The sketches she’d abandoned when she’d stolen from Edward’s embrace in the dead of night.
“These aren’t final designs,” Edward said, though neither Mama nor Uncle appeared to heed him. “I said, these still need some work. I’m not finished with them.”
Because with a flounce here and a puffier sleeve there, Edward might obscure the fact that he’d committed larceny in addition to trespassing on a good woman’s virtue.
While Mama and Uncle went blithely about another of their many arguments, Edward tied the portfolio ribbons closed. It would not do for anybody to catch sight of what he carried about where pencils, paper, charcoal, pastels, and erasers should be.
***
A big dark-haired fellow came sauntering past the crossed ceremonial claymores gracing the first landing, his unsmiling gaze fixed on Lady Joan. He looked ready to launch into lectures Dante was too tired to tolerate.
“Are Dora and Mary Ellen with you?” His tone was more inquisitive than concerned, and beside Dante, Lady Joan stood taller.
“They made separate arrangements.”
“Lady Joan traveled out from the station with my family and me. I’m sure her day has been quite taxing.”
The confused quality of the other man’s scowl reminded Dante that—heaven help him—they had not been introduced.
MacGregor remedied the oversight. “Lord Spathfoy, may I make known to you Mr. Dante Hartwell. Mr. Hartwell, Tiberius, Earl of Spathfoy, whom I consider a cousin by marriage.”
Without giving up his hold of Joan’s arm, Dante bowed to his lordship, wondering what the fellow had done to merit a first name address from Lady Joan. Spathfoy was English, and impeccably turned out, which would matter to Joan.
“Hartwell, my thanks,” said his hoity-toity English lordship. “Now you will please turn loose of my sister that I might inflict a proper greeting on her.”
Sister. Dante did not turn loose of Joan so much as she eased from his grasp and slipped into her brother’s embrace.
“Is Hester here?” Joan asked, drawing back but not leaving the circle of her brother’s arms. “I have missed you both terribly, and I’m sure my nephew is ready to ride to hounds.”
Spathfoy was fooled by that diversionary tactic—he went into lordly raptures about some baby, and needing rest, and his countess believed this and that about the rearing of a child—but Joan was bluffing.
She was exhausted, anxious as hell, possibly even scared, and her brother wasn’t to know any of it. And yet, the entirety of her miserable day had been given into Dante’s confidence.
Where it would remain.
“MacGregor, if you’d complete the introductions?” Dante asked. “The children in particular have had a long day.”
As had Dante. MacGregor—the earl of Balfour, rather, dammit—said something to his red-haired wife, an American whose name or title or proper form of address Dante would worry about tomorrow, and soon that lady was leading Margs and the children up the curving stairway.
The noise level dropped considerably with Charlie’s departure, and in the ringing quiet, fatigue crept up behind Dante and clobbered him stoutly.
“You’re probably for bed too,” MacGregor—Balfour—said. “Her ladyship will have trays sent up, and the sideboards are stocked in all of the bedrooms. Will you need a valet?”
What Dante needed was to know Joan would be provided the same solitude and comfort MacGregor was offering him.
“I see to myself,” Dante said. “A tray would be appreciated.”
“Joan!” A small blond woman came barreling into the entryway. “Oh, you’ve surprised us! It’s so good to see you!”
Dante liked this woman on sight, for her arrival had saved Joan from further interrogations by Spathfoy, and she was effusive in her greetings. She was so petite, however, that Joan’s height looked even greater by contrast.
“It’s lovely to be here,” Joan said, flashing another smile. Her stamina, when it came to facial dissembling, was prodigious. She reached for Dante and drew him forward by virtue of linking their arms. “Lady Spathfoy, may I make known to you…”
Dante bowed over the lady’s hand, while he tried to absorb that this bright, cheery little woman was married to Joan’s lordly brother. Perhaps opposites did attract. And while Spathfoy made sheep’s eyes at his wee countess, Dante renewed his request to MacGregor.
