Lady Louisa's Christmas Knight

by Grace Burrowes

  Does that eclipsing hand of thine deny

  The sunshine of the Sun’s enlivening eye?

  Without thy light what light remains to me?

  Thou art my life, my way, my light’s in thee;

  I love, I move, and by thy beams I see.

  Thou art my life—and if thou but turn away

  My life’s a thousand deaths. Thou art my way—

  Without thee, Love, I travel not but stray.

  My light thou art—without thy glorious sight

  My eyes are darken’d with eternal night.

  My Love, thou art my way, my life, my light.

  And His Grace reads the following Shakespeare Sonnet (No. 73) to his duchess, and Joseph quotes just a few lines from the same to Louisa early in their story:

  That time of year thou mayst in me behold

  When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

  Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

  Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang,

  In one thou see’st the twilight of such day

  As after sunset fadeth in the west;

  Which by and by black night doth take away,

  Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.

  In me, thou see’st the glowing of such fire,

  That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

  As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

  Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

  This thou perceivest, which makes thy love

  more strong,

  To love that well which thou must leave

  ere long.

  I first came across the quote from Aeneas in college: “Fortran et haec olim meminisse juvabit.” This encouragement appeared in a venerable restaurant/diner/watering hole (the place has had many incarnations), where I hope it remains today. The sense of the phrase is: Someday, we’ll look back on even this and smile.

  And as for Catullus… My dear sister Gail taught Latin for many years, and by the time you read this, will be well on her way to a PhD in comparative literature, her focus being in the realm of classics. She loaned me enough of Catullus’s translated poetry that I understand why much of his work cannot be studied prior to college, at least not in a school setting. Naughty puts it mildly.

  But treat yourself to a few of his more genteelly impassioned offerings, and you too will appreciate that like Louisa, his genius was not limited to the proper and staid.

  I hope you’ve enjoyed this story—I certainly enjoyed writing it, and I wish you and yours the happiest of holidays.

  Grace Burrowes

  Watch for Grace Burrowes’s new Scottish

  Victorian series beginning with

  The Bridegroom Wore Plaid

  Available December 2012

  From Sourcebooks Casablanca

  “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single, reasonably good-looking earl not in possession of a fortune must be in want of a wealthy wife.”

  Ian MacGregor repeated Aunt Eulalie’s reasoning under his breath. The words had the ring of old-fashioned common sense, and yet they somehow made a mockery of such an earl as well.

  Possibly of the wife too. As Ian surveyed the duo of tittering, simpering, blond females debarking from the train on the arm of their scowling escort, he sent up a silent prayer that his countess would be neither reluctant nor managing, but other than that, he could not afford—in the most literal sense—to be particular.

  His wife could be homely, or she could be fair. She could be a recent graduate from the schoolroom, or a lady past the first blush of youth. She could be shy or boisterous, gorgeous or plain. It mattered not which, provided she was unequivocally, absolutely, and most assuredly rich.

  And if Ian MacGregor’s bride was to be well and truly rich, she was also going to be—God help him and all those who depended on him—English.

  For the good of his family, his clan, and the lands they held, he’d consider marrying a well-dowered Englishwoman. If that meant his own preferences in a wife—pragmatism, loyalty, kindness, and a sense of humor—went begging, well such was the laird’s lot.

  In the privacy of his personal regrets, Ian admitted a lusty nature in a wife and a fondness for a tall, black-haired, green-eyed Scotsman as a husband wouldn’t have gone amiss either. As he waited for his brothers Gilgallon and Connor to maneuver through the throng in the Ballater station yard, Ian tucked that regret away in the vast mental storeroom reserved for such dolorous thoughts.

  “I’ll take the tall blond,” Gil muttered with the air of man choosing which lame horse to ride into battle.

  “I’m for the little blond, then,” Connor growled, sounding equally resigned.

  Ian understood the strategy. His brothers would offer escort to Miss Eugenia Daniels and her younger sister, Hester Daniels, while Ian was to show himself to be the perfect gentleman. His task thus became to offer his arms to the two chaperones who stood quietly off to the side. One was dressed in subdued if fashionable mauve, the other in wrinkled gray with two shawls, one of beige with a black fringe, the other of gray.

  Ian moved away from his brothers, pasting a fatuous smile on his face.

  “My lord, my ladies, fáilte! Welcome to Aberdeenshire!”

  An older man detached himself from the blond females. The fellow sported thick muttonchop whiskers, a prosperous paunch, and the latest fashion in daytime attire. “Willard Daniels, Baron of Altsax and Gribbony.”

  The baron bowed slightly, acknowledging Ian’s superior if somewhat tentative rank.

