His Grace had eaten all but two cakes, and those he decided to leave on the plate lest Her Grace be distracted by his lack of restraint. “What did you see, my love?”
“You will think I should have disclosed this sooner, Percy, but I attached little significance to it at the time.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like the last of the cakes, Esther?”
“How can you think of—please eat them, Percival. The servants will just argue over them otherwise.”
The duke popped both cakes into his mouth. They tasted particularly fine, given that his lady had ordered him to consume them.
“Percival, I saw Louisa kiss Sir Joseph.”
“You saw—? Good God!” Before His Grace was done sputtering and coughing, Her Grace had delivered several stout whacks to the ducal back. “You saw Louisa kiss Sir Joseph? I may be getting old, my dear, but as best I recall from my youth, the thing is usually managed the other way around. The swain kisses the damsel.”
She gave him an arch look “Not always.”
Well. Various memories of their long-ago courtship crowded out the immediate consternation of a papa who could see his daughter—who had seen his daughter—initiating such an impropriety.
“Esther, you are a naughty duchess. I love this about you, but what does one kiss days ago have to do with the present difficulties?”
“I saw her face, Percy. She meant to buss his cheek, I think, and yet the kiss turned into something else entirely. Sir Joseph did not take advantage, mind you. He captured and held her attention, though. I think he surprised her, and she’s been considering that surprise ever since.”
“For all he raises swine, Sir Joseph is a damned decent fellow. Louisa could do much worse. I’ve mentioned him to the Regent now that another honors list is in the offing.”
Her Grace was quiet for a moment. There being no tea cakes left, His Grace contented himself with the pleasure of sharing an embrace and yet another parental challenge with his beloved duchess—either of which trumped tea cakes handily.
“So that’s Sir Joseph’s contingency plan? He’ll offer for Louisa himself?”
“He won’t expect her to accept. He’s thinking it will be a temporary engagement, but I have my doubts.”
Another silence, while His Grace enjoyed for once making the dear lady exercise some patience of her own.
“Percival, what aren’t you saying?”
“That kiss you saw, between Louisa and Joseph?”
“They had just danced a lovely waltz on a quiet terrace. I caught the end of the dance from a second-floor balcony where I’d gone for a moment of solitude.”
“And I was across the terrace, having a private moment at the French doors of the gallery. I saw just a few bars of the dance, but, Esther? Do you recall the ballroom at Heathgate’s town house?”
“It has an entire wall of mirrors. Ostentatious, but I take your point. Louisa and Joseph look much like ourselves when they’re dancing with each other. I don’t think Louisa realizes the potential of the situation.”
“From where I stood, I could see Carrington’s expression, Esther. Smitten, besotted, head over ears, call it what you will. Louisa might not entirely understand what’s afoot, but Sir Joseph does. He looked like a man who’d awoken on Christmas morning to find his every wish come true.”
“Then we must trust not only that he sees what’s in the balance, but that he has the courage and skill to seize it.”
“Just so, my love.”
His Grace placed a kiss on his duchess’s temple and sent a silent request to the Almighty that if courage and skill didn’t sort the young people out, then the more reliable commodities of blind lust, some well-placed mistletoe, and a goodly quantity of holiday libation might see them put to rights.
***
Joseph tried to resort to the instincts that had saved his life more than once in Spain—the detached, analytical mental functions that took no notice of the simmering arousal caused by the simple touch of Louisa’s hand on his breeches.
This was the same part of his mind that wanted to believe he held her hand merely to prevent her from stroking his thigh.
The objective is to preserve Lady Louisa from a scandal she’s done nothing to deserve. The preferred plan is to see her safely engaged to Honiton, which will, as you have just explained to her, solve a number of problems all around.
That it would break Joseph’s heart to surrender the lady to a loveless match was of no moment.
“You mentioned a kiss, Louisa. If a poor ability in this regard is your objection to Honiton as a matrimonial prize, then may I remind you that decades of wedded bliss will ensure you have ample opportunity to refine his abilities.”
