Grattingly whipped his gaze to Louisa. “You have every last copy of that damned book?”
Louisa’s gaze could have chipped ice, and Joseph had never been more proud of her. He wanted to swing her against his chest and dance up the steps with her, wanted to laugh out loud, and yet…
“My wife does not converse with scoundrels, Grattingly. Neither will she associate with cowards, nor with a person so craven he’d exploit the unfortunate circumstances of children left orphaned by war.” Joseph flicked a glance at St. Just, who caught Lord Valentine’s eye.
“It’s coal in your stocking today,” Valentine said as he and St. Just started toward Grattingly. “Or perhaps a very long jump rope once the magistrate finishes with you and your pathetic attempted felonies.”
As they closed in on Grattingly, Joseph held out a hand to Louisa, needing in the marrow of his bones to put himself between Louisa and the miserable cretin responsible for almost ruining their holidays, and their lives.
But he’d not figured on Grattingly’s desperation, or on how much speed that desperation could impart. Grattingly whirled away, snatched the reins of his horse from the startled groom, scrambled into the saddle, and was off toward the curve of the drive.
While Joseph could only watch. No gun, no knife, no bow, no—
“Joseph!” Louisa slapped the snowball into his hands. “Into the trees above him!”
While Joseph had focused on Grattingly, Louisa had apparently been figuring trajectories and angles and options. Visions of Fleur raining snow down on her hapless sister snapped into Joseph’s mind. He didn’t have to aim; he just let his ammunition fly into the boughs so that Grattingly’s horse was showered in the face with a huge lot of snow. The animal propped, whinnying its indignation, while Louisa slapped another snowball into Joseph’s hand and Valentine and St. Just leapt onto their mounts.
The second dump of snow had Grattingly’s horse rearing and Grattingly tumbling ignominiously into the snow, while Joseph—with a silent apology to the animal—fired a third snowball hard, directly at the beast’s quarters.
“Mind if I have a go?”
Westhaven’s aim was good enough to bring more snow down on Grattingly, and by the time St. Just and Lord Val were marching the man back up the drive, even Louisa had taken a turn pelting the miscreant with snow.
“I might grow to enjoy marksmanship,” Louisa said, beaming at her husband.
Joseph caught her close, barely resisting the temptation to hug the stuffing out of her. “You’ve a wonderful mind and a good arm, Wife.”
“I have a wonderful knight. I cannot believe you knew.”
“And you knew. Let me introduce you to the children.”
“Our children.” She corrected him so gently, so happily, Joseph’s heart just about beat its way from his chest.
“My wife is ever correct. Our children.”
“Not so fast.” The little pink-headed fellow came careening through the snow. “You’ll be taking these, and I’ll be heading for the nearest inn, by God. I don’t know yon miserable sod there”—he jerked his chin in Grattingly’s direction—“but I’ll be telling the Regent how cavalier that fellow attempted to treat an earl and his countess.”
“An earl?” Joseph cocked his head and glanced at Louisa, who was looking as puzzled as Joseph felt.
“You, my lord, are created the first Earl of Kesmore. Here.” Hamburg pushed some papers at Joseph. “You’ll tell the Regent I delivered the documents Christmas Day with all due pomp and ceremony, or I’ll see that you end up on as many committees as I have myself.”
Joseph stared at the vellum in his hand. “An earl?”
“Mr. Hamburg, I do thank you,” the duchess said quietly, and this for some reason had the man beaming from one pink ear to the other.
Joseph passed the document to Louisa, who scanned it quickly and came up smiling like all of her Christmas wishes had just come true.
“You must not fret over this, Husband. It’s a mere few lines on a piece of paper, and probably some more property that you will turn to good advantage. Let the Regent say what he will. You will always be my perfect, gentle Christmas knight.”
In recent months, Joseph had grown complacent. His injury had well and truly healed, and not since the previous winter had his perishing damned knee gone out on him. Before the entire army of his wife’s family, his children, and the Regent’s representative, Joseph was bowing to his lovely wife one moment only to find himself down on one knee before her in the snow the next.
As he made an ungainly descent, he heard the sound of gloved hands applauding from all sides, almost as if he were making a grand, intentional romantic gesture. The children cheered, the men whistled, and little Fleur—where had she come from?—could be heard exclaiming over the din:
“Oh, Manda, look! Just what we wanted for Christmas, a tidy lot of friends to play with!”
***
Two burly footmen wrestled a cursing Timothy Grattingly off to be confined in the groom’s quarters until the magistrate could be fetched.
“Good riddance,” Her Grace muttered, sending a glare of maternal protectiveness in Louisa’s direction.
Louisa could only smile back at her mother, at everybody, like an idiot, drunk with the happiness of knowing her husband, her siblings, and even—she suspected—her parents had for years been tirelessly protecting her interests, and that these children, these beautiful dark-eyed children, had Sir Joseph’s protection.