  “Balfour, at your service.” Ian shook hands with as much hearty bonhomie as he could muster. “Welcome to you and your family, Baron. If you’ll introduce me to your womenfolk and your son, I’ll make my brothers known to them, and we can be on our way.”

  The civilities were observed, while Ian tacitly appraised his prospective countess. The taller blond—Eugenia Daniels—was his marital quarry, and she blushed and stammered her greetings with empty-headed good manners. She did not appear reluctant, which meant he could well end up married to her, provided he could dredge up sufficient charm to woo her.

  And he could. Not ten years after the worst famine known to the British Isles, a strong back and a store of charm were about all that was left to him, so by God, he would use both ruthlessly to his family’s advantage.

  Connor and Gil comported themselves with similarly counterfeit cheer, though on Con the exercise was not as convincing. Con was happy to go all day without speaking, much less smiling, though Ian knew he, too, understood the desperate nature of their charade.

  Daniels made a vague gesture in the direction of the chaperones. “My sister-in-law, Mrs. Julia Redmond. My niece, Augusta Merrick.” He turned away as he said the last, his gaze on the men unloading a mountain of trunks from the train.

  Thank God Ian had thought to bring the wagon in addition to the coach. The English did set store by their finery. The baron’s son, Colonel Matthew Daniels, late of Her Majesty’s cavalry, excused himself from the introductions to oversee the transfer of baggage to the wagon.

  “Ladies.” Ian winged an arm at each of the older women. “I’ll have you on your way in no time.”

  “This is so kind of you,” the shorter woman said, taking his arm. Mrs. Redmond was a pretty thing, petite, with perfect skin, big brown eyes, and rich chestnut curls peeking out from under the brim of a lavender silk cottage bonnet. Ian placed her somewhere just a shade south of thirty. A lovely age on a woman. Con would call it a dally-able age.

  Only as Ian offered his other arm to the second woman did he realize she was holding a closed hatbox in one hand and a reticule in the other.

  Mrs. Redmond, held out a gloved hand for the hatbox. “Oh, Gus, do give me Ulysses.”

  The hatbox emitted a disgruntled yowl.

  Ian felt an abrupt yearning for a not-so-wee dram, for now he’d sunk to hosting not just the wealthy English, but their dyspeptic felines as well.

>   “I will carry my own pet,” the taller lady said—Miss Merrick. A man who was a host for hire had to be good with names. She hunched a little more tightly over her hatbox, as if she feared her cat might be torn from her clutches by force.

  “Perhaps you’d allow me to carry your bag, so I might escort you to the coach?” Ian cocked his arm at her again, a slight gesture he’d meant to be gracious.

  The lady twisted her head on her neck, not straightening entirely, and peered up at him out of a pair of violet-gentian eyes. That color was completely at variance with her bent posture, her pinched mouth, the unrelieved black of her hair, the wilted gray silk of her old-fashioned coal scuttle bonnet, and even with the expression of impatience in the eyes themselves.

  The Almighty had tossed even this cranky besom a bone, but these beautiful eyes in the context of this woman were as much burden as benefit. They insulted the rest of her somehow, mocked her and threw her numerous shortcomings into higher relief.

  The two shawls—worn in public, no less—half slipping off her shoulders.

  The hem of her gown two inches farther away from the planks of the platform than was fashionable.

  The cat yowling its discontent in the hatbox.

  The finger poking surreptitiously from the tip of her right glove.

  Gazing at those startling eyes, Ian realized that despite her bearing and her attire, Miss Merrick was probably younger than he was, at least chronologically.

  “Come, Gussie,” Mrs. Redmond said, reaching around Ian for the reticule. “We’ll hold up the coach, which will make Willard difficult, and I am most anxious to see Lord Balfour’s home.”

  “And I am anxious to show it off to you.” Ian offered an encouraging smile.

  Continue the saga of the

  Windham family with

  Lady Eve’s Indiscretion

  Available February 2013

  From Sourcebooks Casablanca

  “What you seek to accomplish, my lord, is arguably impossible.”

  Earnest Hooker shuffled files at his desk while he sat in judgment of the Marquis of Deene’s aspirations. When the ensuing silence stretched more than a few moments, the solicitor readjusted his neck cloth, cleared his throat, and shifted his inkwell one inch closer to the edge of the blotter centered on his gargantuan desk.

  Two of his minions watched the client—whom they no doubt expected to rant and throw things in the grand family tradition—from a careful distance.

  Lucas Denning, newly minted Marquis of Deene, took out the gold watch Marie had given him when he’d come down from university. The thing had stopped for lack of timely winding, but Deene made it a point to stare at his timepiece before speaking.