“Might we prevail upon you to show us to our accommodations, MacGregor? I confess I’m about asleep on my feet.”
He could go another twenty-four hours before that was so, and had on occasion, but he was damned if he’d let Joan’s brother get a free shot at her before she’d had some rest.
“This way, then,” MacGregor said, leading them up the stairs and past the claymores. “Spathfoy, Countess, until breakfast.”
They were shown to rooms across the hall from each other, which suited Dante well enough. MacGregor’s ancestral pile sported a modern bathing chamber on the same corridor as the guest rooms. The house was well appointed—the mirrors shone brightly, the sconces sported clean chimneys, the scent of the place was fresh and cedary with a homey undertone of peat.
For all its cleanliness and size, the house fell short of pretentious—and thank God for that, because Dante could not have borne to do business with a Scotsman given to fussiness and airs.
“Lady Joan, I’ll bid you good night,” MacGregor said. “Breakfast is on the sideboard by seven. Any maid or footman can direct you if the scent of bacon isn’t guide enough. Mr. Hartwell, good night.”
He bustled off, kilt swinging, maybe to find his countess, or perhaps to give two weary travelers privacy to seek their beds.
Joan paused with her hand on the glass doorknob. “He’s Balfour, not MacGregor, though Asher is quite the democrat. He didn’t seem to care how you addressed him.”
Her hand dropped without turning the knob. Dante was across the hall in an instant, scooping her up against his chest and carrying her into his room.
“I don’t care how I address him,” he said, shoving the door closed with his shoulder. The room was warm, a few candles were lit, and a fire burned cheerily in the hearth. “We need to get our stories straight before your brother resumes his interrogation of you.”
“You need to put me down, Mr. Hartwell.”
No, he did not. Lady Joan was no sylph, she was a proper armful of feminine curves—unhappy feminine curves.
Dante sat her gently on the high, fluffy bed, and then he locked the door.
***
“Your brother will be after you at breakfast,” Mr. Hartwell said, stalking about the room. He peered out at the darkness past the window, opened and closed the wardrobe doors, opened and closed the drawers to the night table, and generally inspected his accommodations much as his daughter might have. “And don’t be fooled, that wee, cheery wife of his will abet his questioning.”
“Would you please sit, Mr. Hartwell?” For his peregrinations, particularly among the green-and-white plaid decor of the room, were dizzying.
He took a seat next to her on the bed, and his bulk was such that Joan settled against him.
“I wasn’t expecting Tye to be here,” Joan said. “I wasn’t expecting your house party to be my house party, rather. This complicates matters.”
Mostly, she wasn’t expecting to be ruined.
Oh, that again.
Mr. Hartwell took her hand, his grip warm and unexpected. “Family members excel at the art of the public ambush, lass. We need to think.”
We. Joan’s regard for Mr. Hartwell rose with his choice of pronouns, and he was right. Tiberius would note the absence of a maid, the absence of baggage, the absence of explanations for those departures from normal expectations.
“My maid did fall ill. Perhaps I’d already joined your party when that happened?”
“Your maid returned to Edinburgh, and her version of events will be different.”
It would. Family excelled at the art of public ambush,
as Mr. Hartwell had noted, while Bertha enjoyed excellent and unwavering recall of the truth, also a loyalty to Joan’s mama that was occasionally inconvenient.
“Perhaps I knew your sister was traveling north, and agreed to join her party?”
“Your path never crossed Margaret’s in public before today, for my sister finds Polite Society tedious.”
A point in Miss Hartwell’s favor.
“Who knew you were leaving Edinburgh, my lady?”
Joan tried to turn the gears of her recollection, but the going was made difficult by fatigue and anxiety bordering on panic.
“Everybody knew my general plans. My family has not been together for a winter holiday for several years, and my mother crowed about this year’s plans to all and sundry.”
Edward knew she was coming north for the holidays and had asked her under whose roof those holidays would be spent—as he’d offered her another drink and sat near enough to her to admire her sketches.
