“I am in a sad case, horse, when I am comparing a lady, a duke’s daughter, a woman far above the touch of a common soldier, to my favorite breeding sow.”
Sonnet gave a lazy swish of a long black tail.
“You’re gelded.” Sir Joseph straightened and smoothed a hand down the animal’s shoulder. “You are spared untimely lapses into poetry as a result. I’m not ready to make the same trade—yet.”
Though watching Louisa Windham sit her horse, as winsome and pretty as the winter day itself, Sir Joseph had experienced a confluence of pleasure and pain as acute as any to befall him. She was so lovely, so unconsciously graceful and unaffected, and while simply beholding her was a pleasure, parting from her, and knowing he would always part from her, was the opposite of pleasure.
“Sorrow, perhaps.” He considered his nigh-somnolent horse. “A bit dramatic but not inaccurate.”
The horse did not argue, not while Sir Joseph removed the rest of the tack, not while he groomed the animal, and certainly not when he led the beast to a stall bedded with fluffy straw.
“I expect I will tarry here most of the day,” Sir Joseph said, slipping off Sonnet’s halter. “Gorge yourself on hay, have a nice lie down. My leg is telling me we’re in for snow, so say a prayer I can get my poetry-spouting self back to Town before the worst of it.”
Sir Joseph gave the horse one last behind-the-ear scratching, closed the stall door, and limped off to hang up the halter. It did not bode well when a man was complaining to a horse that he missed a pig.
Not well at all.
Sir Joseph was still pondering this unhappy state of affairs when he walked into the kitchen at the back of the big, three-story manor house in the Surrey countryside.
He’d tarried too long in the barn, and now it was mealtime. A dozen chairs scraped back; a dozen pairs of feet made a soft thunder on the plank flooring. A dozen high, happy voices were raised to the rafters.
“It’s Papa! Papa is here at last!”
Sir Joseph was swarmed with fierce embraces; with little fingers grabbing at him, at his clothes, at his hands; and with the good, wholesome scents of well-cared-for children: soap, starch, lavender, a breath of chocolaty warmth where little Ariadne clung to his neck.
He extricated himself carefully from all save Ariadne’s grasp—she being the youngest could also be the most tenacious—and tried not to compare the pleasures of citrus and clove to the satisfaction of seeing once again that his children were safe, happy, and well cared for.
Four
“We have some more names,” Eve whispered as Louisa pretended to look over a selection of silk handkerchiefs with elaborately embroidered borders. “Tonight after supper, we’ll regale you with them, and for once you’ll keep your nose out of your books, Lou, and pay attention.”
Paying attention to Eve and Jenny’s almighty list was proving difficult when Louisa kept hearing instead Wordsworth recited in Sir Joseph Carrington’s gravelly baritone. Not a grating voice, but a substantial, definitively masculine voice when engaged in the recitation of poetry. How would Sir Joseph deliver Blake?
“And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury…”
“Louisa.” Jenny spoke a trifle sternly. “For eleven more days you can at least pretend to take an interest in your own future.”
“Eleven days or two hundred sixty-four hours. Also approximately sixteen thousand minutes,” Louisa said absently, running her hand over a bright red silk offering with white snowflakes dancing around its edges. Fifteen thousand eight hundred forty minutes, to be exact.
“Put like that,” Jenny said, wrinkling her nose, “it does sound like an eternity.”
Nine hundred fifty thousand four hundred seconds sounded more like an eternity. Louisa’s gaze fell on another of the gift shop’s offerings, and for a moment, her heart sped up. The volume was the right size, and the leather was the right shade of red, but the little book sported a thin line of gold trim. When Louisa inspected the pages, she found them blank.
“A journal,” said a familiar baritone. “Though if I buy one for Fleur, then I must buy another for Amanda, and God forbid I should give Amanda one in a color favored by Fleur or conversely.”
Sir Joseph, ruddy cheeked and scowling, regarded the volume in Louisa’s hand. A sense of relief coursed through her at the sight of him, incongruous though he appeared in a crowded shop near Piccadilly.
