What A Lady Needs For Christmas

by Grace Burrowes

  “My drawing is almost done,” Charlie said. “May I show it to you?”

  The girl was on her manners, probably as a function of being in new surroundings, or maybe because Lady Joan was here, sprinkling sweetness and fairy dust on all and sundry.

  “Later we’ll have an art show,” Margaret said, wedging past Hector.

  And what a blow that was. Margaret didn’t believe in lacing herself tighter than perdition, and preferred the old-fashioned country stays to the modern variety. Her female attributes were thus in soft, abundant evidence as she squeezed through the doorway and into the nursery.

  “Good morning, children!” Margs said. “The cook is making the Christmas pudding today, and that means every member of the household must give the batter a stir, especially you weans.”

  “Everybody? Does that mean Papa, too?” Phillip asked, replacing pastel chalks in their box, ordered from brightest to darkest.

  “Everybody,” Lady Joan replied, neatly stacking the drawings. “That’s the tradition.”

  “English tradition,” Hector said, extending a hand down to the lady. “In Scotland, we don’t emphasize Christmas as much as we try to prepare for the New Year.”

  Lady Joan put her hand in his, a slim, pale hand sporting not a single freckle. She rose easily, nearly matching him for height, and set the drawings on the mantel, face out.

  “How fortunate, then, that we shall have the benefit of both traditions this year.” Her smile was pleasant, her tone entirely civil, and Hector nearly hated her for it.

  “Come along.” Margaret waggled her fingers at the children, while Hector endured the knowledge he was being ignored—again. “Lady Balfour says the servants like to sing when they’re mixing up the pudding, and you two both have such strong voices.”

  “Especially me!” Charlie grabbed her aunt’s hand. Phillip was slower, looking around for a place to store the box of pastels. Lady Joan took the box from him before Hector had the chance, and put it on the mantel.

  “We can draw more when you’re done in the kitchen, Phillip,” she said. “You were making great progress on your dragon.” Slow progress, no doubt. Phillip was a plodder, and Hector had sympathy for all plodders.

  “Shall you come with us, Lady Joan?” Hector asked. She might be English, and a distraction Hector’s employer could not afford, but, to Hector’s eyes, she could use a few servings of pudding, for all that.

  “Let’s fetch Mr. Hartwell. His children will enjoy having him take part in the merriment. I’m sure Balfour and even Spathfoy will put in an appearance.”

  Charlie’s happy voice faded as Margaret and the children left for the kitchen. A cool draft from the hallway cut through the nursery’s peaty coziness.

  “You refer to your own brother by his title, my lady?”

  Lady Joan appeared to consider Charlie’s drawing, a fanciful amalgamation of wings, fangs, horns, and God knew what in every color of the rainbow.

  “Of course—also by his given name and even his nickname. He answers to all of them, unless he’s absorbed with some problem on the estate, and then he answers not at all. I think you know the type?”

  She sent the merest glance in the direction of the nursery maid, who was studying the fire as if a pot of gold might be contained therein.

  That glance was a rebuke to a mere man of business who would pick a fight with a proper lady before the help—a deserved rebuke, at least in part. And yet, Hector presumed to offer the lady his arm, which she took with easy grace.

  “I’m protective of him,” Hector said when he’d intended to maintain a stony silence through four stories of elegant Highland decor. “If it weren’t for Dante Hartwell, my family would still be freezing on the coast, living on mackerel, kelp, and stubbornness.”

  Lady Joan smelled good, all female spiciness with a hint of something expensive. Margaret, by contrast, smelled like vanilla and common sense.

  “Protectiveness can be smothering, Mr. MacMillan, all the more so for being well intended. I’m only a female, what can Mr. Hartwell possibly have to fear from me?”

  She wasn’t pretending they were making small talk, for which he accorded her a few grudging points.

  “He has everything to fear from you. You sport a passel of wealthy, titled English family at your back. They will not understand. They will stand against him, and Dante deserves better than that.”

  Better than you.

  That was her cue to drop his arm, stick her sniffy nose in the air, and beat him down the corridors with lectures on presumption and knowing one’s place.

