But how to go on?
Sir, would you please impale me on your hedgehog? “Have you decided what to give your children for Christmas?”
“Those two are easy. Charlene is happy with anything—storybooks, hair ribbons, dolls. Phillip is a mechanical sort—he can spend an hour with a spinning top—and he likes his books too.”
Joan’s parents wouldn’t have had such ready answers about their children. “What would you like?” She’d asked him this before, and his answer had been a lot of flattery and indirection.
“Margs will knit me a scarf. Hector will find me a good bottle of whiskey. The women at the mills send a basket of jams and such.”
He had employees, not only family. Did Edward Valmonte’s seamstresses and cutters send him a basket of jams for the holidays? Joan scooted a foot or so closer to her husband’s side of the bed.
“Do you find presents for the children yourself, or leave it to Margaret?”
Or would he pass that responsibility on to Joan? She hoped he would, and might even ask him to. Good heavens, what was she to give him for Christmas?
He shifted, such that when Joan stretched out her chilly foot, she encountered his calf. His bare, warm, hairy calf, because her husband slept without the benefit—or hindrance—of clothing.
“I find my own gifts for the children—a papa’s prerogative to put some sort of imprimatur on the holidays. Margaret and Hector deal with the employees’ Christmas baskets.”
He shifted up onto his side, facing Joan. “What shall I get you for Christmas, Mrs. Hartwell?”
“You’ve given me your very name. That’s gift enough.” Also his trust, his respect, his kisses…so many treasures, and all of them as undeserved as they were precious.
He rolled to his back again, suggesting she’d provided the wrong answer.
“I don’t want your gratitude, Joan. Loyalty, fidelity, and a good-faith effort to make something of this marriage will be a fine bargain on both of our parts. The marriage is as much opportunity for me as it is convenient for you.”
Joan did not want a fine bargain, but she did want the warmth her husband’s body gave off. She yielded to the craving and snuggled right up to his side. His arms came around her, as if they’d spent many nights visiting their way to shared sleep.
“I kept my nightgown on.”
“I know, lass. I’ll forgive you that modesty if you kiss me.”
She kissed him, and the contour of his lips told her he was smiling. “You should kiss me too, sir. My feet are cold.”
“You need your husband to warm them up?”
She needed her husband in so many ways. When Dante kissed her, when he held her and spoke of loyalty and fidelity, then nasty notes and misplaced sketches seemed far away and insignificant.
“Shall I take off my nightgown?” She didn’t want to, but Dante was naked, and the intimacies she’d tried hard not to dwell on were commencing.
“You feel safer with it on,” he said, shifting to blanket her with his body. “I’ll try not to tear it.”
Gracious. “I can stitch it back together if you do.”
He nuzzled her ear, sending a shivery feeling down Joan’s spine. “Kiss me some more, Mrs. Hartwell.”
He’d been calling her that since they’d shut out the rest of the world nearly an hour ago, but his voice had taken on a rasp, and her new name had become an endearment.
Also a dare.
She threaded one hand in his hair and used the other to cradle his jaw, the better to know exactly where to resume kissing him.
“You shaved again.” He’d also used his tooth powder, bless him. This detail reassured Joan, as a memory of Edward’s wine-soured breath tried to intrude.
Dante rubbed his cheek against Joan’s in answer. The movement rubbed his chest against Joan’s too.
“I love silk,” Joan said, kissing his smooth jaw. “I think I’ll love it even more by morning.” Because silk turned every touch—even a touch of chest to breasts—into a caress. Did all married women know that?
Did married men know that?
He resumed kissing her, and his tongue came calling, politely at first, then more boldly, until Joan caught on and paid a few calls of her own.
“Your nightgown, woman—”
He tried to lift her hem, but it was trapped under her hips. Joan raised her hips and encountered…her husband.
“Careful,” he whispered, right near her ear. “Your kisses have inspired me.”
He was hard, ready, and naked, while Joan…worked her hem up, not quite to her waist. “I like kissing you too.”