“Good morning, Sir Joseph. Do I take it you’re searching for Christmas presents for your daughters?”
He ran an ungloved hand through his hair and glanced around warily. “I’ve left it too late. They’ve been good, both of them, within reason. Their governess thinks I spoil them, but they’re only children, and they try hard, like recruits new to their posts. A token at Christmas is appropriate, or several tokens, for encouragement. Then too, they will draw me pictures and write me verses, and one doesn’t want—Louisa Windham, are you laughing at me?”
She set aside the diary and slipped an arm through his rather than indulge in the absurd impulse to hug him in all his paternal exasperation. “You remind me of His Grace. When I was a girl, he made a cavalry expedition of even a family picnic. We’d mount up at his signal and trot along until he gave the command to charge. I had great fun trying to keep up with my brothers. Now tell me about your daughters.”
“They are…” He glanced around again. “Your sisters are motioning to you from the door.”
“Bother my sisters.” Louisa let Sir Joseph escort her to the door, where to her surprise, she found that Jenny and Eve had a sudden pressing need to nip over to Berkeley Square and drop in at Gunter’s, and nothing would do but Sir Joseph must join them.
He acquiesced like a man grateful for an excuse to abandon his shopping efforts, and yet, as luck—or a pair of meddling sisters—would have it, Eve and Jenny linked arms and sailed ahead, leaving Louisa to take Sir Joseph’s arm and bring up the rear, with the footman and the maid trailing along at a distance.
His limp didn’t slow him down, nor did he appear self-conscious about it. He steered Louisa through the throngs of shoppers, which parted for him as if he were Moses dispatching the Red Sea.
“It smells to me like snow,” Louisa murmured. The air had a crispness, a sense of tidings in the wind.
Sir Joseph glanced at her as they approach the slightly less crowded environs of Berkeley Square. “That is the scent of coal smoke, Louisa Windham. One is cautioned not to inhale it too deeply.”
He leaned nearer to open the door for her, his proximity bringing to Louisa’s nose a scent that was anything but coal smoke. Cedar and spice, redolent of Christmas and of… Sir Joseph. The fragrance was pleasant but also… comforting. His daughters would know him by that scent, just as Louisa knew her father’s bay rum.
And as yet more luck—or the same two sisters—would have it, Gunter’s was enjoying enough custom that no two tables were available side by side, such as would accommodate four patrons together. Eve and Jenny chose a spot near the window, leaving Louisa to take a corner table a few feet away with Joseph.
He seated Louisa with as much decorum as a bustling eatery would allow, then got settled across from her by virtue of bracing himself on the table and lowering himself by inches to the seat.
“It pains you,” Louisa observed, then regretted the words at the grimace they provoked.
“To be the object of pity pains me, but you were referring to my leg, weren’t you?”
While she cast around for something to say, Louisa had cause to mentally wonder at her sisters’ motives. Here she was, stranded for the duration in the company of an eligible if somewhat abrupt gentleman, and every notion of how to converse with him had deserted her.
“I did not mean to call attention again… that is… I wasn’t trying…” Louisa fell silent as heat climbed from her neck to her cheeks.
Sir Joseph smiled at her, an expression of breathtaking benevolence that rendered h
im not simply handsome but also… somehow dear.
“Spare yourself the apology, Louisa Windham. I limp, and I am happy to limp. Were it not for your brothers’ intervention, the field surgeon would have relieved me of a limb that was merely in want of stitches, the bone-setter, and rest. Now, shall we drop that unappetizing topic and take up the challenge of Christmas gifts for my daughters?”
“Yes, please. Tell me about Fleur and Amanda.”
As they devoured a pair of lavender ices and a plate of warm plum tarts, Louisa found herself entranced at her first discussion with a man not of her family about his offspring. Her brothers would speak of their children, Uncle Tony doted on his daughters, her father bragged on his progeny incessantly, but Sir Joseph fretted over these two very young ladies.
“They are already females,” he said as the waiter cleared the plates. “Almost from infancy, they had female minds and female ways. A fellow who has no sisters and little memory of his mother finds himself… daunted.”