“Arise, Knight,” she said, beaming down at her husband, “lest thy riding breeches get soaked and thy wife take thee to task before these good people.”
“Can’t have that,” St. Just said, boosting Joseph to his feet. “Happy wife, happy life.”
“Esther, I swear I never told the boy such a thing,” the duke began, but he was smiling and so was the duchess.
“No, Percy, that advice came from me.”
The ladies hooted merrily at the duchess’s riposte, while Louisa tucked herself against her husband’s side. “Shall we repair to the house? I’m sure you could all use food and drink after journeying here from Morelands.”
While Louisa waited for her family to file ahead of her into the house, Joseph silently passed her a small silver flask. This one was engraved with a rose in full flower, and held the exact blend of heat and comfort Louisa might have asked for, had her husband not already guessed her preferences. That Joseph kept his arm around Louisa suggested he also, thank God and all the angels, understood her other needs as well.
As she stood beside her husband, snow flurries began drifting down from the heavens, and Louisa decided a woman had never, ever had a better Christmas.
***
“I thought they would never, ever leave.” Joseph closed the door to the library—the only room in the Surrey house big enough to hold the impromptu Christmas party. “Wife, please come here.”
Louisa went into his arms, grateful for the quiet, grateful for her family, and grateful beyond words for the man she’d married.
“I love you, Lord Kesmore. I love you so much, but we really must talk.”
He held her for a moment, then Louisa felt his embrace tighten. “And by heaven, Lady Kesmore, I love you. You were magnificent, you were breathtaking. I could almost write a damned poem—”
“Husband, you are squashing me. May we sit?”
He did not let go of her. Instead, he turned her under his arm and escorted her to a huge reading chair beside the fireplace. Next to the chair sat an enormous basket of fruit sent by Lord Lionel and his recently acquired bride, Lady Isobel Honiton.
Joseph settled himself into the chair. “This chair holds eight children and one adult. We had a contest last Christmas.”
Louisa was pulled into her husband’s lap, a very fine place to find herself. “I don’t think I am capable of counting to eight,” Louisa said, trying to arrange her skirts. “This is your fault, Husband.” Though how marvelous, to be unable to count, cipher, or calculate
for a time. Louisa kissed her husband for bestowing upon her yet another Christmas gift.
Joseph drew her head down to his shoulder and stroked her hair, leaving Louisa content in a way she hadn’t been yet that day—perhaps yet in her life—except for one detail. “About the poems, Joseph. My brother misspoke.”
“Alert The Times. The Earl of Westhaven misspoke. In anybody else we’d call it an out-and-out bouncer, perhaps even a falsehood. Never say your brother lied on Christmas Day.”
Joseph was nuzzling Louisa’s neck in a distracting and thoroughly endearing manner, so she got the words out quickly. “He did not lie, but he was mistaken. There’s one volume of that dratted book still extant. I have no idea where it is if Grattingly doesn’t have it. Victor dared me to see if I could get my manuscript published, never dreaming one can deal with the literary people entirely through the mails. I was too stupid to know publishing anonymously would hardly protect me once I used some of the same translations for Valentine and his friends at Oxford. I am sorry. Victor was horrified when he realized I’d taken his dare.”
Joseph did not desist with his nuzzling. “Victor should have known better than to underestimate you. It’s lovely poetry, Louisa, and the work of a woman as beautiful in her intellect as she is in her heart. Why didn’t you believe at least some of the younger children here could be mine?”
Louisa followed the change in topic with a little difficulty, because Joseph was, in addition to running his nose along her jaw, petting her breast, cupping its fullness and generally creating mayhem with Louisa’s ability to speak.
“You were married at the time, and you are a man who keeps his vows.”
“Even to an unfaithful wife? I doubt society would see it as you do. In fact, I know they wouldn’t.”
“Cynthia had your compassion. You would not have played her false because she was young, lonely, and weak.”
“Louisa Carrington, what am I to do with a countess such as you?”
“Make babies?”
His smile was both tender and radiant, a Genuine Article of a smile if ever she’d beheld one. When Louisa thought he’d reach into her bodice, he instead reached into his waistcoat and withdrew a small red volume.
“Your brother Bartholomew asked me to hold onto that when he went on leave in Portugal. He said if he bet it in some inebriates’ card game or lost it to a light-fingered drinking companion, he would never forgive himself.”
Louisa took the little book with shaking fingers.
“You had the last volume? All along, you’ve had this? And it was Bart’s?” She clutched the book to her chest and hid her face against Joseph’s shoulder.
“He’d bought it, not knowing it was yours, but one of your brothers must have told him. Some of the notes in it are his, but the rest are mine. I’ve carried that thing across the entire Peninsula, I’ve read it to Lady Opie, and I look very much forward to reading it to you. You’re brilliant, Louisa Windham Carrington, and those poems are brilliant too.”