In fact, she liked him. Liked that he could tell her he wanted no dirty looks between them in the morning—a modest, honest ambition she could share and fulfill. She wasn’t so keen on his hand covering her breast through the silk of her nightgown, for Edward had touched her thus—groped at her—and it had been purely unpleasant.
“Don’t go shy on me,” he whispered, scraping a fingernail over Joan’s nipple. “Tell me if you like that.”
“Do it again.” The sensation was…unnerving. Agitating but pleasurable, not the rough squeezing she’d been subjected to by the viscount. “I’m not sure. It’s different.” Inspiration struck, and Joan reached between their bodies. “Maybe it feels like when I do this?”
She brushed her thumb over the smooth head of his cock. He retaliated with a similar caress to her nipple. For a few minutes, under the covers, in the warmth and darkness, they experimented with a call and response of caresses, until Joan was panting beneath her husband, and battling an urge to…squirm.
“If you keep that up, Mrs. Hartwell, I’ll spend, and we’ll have to start all over.”
Was he complaining? “Is that bad?”
He laughed—or possibly groaned. “Spread your legs, love, and leave off teasing a newly married man.”
This made sense, that instead of his legs braced outside of hers, he should be between her legs, and yet, the position was unbearably marital.
“We’re about to consummate our vows, aren’t we?”
“Aye, as long as you’re willing.”
Something blunt and warm nudged at Joan’s privy parts. The sensation was novel, and neither pleasurable nor painful.
“Hold still a wee bit while I get my bear—there.” A forward maneuver, and that blunt warmth began insinuating itself into Joan’s body. “You’re wet, God be thanked.”
“Am I supposed to be?” She thought perhaps she was, because having established her wetness, her husband seemed to gather a sense of purpose.
“I love that you’re wet,” he said, kissing her cheek. “And you’re luscious and hot and wonderful too.” More kisses, to her jaw, her ear. Gentle, beguiling kisses to go with a careful joining of their bodies.
His compliments were curious, and accompanied by the peculiar sensation of a male body entangled with Joan’s in the coital act. She wanted to ask him if she should do something—kiss him back perhaps? But they’d already kissed for some time—and interrupting her husband as he sought to consummate their union didn’t seem quite the done thing.
Hold still, he’d said.
The bed bounced rhythmically, distractingly. Dante’s breathing became labored, Joan’s nightgown bunched up between their bodies, and the temptation to squirm nigh overwhelmed her self-restraint.
“A bit more,” her husband rasped. “Almost… Ah, blessed, holy…God.”
She held still as he thrashed and thrust, until like a locomotive, he decelerated, moving more and more slowly until he came to rest against her.
That was it then. They were married, and though Joan felt a sense of disappointment that was somehow physical, and her feet were still not warm, she was also left with a puzzle.
If she’d undertaken this behavior with Edward Valmonte, she could not recall it, not in any detail of sight, sound, scent, or sensation. Kisses, yes, some rough handling of her breasts, and then Edward’s weight—insubstantial compared to Mr. Hartwell’s—but nothing
more intimate than that.
Another reason to thank God.
Joan kissed her husband’s temple and brushed a hand through his hair, grateful beyond measure that, despite her disappointment and cold feet, her only memories of this intimacy would be with her very own Mr. Hartwell.
Thirteen
Worse than dirty looks from a new wife were no looks at all, and the sinking conviction that dirty looks were deserved. A man on his second wedding night should have at least pleasured his bride.
Fortunately, Joan did not seem aware of her husband’s poor showing, while Dante could focus on little else.
“Do you favor coffee, tea, or chocolate?” Dante asked, though sitting across from him at the small breakfast table, Joan was entirely capable of pouring her own drink, and looking elegant while she did. He simply wanted to know her preferences.
