* * *
Miss Madeline Hennessey had a gift for deception.
Jack had been prepared to enjoy his last proper dinner before Mama turned every menu to consommé, beefsteak, and potatoes, when Miss Hennessey had brought up the topic of holiday decorations. Christmas Day having passed, nothing would do but a supply of greenery and mistletoe must be laid in before Mama’s arrival. Per custom, however belatedly observed, the entrance hall and front door were to be swathed in pine boughs, lest Mama think Jack had spent his holidays without benefit of pine needles all over his carpets.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” Jack said, stomping snow from his boots. “I am frozen from my toes to my ears, Pahdi will not speak to me for a week, and the footmen are all too chilled to hang the blasted stuff they spent most of the morning collecting.”
“Order the footmen a round of toddies,” Miss Hennessey shot back. “We’re preparing for the arrival visitors, not a forced march to Moscow. A bit of good cheer, and the footmen will be fetching ladders and ambushing the maids.”
She unwound a scarf from Jack’s neck and shook the length of gray lamb’s-wool, showering the foyer with snow and damp.
“You appear all docile and biddable,” Jack said, unbuttoning his greatcoat. “But then you set an objective, and heaven help the sensible fellow who suggests your course requires further thought. You might have warned me you’re as stubborn as a mud-stuck mule.”
Miss Hennessey whisked off Jack’s hat and set it on the sideboard. “Your mother is on her way, Sir Jack. If you do not make her feel welcome, you will suffer for your lack of consideration the entire winter. While you might deserve such a fate, your staff does not.”
Here was another bit of dissembling. Miss Hennessey appeared to be a domestic servant who’d done well in the household of generous and open-minded employers. She was, in fact, quite shrewd, having a grasp of strategy many a general would envy.
“My staff is complicit in your foolishness, and when they all come down with an ague, I will blame you.”
The sideboard sported a pile of mistletoe, and on the steps outside, the footmen had left an abundance of greenery to make into swags. The air in the foyer was fresher as a result, and the outing had put color in Miss Hennessey’s cheeks.
“When your footmen come down with an ague, I will show Cook how to make a tisane that will bring them right in a day or two. Where shall we hang this mistletoe?”
Sir Jack undid the frogs of Miss Hennessey’s cloak, lest she forget she even wore one in her haste to direct the next phase of this holiday invasion.
“Hang it anywhere you damned please, and don’t expect me to—hold still, madam.”
She tipped her chin up and let him finish unfastening her cloak, then turned so he could peel it from her shoulders.
“You need a new cloak, Miss Hennessey.” Her scarf was a bit tattered as well, and a surreptitious glance suggested her boots weren’t adequate to the challenge of a fresh snowfall. Her feet had to be even colder than Jack’s.
Miss Hennessey passed him her gloves, as if he were the first footman or the porter. “This cloak was a gift from my Aunt Theodosia, who is nearly as tall as I am. It was her best, at the time, and is my only cloak. Insult my cloak at your peril.”
“I meant to remark a simple fact. You there—” Jack raised his voice to get the attention of a maid scurrying past with a feather-duster in hand. “Please ask the kitchen to serve a round of toddies in the servants’ hall, and have mulled wine brought for Miss Hennessey and myself in the library. I’d also like mulligatawny soup with naan for our luncheon, and that can be served in the library as well.”
Where a roaring fire stood a prayer of thawing Miss Hennessey’s toes—and Jack’s temper.
He tossed her gloves onto the sideboard.
“You must decide where the mistletoe and greenery go,” Miss Hennessey said, as if instructing a dim little scholar. “The butler would typically direct the footmen, and Pahdi might lack the familiarity with our traditions to do so knowledgeably.”
“One hangs mistletoe from the rafters,” Jack said, mostly for the pleasure of arguing with her. “Pahdi will figure that much out.”
Miss Hennessey took her gloves from among the mistletoe and stuffed them into the pockets of her cloak, which Jack had hung on a hook.