She gave him a peevish look. “I’m to spend decades teaching a not-stupid man how to kiss?”
“You are speaking in the indecipherable code reserved for females seeking to befuddle males, Louisa. Are you telling me you want to inspect Honiton’s kisses before you accept him as a spouse?”
Joseph did not raise his voice, but he was coming perilously close to arguing with a lady. Again. Even among mere knights of the swine farms, such a thing was not done. The urge to put distance between him and the clove-and-citrus scent of the daft woman beside him was thwarted only by contemplating the spectacle he’d make trying to get to his feet.
A knot above his knee, indeed.
“I would certainly want to inspect the kisses of any man to whom I’d consider plighting my troth, and don’t tell me it’s a foolish notion. Your kiss was not at all wanting, in case you’ve wondered.”
She fired this observation at him broadside, putting memories of sweet curves, soft, curious lips, and a private waltz where his determination to see to her best interests ought to lie.
“My thanks for that gracious accounting.” He scooted forward and braced both hands on the hearthstones. “I should be going, so I will leave you to contemplate the tutelage you will bestow on Honiton that he might merit the same encomium.”
A strong grasp seized him about the elbow and boosted him to his feet. “You are as articulate as Westhaven and as proud as His Grace, also as stubborn as the two of them combined, and possibly as thickheaded as all the extant and deceased Windham males put together. Why don’t you use a cane?”
Joseph tested his balance while he withstood a glare from the woman beside him. “A cane? You think a cane would preserve my dignity? I’m not that much past thirty years old, my lady, and if it weren’t for the damned—excuse me, the dashed—weather, I’d be as nimble as a blessed flea.”
He was arguing with a lady, and because it was this lady, an apology was needed before he took his leave. “I beg your pardon. A cane is an excellent idea.”
“Marrying Honiton is not.”
Her ill humor had fallen away, and she was peering up at Joseph with earnest green eyes. Her arm was still twined around his, and Joseph could not have moved away to save his soul.
“My dear, living the rest of your life through books and nephews is a terrible idea, as is condemning your sisters to the same fate. Society loves for the mighty to fall, and with your lapse, your sisters’ matrimonial prospects have been lamed, if not taken from the race. I am a widower, Louisa. I can tell you that having even a spouse to resent, a spouse to gossip with, is better than this notion you’ve taken. You have such passion…”
She was watching his mouth, watching the idiot mouth that had nearly whispered those last, achingly sincere words.
“People are talking, then?”
They were gleefully tearing Louisa’s character to shreds, the women much more than the men. Joseph nodded and said nothing.
“Papa suggested you had some options to put before me. What have you to offer besides this lunatic proposal that I should join myself to a man who is not much given to vice and not at all given to stealing kisses?”
Now he was watching her mouth. “The only other option I see, Louisa Windham, is for you to marry me.” He braced him
self for her to whip away, to laugh, to pucker up with the presumption of it. “Say something, Louisa. I mean you no insult, I hope you know that.”
“You think I’d take insult because you raise swine and I am a duke’s daughter?”
She still had not moved away, and a distracting olfactory tickle of clove and citrus wended its way into Joseph’s awareness. “There is that salient reality, but it’s also the case that I must have children, Louisa, there being the matter of that da—deuced title. I could not offer you the cordial union you might seek.”
“By cordial, you mean unconsummated.”
He managed another nod. Merely standing near her, her arm twined with his, their fingers linked—when had that happened?—was wreaking havoc with his composure.
She stared past him into the fire, her brows knit. “I like children. They’re honest. They might lie about whether they stole the pie, but they don’t deceive themselves about enjoying every bite. Children love a good story. They don’t twitch their noses at a lively tale because it does not ‘improve the mind.’ Eve and Jenny adore children.”
What was she saying?