“Chocolate, I think, to celebrate our first morning as man and wife.” Her smile was a crumb, tossed his direction as she turned the pages of the Aberdeen newspaper. Hector didn’t read the paper with that much focus. Dante himself—
She studied the page as if it were holy writ, or as if she indeed sensed that her one and only wedding night had been less than she deserved.
“They used your word: demure. They say my dress was a demure, elegant concoction in a shade between celadon and jade, with tastefully understated lace adornment suited to the solemn joy of the occasion.”
His lovemaking hadn’t put a smile like that on her face—yet. He vowed that one day soon—one night very soon—it would.
“Your chocolate, madam. I gather you’re pleased with the account of the wedding?”
“I’m pleased with the account of the dress my sisters and I made for the wedding.”
Dante wasn’t pleased, though the dress, the wedding, and the bride had been lovely. His sole consolation lay in the realization that the wedding night had attained the goal of confusing the paternity of any child Joan might bear nine months hence.
He nonetheless battled a compulsion to take Joan by the hand and drag her back to bed, so he might acquit himself well enough to put that smile on her face in the next twenty minutes. The wedding night had been a success from a pragmatic perspective, and only from a pragmatic perspective, but as a lover, he’d finished the race well behind a dress.
At least he’d finished. With Rowena…
He snipped that thought off like a loose thread that could unravel an entire seam, even as he admitted that such memories had contributed to his lack of deliberation with Joan the previous night.
“What will you do now, with your demure, elegant, tastefully understated…dress?”
She stirred her chocolate, much as a general might have stirred chocolate while looking over his battle maps.
“I will add more lace, perhaps a lavender lace fichu, a stripe of purple embroidery about the hem, bodice, and cuffs.” The chocolate was set aside, while eggs and toast grew cold on Joan’s plate.
“You’ll fuss it up,” Dante said, taking a bite of his eggs. “Is that your mother’s influence?”
And could he order Hector to develop some reports on ladies’ fashions? Because apparently, the topic would figure prominently in marital conversations. Perhaps he should have spoken to his wife of silk and nacre in bed?
“My mother?”
Dante put a bite of egg on a corner of toast and passed it to his wife, whose figure, he had occasion to know, had little need for her corsets.
“You said your mama likes to dress loudly, too much flounce and whatnot. You looked lovely yesterday, and I know every person with eyes in that church envied me my bride.”
Joan clearly wanted to argue—not to the point of dirty looks—but she instead took the toast.
“Thank you. I felt pretty, though my wedding dress isn’t my lucky dress.”
The first time he’d shared breakfast with Rowena, she’d given him a list of rules she had wanted enforced in the mills, half of which had been damned silly. The list had been a test—would Dante prove himself a fool by enforcing the rules they both knew were silly, or would he prove himself a fool by battling his wife over silly rules?
They had been so young, so unsure of themselves, and so unable to trust each other’s support. He felt a stab of compassion for his immature, furious first wife—and for her husband.
Dante knew better now—or hoped he did. “What is a lucky dress? Should I be searching for a lucky kilt?”
Though he suspected he’d been wearing his lucky kilt yesterday, wedding night disappointments notwithstanding.
“It’s that dress,” Joan said, sitting back, eggs, toast, chocolate, quite possibly husband, and even her unimpressive wedding night forgotten. “That dress you put on, and you feel like the smartest, most lovely, beneficent woman in the world. You feel like your best self, and like you want to share that best self with all of creation. A lucky dress is comfortable, too, though, and it need not even be all that showy. It’s your lucky dress.”
“Can a woman have a lucky dressing gown? The one you’re wearing is fetching.”
And held together with nothing but a sash, or pair of sashes, inside and out.
“I love that you tease me,” Joan said, tucking into her eggs with a hint of a smile. “Friends tease each other.”
“Spouses do too.” Had she recognized the sexual innuendo? Her smile held a fortifying hint of mischief. “Would you please pass the butter, and what do you mean, the dress makes you feel beneficent?”