“Pahdi is dealing with a staff trying to anticipate your mother’s every need. Will she bring a lady’s maid, and where will that worthy sleep? Does she travel with footmen and grooms, as well as a coachman, or has she hired a conveyance that will turn around and leave upon arrival?”
“She’ll take her traveling coach, which is nearly the size of Prinny’s pavilion,” Jack said, though why hadn’t anybody bothered to ask him these questions previously? “She prefers to impose on her host rather than bring along footmen, though her coachman and head groom have been with her for years. As for a lady’s maid… we can recruit a maid for that function.”
Miss Hennessey stepped closer, so she was nearly toe to toe with Jack. “Which maid? Do any of them have experience being a lady’s maid? Will the other maids be jealous? What if your mother finds fault with the person chosen, and the others find out about it? Mrs. Abernathy ought to have foreseen these difficulties, but she’s too busy criticizing the work of the footmen.”
“Come with me,” Jack said, taking Miss Hennessey by one cold hand. “If you’re reporting a mutiny, then at least do so in the privacy of the library.”
Privacy, and warmth.
She came along peacefully enough—more deception, for Jack could feel her cocking and aiming sharp retorts as an archer knocks her arrows.
“I will now breach all decorum,” Jack said, when they’d reached the sanctuary of the library, “and remove my boots, lest my toes become permanently cramped by the cold. I suggest you do likewise.”
“One does not remove—”
Jack took the chair closest to the fire and yanked off his right boot. “I have seen a woman’s feet before, Miss Hennessey. In India, bare feet are common, for a certain class.” The left boot followed, and Jack placed them beside his desk.
Miss Hennessey regarded his boots with something like puzzlement. “This is not India.”
“The problem in a nutshell. If we were in India, my mother would not be planning a protracted raid on the garrison. Shall you remove your boots?”
Miss Hennessey’s hems were damp, though they’d dry quickly enough if she remained near the fire. “I don’t suppose it could hurt.”
Jack toed on the slippers beneath his desk and busied himself with building up the fire. The library was kept cozy at all hours, which took some doing when the draperies were also routinely tied back.
“I’ll take your boots,” he said, gesturing with his fingers, when she’d removed her footwear.
“And do what with them?” Miss Hennessey asked, rising from the sofa.
“Put them beside mine, where the heat of the flames won’t damage the leather.”
Miss Hennessey tended to that task herself. “About the mistletoe.”
Jack was saved from the impending skirmish by a soft triple-tap on the door. Pahdi entered bearing a large silver tray laden with soup, naan, a porcelain teapot, and two glasses of steaming wine.
The scents were luscious, all complicated spices and good food.
“Thank you, Pahdi,” Jack said, taking the tray from his butler. “When the footmen are half drunk from their toddies, I’ll direct them in the hanging of the mistletoe. Tying the greenery into swags is usually done in the servants’ hall, and today is a fine day to undertake that task. The maids are welcome to a seasonal tot, given the nature of the afternoon’s activities.”
Once Mama arrived, they’d all be kept busy with far less enjoyable work.
“Meaning no disrespect to ancient British traditions,” Pahdi said, “but being a simple Indian butler, I do not understand why poisonous shrubs are a required part of holiday celebrations. I’ll send you James and Will
iam when your meal is complete, sir. Their superior English brains can doubtless manage the challenge of decorating the inside of a house with shrubbery usually found only outside of that dwelling.”
“They’ll need a ladder,” Miss Hennessey said. “And part of that ancient British tradition is that couples who meet beneath the mistletoe offer one another a kiss in the spirit of the joyous season. You shouldn’t reprimand those who adhere to the tradition, as odd as it might seem.”
“I had heard of this tradition, but did not know whether to believe such a decorous and worthy culture would indulge in frivolous behavior.”
“Believe it,” Miss Hennessey said, “and avoid standing beneath the mistletoe lest you be accosted by Mrs. Abernathy.”
“Miss Hennessey is teasing you,” Jack said, at Pahdi’s horrified expression. “Mostly. The kissing bit is a silly tradition, not a general order. Be off with you, before there’s a riot below stairs.”
Pahdi withdrew with a swift bow.
