Copyright © 2014 by Grace Burrowes
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Cover art by Jon Paul
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
MacGregor-Flynn-MacDaniels Family Tree
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
An excerpt from The Laird
About the Author
Back Cover
For those of us to whom the holidays present a challenge, which is to say, ALL of us, at some point.
One
“But, Papa, we should help the lady!”
The childish soprano carried over the hum and bustle of a crowded train station, jabbing at Lady Joan Flynn’s composure like a stray pin making itself known in her bodice as she swept into the first turn of a waltz.
Joan nonetheless beamed an unfaltering smile at the ticket master.
“Surely you can find one seat on the westbound train? I have little luggage and need passage only as far as Ballater.”
Her luggage consisted of a carpetbag clutched in her right fist. That she’d fled Edinburgh without even packing a single trunk of clothing spoke of Joan’s first experience with true desperation.
“Papa, we’re going to Ballater. We should help her.” The girl’s voice, if anything, had grown louder.
“Like I said. Nary a single seat left, ma’am. Ye’ll have to step aside now.” The old gnome made his pronouncement with the malevolent glee of a clerk exercising his petty—but absolute—power.
Joan most assuredly did not step aside.
“Christmas is coming. We’re supposed to be nice, Papa.”
The child’s intentions were good, though Joan wanted to turn around and wrap her scarf around the little dear’s face. A soft, rumbling Gaelic burr replied to the girl, while Joan let her smile wobble as she fished a handkerchief from her reticule—the white silk with the holly-and-ivy trim around the edges.
“I’ll ride with the livestock,” Joan said, touching the handkerchief to the corner of her left eye, where tears would, in fact, soon gather. “I must rejoin my family, and they’ll be so worried, and—”
White eyebrows climbed aloft on the ticket master’s pink forehead, then crashed down as inspiration struck.
“Ye canna ride with the beasts. ’Tis against regulations.” He flourished the r of regulations, then swooped on the g, an officious Scot relishing the delivery of bad tidings—rrrreg’ulations. “Ye can buy a ticket for Monday’s train.”
No, she could not. “But I have nowhere to stay until Monday. I have the fare if—”
“Her ladyship will ride with us,” said that same rumbling baritone from directly behind Joan.
“Because we’re going to Ballater,” the child added helpfully.
Joan turned without giving up her place at the counter. “Sir, that’s most kind of you, but if we have not been introduced—”
Except, thank all the angels, Joan had been introduced to the man, not three weeks past.
“Lady Joan.” Mr. Dante Hartwell bowed, as much as a man can bow when he has a small child perched on his hip. “You are welcome to travel with us. Charlie reminds me that we’re going as far as Ballater ourselves, and we have plenty of room.”
Charlie was of the female persuasion, though she had her father’s sable hair and a lighter version of his green eyes. He whispered something in the girl’s ear, then pressed a quick kiss to her cheek, which had Charlie grinning at Joan.
Mr. Hartwell’s expression was not nearly so genial.
In Joan’s experience, Mr. Hartwell and geniality were not well acquainted, though if Joan had spoken out of turn at Charlie’s age, her lordly father would not have whispered his scold or followed it up with a kiss.
“Your offer is generous, Mr. Hartwell, but I cannot travel with you unchaperoned.” Or could she?
“You were willing to travel with the beasts,” he shot back. “I smell a bit better than they and can offer you more than straw and a cold loose box for the duration of the journey.”
“Papa smells good,” Charlie supplied, “but not as good as Aunt Margs. She took Phillip ’round back.”
“Madam,” the ticket master interrupted. “Ye’re holding up the line, and ye either travel with the gentleman and his family or ye bide here until Monday’s train. Next!”
Joan had danced with Dante Hartwell and found him lacking many of the attributes she associated with a proper gentleman. He neither gossiped nor flattered nor took surreptitious liberties in triple meter.
In short, despite his many detractors—some called him Hard-Hearted Hartwell—she’d liked him. Little Charlie was also right: her papa smelled good, of wool and heather, unlike the fellows wearing their cloying Paris fragrances in ballrooms already redolent of manly exertion. Mr. Hartwell savored of simple tastes, fresh air, and Scotland. Then too, his hair stuck up to one side, as if Charlie had made free with her papa’s coiffure.
“Your sister is traveling with you, Mr. Hartwell?”
“Aye. Is this your only bag?” He appropriated the carpetbag from Joan’s grasp.
“Aunt Margs has lots of bags,” Charlie said. “I think our Christmas presents might be in them, but Aunt says it’s all her dresses.”
The ticket master had apparently had enough. “Madam, I really must insist that ye—”
“Stow it, MacDeever,” Mr. Hartwell said. “Lady Joan travels with us, and ye’ll no’ be spoutin’ off about yer pernicious regulations if ye want my continued custom.”
The eyebrows climbed halfway to the North Pole, but MacDeever remained silent.
