His fear that Edith herself was on the ladder was assuaged when she emerged from the trees. She held her bonnet in one hand and stood, eyes shaded with a hand, when he came close enough to speak. A breeze caught at her mantle and revealed a stripe of a yellow-gold gown.
He dismounted. From the look of things, she had been in the trees herself. Oak leaves and bits of moss clung to her hair and shoulders. He found the enthusiasm behind her untidiness quite charming. “Miss Clay.”
“Good afternoon, Your Grace.” Her eyes lit up, though there was no reason to believe she was pleased to see him, as opposed to pleased to see anyone at all. She curtsied. Her maid did the same and retreated several steps back. “What brings you here?”
Her naturalness around him was a consequence of her having no personal expectations of him; this he had understood from the start. She did not see herself as the sort of woman in whom he would take a personal interest. Nevertheless, he did not think it was his imagination that she was less formal with him than previously.
“I have information to put before you.”
Leaves and smaller branches rustled, and Edith glanced into the tree. “Have a care.”
“Below left!” came a masculine voice from the tree.
Her maid dashed to the other side of the ladder, a basket in hand. Something green dropped from the tree. The servant placed the basket to catch the mistletoe.
“Well done, Jim Dandy.” Edith looked into the tree again. “Well done.”
The man called down, “One more, and we’ve all we can take here, mistress.”
“Good, good.”
Oxthorpe walked toward the ladder and Edith. Beneath the branches, the ground was covered with oak leaves. There was no frost here. The maid stood on the other side of the ladder. Her basket was full of mistletoe, with the occasional twig or oak leaf among the leaves and berries. Nearby were three large bundles of mistletoe, tied up in squares of white cloth. “A good afternoon’s work.”
“Yes.” Edith was cheerfulness itself. “Our assembly will have mistletoe everywhere you look.”
That damned assembly. It wasn’t enough that he donated the bulk of the funds or that he gave up his kitchen staff and cook for the duration. Not that he begrudged the expense or the inconvenience of a cold dinner, but every year he was bombarded with all manner of sly and not-so-sly hints that he attend. He had no wish to attend. He had, in fact, arranged to be away from Killhope at the time. “Ah, yes. You are on the committee.”
“I am.”
She would be there. At the assembly.
And he would not be.
“I have promised them mistletoe, and I mean for us to have more than you can imagine.”
He glanced at the basket and the other bundles. “Success is within your grasp.”
She laughed, and he was pleased to have amused her. “We’ve done a fine job here.”
He brushed an oak leaf from her shoulder. “You have.”
“We’ll be the next week tying ribbons and lace.”
“Why?”
“On the mistletoe. This year’s decorative theme is blue and white grosgrain ribbon with blond lace.”
“How festive.”
“Yes, won’t it be? I am so sorry you won’t be there.” She put her hands on her hips. “Never fear. I will raise a glass of Mr. Wattles’s famous cider and toast to your good health.”
“Thank you.”
She beamed at him. “Then I shall wish all present and future residents of Hopewell-on-Lyft and Killhope Castle a very merry Christmas and happy New Year. What do you say to that, sir?”
“Will you stand under the mistletoe and wait for a gentleman to kiss you?”
Her cheeks pinked up, and, good God. No. No. God, no. She thought he meant she would be waiting all night for such a thing. “That is not—”
“If Louisa were to come, there would be a line of gentlemen.” She spoke too quickly, and her smile was gone.
“I daresay. Miss Clay—”
She took one of the leaves from the basket and held it up for inspection. “Did you ever see more perfect berries?”
Jim Dandy began his descent of the ladder. Instinctively, Oxthorpe steadied it. “Never,” he replied to Edith, desperate to repair the damage he’d done. “Except at Killhope.”
As the servant came down the last rungs, she laughed. “I say we repair to Killhope this instant and compare, for I’ll warrant my mistletoe is the most perfect this side of the Vale of West.”
He managed a smile. A small one. He took the mistletoe from her and examined it in the sun. He ought to go to the bloody assembly and kiss her beneath the mistletoe. That would cause a stir. “You will lose that wager, Miss Clay.”
She stepped forward and squinted. “I would not. That mistletoe is perfect.”
There was a moment when she stood underneath the mistletoe he held. The world swooped around him like a drunken lark. He ought to kiss her. One kissed a lady who stood beneath the mistletoe, though she hadn’t done so on purpose.
Impossible. He could not do something so outrageous. In front of her servants. She would be offended. Or worse, she would endure the contact and ever after hold him in even greater dislike.
She might kiss him back. God, what if she did?
He lowered the mistletoe and tossed it in the basket. Behind this tableau of his hopes and her utter blindness to them, Jim Dandy put away the sickle he’d used to cut the plants from the tree and walked off with the ladder and two of the bundles of mistletoe, and that ended everything.