“How long has he been in England?” Miss Hennessey asked from her place before the fire. “Kissing beneath the mistletoe is hardly an arcane practice.”
“He’s been with me since I came home,” Jack said. “But my household has done little to observe the holidays in past years. Are your stockings also wet?”
Miss Hennessey had turned before the fire, her skirts brushing the fender, and a bare toe had briefly peeked from a holey stocking.
She adjusted her skirts. “A gentleman wouldn’t notice.”
“A lady would be left in avoidable discomfort as a result of the gentleman’s feigned blindness. Give me your stockings.”
“Sir Jack Fanning, if you think for one instant that I will remove an article of apparel simply to avoid a slight damp—”
Jack was on one knee, his hands under her skirts in the next moment. “I hate the cold, do you hear me? India was marvelously hot. Burning. Heat so thick it pressed on your very mind. These stockings are soaked, and you’ll have chilblains and an ague and lung fever just as I need you to keep my mother from—”
He’d untied her garter by feel and peeled the stocking from her calf. He held up the wet wool like a limp pelt.
“Now the other one, Miss Hennessey. Our soup is growing cold, and your feet will not get warm until you do as I say.”
She took the wet stocking from him and hung it over the fireplace screen. “You are daft. The heat of India has scorched the manners right out of you.”
“Probably,” Jack said, untying the second garter and retrieving another sopping-wet stocking. He wasn’t taking liberties, but neither could he ignore the fact that he was touching a woman under her skirts for the first time in years.
And enjoying himself, which was such a relief, Jack didn’t bother apologizing for his presumption.
“Here,” Jack said, shuffling off his slippers. “Put these on, and you might be spared the lung fever part.”
“What about the mortification part?” Miss Hennessey donned his slippers, though they were a bit too big for her. “These are wonderfully warm.”
“You’re welcome. Let’s eat.”
Jack nearly missed it as he arranged her second stocking over the screen—the first was already steaming—but Miss Hennessey was smiling at her feet.
Her expression included pleasure, self-consciousness, and a touch of bewilderment, and Jack wanted to lecture her about employers who allowed their help to go about poorly shod and badly cloaked.
He settled instead for serving her hot, spicy soup and fresh buttery naan, then enjoying a large portion of the same himself. The wine was hot and spicy as well, and the result was one of the most satisfying repasts Jack could recall since leaving India.
“About the mistletoe,” Miss Hennessey said when her bowl was empty.
“Hang the mistle—bother the mistletoe, rather. What difference does it make where the damned stuff is?” And why hadn’t Pahdi sent up any extra wine?
Miss Hennessey took a dainty sip of her drink. “You want to hang some in the places the staff frequent, a little private, but not dangerously private, and in the front foyer, of course.”
“Perhaps the libation has muddled me, but what is dangerously private?”
She peered at him over her drink. Such a way with a silence, she had.
“Miss Hennessey, if any fellow in my employment takes liberties beyond those freely offered, he’s turned off without a character.”
“Freely offered is subject to a world of interpretation, Sir Jack, and the interpreting is done by footmen eager for any kiss. Mrs. Abernathy is not the sort to inspire confidence in the women working for her.”
Miss Hennessey had been beaten daily her first year in service, probably for not offering her kisses—or more—freely. Somebody needed to be flogged in public for that, likely her first employer. Had she let Belmont know what a hell she’d endured before coming to his household?
“I take your point.” Taking her point was becoming a habit. Miss Hennessey was uncommonly sensible, and wearing Jack’s favorite slippers, she’d acquired a touch of the adorable too.
Perhaps one glass of wine had been sufficient after all.
“Let’s put the footmen out of their misery, shall we?” Jack asked, extending a hand down to her.
She took it—her fingers were warm now—and rose as if the wine might have unsteadied her a bit too.
“My thanks, Sir Jack.”
He kept hold of her hand, and what he did next was a result of pure instinct. Miss Hennessey stood close enough that a whiff of lavender came to Jack over the scent of the fire in the hearth and the damp wool drying on the screen. Without her boots, she was not quite as statuesque, not quite as formidable.