For so long, Louisa had viewed this printed evidence of her creativity and learning as a shameful, stupid expression of a good education, as an adolescent rebellion gone very far amok. Joseph didn’t see it that way, and while Louisa could not agree with his assessment entirely—some of the poems were vulgar indeed—she also couldn’t cling to her own characterization of the book.
“This is my present to you,” Joseph said, prying the book gently from Louisa’s grasp. “Happy Christmas, beloved Wife.”
He kissed her, sweetly and gently, not enough to start anything, but not enough to put Louisa off the notions gathering momentum in her heart.
“Joseph, I cannot… I cannot…” She sighed. “I cannot get out of this dress fast enough. I would like to make love to the Earl of Kesmore.”
“And he would like to make love to the Countess of Kesmore, but Louisa, I have one more request of you this holiday.”
He sounded not serious, but not playful, either. Louisa peered at her husband. “Is the door locked, Husband? Is it that kind of request? You’ve been a very good fellow, after all, my wonderful Christmas knight, and a serving of plum pudding just isn’t reward—”
He put a finger to her lips. “The door is locked, but what I want you to do is reprint that book.”
“What?”
Louisa tried to pull away, but sitting in a strong man’s lap—a strong and determined man’s lap—didn’t give a woman who’d had several servings of punch much leverage.
“Edit out the truly risqué offerings if you must, polish up the erotic language where it makes you uncomfortable, but leave all the love songs, sonnets, ballads, and odes, Louisa. They’re enchanting, and I would have the world know of your talent. You’re married now, not a prodigy in the schoolroom, and if anything, your rendering of those poems will only be more lovely for your maturation.”
She opened her mouth to argue then shut it.
He was right. Louisa was not only married now, she was happily married, married to a man who loved her, who didn’t flinch or look away when she said she loved him.
A man who was proud of her.
“I could do it.” She hadn’t meant to speak aloud.
“And I can be an earl, so my countess tells me. It’s much the same thing, a matter of keeping things in perspective and maintaining the right associations.”
Louisa sensed he wanted her to do this, to publish, to cast her work before all of society, and to take her place among those with literary talent.
“I’ll use a pseudonym,” she said, finding joy in the idea of reworking the poems, taking her time, and getting them exactly, wonderfully right. She had missed the pleasure of creation, missed it desperately. “I’ll use a publisher up in York—there are several good ones—and correspond, like I did last time. It might work.”
“That is all entirely up to you, but as your partner in this venture and several others, I think you might want to use your own name, or the titled version of it common on publications.”
“Joseph, I’m flattered beyond words that you’d support me in this…” Flattered didn’t begin to convey the relief—the joy—coursing through Louisa’s veins, but she fell silent at the expression on her husband’s face.
He was smiling, a naughty, lovely, wicked smile—even better than a Genuine Article smile. “Dedicate this volume to me, my love, and get the credit you deserve from all and sundry. Louisa Windham was not appreciated for her talents, but as long as I am her knight, the Countess of Kesmore will be.”
And so it came to pass that in the following Christmas season, Louisa found under her pillow another small volume bound in red leather, a beautiful book full of enchanting verse, dedicated to a wonderful man. Louisa’s husband lay beside her, reading words of love in the voice Louisa adored to hear rendering her poems, until the baby started fussing, and all thoughts of poetry—at least the kind in that little book—had to be temporarily set aside.
But only temporarily.
Author’s Note
Joseph recites the following poem by William Wordsworth to Louisa while they’re riding by the Serpentine in Hyde Park early one winter morning:
Composed upon Westminster Bridge,
Sept. 3, 1802
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, such a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Feeling a little bleak before Christmas, Louisa mentally runs through some lines by Blake about chimney sweeps:
The Chimney Sweeper
A little black thing among the snow,
Crying, “’weep! ’weep!” in notes of woe!
“Where are thy father & mother? Say?”
“They are both gone up to the church to pray.
“Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smil’d among the winter’s snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
“And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God & his Priest and King,
Who make up a heaven of our misery.”
Her Grace refers to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a woman ahead of her time in many ways, though perhaps best remembered for bringing the smallpox inoculation with her when she returned from Constantinople, and for penning the following:
Between Your Sheets
Between your sheets you soundly sleep
Nor dream of vigils that we lovers keep
While all the night, I waking sigh your name,
The tender sound does every nerve inflame,
Imagination shows me all your charms,
The plenteous silken hair, and waxen arms,
And all the beauties that supinely rest,
…between your sheets
Ah, Lindamira, could you see my heart,
How fond, how true, how free from fraudful art,
The warmest glances poorly do explain
The eager wish, the melting throbbing pain
Which through my very blood and soul I feel,
Which you cannot believe nor I reveal,
Which every metaphor must render less
And yet (methinks) which I could well express
…between your sheets.
Joseph quotes a few lines of the following to Louisa on the night when they consummate their vows:
To His Mistress
By John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? Oh why
Lady Louisa's Christmas Knight Page 29