And to leer at the meager treasures in her bodice.
Maybe depression was the exhausted form of self-loathing, for when Joan should have crossed the hallway into her own room, she instead turned her face into Mr. Hartwell’s wool-clad shoulder. The inevitable scent of coal smoke clung to his clothing, but beneath his attire was solid muscle and common sense.
Also, apparently, a goodly quantity of decency.
“Perhaps you and I are already engaged,” Joan said. “Or we have an understanding until you can talk with my family.”
By virtue of a hand anchored at her nape, Mr. Hartwell turned Joan’s face up, so she had to meet his eyes.
He was tired, he lacked the refined appearance and pretty manners of Joan’s peers, and she wanted to kiss him.
“If you bruit it about that we’re engaged, Lady Joan, your reputation will suffer if you have to break it off. You might cast aside a fellow of your own set as a queer start, but I’m…I’m not…an expected choice for such as you.”
Such as you. Mr. Hartwell forgot his host’s title, but he could be delicate when it mattered.
“You own mills,” Joan said, smoothing his hair back, because touching soft things soothed her. “I love to design clothing. Maybe you’re not so unexpected.”
He said nothing rather than remind Joan of his parlous upbringing. She appreciated that consideration too.
“Will you sit by me at breakfast?” she asked.
“I’ll not go down without you.”
He’d wait above stairs until spring for her if need be. Tiberius was equally stubborn, though in a brother—or a father, mother, and sisters—the quality was not half so attractive.
“I’ll think of something,” Joan said, “and confer with you before breakfast. I’m too tired to think now.”
Not too tired to feel, though.
Mr. Hartwell patted her hand. “You might tell your family the truth, my lady. That brother of yours looks like he could sort out a presuming twit or two without much trouble.”
“But Tiberius would know then, wouldn’t he? He’d know I was ruined, and he’d feel compelled to tell my parents. They’d all smugly conclude that were I not so preoccupied with matters of fashion, I would not have been led astray, and the one thing—the single pursuit I’ve chosen for my own—would be taken from me.”
He kissed her temple, the same way he’d kissed Charlie’s temple hours ago in a chilly rural train station.
“Your dresses are more important to you than honesty with your family?”
What had that to do with anything?
“I’m tired,” Joan said, rising. “You’re tired, and things will look brighter in the morning.”
They would not, of course. By tomorrow, Edward might have already let all and sundry know of Joan’s fall from grace.
Mr. Hartwell remained sitting on the bed. “Shall I unhook your dress?”
This had been a worry, in that small train station as Joan had put Bertha on the southbound train. How did a fashionably attired lady undress at the end of the day if she was unfashionably stranded without the services of a maid?
She could destroy her clothing or accept assistance.
“Lord Balfour neglected to offer me a maid’s services, though I could ring for one.” Who would probably take a half hour to appear.
Mr. Hartwell rose, his expression grave.
“If we marry, my lady, we will marry quite soon and consummate the vows immediately. For the child’s sake, and for yours.”
Understanding bloomed, a blush along with it. “So the child’s paternity might be shrouded in ambiguity?”
He did not so much as nod. “Shall I unhook your dress?”
The second time he asked the question, it bore a significance Joan hadn’t grasped earlier. Mr. Hartwell had been married, and married couples at his strata assisted each other to dress and undress. He’d unhooked any number of dresses, unlaced endless numbers of stays. While Joan’s experience of unclad men was limited to marble statues without faces.
She’d enjoyed kissing Mr. Hartwell, despite all odds to the contrary. Had he enjoyed kissing her?
Joan turned her back to him and swept her hair off her nape. As deft fingers undid her gown, she marveled that with Mr. Hartwell, she was safe even when he was undressing her, though with a man she might have considered her equal, she’d been ruined.
“Thank you,” she said a few moments later, more able to breathe than she’d been all day.
He stepped away, his hands behind his back. “Get some rest, and we’ll talk further in the morning.”