“Louisa, I am offering a marriage in truth, though I am not the better bargain.”
This close, he could see the gold flecks in her green eyes. The firelight brought out red highlights in her dark hair, and it was all he could do not to run his fingers over those highlights, to feel for himself the warmth and softness to be had by touching her.
“We kissed once.” She spoke quietly and lowered her gaze. “I esteem you greatly, Joseph Carrington, though I have wondered if my efforts in that kiss were sufficiently unmemorable as to make you regret the occasion.”
He was so busy trying to muster the discipline to let go of her hand and take himself off that her words didn’t register immediately in his befuddled mind.
She esteemed him greatly? “Louisa, your efforts were not… unmemorable.”
He saw her drop frosty politesse over the hint of vulnerability in her eyes, felt her spine stiffen fractionally—and knew he’d said the wrong thing. He could not abide those withdrawals, however subtle. “Louisa, since we kissed, I have thought of little else, and I esteem you greatly, as well. Very greatly.”
While Joseph watched, a blush, beautiful and rosy, stole up Louisa Windham’s graceful neck.
“I have had occasion to consider that kiss a time or two myself,” she said. He thought her voice might have been just a trifle husky.
Hope, an entire Christmas of hope, blossomed in the center of his chest. “Perhaps you would like a small reminder now?”
He would adore giving her a reminder. A reminder that took the rest of the afternoon and saw their clothes strewn about the chamber. Twelve days of reminders would work nicely, with a particular part of Joseph’s body promptly appointing itself Lord of Misrule.
He would not push her, but he would get a cane, the better to support himself should random insecurity threaten his knees in future.
Louisa lifted her gaze to his and seemed to visually inventory his features. After suffering her perusal for an eternity, Joseph let out a breath when she twined her arms slowly around his neck. He would not harry her. It would be a chaste kiss, a kiss to reassure—
Louisa Windham did not need any reminders about how to kiss a man. She gently took possession of Joseph’s mouth, plundered his wits, and stole off with his best intentions. His arms came around her, anchoring her tightly against his body. Following in the path of sincere gentlemanly attentions, lust galloped up on a big, fast horse flattening his restraint.
It didn’t flatten anything else, though. When Joseph would have angled his body away to avoid offending the lady, she tucked herself against him, breasts and hips, leaving nothing to the imagination.
“Louisa—”
The daft woman used his bid for reason to seam his lips with her tongue. God in heaven, she even tasted like cloves and oranges.
“Kiss me, Joseph Carrington…” She muttered her orders against his mouth, and he obliged. By heaven, he obliged with everything in him—but not with force.
He resorted to stealth, teasing the corners of her mouth with his tongue and sliding his hands down, down to her hips. While she retaliated with a hand tangled in the hair at his nape, he shifted closer, wanting more of the feel of her against him. He loved learning the span of her hips with his hands, loved the womanly shape of her, loved the feel of their bodies pressed so tightly together.
But he cared for her too, so he eased away from the kiss and rested his cheek against her temple. She was breathing as fast as he, an observation which yielded him no small pleasure.
“Will you marry me, Louisa Windham? I feel compelled to point out to you that you should not when a better alternative exists.”
Eight
Louisa’s expression cooled, giving her a resemblance to her mother Joseph hoped was not a prelude to polite rejection, or worse than rejection, a request for time to “think.”
“Your admonitions are very chivalrous, Joseph Carrington, but unavailing. You are handsome, intelligent, and I will not have to spend decades teaching you how to kiss. I’m told these qualities adequately endorse a man for matrimony.”
She had accepted his proposal, she esteemed him greatly, and she thought him handsome and intelligent?
As if to deny that such bounty had been surrendered, Louisa regarded him with hauteur worthy of a duchess—a ploy to hide her tender heart, he was sure of it. “You will not allow Grattingly to harm your person, Joseph. You have my permission to teach him a lesson, though.”
A tender and protective heart, then.