Her outing was done. Her maid covered the basket with a white cloth she tied to the handles to keep the mistletoe secure, picked up one of the other bundles, and followed in the steps of Jim Dandy. Offended, no doubt, on behalf of her mistress. Oxthorpe led his horse and walked beside Edith for the ten-minute return to Hope Springs. When they came near the stables, he handed off his horse to Jim, along with a coin for the servant’s troubles on his behalf. “I shan’t be longer than an hour. Give her water and hay, thank you.”
“Your Grace.”
He accompanied Edith into the house. She left him in the parlor, and he found he could not sit still. He paced the room, stared out the windows. Examined the walls and the repairs made to the chimney. He’d not seen the interior of the house since he and Goodman had made an inspection prior to its sale. She’d repainted and put up new curtains. The house had not come furnished, so that had been an expense that must have set off her spendthrift worries.
The furnishings she’d chosen reminded him of the woman who lived here. Nothing to admire, and yet he wished to be here. To stay here and be surrounded by rooms that settled him. He was at ease, and the longer he stayed, the more he found to like.
While he waited, taking in what she had done to make this her home, another maid brought in tea and a tray of biscuits, cold meats and bread. He recognized her from Hopewell-on-Lyft. Edith came in shortly afterward. On his feet, he swept a hand toward the desk at one side of the room.
“I have drawings to show you.” Without saying more, he walked to the desk and set his papers on the surface. “And a proposal for you.”
Chapter Six
‡
Good heavens. Edith gazed with some amazement at the scene in her parlor. The duke himself. In her house. She must remember every detail so that she could relay them to Louisa in her next letter. The Duke of Oxthorpe was seated at her desk as if he discussed business with her every day. Because he loved Louisa and wanted to be kind to his future relations.
Predictably, he took up all her attention. She wished Mrs. Quinn had not swooned over the man and thus made her so aware of his looks. Before, she had acknowledged that he was handsome. But now? Several times when he’d found her in the oaks, with leaves in her hair—could she have appeared any more undignified?—she’d lost her train of thought because she was struck by how green his eyes were. Or wondering if his hair was as soft as it looked.
Or whether he was a competent lover
. Her mind went blank while her body flushed hot.
He looked over his shoulder at her, and his look of dry curiosity jolted her.
Confounded by that inappropriate reaction, she lifted the teapot and prayed God she did not look as stupefied as she felt. “Something to drink, Duke?”
He went back to his documents. “Thank you.”
She poured his tea, which she knew he took plain. This fact she had observed during one of those interminable hours when he’d called on Louisa, and it had been her role to keep the conversation from dying.
Their fingers touched when she brought him a cup and saucer, entirely accidental, but her stomach lurched with recognition of him as a man. Behind the clothes, behind the title, he was a man who must have had lovers, who likely kept a mistress. Raven’s-wing black his hair was, thick and glossy, and with a tendency to stand up after he’d run his hands through it. Which he had done twice.
He set his tea atop the desk and stood to hold a chair for her. She sat, and he fetched another chair for himself. She was no innocent. Once, just once, when she believed she would be forever bound to a dry and empty existence with her cousin Clay, she had taken a lover. They had neither of them thought their attachment would last beyond a few days. Then a few weeks. Two months. She had discovered the beauty of a man’s body, the fit, the differences, astonishing uses for one’s mouth. All that she’d put away when, at last, they’d parted ways.
Oxthorpe brought that roaring back, and it did not make sense. He loved Louisa. If he was here now, it was because of Louisa.
His attention flicked to her bosom. But no, that must be her imagination. She smoothed the lay of her skirts. Her gown was pink satin and gray silk with slippers to match and all in colors she loved because they suited her, because she had not been allowed to wear them before. As yet, she had little jewelry, but one of her first, early purchases had been a string of pearls that went well with this gown and her skin.
“Here are two choices for you.” He laid out the papers he’d brought. The top two sheets were advertisements from a carriage maker in Nottingham. “Both these”—he pointed at the first—“are within your budget.” He went through the respective costs, the taxes, the maintenance of each, the cost of the horse that best suited the purpose.
The information he’d run through threatened to slip away, and that was disconcerting. It was not her usual experience to find herself so flustered. He was not here for any reason but to do her a good turn. A man like him had no personal interest in a woman like her. She tapped the papers he’d put before her. “May I?”
“Yours to do with as you wish.”
“Thank you.” She studied the drawings and imagined herself in either of the gigs depicted on the sheets he’d provided. Both were small vehicles, but there would be room for her maid. He was right. Either would be an excellent choice. She went through the expenses he’d listed, written in a precise hand on a sheet of smooth, creamy paper.
Her stomach clenched again. The repairs to the house had just been settled, and here she was about to take on the expense of a gig, a horse, and another servant. She knew she ought to. She knew it. But she resented the need. She could buy something less expensive. She did not need to look smart or have a dainty mare. She could use one of the drays.
He put a hand on the papers. “Miss Clay, may I speak bluntly?”
“Please.”
He shifted on his chair, and she was again pulled, unwilling yet enthralled, into recognition of him as a man. “You have been put to some expense, outfitting your house.”
“I have.” This was true, and his understanding of that settled her.
“You wish to economize.” This, she realized, was his element, the managing of details. Choosing among facts and taking a decision.
