“Come along, Lady Margaret. His lordship will think he has only me to deal with, and he will shortly excuse himself. He won’t beat such a rude retreat if you are here to keep him on his manners.”
Oh gracious. Lord Marcus was in there, and Meg must face him.
She summoned a smile and discarded it. Not for him, the brisk, pleasant, false expressions she used on customers. This man had heard her troubles, offered to take up arms on her behalf, and kissed her good night—after asking her permission. That kiss probably meant nothing to him, but to Meg, the memory was precious.
“Good morning, my lord.” She curtseyed.
He rose and bowed. “Ladies, good day. I trust you both slept well?”
Aunt took up a plate and lifted the lid of a warming tray on the sideboard. “Old people do not sleep well, I’ll have you know. We doze, we drift, we toss and turn and wake up tired, which explains half of our surly mood. The other half is explained by the world we wake up to. Your cook knows precisely how to treat a strip of bacon, bless the woman.”
Lord Marcus stayed on his feet. Meg remained standing near the door. Aunt helped herself to an enormous portion of bacon, and the moment became exactly what Meg had dreaded—awkward.
“But did you sleep well, Lady Margaret?”
What was he asking? “I did, my lord. I was dreaming before my head hit the pillow.”
He fetched a plate from the warmer and gestured for her to join him at the sideboard. “One hopes your dreams were as pleasant as my own. Would you care for some eggs?”
Meg cared simply to stand near him, which was ridiculous. Had he, too, dreamed of that kiss? “Please, and don’t be too sparing. Eggs and buttered toast have seen me through many a long day.”
“Huh.” Aunt took the place to the right of the head of the table. “That’s not enough to keep a Christmas elf on his mettle. Offer the woman some meat, Marcus.”
He offered Meg a smile, a slight curving of his mouth, accompanied by a subtle light dancing in his eyes. “You refuse Aunt’s direction at your peril, Lady Margaret. The ham is quite good.”
“He means,” Aunt Penny said, pouring herself a cup of tea, “you should leave the bacon for me. I will assist you today in the decorating, and I need my full energies.”
“One shudders to contemplate such an eventuality,” Lord Marcus said, spearing two thick slices of ham onto Meg’s plate, “if your present demeanor is an example of your diminished energies.”
“And this,” Aunt said, gesturing with her fork, “is the man as he rises after a full night of pleasant dreams. One shudders, and all that. Heavens above, I do adore bacon.”
Meg took her plate from his lordship and indulged in the silliness of allowing her fingers to brush his. He seated her with all proper dignity, but as he bent to give the chair one last push, his lips ended up near Meg’s ear.
“Minx.” The word was barely whispered, but Meg felt the brush of warmth against her neck.
This would not do, it would not do at all, though Meg would leave Lord Marcus’s household at the end of the day, so where was the harm in a little breakfast flirtation?
“Marcus, you will not allow Elizabeth to interrupt the proceedings here,” Aunt said. “She will be overcome with curiosity, but then, the whole open house was her idea.”
Meg took a bite of fluffy, perfectly salted eggs and had a nibble of the best ham she could recall tasting in ages. The day would be busy, but she’d at least face it on a full stomach.
“What open house?” his lordship asked, taking his seat at the head of the table. “I am decorating this abode in preparation for the arrival of my nieces. They deserve some holiday cheer, and it is my privilege to provide it.”
He poured Meg a cup of fragrant black tea and put a honey jar and a pitcher of cream—not milk, cream—at her elbow.
She allowed herself to enjoy the precious sense of budding intimacy that these little courtesies created. Lord Marcus was to appearances being a proper host, but Meg had kissed him. She knew the warmth of his touch, the passion lurking immediately beneath his veneer of self-discipline and detachment.
Of all the holiday surprises… Meg was powerfully attracted to her host, though, of course, nothing could come of it. She was simply grateful that a time of year she had learned to dread had instead brought her unexpected pleasure.
“Perhaps my lady prefers sugar to honey?” his lordship asked. “We have our own honey brought up from Sussex, though not everybody finds the flavor agreeable in tea.”