Joan headed for the door but had to pause to unlock it. “In the morning, we might become engaged.”
And within the week, they might well be married.
***
Edward stared at the blank stationery before him, one thought filling his awareness: a gentleman should apologize for abusing a lady’s sensibilities, particularly when that lady was connected to a wealthy family, moved much in Society, and possessed prodigious talent when it came to designing pretty dresses.
“You aren’t making much progress with your correspondence, Edward. Are you preoccupied with thoughts of our wedding?” Lady Dorcas asked.
What wed—? Oh, that wedding.
“Of course, my dear. Have you chosen a recipe for the cake yet?”
Because the cake was the central concern in this blushing bride’s list of wedding details. The dress, she’d confided, would be of her fiancé’s design—God help him.
“I’m debating between vanilla and orange flavor for the cake. To whom do you write, Edward?”
Like most engaged couples, they were given significant latitude beyond the rules imposed on the unattached. Edward’s mother would reappear at some point, though not soon enough, and she’d announce her impending arrival with a song or an overloud proclamation to the footman posted six feet outside the door.
“I’m writing to a friend, trying to word an apology that isn’t too obsequious, and asking for the loan of a…particular walking stick left in my care.”
Dorcas put down her lorgnette. “Apologize for what? You’re a viscount—why should you apologize?”
“My friend and I were a bit naughty—a bit too free with the spirits, you know.”
Was he telling her this as a sort of backhanded confession?
“If he’s careless with his things, you need hardly apologize for looking after them in his absence. I know somebody else who was naughty. Mama’s abigail heard it from her sister, who’s a chambermaid in Lady Quinworth’s household, and the abigail told my lady’s maid.”
Dorcas had a certain practical charm, for all she thought more of cakes than dresses, and she had a fiendish memory for gossip.
Edward tossed his pen down and took a place on the love seat beside his intended.
“We’re to be married, my dear, and that means we should be in each other’s confidence when it comes to juicy gossip.”
For why should he be the only one making the occasional, entirely un
derstandable, hardly-his-fault misstep?
“Lady Joan Flynn’s maid went north with her yesterday—very little luggage, no tickets purchased in advance, bad weather closing in—and came back without Lady Joan before midday. The family is sending the maid off to spend the holiday with her sister in the south.”
Of all the names that might have come out of Dorcas’s rosebud mouth…
“Lady Joan was to spend her holidays at some house party in the hills, I believe.” At the Earl of Balfour’s house party, a coveted invitation extended to a select few, and those mostly MacGregor family connections.
Wealthy MacGregor family connections.
Dorcas’s expression was indulgent. “Edward, Stirring Up Sunday is tomorrow. Nobody starts a Christmas house party this early, particularly not in the frigid and dreary Highlands. The maid came back alone, which means Lady Joan apparently met somebody to the north, or traveled on without any accompaniment. One is left to wonder why she fled, or whom she met.”
“I thought you liked Lady Joan.” Edward liked Joan—when he wasn’t trying to cadge kisses and sketches from her.
“How could I like a woman who manages to look wonderfully turned out despite having a long nose, no figure, and far too much height? Badly done of her, if you ask me. She’s overdue for a comeuppance. Do you favor vanilla or orange?”
Sweets in general had no appeal for Edward. “I’ll favor whatever you choose, my dove. So Lady Joan is courting scandal?”
Dorcas picked up the lorgnette and went back to studying her recipes.
“A woman who values her wardrobe as much as Joan Flynn would never part with her maid when in her right mind. Joan was going to meet a lover is my guess, and the maid figured it out and wanted no part of such debauchery. Skinny women get desperate.”
Joan was not skinny, not where it mattered. “Maybe her ladyship was fleeing a lover.” Or fleeing the announcement of a lover’s engagement, which had been all over the morning papers—bad timing, that.
“One doesn’t flee a lover,” Dorcas said, wrinkling her nose. “Whoever heard of a chocolate wedding cake?”
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