“Thank you, Mr. Hartwell, and thank you, Charlie,” Joan said, for it appeared she was to share a compartment with Mr. Hartwell and his family. How she’d travel from Ballater to Balfour House, she did not know, but surely hacks, drays, and other conveyances could be had for a few coins at a busy train station.
Because a few coins was all she had.
“Aunt Margs!” Charlie bellowed, waving madly as they tromped out onto the platform. “We’re being good. Papa says Lady Joan is to travel with us because we’re going to Ballater and she only h
as one bag.”
The girl had shouted directly in her father’s ear, and yet, Mr. Hartwell simply stood in the freezing wind, his bare knees exposed by his kilt. As rescuers went, he was an unlikely specimen. Pine swags draped over the station’s entry luffed above him; he had Joan’s purple brocade traveling bag in his big hand, a child affixed to his hip, and a grouchy expression on his face.
A petite woman approached, leading a small, dark-haired boy by the hand. Her cloak was a nondescript green with an unevenly stitched hem, though the wool was passable quality.
“Dante, has someone joined our party?” She spoke with the soft, broad vowels of the native Scot, and while her brother was tall, dark, and lean, Margaret Hartwell was short, fair, and comfortably rounded.
And smiling. Margaret had the sort of open, friendly smile that would put any guest at ease and warm any heart.
“Lady Joan Flynn, may I make known to you my dear sister, Margaret,” Mr. Hartwell said, his tone as close to warm as Joan had heard from him. “The rascal by her side is my boy, Phillip. Phillip, make your bow.”
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” the child piped, flopping over at the waist.
“Miss Hartwell, Master Phillip, the pleasure is mine.” Particularly when it was Margaret’s presence that allowed Joan to accept Mr. Hartwell’s kind—if begrudging—offer.
As for the “boy”—a gentleman of more refined breeding would have referred to the child as his son—he looked entirely too angelic. Dark hair in need of a trim framed green eyes too serious for such a small child, but then, what did Joan know of small children?
Much less than she needed to.
As Joan cast around for small talk, Mr. Hartwell strode off toward the back of the train.
“We’d best hurry,” Margaret said. “Dante likes to oversee the loading of the luggage, and he’ll forget that Charlie shouldn’t be out in this weather any longer than necessary. Normally Dante would make this journey in a single day, but with the children…”
She bustled off after her brother, though why Mr. Hartwell had to oversee the porters, Joan could not fathom. Her brother, Tiberius, would have, because Tye was the most responsible fellow ever to stand in line for a marquessate, but Mr. Hartwell’s prospects were nowhere as daunting.
Mr. Hartwell was in trade, a fact Joan had heard whispered behind fans, mentioned at card tables, and casually brought up in the course of numerous dances. The longer Mr. Hartwell had gone without stumbling on the dance floor, insulting the hostesses, or showing up for a Society ball in riding attire, the more frequently Joan had heard of his plebeian antecedents and unfortunate preoccupation with commerce.
A whistle blast signaled those milling on the platform to board their respective compartments, and at the end of the train, Mr. Hartwell, the child on his back now, oversaw no less than three porters stowing bags in the last car.
“Should we find our compartment?” Joan asked as she caught up with Margaret and Phillip.
“We’re in here,” Margaret said, gesturing vaguely toward the passenger cars. “Dante, that child should be out of this weather. You will put her down this instant.”
“I’m helping,” Charlie said, clearly enjoying her perch on her papa’s back.
The girl might have weighed less than a sparrow for all the notice her father took of her.
“The fools put the small trunks in first,” Mr. Hartwell groused, “which means the largest trunks have nowhere to go but atop the heap, and that isn’t the most stable—”
He broke off and leveled a look at Joan.
“Take Charlie.” He peeled the girl off his back in a smooth display of one-armed muscle and more or less threw her in Joan’s direction. “Charlene, mind Lady Joan while I—”
A spate of cursing in Gaelic followed as Mr. Hartwell disappeared into the baggage compartment, and three porters vacated it, rather like rats scurrying for safety upon the arrival of a particularly large, ferocious terrier.
“Dante likes things just so,” Margaret observed in what had to be a diplomatic sororal understatement. “Let’s get these children out of the weather, shall we?” She led Phillip to the steps and allowed him to scamper onto the train ahead of her.
“You can put me down,” Charlie said. “Papa only carries me when I can’t keep up. His legs are longer than mine.”
“His legs are longer than most people’s,” Joan said, taking the child by the hand, though she’d rather liked Charlene’s solid weight against her hip. “Shall we find our seats?”
Charlie peered up at her, her expression perplexed. “We don’t have seats. We have the last two cars of the train.”