“The honey is wonderful.” Meg took up her knife and fork lest she descend into simpering glances and fatuous smiles.
“So you’re to call on Eliza today?” Aunt Penny said, biting off the end of a piece of bacon. “Spike her guns all you please, but she will have her open house.”
Lord Marcus finished his tea and poured himself another half a cup. “Is Eliza planning an open house? Mr. Hennepin will have something to say about that. Feeding a throng of hungry guests will cost a pretty penny, and if Eliza is making up the guest list, it will be a throng of biblical proportions.”
Aunt reached for the teapot. “She is making up the guest list, but you will be hosting the event. She’s probably waiting until the children are underfoot to spring it on you. Wants the place all decorated and the invitations sent out, I’m sure.”
The good humor in his lordship’s eyes was replaced by his usual wintry sternness. “Make no mistake, Aunt, I am not having my household turned upside down, my peace invaded by strangers, and my larders stripped for my sister’s convenience. Her own domicile is perfectly commodious, and the children will require calm and quiet as they settle in.”
Aunt set down the teapot, and Meg passed her the honey and cream.
“Marcus, my dear boy, you are reasonably intelligent, considering the limitations of your gender, but Eliza is determined to see you married off. The children are but a prop she feels will increase your appeal to her various friends and their daughters. She intends that you host a holiday open house in two weeks, and the purpose will be for her to choose the young lady to whom you will offer a holiday proposal.” Aunt poured half the cream pitcher into her tea cup. “I do so enjoy a little pampering every now and then. I should come visit you more often.”
Before Meg could choke on her buttered toast, Lord Marcus was on his feet. “Lady Margaret, the staff is prepared to obey your every wish and whim. Aunt Penny, you might have warned me sooner. I bid you both good day. I am off to threaten my sister with a permanent estrangement.”
He left at a brisk march as Aunt Penny stirred her tea. “You see the thanks I get. If Marcus hadn’t galloped off to parlay with his sister, I could have informed him that the only truly suitable name on Eliza’s guest list belongs to Miss Davina Andrews-Clapshot. Easy on the eye, beauteous settlements, nobody’s fool, and possessed of a very determined mother. Eat your ham, my lady. We have a busy day ahead, and you must look your best when Eliza comes to survey the battlefield.”
Meg took a small bite of ham, though her pleasure in the meal had fled. She’d been getting ideas about Lord Marcus, foolish, hopeless ideas. His family was picking out a fiancée for him, and whoever that lucky woman was, she would not be a disgraced widow of limited means.
Chapter Five
“Eliza, you go too far. Again.” Marcus stalked up to his sister, who was leafing through music as she sat on the piano bench. “You all but saw me compromised with the Clevinger heiress, you tried to talk me into a literary liaison with Lady Antonia Mainwaring. Now you manipulate a pair of grieving children for the sake of your schemes.”
Her ladyship set a sheet of music on the piano’s music rack and placed her hands on the keyboard as if Marcus hadn’t spoken. She made a very pretty picture at the keyboard, and she knew it. Her playing was only passable, but her performing was first-rate.
Marcus closed the cover over the keys, forcing Eliza to snatch her hands away. “You think because I don’t shout and hurl porcelain as yo
u do that my temper remains in check. That I am merely annoyed, rather than furious. I am both, and more to the point, sister mine, I am disappointed in you.”
Eliza let out a histrionic sigh. “You needn’t shout. I am only trying to help.”
He leaned closer. “I am not shouting. When need be, I can make myself heard over the din of five thousand men-at-arms engaged in mortal combat. The task before me is to make myself understood by one stubborn, selfish female.”
Next came… Yes, there it was, the protruding lower lip, not to be confused with the quivering lip, a display reserved for moments of dire frustration.
“I aid you in a task you are unable to satisfactorily complete on your own,” she said, “and you rail at me and hurl accusations. If anybody should be disappointed here, I should be.”
How gently Eliza chided, how becomingly she blinked at him, the epitome of the damsel bewildered by male dunderheadedness. Lady Margaret had come face-to-face with much worse than male dunderheadedness, and she wasn’t carrying on like an aging schoolgirl.