He asked, because a marquess’s daughter might have a different view of spending money than a mill owner’s wife. Joan’s pin money was spelled out in the settlements, and wasn’t much more than Dante set aside regularly for Margs.
“Beneficent to me is sweet, openhearted, in love with the world,” Joan said, passing him the butter. “Generous of spirit.”
Like a woman should feel after her husband had shown her a proper wedding night.
“You’ll not be making one of these lucky dresses for Margs, then. She can nigh bankrupt me with the Christmas baskets she gives out to the workers each year.”
Dante had yet to have his annual argument with Dear Margs on this topic, though it was imperative that expenses be kept to a minimum this year more than ever.
“You do Christmas baskets.” Joan’s look was the farthest thing from dirty—she approved of the Christmas baskets, God help him. “Do you hand them out yourself on Boxing Day?”
“I hand them out with Margs, because she insists that Hard-Hearted Hartwell be seen committing at least one act of wanton generosity. When we send the workers home on Christmas Eve, we send them home with the baskets.”
Joan set aside the next bite of eggs and toast her doting husband had so generously provided her.
“You expect people to work on Christmas Eve?”
Dante spread butter on his scone—something a doting wife might have done for him.
“They expect to be paid; I expect them to work. It’s a quaint system, but has a certain pleasing symmetry. Will you finish those eggs?”
She considered her remaining eggs, she considered her chocolate, and then she considered her husband, and still she didn’t give him a dirty look.
She gave him a pitying look.
“The holidays are an occasion to celebrate, Dante. People need times to celebrate, to gather with family and express their thanks for the good things in life. Especially when winter closes in, so cold and dark, we need Christmas to cheer us.”
He was a papa. He didn’t need anybody to explain Christmas to him. Christmas was about storybooks and spinning tops for the children, mistletoe for the maids and footmen.
A free ham for the workers, rum punch, that sort of thing.
“We need coin to pay our rents,” he said. “While we’re sitting on our backsides, singing carols and swilling wassail, those rents go unpaid.” On that point, he’d never taken issue with Rowena. “Besides, Christmas is more English than Scottish. We Scots focus on the future, on t
he New Year, and the opportunities it brings.”
“So you give your workers New Year’s Day off?”
Now his eggs had gone cold, but he finished them anyway. A new husband needed to keep up his strength, for marriage encompassed many nights when a wife might need her spouse’s warmth.
“We relax our vigilance about tardiness on Boxing Day and New Year’s, and we close ninety minutes early on Christmas Eve. Any day my people work and the other mills are silent is a day when I’m making profit and the others aren’t. That profit is what keeps the mills safe, and puts the Christmas hams in those baskets.”
He was happy to explain business to his wife. Joan was a smart, sensible woman, and fifty years discussing ladies’ fashions would be a trial to any husband.
“But if the other mills are silent on Christmas Eve and New Year’s, then you wouldn’t be falling behind them by giving your workers a holiday.”
“Suppose not. Might you pass me the paper?”
“Maybe we English need Christmas more than you Scots do, but Christmas is still important to the Scots.”
Christmas pudding was important to them, witness all that nonsense in Balfour’s kitchen over the damned pudding. Dante didn’t reach for the paper though, because he had a sense his new wife was about to deliver her version of a dirty look.
Over his business practices—an oddly cheering thought. They had years to learn each other’s preferences at the breakfast table and in bed, after all.
“I’m willing to concede that Christmas has its uses,” he said, “else I would not be attending Balfour’s holiday house party. Then too, the Yuletide festivities brought you to me, for which I must esteem them greatly.”
He assayed a smile and got nowhere with it. Perhaps Lady Joan could accept only compliments to her clothing.
“Dante, please give the workers Christmas Eve and Boxing Day off. Families need to be together at Christmas, and the ladies will work all the more happily in anticipation of your generosity.”
Not a dirty look, not a pitying look, but a hopeful look.
“They’ll miss two days’ pay, Joan. Some of them will miss it terribly.”
What A Lady Needs For Christmas Page 21