  “Impossible, Hooker? I’m curious as to the motivation for such hyperbole from a man of the law.”

  One clerk glanced nervously at the other when Hooker stopped fussing with his files.

  “My lord, you cannot mean to deprive a man of the company of his legitimate offspring.” Hooker’s pudgy, lily-white hands continued to fiddle with the accoutrements of his trade. “We’re discussing a girl child, true, but one in her father’s possession in even the simplest sense. The courts do not exist to satisfy anybody’s whims, and you can’t expect them to pluck that child from her father’s care and place her in… in yours. You have no children of your own, my lord, no wife, no experience raising children, and you’ve yet to see to your own succession. Even were the man demented, the courts would likely consider other possibilities before placing the girl in your care.”

  Deene snapped the watch shut. “I heard her mother’s dying wishes. That should count for something. Wellington wrote me up in the dispatches often enough.”

  One of the other men came forward, a prissier, desiccated version of Hooker, with fewer chins and less hair.

  “My lord, do you proceed on dying declarations alone, that will land you in Chancery, where you’ll be lucky to have the case heard before the girl reaches her majority. And endorsements of a man’s wartime abilities by the Iron Duke are all well and good, but consider that raising children, most especially young girl children, should not have much in common with battling the Corsican.”

  An insult lurked in that soft reply, but truth as well. Every street sweeper in London knew the futility of resorting to the Court of Chancery. The clerk had not exaggerated about the delays and idiosyncrasies of that institution.

  “I’m sorry, my lord.” Hooker rose, while Deene remained seated. “We look forward to serving the marquessate in all of its legal undertakings, but in this, I’m afraid, we cannot honestly advise you to proceed.”

  Deene got to his feet, taking small satisfaction from being able to look down his nose, quite literally, at the useless ciphers whose families he kept housed and fed. “Draw up the pleadings anyway.”

  He stalked out of the room, the urge to destroy something, to pitch Hooker’s idiot files into the fire, to snatch up the fireplace poker and lay about with it, nigh overcoming his self-discipline.

  “My lord?”

  The third man had the temerity to follow Deene from the room, which was going to serve as a wonderful excuse for Deene’s long-denied display of frustration—a marquis did not have tantrums—when Deene realized the man was carrying a pair of well-made leather gloves.

  “My thanks.” Deene snatched the gloves from the man’s hand, but to his consternation, the fellow held onto the gloves for a bit, making for a short tug-of-war.

  “If your lordship has one more moment?”

  The clerk let the gloves go. The exchange had been bizarre enough to penetrate Deene’s ire, mostly because, between Hooker & Sons and the Marquis of Deene, obsequies were the order of the day and had been for generations.

  “Speak.” Deene pulled on a glove. “You’re obviously ready to burst with some crumb of legal wisdom your confreres were not inclined to share.”

  “Not legal wisdom, my lord.” The man glanced over his shoulder at the closed door behind them. “Simple common sense. You’ll not be able to wrest the girl from her father through litigious means, but there are other ways.”

  Yes, there were. Most of them illegal, dangerous, and unethical—but tempting.

  Deene yanked on the second glove. “If I provoke him to a duel, Dolan stands an even chance of putting out my lights, sir, a consummation my cousin and sole heir claims would serve him very ill. I doubt I’d enjoy it myself.”

  This fellow was considerably younger than the other two, with an underfed, scholarly air about him and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses gracing his nose. The man drew himself up as if preparing for oral argument.

  “I do not advocate murder, my lord, but every man, every person, has considerations motivating them. The girl’s father is noted to be mindful of his social standing and his wealth.”

  Vulgarly so. “Your point?”

  “If you offer him something he wants more than he wants to torment you over the girl, he might part with her. The problem isn’t legal. The solution might not be legal either.”

  If there was sense in what the young man was saying, Deene was too angry to parse it out.

  “My thanks. I will consider the not legal alternatives, as you suggest. Good day.”

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  About the Author

  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Grace Burrowes hit the bestseller lists with both her debut, The Heir, and her second book in The Duke’s Obsession trilogy, The Soldier. Both books received extensive praise and starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. The Heir was also named a Pu
blishers Weekly Best Book of 2010, and The Soldier was named a Publishers Weekly Best Spring Romance of 2011. She is hard at work on stories for the Windham sisters—the first two, Lady Sophie’s Christmas Wish and Lady Maggie’s Secret Scandal are already on the shelves, along with The Virtuoso, the story of Valentine, the third Windham brother.

  Grace lives in rural Maryland and is a practicing attorney. She loves to hear from her readers and can be reached through her website at graceburrowes.com.