***
“She’s hiding from you,” Dante said, wondering how much his guest’s cloak had cost. Contrasted with Lady Joan’s red hair, the velvet was so purple, it shimmered in waterfalls and waves of light that had no visible source. A dark, luminous purple that shouted—quietly, mind—of warmth, pampering, and class, even as it made a man’s palms itch to stroke it.
“Miss Hartwell is hiding?”
Miss Hartwell. Not “m’ dear wee sister, Margs,” or whatever Dante had said when he’d introduced Margs to her ladyship. A powerful thirst came upon him, the same thirst he experienced whenever he was forced to prowl around the parlors and ballrooms of his betters.
And what a waste of time and fussy tailoring that had been.
“Aye. Margs is shy. May I offer you something to drink, Lady Joan?” Margs was scheming and determined too, which accounted for her pressing need to “see the children settled” in the other car.
“Have you any tea, Mr. Hartwell? I left Edinburgh in something of a hurry.”
Her very diction carried light and elegance, and yet bore a certain warmth, as did she. Dante owed this woman—and he always paid his debts—but he also liked her.
“Tea, we have, and we’d best drink it before it cools.” The train had yet to pull out of the station, so pouring would be little challenge—but for whom?
Lady Joan sat at the small mahogany table secured beneath the curtained window, while Dante prowled around the parlor car like a bear in a tinker’s wagon.
Did he sit across from her?
Ask permission to sit?
Serve her while standing, as if he were a bloody footman? Sit and then serve her?
Ask her to pour?
Would Father Christmas please bestow on one hardworking Scotsman some command of the manners and mannerisms necessary to move among those with titles and wealth?
“Do have a seat, Mr. Hartwell, and I’d be happy to pour out.”
Dante retrieved the tea service from the sideboard, set it down before her with a small “clank,” and wedged himself into the seat across from her.
Train cars were built to the scale of fairies, though for all her height, Lady Joan looked comfortable enough.
“So what were you about, stranded at some widening in the cow path halfway to the Highlands?”
He should probably have stashed a “my lady” or two somewhere in that question. She belonged in the ballrooms, the elegant parlors, the best shops, while he did not.
“I was all but going to pieces,” she said, her smile wry. “I cannot thank you enough, Mr. Hartwell, for your kindness and generosity. How do you take your tea?”
Dante Hartwell was known for neither kindness nor generosity.
“If that’s your idea of going to pieces, then I’m not sure what you’d call some of Charlie’s worse behaviors. The girl can be—”
Just like her father, but Dante didn’t say that. He was too absorbed watching a lady execute the gracious and baffling ballet of the tea service. Lady Joan had lace at her wrists, the white a brilliant contrast to her deep purple sleeve. The dress wasn’t as dark a hue as the cloak, but complemented the cloak and was every bit as shimmery. Against the purple velvet, the dab of lace looked like snow on violets or hyacinths or some damned posy.
“Your daughter is charming,” Lady Joan said. “Shall I add cream
and sugar?”
“Nay.” He accepted the tea and downed it in a swallow. It was hot, and—
Not by word, deed, lifted eyebrow, or firming of her rather full lips did Lady Joan call Dante on his misstep. He rather wished she had.
“I bungled that,” he said, setting the silly little cup back on the tray. The service was sized for one of Charlie’s endless tea parties, not for use by thirsty adults. “I was supposed to wait for you to serve yourself.”
His entire foray to Edinburgh had been one long exercise in bungling, and he was weary to his soul of it. When he’d been on the point of retreating to Glasgow, tail between his figurative knees, Lady Joan had given him a waltz and shown every pretense of enjoying his company. That single dance had silenced the worst of the gossips and prompted invitations from all manner of titled hostesses.
“You were supposed to enjoy your tea,” Lady Joan said, pouring him another cup. “You should hear my brother prosing on about tea, and how the empire would fall apart if we were denied our tea for a week straight. He’s full of opinions, is Spathfoy.”
This time, Dante let the cup sit on the tray until the lady had poured for herself. “The empire’s finances would certainly falter if tea consumption stopped.”
Another bungle, referring to commerce that way. He was in fine form today.
She took her tea with cream and sugar, and in her hands, the little porcelain cup with the gilded rim looked perfect—also a tad shaky.
“My nerves would falter as well. This is very good.”
“Bit of Darjeeling in it, because Margs prefers it. You’ve avoided my question, Lady Joan. One doesn’t find daughters of English marquesses milling about wee, cold, smelly Scottish train stations every day.” Not alone, not without their luggage, not desperate for a seat on any westbound train.
She cradled her tea in her hands, giving Dante a moment to study her. The Lady Joan he’d come across socially had never had a hair out of place, never so much as a crumb on her bodice or a less-than-pleasant expression on her lovely face.
This Lady Joan’s green eyes were shadowed with fatigue, her red hair was coiled in a simple chignon any serving maid might use for Sunday services, and her fine brows were slightly pinched, as if a worry had taken up residence behind them.
What A Lady Needs For Christmas Page 1