Men in Louisa’s family did not speak of being daunted, not to her. “Daunted how?”
Sir Joseph’s brows twitched down. “Their little minds are at once devious and innocent. They can be obvious in their emotions and also unfathomable. They are passionate and reserved.” He left off tracing the grain of the table’s wood with his third finger and glanced up at Louisa. “They are already like you, my lady. They have that fascinating, unknowable quality.”
Fascinating? Unknowable? Heat that had nothing to do with embarrassment curled up from Louisa’s middle.
“His Grace used to call me his abacus.” This admission slipped out as Louisa noticed that Sir Joseph was smiling at her again. There was a wistful tenderness in his smile that made it difficult to draw a full breath.
“You are not an abacus, Louisa Windham. Any man with eyes can deduce that.”
He sounded wonderfully sure of his point.
“I am an abacus. I can do mathematics in my head.” That sounded like bragging, so Louisa tried again. “I can’t not do mathematics in my head, in fact. If you think of a problem involving numbers, it solves itself in my mind before I can write it down. I can write it down, but that takes longer than arriving at an answer by thinking about it.”
He cocked his head, his smile fading. “Were you accused of cheating?”
The question was insightful, also painful. Louisa nodded, while two yards away, Jenny and Eve broke into peals of laughter. “When our governess wanted to punish me, my sisters explained to Their Graces that I’d always been able to do math. My brother Victor staged a demonstration for them, and Papa took to calling me his abacus. I don’t think Her Grace approved of the name.”
She should not have said that last, though Louisa wasn’t sure why.
“He meant it as an endearment, Louisa,” Joseph said gently.
“I know.” Though it eased something to hear him confirm it. “Promise me you won’t refer to Fleur or Amanda as an abacus, though.”
“Perish the notion.” One more smile for her, and then he was reconnoitering, taking in Eve and Jenny’s table and the empty dishes thereon. “Shall I take you ladies home? Your guidance has been most helpful, and your sisters appear to be finished with their ices.”
Helpful. The notion was interesting. Not brilliant, not insightfully direct, not statuesque, not any of the backhanded compliments Louisa was accustomed to, but simply helpful.
“We can return by way of Regent Street,” Louisa said. “You’ll get more ideas by inspecting the shop windows.”
“This is a female tactic.” Sir Joseph rose awkwardly and seemed to test his balance for a moment. “You call it browsing the shop windows. Wellington called it reconnaissance.”
He helped Louisa to her feet and draped her cloak around her shoulders, smoothing the fabric in a brisk stroke of his palms over her shoulders. In the next moment, he was tying the frogs beneath her chin, as if she were…
His. His to look after, as he clearly looked after his daughters, his horse, his pigs. With Sir Joseph frowning as if the knot beneath Louisa’s chin must be done just so, she envied those pigs.
When he’d taken a step back and was treating Louisa to a visual inspection, she lifted her chin a half inch. “Will I do, Sir Joseph?”
“Put your gloves on, my lady. Your prophecy has come to pass.” He nodded in the direction of the windows then shrugged into his greatcoat.
“My prophecy?”
“It’s snowing, Louisa. If I were home, Fleur and Amanda would be clamoring at me to hitch up the sleigh.”
He sounded so homesick, Louisa felt her heart lurch. For him, for the daughters he was missing, and for herself. As long as the little red book was still at large in any quantity, an impromptu sweet with a man who did not see her as an abacus was as much a Christmas gift as Louisa could hope for.
***
As Joseph ushered Louisa to the door, Lady Eve and Lady Jenny begged a moment to greet an acquaintance. Fleur and Amanda were forever indulging in the same delay with their friends in the churchyard.
“Come along, Sir Joseph. If we keep moving, Eve and Jenny will eventually catch up. If we stand by all patience and good cheer, they’ll gossip forever.”
Louisa tucked her arm through his and gave him a smile that suggested they were conspirators of some sort, two united against the general ridiculousness of the season.
“You are willing to watch a grown man dither over dolls, spinning tops, and storybooks, then?”
