Quinworth winged his arm, the only response DeeDee needed when she was in one of her flutters. Spathfoy had the slightly dazed look so many fellows wore in DeeDee’s presence, and the faint fatigue of a man parenting a small child.
“Hello, sir.” Spathfoy said to his father.
“Hah. Warn your sisters that her ladyship and I are on the premises, and pray for an early spring. I don’t know whose idea this infernal house party was, but if I find him, he’ll have much to answer for.”
Spathfoy had his mother’s sweet, winning smile, though he was more parsimonious about sharing it. “Happy Christmas to you, too, sir. And might I say, you and Mama are in great good looks.”
DeeDee preened, and well she might. For a woman of a certain age, she showed to excellent advantage. Tall, red-haired, and formed by a generous and loving God, she was more Christmas gift than any one marquess deserved in a lifetime.
“Save your flattery for your wife, Tiberius,” she said. “Your father doesn’t tolerate the cold as easily as you young fellows do.” She ran a maternal eye over Spathfoy’s knees, in evidence because the boy was wearing a kilt—the Flynn tartan, of course.
Inside Balfour house, Quinworth endured more greetings, to the point that a near crowd had gathered in the entrance hall. Most of the fellows were in kilts, and many of the assemblage seemed to know one another. Hester greeted her father-in-law cheerfully—as well she had better—while DeeDee swanned about and kissed cheeks left and right.
“Who’s the solemn little fellow?” Hale asked his daughter-in-law, for the petite Lady Spathfoy was a canny sort and a worthy ally. A small boy peered through the banisters of the balcony in the time-honored tradition of eavesdropping children.
“Mr. Hartwell’s son, Phillip. A shy lad, likes his books and is completely overshadowed by his younger sister.”
“Younger sisters can be the very plague,” Quinworth muttered. “Just ask your husband.”
“Dora, Joan, and Mary Ellen will all be down in a moment,” Hester said—she was also the informal sort, which likely caused Spathfoy no end of consternation. “Dora and Mary Ellen were on the noon train. You made good time out from the station.”
They’d made good time because DeeDee loved to feel the wind in her hair—also because the lady needed to dote on her children and grandchildren regularly, and brought a certain urgency to her activities.
“I assume you and Tiberius are managing adequately?” Quinworth asked. Balfour had decorated his home in the English style, with greenery hanging from the rafters, cloved oranges dangling here and there, and wreaths on the doors and in the windows.
All in the tasteful excesses called for by the season, of course.
Hester was not fooled. She waited until Quinworth had visually inspected every corner and cranny of the entrance hall before she deigned to answer.
“I might well be again in anticipation of a blessed event, your lordship. Tiberius wants to wait until after the holidays to share the news with her ladyship.”
Tiberius was waiting, no doubt, because DeeDee had buried a son, and her nerves should not be tested unnecessarily with good tidings that could turn out to be no tidings at all.
“The little fellow wants to come down,” Quinworth said. “Where is his nurse?”
The longing in the child’s eyes was discernible at twenty paces. He’d have imprints on his pale cheeks from the banister railings. As Quinworth and Hester watched, a blond woman no longer in the first blush of youth knelt beside the boy. She wasn’t dressed as a nurse, and yet…
“Joan needs to take that young lady’s wardrobe in hand,” Quinworth muttered. “Though I doubt her ladyship or Dora and Mary Ellen will allow her the time.”
“That is Mr. Hartwell’s sister Margaret,” Hester said. “We’re finding her very agreeable company.”
Of course. Everybody was agreeable for the first few days of a house party, and then the flirting and overimbibing and overwagering began. Miss Agreeable Company took the boy by the hand, but the child cast a longing glance over his shoulder.
DeeDee had once confided to Quinworth that her secret for managing any gathering was to look about the room and find the person who seemed the most out of place, the most uncomfortable, and attach herself to that person until others had joined their conversation.
Other children were in the entrance hall, darting between the adults, adding to the racket, and nearly tripping the servants taking winter wraps and offering hot cider to the new arrivals.
Quinworth tipped his chin to get the lad’s attention. The boy stopped long enough that Quinworth could wink at him and earn a smile for that breach of lordly decorum, before the child was dragged away from the balcony.
DeeDee’s smile connected with Quinworth’s gaze in the next instant. Not her “The Marchioness of Quinworth” smile, but the smile belonging to Hale Flynn’s wife, the mother of his children, and his friend.
Sometimes his only friend. She blew him a kiss from hands still clad in smart green gloves, for DeeDee always remembered what Hale had tried so often to forget: he, too, had buried a son.
***
“Your sketch pads are stacked willy-nilly, you’ve arrived here two days before the rest of us with no explanation, and your lady’s maid begged me for an extended holiday at her sister’s—also without explanation.”
Mama turned with military precision before the hearth in Joan’s bedroom, for nobody could make skirts swish like Mama in a taking.
“Which holiday I gave her,” Mama went on, “with pay, when in thirty years of service to the Flynn family, Bertha McClintock has never once mentioned a sister.”