“Very likely, you are disappointed,” Marcus said, “in your latest batch of hats or your dearest friend’s inability to partner you profitably at whist. If we’re to be very honest, you might be disappointed in Hennepin’s behavior as a spouse. That is none of my affair, just as my choice of wife—or my choice whether to take a wife—is none of yours.”
She scooted past him and rose, doubtless because the program had reached the pacing-and-muttering portion.
“I despair of you, Marcus, truly I do. You intimate that you might not marry, but we both know you must. Papa is nearly in a decline, while you refuse to take the one step that might revive his spirits. And yet, you call me selfish. Never has a sister been as vexed by her only sibling. Tell me about Lady Margaret.”
That abrupt change of subject was supposed to deflect Marcus from the stated agenda of chastising his sister. Elizabeth tossed out such commands in conversations she couldn’t otherwise control. Fetch my shawl from the library, Marcus, was the imperative of last resort, but Marcus wasn’t indulging her tactics on this occasion.
“Elizabeth, I will some sad day become the head of the Bannerfield family. We are a lamentably small tribe, and any offspring you have will need every ounce of my consequence, particularly if Hennepin doesn’t rein in your proclivity for shopping. I will recall then how frequently and vexatiously you interfered in my personal business. I will have a list at hand of every occasion on which you publicly embarrassed me or tried to manipulate me—a long list. You either cancel this damned open house, or I will tell Hennepin exactly how much I spent this year to cover your gambling debts.”
The pacing stopped. “That is a low blow, Marcus. I put my trust in you, rely on your discretion as a gentleman and my only surviving brother, and you threaten me with exposure because I am trying to save Papa’s life. He needs to know the succession is secure, needs to know that you will not fail in your duty to the title. I am subtly—only subtly—making that task easier for you, and you come here pitching a tantrum like some spoiled schoolboy. I am very tempted to wash my hands of you. I truly am.”
Marcus bowed to her. “I commend your selfless devotion to creating drama and meddling in other people’s lives, Eliza, but I am not hosting an open house so you can parade me before the matchmakers yet again.”
She fisted her hands against her skirts and raised her gaze heavenward, St. Joan contemplating her martyrdom.
“That is the very point, Marcus. I have tried and tried. You stood up with only the most staid of the wallflowers all last Season. For the little Season, you partnered only dowagers or widows at cards and drove out only with sisters in pairs or threes. You will soon be seen as a confirmed bachelor, and all of Society will blame me for your unmarried state.”
He was supposed to relent soon, to give Eliza credit for having a scintilla of sense to her arguments. From there, he’d unbend enough to grant that a small portion of her motivation for disregarding his stated wishes might be concern for Papa, or even—when the handkerchief of doom came out—concern for Marcus himself.
Alas for Elizabeth, Marcus had met a woman who was entitled to cry, rant, stomp, and throw vases. Lady Margaret had been served one bad turn after another, and her response was to put pride aside and deck the damned halls.
“You need a charitable project,” Marcus said. “You need to come face-to-face with women who haven’t one good pair of shoes, much less the dozens you hoard for no reason. Find some means of entertaining yourself that doesn’t burden others, Eliza. You are bright, you have connections, you could make a difference. Instead, you choose to pester me with your matchmaking. Have done, or you will wish you had. Good day.”
He left the room without offering her another bow, and that bothered him—a little. That he’d put her in her place and refused to let her little drama paint him into yet another corner felt wonderful.
“Marcus, wait.” Elizabeth hurried up the corridor and latched on to his arm. “Don’t let’s quarrel, please.”
Now she wanted to make peace? “We are not quarreling. You are canceling the open house you have attempted to foist onto my exchequer and my residence. Badly done, Eliza, and if Aunt Penny hadn’t put me wise to your schemes, then I would be raising my voice.”
Eliza glanced up and down the corridor, then stepped closer. “The invitations have gone out. I cannot cancel this affair, Marcus. I know it was bad of me, but I am worried for Papa.”