  She patted his arm. “Margaret needs to see this protective side of yours, Mr. MacMillan. Making allies of the children is clever, and I can understand that Mr. Hartwell might take some winning over, but when the lady herself doesn’t know she’s being pursued, it’s time to reevaluate your tactics.”

  “I’m not pursuing her.” Hadn’t dared.

  “The holidays are a fine time to win a woman’s notice,” Lady Joan went on, as if Hector hadn’t spoken. “And while your Scottish heart probably winces at all of our English silliness, you can work it to your advantage.”

  “Margaret’s not English.” And when had he lost control of this discussion, which was to have been about how daft marriage between Dante and Lady Joan would be?

  “Margaret’s not English, but she’s a woman much in need of kissing and cosseting, and you’re just the fellow to take on that challenge.”

  Lady Joan did stop then, right where two hallways converged on the balcony leading to the main staircase. She pointed straight up, to some greenery hanging from a crossbeam.

  As if pine boughs…

  And then she kissed Hector’s cheek. “I can be protective too, Mr. MacMillan. This is your only warning.”

  She sashayed on down the stairs, all purple grace, and while Hector had no idea what she might be warning him about, he did grasp that mistletoe was a fine old English tradition.

  ***

  Dante had made a sketch of the Balfour family tree, for the MacGregors had managed, repeatedly, to marry English wealth. Balfour himself had married an American heiress less than a year ago, while each of his four siblings had plucked a matrimonial English goose.

  Ian MacGregor, the next oldest to Balfour, was married to Augusta, Baroness of Gribbony.

  Gilgallon, described by Balfour as the family charmer, had married Augusta’s cousin, Eugenia Daniels, another heiress and a beauty.

  Connor, the youngest brother, and “whatever the opposite of a charmer is,” had married a wealthy Northumbrian widow, with whom he was hatching up a brood of fat, noisy bairns.

  Mary Fran, in addition to being the widow of Spathfoy’s late younger brother, had married another of Augusta’s cousins, Matthew Daniels, whose substantial assets included nothing less than the personal favor of the Queen and the Prince Consort.

  And finally, the youngest of the Daniels cousins, Hester, had the dubious honor of the Earl of Spathfoy for a husband.

  The lines on the page crossed and recrossed, forming the sort of genealogical fortress a Highland laird would have been proud to call family—wealthy family.

  Lady Joan interrupted Dante’s musings, striding into the library—no hesitating on the threshold for her—her purple skirts a-swishing.

  “Are you hiding, Mr. Hartwell?”

  She was a master at hiding, even in her velvet and snowy lace. Dante ever so casually folded the family tree in half, so the various golden apples dangling from it were not visible to Joan.

  “I’m working. Hector gets frantic when we have to be away from the mills for any length of time, and he knows I’ll use the Sabbath to catch up.”

  “It is Sunday,” she said, stopping short of the armchair Dante occupied near the hearth and veering off in the direction of the bookshelves. “The trains won’t run. You’re not supposed to work on Sundays.”

  He liked the look of her, wandering around Balfour’s high-ceilinged library. She was made for l
ofty spaces, for places that flattered her height.

  “You work on Sunday, madam.”

  Her ladyship left off studying a portrait of some Highlander of old directly over the crackling fire. A fierce old fellow who yet had a twinkle in his eye.

  “I don’t work, ever. This is a point of contention between my family and me. I’m a lady, and worse than that, a lady blessed with a papa who thinks I’m to be ornamental.”

  She was very ornamental. “I assume this papa will arrive on one of those trains you’re so worried about.”

  “This painting needs a good cleaning. Peat smoke will ruin it in another generation or two.”

  “Why don’t you clean it?” As soon as he’d made the suggestion, Dante realized that if Joan were busy in the library throughout the day, he’d have to work elsewhere if he wanted to be productive.

  “I could restore this portrait. I studied in Paris for a few months.” She was lost in the painting, which prompted Dante to rise and take a closer look at it himself.

