astronomy, ancient history, and economics.”

  “The calculus makes measuring the stars easier. I’m having my telescopes sent over from Morelands—our daughters will have great good fun staying up past their bedtimes, learning the constellations. I don’t know who enjoyed the midnight picnics more, His Grace, my brothers, or myself.”

  His hand on her hair went still, cradling the back of her head. “Do you even know you refer to them as our daughters?”

  And with one question, they were on tricky ground indeed. Not the stuff of poetry, but possibly the stuff of marital discord. “I don’t mean to presume. I can refer to them as Amanda and Fleur—such pretty names.”

  He pulled back enough to frame her face with his two warm hands. “Because you say it is so, Louisa, they are our daughters. This is more than a wedding gift, because you give it not just to me but also to two small girls who very much need a mother.”

  This kiss was different, reverent, tender, lovely… beyond poetry.

  Louisa dropped her forehead to her husband’s naked chest and, for the dozenth time, silently cursed her female organs for their poor scheduling. “We’ll never get to Kent if we aren’t on our way soon.”

  Joseph patted her bottom and stepped back. “We will not let your parents serve us breakfast, or your sisters dragoon you into their private lair. I suspect the worst offenders will be your brothers, though. I’ve never met such a lot of mother hens.”

  He splashed on his cedar-and-spice scent, then started laying out clothing, making trips from the wardrobe to the bed. Joseph continued striding around the bedroom in nothing but riding breeches, as casual as you please.

  And Louisa did please. Her husband was well endowed with muscle and masculine pulchritude, and he thought her brothers were mother hens. He had listened to her in the dark, and he had held her and rubbed her back when she hadn’t even known she could ask for those considerations.

  Maybe love was not a matter of ringing declarations and rhyming couplets. Maybe it wasn’t bloodred roses and dramatic sentiments. Maybe love was a pat on the bottom and a tender kiss, a shared good night’s sleep, and a man considerate enough to build a quick stop by the ducal mansion into the start of the wedding journey.

  ***

  “You get her for the rest of your life, Carrington. At least let us say a proper good-bye.”

  The musical brother—Lord Valentine—delivered this observation with a paucity of good cheer as Joseph watched Louisa being hugged yet again by St. Just, Westhaven, and each sister in turn. In an odd display of diplomacy, Their Graces had retired inside the mansion after wishing Joseph and Louisa safe journey.

  “You had your sister for the first twenty-five years, my lord, and I’m starting to wonder if you’ve waited until she’s leaving to appreciate her.”

  Dark brows rose in a gesture very like the duke’s. “What is that rudeness supposed to mean?”

  “She’s studied practically every modern European language, but her only opportunities to speak them have been when your parents entertain diplomats. She can do math in her head you and I couldn’t follow even on paper, and yet she’s lucky if Westhaven lets her tag along to the occasional economics lecture. She summarized half a millennium of Roman military strategy for St. Just—knows Caesar’s letters by heart in the original and in translation—and yet St. Just’s epistles back to her from the Peninsula dealt with ladies’ hats. You compose little bagatelles for her when what she needs is to be working on a translation of The Divine Comedy.”

  Lord Valentine blinked, and then his lips curved up in a rueful smile.

  “I suppose when it comes down to it, we haven’t known what to do with Lou. I realized early on that as much passion as I have for music, she has that passion too, but she can turn to practically any intellectual pursuit. I would have been sent down my first term if not for her.”

  He fell silent while Louisa accepted a small parcel from St. Just and tucked it into her reticule. Lord Valentine had passed her a similar present, as if little tokens made up for a quarter century of fraternal neglect.

  “You should have been sent down. She should have been allowed to matriculate.”

  “She went through much of the curriculum by correspondence with me. I struggled in every class mostly because I spent too many hours at the piano. Latin was the worst. She did my translations for me and for a few of the other fellows, though it was cheating. Once she understood what we were about, she put a stop to it, but by then…”

  Lord Valentine went quiet again, his smile nowhere in evidence.

  “By then you’d learned enough Latin or Greek or mathematics from her to limp along yourselves, while she was left to rusticate in Kent and stare at the stars as her sisters embroidered their stays and drew nude sketches.”