“I do.” She leaned an elbow on the desk. Her difficulties by the oaks were vanquished, the awkwardness she’d felt earlier now gone in the face of his competence here. “But I do not wish to be poor again.”
“Economy is not always a savings.”
She nodded. Again true. Nothing she did not know, yet, to her shame, knowledge she had been unable to put to use.
“A paradox it would seem, but true,” he said. She was so accustomed to his brusque manner of speaking that she was taken aback by the lack of disdain in his reply. Taken aback and then grateful.
“Yes.” She swallowed. “You are correct.”
“If you do not buy the vehicle you need, then you will find yourself out the expense of what you buy now, in addition to what you must purchase later when you understand you do not have what you need. What is proper for a lady of means.”
She met his eyes and did not see the usual chill there. “I could sell what I buy now.”
“Not for the price you pay today.”
She folded her arms on the desk and buried her head there. She squeezed her eyes closed, then opened them and turned her head to the side of the desk where the duke sat. At least he wasn’t mocking her. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes. You are right. I know you are right.”
“Of course I am.”
She sat straight, and then he smiled, and she drowned in her visceral reaction to that.
“Either of these would be suitable.” He set a finger to the drawings. “I will, if you permit me, arrange the purchase and find you a horse.”
One could admire a man’s looks without thinking oneself his equal. She could. She had done so for all her adult life. “You are too generous.”
“Not in the least.” He drew a breath. “I have another suggestion.”
“I am all ears.”
“I have a curricle.”
“The one I rode in, do you mean?” Yes. There. She had set aside the fact that his body was shaped by muscle. There was no denying him that, but she need not do anything but say to herself, this is a fact about the Duke of Oxthorpe, in the same way she would note that his coat was blue and his boots were maroon. “Is it awful of me if I tell you how much I enjoyed that?”
“No.” His mouth twitched. “I mean another, however, which I have intended to take to a property I own in Northumberland.”
Louisa. He meant his impending visit to offer for Louisa. What else could he mean? “The reason you will not be at the Christmas assembly.”
“One of them, yes. I will sell it to you, if you are interested.”
“What is the other reason?”
“Affairs of business.”
He’d answered her too quickly, and that got her thoughts stuck on his admission of more than one reason for going to Northumberland for the Christmas holidays. He quirked his eyebrows. She tipped her head to one side. The curricle was the excuse for his trip to Northumberland. If he did not wish to tell her yet about Louisa, she understood that. He was a private man. She understood that, too.
“How much?”
“Not what does it look like?” he asked, smiling again. “Not what is its condition?”
“I presume you are not scheming to sell me a wreck.”
“No.” He smiled again, distractedly, and tapped the larger of the gigs in the advertisements. “I will sell it to you for near what you would pay for this. I would, naturally, have it refinished to remove my coat of arms at no expense to you.”
She gazed at the paper and felt her chest tighten. Every expenditure was a debit to her income, and they added up at an alarming rate. “Higher taxes. A greater cost.”
“That is so.” He sounded resigned.
“Two horses to keep rather than one.”
“The curricle was custom-made. To exacting specifications.”
She raised her head from the papers he’d set before her. She wanted to. She did. But there was no need for a curricle, however dashing it would be. “Thank you for your generous offer.”
His reply was a brusque nod.
“I sincerely mean that. I am flattered by your condescension and kindness. I need a carriage of some sort. But not a curricle when a gig will be more than sufficient for my needs.”
“Miss Clay.” He slouched on his chair, stretching out one leg. She swooned a little every time he smiled at her this afternoon, and now? With that slouch that spoke of a man at peace with his magnificent body? She was nearly insensate. “May I speak frankly yet again?”
“You may, but I must tell you it is not necessary to ask permission again. I hope and expect you will always speak frankly to me.”
He tapped a finger on his thigh. She refused to look. She could not allow him to see her look. “You did not, until recently, have a fortune of your own. Nor any expectation of one.”
“True.”
“You do now.”
“I do.” Three times dead.
“You bought Hope Springs.”
“I did, Your Grace.”
He waved a hand to indicate their general surroundings. “This property suited your budget and your new future. Its purchase was an excellent decision.”
“That was my opinion as well.” She laughed and leaned toward him. Praise from the Duke of Oxthorpe. This was a day that must live forever in her memory. “I hope to live into my dotage, you see.”
“So hope we all.” He propped his elbow on the desk. “I presume your cousin was worse than useless after you came into your money.”
She did not answer immediately, for the politics of her possible answer robbed her, momentarily, of her honesty. Then again, if he meant to marry Louisa, he must already know what her cousin Clay was like. He was not the sort of man who would be fooled. “The change in my fortunes was, for him, a setback.”
“No doubt.” He met her gaze, smiling a little, and that sent her thoughts racing to what a man might do with his mouth. “You’ve no husband to manage your remaining funds.”
That shocked her, that he would broach such a subject with her. “I have not.”
“You would do better to marry than live here alone.”
Christmas in The Duke's Arms Page 13