Perhaps that was what inspired Jack to bend his head and kiss her. Not her cheek, which would have been a better way to convey the simple liking he felt for her, but right on her full, sensible, rarely smiling mouth.
Her hands rested gently on his biceps, and he and she remained thus, mouths touching, nobody moving, until Miss Hennessey’s grip on his sleeves tightened, and she stepped nearer.
Whatever Jack had intended—holiday gesture, a moment of affection, or even flirtation—he had no explanation for why he gathered her closer and let the kiss blossom into intimacy. When Miss Hennessey ought to have slapped him, she looped her arms around his neck and pressed the luscious abundance of her curves closer.
Desire charged forth at a dead gallop to ambush Jack’s self-restraint. He’d forgotten how intense the sensations associated with erotic yearning could be, or perhaps his body meant to make up for years of sexual indifference at the worst possible time.
He wanted this woman, and that absolutely would not do.
Miss Hennessey recovered first, resting her forehead on Jack’s shoulder. She was the tallest woman he’d kissed, and the fit of their bodies was marvelous.
She was utterly unlike Saras, who’d been so diminutive Jack had at first mistaken her for delicate.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said, though he was apparently not sorry enough to turn loose of the lady.
“For kissing me?”
She would ask that, and she’d know if he was anything less than honest. “For kissing you without permission. You are under my protection, and I am the last man who should impose on you.”
Belmont would kill Jack for imposing, if imposing it had been.
Miss Hennessey stepped back and downed the last of her wine, though it would no longer be hot.
“You would not know how to impose on a woman if your life depended on it. Will you send me back to the Belmonts’ now?”
Jack probably should. His reaction to her had taken him by surprise. No warning shouts had gone out from his breeding organs to his thinking brain, and he had no explanation for an arguably ungentlemanly impulse.
“Do you want to return to the Belmonts’ household? I wouldn’t blame you.”
But he would… miss her. In a few short days, Miss Hennessey had opened his eyes
to aspects of owning and managing a large domicile he’d been oblivious to. And she kissed… she knew how to kiss, how to hold a man, how to communicate bodily delight in his overtures.
“Do you want me to go?” she countered, gathering up her stockings from the screen.
Jack hesitated to say yes—the sensible answer—and yet admitting he did not want her to go was a risky alternative.
Pahdi’s characteristic triple tap sounded at the door.
“Come in,” Jack bellowed.
“I beg your pardon, Sir Jack, Miss Hennessey, but a large coach is coming up the drive. I thought you would want to know.”
“Battle stations, Pahdi,” Jack said, sitting at his desk to tug on his boots. “Alert Mrs. Abernathy that I’ll be introducing her to Mama and remove the damned pile of mistletoe from the sideboard in the foyer. Be sure the fires in Mama’s apartments are roaring, and get a tea tray with shortbread and biscuits ready to go—the best everyday china, and nothing that tastes of lemon. Mama cannot abide lemons.”
“Have someone gather up these dishes,” Miss Hennessey added, “and the head footman should also be introduced to Mrs. Fanning along with you, Mrs. Abernathy, and Cook. The maids will need clean aprons and tidy caps, and the footmen should have on their best gloves.”
Pahdi bowed and nearly ran from the room.
“Your slippers,” Miss Hennessey said, bracing herself on Jack’s desk to scuff out of his footwear.
“Keep them,” Jack said. “And in answer to your question, I would not let you leave this household now if Axel Belmont crawled through the snow to beg you to rejoin his staff at Candlewick. The invasion has begun.”
To emphasize that point, or perhaps to demonstrate his complete loss of sense, he kissed her again, a proper smack on the lips.
“No more of that with your mother nearly at the door,” Miss Hennessey said. “We’ll finish this discussion later.”
Jack decided on a tactical retreat rather than argue details with Miss Hennessey, because later might mean spring, or summer, or next Christmas. At the very least, they were agreed she ought to remain under his roof for the present, and that felt damnably like a victory.
Jack (The Jaded Gentlemen Book 4) Page 7