She looked genuinely contrite, which was a complete sham.
“You can send out word the affair has been canceled, or better still, moved to your own residence. Hennepin can host it with you. He’s your husband, after all.” To his credit, Hennepin never had a word to say against his wife and regarded Eliza with a sort of exasperated affection.
“He’s being difficult, Henny is.” Elizabeth glanced around again. “He’s cut me off, Marcus, until the first of the year. He gave me an annual budget, you see, and my head for numbers isn’t the best. I had to ask for a bit more… in March.” She smoothed her hand down Marcus’s sleeve. “And June, and September. I am in disgrace as a wife and as a hostess. My friends invite me to their affairs, but I cannot afford to return their hospitality.”
This tale might very well be a tissue of misrepresentations, or it might be all too true.
“Elizabeth, your grasp of mathematics is quite sound. You overspend because it annoys Hennepin, who has done nothing to deserve that aggravation.”
“He’s always busy. Always, Marcus.”
Marcus had theories about why Hennepin was so busy, but he also aspired to live to see his thirty-fourth birthday, so he kept those theories to himself.
“I will speak with him.”
Elizabeth straightened. “Don’t you dare. He is my husband, and I will deal with him. I apologize about the open house, Marcus. I thought you’d be pleased. You have no hostess, and I don’t like to think of you alone for the Yuletide season.”
He almost believed her. “Have you truly sent out the invitations?”
Her lower lip quivered.
“Elizabeth?”
“No.”
Marcus was unmoved by neither her contrite expression, nor by the worry she affected in her smile. Eliza deserved to suffer the consequences of her mendacity and manipulation.
And yet, Lady Mistletoe’s handiwork should be displayed. All of Mayfair—all of London—should see what Lady Margaret Entwhistle could do with some time, ingenuity, and coin. She deserved to pick and choose among her customers, to charge whatever she pleased for her time and talents.
London’s best tailors, cobblers, and modistes were thronged with custom. Its best holiday decorator should be too. Well-born women owned banks, steel mills, chain-making enterprises, shipping ventures… Why not a decorating service?
“Heed me, Eliza,” Marcus said, shrugging into his coat. “I will open my home to visitors two weeks hence between the hours of three and six of the clock. The gues
ts will find a buffet in the gallery, and the music will consist of a small holiday chorus in the library. Invite no more than one hundred people, at least half of them elderly, widowed, far from home, or new to London. I will ask Papa to come. You will handle the invitations.”
Her brows drew down, but her infernal lip ceased quivering. “I will have to revise all of the invitations.”
“Ask Hennepin to help you. Hang a perishing kissing bough in your private parlor. Order a bottle of good brandy, build up the fire, and tell the staff you don’t wish to be disturbed for the duration of the evening. I’m sure Hennepin will come to your aid if you ask him directly and cease your damned scheming.”
Marcus bowed over her hand and left her standing, her mouth slightly agape, in her own foyer.
Margaret quit the breakfast parlor, starting her day with a full tummy and an aching heart. One kiss did not an infatuation create, but a kiss, a patient listening ear, an unhesitating willingness to take on orphaned nieces, a subtle sense of humor… They created a memorable impression.
Meg was not smitten with Lord Marcus, but she had noticed a man in a good way for the first time in ages. She told herself that was an unlooked-for boon, a small reason to take heart, and threw herself into decorating his lordship’s foyer as it had never been decorated before.
“The young gents have the outdoor greenery about half put together,” Daisy said. “The young ladies have a dozen oranges completed, and we’re halfway done twining the ribbon on the bannisters.”
They were on schedule, in other words, but that wasn’t the point of Daisy’s report. “Then it’s time for our morning break,” Meg said.
Daisy took up a bosun’s whistle dangling from a string around her neck and gave a shrill, two-pitched tweet that cut through the tapping of hammers from outside and the chatter of the girls working at a makeshift table across the foyer.
Charlotte’s face appeared over the bannister. “Is that all hands on deck?”
“Indeed it is,” Margaret said. “Stop what you’re doing and report for orders.”
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