  “You could get started today, assuming the supplies were on hand. Restoring the laird here would give you something to occupy yourself.”

  Because she needed that.

  “I don’t seek merely to be busy, Mr. Hartwell.”

  “You’re fretting. Being busy can help the fretting times pass more easily.” Though it had never particularly helped Dante, not when busy meant closeting himself with Hector’s blasted reports.

  “I’m not fretting. I’m fetching you down to the kitchen, so you can have a turn stirring the plum pudding. The servants are all gathered there, along with the children, my relations, and Balfour’s family.”

  What was she looking for in that mahogany desk?

  “Balfour’s doing the English this year?”

  “He’s doing the hospitable. Tiberius likes Balfour, and that’s no small endorsement.”

  Dante was more inclined to think of Spathfoy’s blessing as a millstone for a Scottish earl.

  “What are you searching for?” Besides a husband.

  “This.” She held up a silver-handled quizzing glass. “That painting isn’t uniformly dirty. It’s darker near the bottom, and probably has more cracks near the top, where the temperature has varied more. The project wants study before I approach Balfour about it.”

  “You’d commend me to the mayhem in the kitchen all on my lonesome?” Not that he’d set foot in a noisy, crowded, tipsy kitchen without her. “Come with me, for Balfour will have punch and sweets to ensure we spoil our digestion.”

  Then too, it couldn’t hurt for dear Tiberius to grow accustomed to the sight of his sister on Dante’s arm.

  She slipped the quizzing glass into some secret female pocket in her velvet skirts. “Don’t talk to me of spirits. I know now why the fussiest ladies never partake of strong spirits.”

  “They abstain because they’ve never faced winter in a Scottish croft. Spirits in moderation never hurt anybody.”

  He’d said the wrong thing, for this time, when she perused the old fellow in his fancy kilt, she blinked furiously.

  “Joan, I’m sorry. I did not mean to judge you.” Though it was a dicey proposition, Dante put a hand on her shoulder. Tension vibrated through her, or indignation.

  Or hurt.

  “I wish I had a familiarity with strong spirits,” she said as the first tear trickled down her cheek. “I wish I had a strong head for them, in fact, because then that dratted man would not have been able to, to—”

  Dante pulled her into his arms, where she fit so well, and so reluctantly.

  “Sooner or later, everybody drinks too much. I get the sense that much of what we call a university education is an exercise in teaching the sons of the aristocracy to hold their liquor. That strong head you’re so envious of takes years to acquire, and some never do.”

  From the same secret pocket, she produced a square of silk, white with green trim. “When will I remember?”

  Women should always wear velvet, for when a man stroked his hands over a woman clad in velvet, he was soothed and aroused in equal measure. “When will you remember what?”

  “When will I recall what happened. I got so muddled, and when I woke up, he was sprawled on top of me, my skirts in complete disarray, the candles guttering, and nothing made any sense.”

  Dante kissed her temple, though she wasn’t Charlie, that her hurts and indignities could be made better with a kiss.

  “Nothing made sense because you were still tipsy. The drink can take a full day to leave your system, and more days before your body entirely rights itself.” That assumed she hadn’t been drugged as well as inebriated.

  “The drink is not in my system now, and I still can’t make sense of what happened. I don’t recall what I said. I don’t recall what I did. Not the half of it, only bits and pieces that are of no help.”

  He let her go, because her indignation was doing more to dry her tears than his embrace—or his kisses.

  “You might never recall more of that night than you do right now,” he said, pulling the fireplace screen back and tossing another square of peat onto the flames. Joan held out her little handkerchief to him, for handling peat was an untidy business.

  “Your handkerchief will get dirty, my lady.”

  She lifted one eyebrow, looking much like her lordly brother. “A bit of dirt will wash, Mr. Hartwell. Most fabrics know the difference between a smudge and a permanent stain.”

  Though Society, of course, did not, and neither did Lady Joan. Dante took the bit of silk, rubbed the dirt from his fingers, and stuffed her handkerchief in his pocket.