  “Merciful heavens. Nudes?”

  “Miniatures, I’m thinking, because the only models they had were the brothers they spied on.”

  On that parting shot, Joseph stepped forward, waiting just long enough for Louisa to slip yet a third parcel—this one from Westhaven—into her reticule. Lady Genevieve passed along a small packet of documents tied with twine, which also went into the reticule, and then at long, long last, Joseph was bundling his wife into the traveling coach.

  “One has a sense of escape every time one departs from your family, Louisa.”

  She switched sides so she was again on his right.

  “Husband, you say the most comforting things. When Sophie stole a few days of solitude for herself last Christmas, I finally realized I am not the only Windham sibling longing for peace and privacy. I love my family, but they are just so…”

  She turned her head to peer out the window. Joseph passed her his handkerchief, thinking she’d wave it at them in parting.

  “I am being ridiculous.” She did wave the handkerchief, but then she dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “I’ll see them all again in just a few days at the Christmas gathering, and the children too. I suppose an excess of sentiment can be forgiven. I hadn’t seen St. Just in months, and Maggie is expecting, but I’ll see a great deal of Sophie—”

  He hauled her against his side and gently pushed her head to his shoulder. “We’ll visit all you like, all over the realm, even the perishing West Riding if St. Just insists on ruralizing there. I did want to take you to Paris in the spring, however, and you’d like Lisbon too, even if it gets quite hot. I’m not as fond of Rome, though Sicily has all manner of ruins you might find interesting.”

  Her head came off his shoulder. “May we take the girls? Children need exposure to the greater world, you know. One can’t learn everything sitting in some dusty schoolroom.”

  No, one could not.

  While Louisa started fashioning an itinerary for summer travels, Joseph cast around for a way to explain to her that journeys beyond a certain duration would be difficult for him. There were a dozen children in Surrey from whom he did not want to be too far away for any length of time. His children.

  Not ours, not yet. Likely not ever.

  ***

  “How is a man to enjoy a proper drink when his hand is bandaged like this?” Grattingly waved a swaddled right hand. Lionel barely glanced up from the meager fire doing battle with the chill in Grattingly’s smallest parlor.

  “How is a man supposed to think when you’re whining about a stoved finger, for God’s sake? It’s all over the clubs t
hat Sir Joseph refused to blow a hole in your hide as well he should have.”

  Like a hound hearing a puzzling sound, Grattingly cocked his head at Lionel. “You didn’t tell me that limping simian was Wellington’s personal marksman. Not well done, Honiton. A friend risks his life for you, puts his very existence on the line, and you—”

  “You’re the one who changed the plan. Wellington’s staff did not include a personal marksman, though I’ll grant you, Sir Joseph is a dead shot. I tried to preserve you from the folly of dueling with him, and you were the one who insisted on meeting him.”

  “And this is the thanks I get? Any girl who’s been the cause of a duel won’t find a decent husband. I hand Louisa Windham to you on a platter, even when you can’t manage to be the one interrupting her scandalous behavior. I put a fat dowry within your grasp, and you can’t be bothered to thank me.”

  Lionel remained silent, which was as much thanks as Grattingly was going to hear from him. The original idea had been simple: Lionel was to rescue Louisa from a compromising situation and accept her grateful hand in marriage immediately thereafter. No duels had been contemplated—until Grattingly thoroughly bollixed up the matter.

  “I should be the one swiving the fair Louisa,” Grattingly muttered. “I like a woman who fights back.”

  Lionel took another sip of inferior wine. “You like a woman who pretends to fight back. Louisa Windham would have gelded you in another moment.”

  Grattingly’s chair scraped back. “Mother of God, what is wrong with you? You need coin. For a small sum certain, I make it possible for you to acquire the same and a wellborn wife into the bargain, and when you can’t manage to take what’s offered, you turn up nasty on me.”

  “My apologies. Impending poverty has quite soured my disposition, this drink isn’t helping, and I hardly regard a percentage of Lady Louisa’s dowry as a small sum. When did you stop stocking decent libation, anyway?”

  And where were the other half dozen or so young men who usually ensconced themselves in Grattingly’s town house of a late evening?