“Better that than watching my sisters dither over Pamela Canterdink’s engagement ring.”
Well, of course. He considered navigating streets now both crowded and sporting an inch of snow. He and Louisa might not make very good time, but he was in no hurry to part from his companion.
A duke’s daughter was far above his touch, and that was a shame. Fleur and Amanda would adore having Louisa as stepmama.
After sharing this pedestrian little interlude with her, Joseph adored her. Adored her earnestness when she applied her imagination to what gifts Fleur and Amanda would enjoy most, adored the hint of vulnerability he’d seen when she revealed Moreland’s clumsy sobriquet for her.
Abacus, indeed. Proof positive that a lofty title did not give a man one jot of common sense.
“Joseph, just look!” Louisa paused as they gained the sidewalk, a purely happy smile curving her lips. “A snowfall like this makes everything clean and new. It gladdens the heart, especially right before Christmas.”
She had dropped the honorific, calling him simply “Joseph.” That gladdened the heart too, as did the sight of her, snowflakes catching on her lashes and brows, a smile lighting her eyes. Joseph tipped his face up and saw a sprig of mistletoe some wag had hung over a signboard. On the square, a seasonal street chorus launched into a jaunty version of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.”
And that gladdened his heart yet more.
Before common sense or some other overrated commodity could stop him, Joseph brushed his lips to Louisa’s cheek, treating himself to a goodly dose of cinnamon, cloves, and female warmth. “Happy Christmas, Louisa Windham.”
He stole that Christmas kiss for himself—he’d been an exceedingly good fellow in the previous year—though he expected at least a scolding for his troubles.
“Rascal.” Louisa ducked her face and led him off down the street, not the least daunted, bless her. “I’m out of practice. When my brothers were underfoot, no one was safe from their infernal kisses this time of year. They will soon be visiting and I can assure you by the New Year, you’ll have to be much quicker to catch me under the mistletoe.”
As scolds went, that one did nothing to quell a male flight of imagination fueled by Joseph’s moment of presumption.
“By New Year, my lady, the berries will all have been plucked, and the mistletoe will be cast aside.”
They shared a smile, one that put a lovely bow on a lovely unplanned outing, and on the lovely unexpected pleasure of spending time with a woman to whom
Joseph, were he not a mere knight, would gladly have offered more than a single holiday kiss.
***
Esther, Duchess of Moreland, poured a steaming cup for her spouse.
“We’re having chocolate this late in the day?” His Grace asked. “Not that I’m complaining, of course.”
“You bear up heroically for the occasional spot of tea, Percival, but it’s a beastly day out, and I need the benefit of your thoughts on something.”
“Hence the chocolate cakes.” He did not help himself to any, though as a younger husband, he would have been inhaling them at a great rate, manners be damned.
“And the sandwiches and grapes,” Esther added. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He was smiling at her, a gentle, indulgent smile that even after thirty years of marriage, still made Esther’s insides flutter agreeably.
“You are intriguing, my dear, in both senses. You intrigue me, and you are getting up to some intrigue. What is all this sweetness and flattery about? It must be something very wicked if you’re taking such pains with it.”
“Not wicked. Why aren’t you off whispering in Prinny’s ear today?”
“Prinny is adept at several things,” His Grace replied. He accepted his cup of chocolate and took a sip. “He spends money like a young man with his first pretty mistress—begging your pardon for the analogy, my dear—he indulges his crapulous tendencies like an entire regiment on leave, and he hides a great deal more shrewdness than most give him credit for.”
“Which does not answer the question.” She put several sandwiches on a plate, as well as a cluster of grapes. “Are you avoiding him?”
“Not a’tall. I’m to see him tomorrow, during which interview I will neither lecture him nor exhort him, nor even rebuke him for all the money he wastes on his infernal pavilions and chefs and art collections. I will not hint at the disgrace that the royal exchequer—what?”
“Pity the man, Percy. He has no son like our Westhaven to set his finances to rights. His daughter and his grandchild are lost to him, his marriage is a national sorrow, and his crown is not even his own. In the ways that count, he has no wealth of any significance.”
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