  “Don’t focus on trying to recall what you said or did. Let it come back to you on its own. If you were drinking absinthe, then the scent of it might trigger some memories, a snippet of conversation might, a whiff of his shaving soap. You can’t stitch this down and put a perfect hem on it, Joan.”

  The library door opened, revealing none other than dear Tiberius, but of all things, the man had an infant affixed to his shoulder.

  A smiling infant sporting a head of bright red hair.

  “There you are. My countess insists that I join the riot in the kitchen, which means you two are subject to the same decree.”

  Joan was across the library in four swishy strides.

  “Give me that baby, Tiberius. You’ll feed him sweets until he has a howling bellyache, then feign innocence and mutter darkly about women who are overly indulgent to their children. What was Hester thinking, putting him in your care on such an occasion?”

  “While you’ll feed him marzipan, and not let me have him back until Whitsun?”

  “Too late,” Dante said as Joan settled the child on her hip and swept from the room. “Your son has been taken captive, and you might as well surrender with good grace—unless you must be the first to stir the Christmas pudding?”

  Joan went on her way, her prize in her arms. His lordship’s expression drained of the puzzled wistfulness with which he’d watched Lady Joan make off with the infant and filled with characteristic disapproval.

  “You were alone in here with my sister, Hartwell.”

  The remaining weeks of the house party loomed with the never-ending dimensions of the new boy’s first semester at public school.

  “Spathfoy, you insult me, your sister, the holidays, and the very books with your innuendo. Balfour has offered the library as a place I might work and meet with my man of business. Lady Joan came to invite me to the merriment in the kitchen, exactly as you did—more or less—and she lingered to inspect that portrait over the hearth.”

  Spathfoy turned his scowl onto the hapless laird twinkling over the fireplace.

  “Lady Joan says the painting is in need of cleaning,” Dante went on, “and she might undertake the project herself. If you doubt my facts, ask her to turn out her pockets, and you’ll find a quizzing glass among her effects.”

  Joan would find her temper, did Spathfoy ask her to turn out her pockets like some naughty chil
d, and she’d direct that temper at her infernal brother.

  “My apologies, Hartwell, but Joan is not in good spirits, and she might turn to an unlikely source of comfort. If you think my regard for her is overbearing, my father is positively backward when it comes to my sisters.”

  At least Spathfoy grasped that Joan was in need of comfort, though it had apparently escaped his lordship’s comprehension that a man with two motherless children knew plenty about offering solace to those afflicted with heartache.

  “Is your backward papa due on the next train?”

  Spathfoy was a big fellow of solid dimensions and strong features. Women would call him handsome, with his dark hair and green eyes. Men would say he had plenty of muscle, and Hector attributed significant wealth to him as well.

  And yet for a fleeting moment, Spathfoy had looked haunted.

  “Quinworth will be here tomorrow, with my other two sisters—and my mother. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll develop pressing business down in Aberdeen, and absent yourself for at least the next week.”

  His lordship followed Joan from the library, leaving Dante to wonder if that admonition was Spathfoy’s idea of a friendly warning—or a threat.

  ***

  Hale Flynn, Marquess of Quinworth, hated Christmas. He hated the foolishness of eating like a market hog when the weather was too foul to allow a man to regularly ride his acres. He hated the social deception of claiming to be glad to see people whose names he’d happily forgotten. He hated eggnog. He hated endless renditions of Handel, and this latest business of whacking down entire trees to dress them up like debutantes at an engagement ball…

  Sheer buffoonery.

  But he loved his marchioness, and if Deirdre, Lady Quinworth, wanted to spend the holidays draped in plaid and harassing their children, then Hale was pleased to oblige her.

  “Damned trains get smellier every year,” he remarked to his son. He handed Lady Quinworth down from the sleigh, and watched bemused as she nearly tackled Spathfoy into the snow.

  “Tiberius, you naughty boy! I was expecting to see you at the train station, and instead you send poor Balfour, who should not be away from his lady if it can possibly be helped. Where is my grandson, and, Quinworth, why are you standing about in this dreadful cold? Take me inside and do not think of disappearing into the game room until you’ve done the pretty for Lady Balfour.”