“You’re the merciful sort. This is good to know.” He kept his arms around her, content to endure any number of lectures and scolds if she’d deliver them while in his embrace.
“I’m practical.” She nuzzled his neck, which hardly seemed the gesture of a practical woman. “Oh, look, Joseph, it’s snowing again.”
There was wonder and pleasure in her voice, and it nicely gilded the moment. Joseph glanced over her head to the window, where, indeed, big, lazy flakes of snow were drifting down over the damp garden. “I’d best be going then.” He treated himself to a quick taste of her mouth and let her be the one to step back.
Let her. As if he could have.
“You will be careful?” Louisa brushed his hair away from his forehead in a gesture that was positively wifely.
“I’m used to snow, Louisa, and my horse is quite reliable.”
Her lips flattened. “I meant with Grattingly. For obvious reasons, I do not trust that man to observe the dictates of honor.”
“I will take no chances.”
“I also don’t like you going out in this weather, Joseph. Could you be persuaded to stay for the evening meal?”
An endless meal where he’d sit beside her, trying to both make conversation and keep his hands off her? “Perhaps next week. I’ll tend to placing the announcement on my way home.”
She looked not pleased, but mollified. “Are we to set a date?”
What was this? “That is usually the lady’s prerogative. I am at your disposal in this regard.” He considered briefly going down on his knees to beg her to allow him to get a special license. Getting up would be a problem, one he’d willingly deal with if he thought she’d give her consent.
She studied him with some unfathomable female light in her eyes. “The strategic thing to do would be to wait until next spring, to open the Season not with a ball, but with an enormous wedding breakfast.”
His brilliant fiancée—who esteemed him greatly—could probably tell him the exact number of seconds between now and any wedding date months hence. “A lot can happen in a few months, Louisa.”
“A spring wedding would give your daughters time to get used to the idea, Sir Joseph.”
A suspicion bloomed in the back of Joseph’s mind, a suspicion that his intended was even more clever than he’d perceived.
“Are you cornering me into
admitting I’d like the wedding to take place immediately?” The idea of having Louisa under his roof for the Yule season lifted a bleakness on Joseph’s heart that had nothing to do with teaching his daughters to ride in the dead of winter.
“I will lose my nerve, Joseph.”
That such a magnificent, brave, and dear woman should make this admission to him was far more compliment than insult. She sounded so plaintive, though, so bewildered.
“Common sense ought to dictate some haste, Louisa. I could end up dead, and as my widow, you’d be shown every courtesy.”
She blinked, and before his eyes, she regained her dignity. “You will not end up dead. I will not have it. We will be married at week’s end if you can fit a special license and a wedding into your schedule.”
Relief warred with a sense of having queered the moment. “And where shall we marry? I assume we’re both members of the parish in Kent.”
“I’d prefer St. George’s.”
“Excellent thinking.” Before the holiday exodus, let society see the vindication of her honor right under their noses. “I will leave you to plan the details and trust you to know my own tastes lean toward simplicity and dispatch.”
She kissed him—with simplicity and dispatch, also a whiff of cloves and a delectable if fleeting press of her bosom to his chest. “Be off with you, then. I must endure my sisters’ good wishes, and for that I need no audience.”
She meant it. Her gaze could not have been more stoic had she been a martyr holding her prayer book.
He kissed her cheek lingeringly—he was not a martyr—and took his leave of her. As he swung up on his horse a few minutes later—swung up easily—Joseph noted with some curiosity that in the last half hour, his leg had stopped paining him entirely.
***
“To a successful marriage.” Westhaven touched his glass to his guest’s and took a sip of excellent potation. “Though I must say, I do not care for the circumstances engendering your betrothal to my sister.”
“I do not want a successful marriage,” Sir Joseph said, stepping away and perusing a shelf of books in Westhaven’s library. “I want, and your sister deserves, a happy marriage. I believe you would say the same thing regarding your countess.”
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