“Bertha has two sisters,” Joan said, resisting the compulsion to tidy up her stack of sketch pads. “One named Joan, like me, the other named Deborah.” Also a brother, though he was a disgraceful sot, according to Bertha.
Like Joan?
Mama picked up the wool plaid blanket folded across the foot of Joan’s bed, shook it out and refolded it. The Marchioness of Quinworth was tall enough that she could fold most blankets without them touching the carpet.
Joan was an inch taller—the last time she’d allowed herself to be compared to her ladyship.
“Joan Flynn, if you think I won’t ferret out what has gone amok, you’re daft. Tiberius is keeping his own counsel, but if I ask him to send a few wires, I will soon have every detail of whatever disgrace you’re about to bring down on this family.”
When Mama was upset, her burr thickened, and she was nigh unintelligible now. That she’d press Tye into service rather than make Papa send her wires was part of the curious dance of consideration and selfishness that had always characterized Mama’s dealings with his lordship.
“I grew bored in Edinburgh,” Joan said, taking a seat on a window bench. “Everybody repairs to the country for the holidays, the Highlands are beautiful in winter, and I took a notion to travel on. Bertha fell ill and asked to turn back at such a small way station, I could not hire another lady’s maid.”
“And Miss Hartwell befriended you. I heard your bletherin’ at supper, and not a soul contradicted you, but, Joan, I am your mother.”
Mama tended to recall this when she was in want of other distractions.
“Must you make drama where none exists?” Joan asked, her tone as condescending as any the marquess himself might have employed. “Maids sicken, and they take winter journeys into dislike. Bertha is not young, and she does have family to the south.”
No lies yet, though they were in the offing, like wolves shivering in the undergrowth, waiting to tear Joan’s tissue of deceptions to shreds.
Mama settled onto the bench beside Joan in a cloud of lilac scent and green velvet fashion that went beautifully with her Celtic coloring.
“I am not interrogating you because I am bored, young lady, though after the past few years, I can understand you might judge me thus. As a parent, I have shortcomings, for which I am sorry.” Her tone suggested she was more irritated tha
n sorry, and yet, any admission of fault from Mama was a startling development. “Your trunks arrived two days ago, Joan. Most of your dresses are not yet pressed, some aren’t even hung up.”
Mistake. Every criminal supposedly made some minor mistake out of a suppressed desire to be thwarted in their wicked activity and brought to justice. Joan always tended to her own clothing when she traveled—something Bertha had never once objected to—but now Joan had allowed her mother to see the disarray in her bedroom.
“I’m letting my dresses air. Anything that travels by train needs to air.” Joan rose but kept her steps measured rather than support the idea that she was fleeing from her own mother. “Take a sniff. Coal smoke is the very devil to get out of winter fabrics, and yet, I don’t think Lady Balfour would like me flying my dresses from the battlements.”
She held out the sleeve of her purple velvet dress, the one she’d worn on the train, the only one that might still carry a hint of coal smoke. Mama leaned in and took a whiff, as if in the manner of a wild creature, she might divine entire itineraries from a scent alone.
“This is such a pretty dress,” Mama murmured, fingering the lacy cuff. “And shows to such advantage on you. If I needed a few small adjustments to my dinner dresses, could you make them without mentioning anything to your father?”
What on earth?
“Of course, Mama. I always have my sewing basket with me.” Also her embroidery and her knitting. Those last had arrived with her trunks.
“I’m off to find your sisters,” Mama said, rising. “Dora muttered something about wanting to learn to play hockey, for God’s sake. I cannot rely on her father to curb such a notion either. He grows so restless when he cannot be regularly on horseback.”
Such a comment might have been a criticism two years ago, but something had shifted in the way Joan’s parents dealt with each other.
“Are you worried about Papa? He seems fine to me.” As irascible as ever, without intending any real harm.
“He’s humoring me,” her ladyship said, hanging Joan’s purple dress in the enormous wardrobe across from the fireplace. “We’re trying, you know. Trying to learn how to get along when neither of us has a natural talent in that direction.”
Right next to the purple dress, Mama hung a green brocade.
Joan considered what Mr. Hartwell had said, about conflict providing a certain excitement in a marriage and gaining a spouse’s notice.
“You want to pay attention to each other,” Joan suggested, “but without being a bother. I can see how Papa might present a challenge in this regard.”
Much less Mama, who let all and sundry know she was the brains behind the overflowing Quinworth family coffers, who’d left her husband for two years without a backward glance, and who thrived on gossip and social drama.
And Mama could not fathom why Papa spent so much time out on the land, in the company of sheep, horses, and fresh air.
Between the purple and green came an umbery brown that bordered on orange, the resulting palette sufficiently disquieting that Joan had to look away.
“I forget that my girls are no longer girls,” her ladyship said. “You’ve hit it exactly: I want to attend to my husband, and not be a bother, and yet…” She trailed off, her gaze on the dresses in the wardrobe. She fingered the sleeve of the purple that looked so good on Joan.
“Whatever is wrong, Joan, I hope you know that your family will always love you. I have not been the most devoted mother, but I am loyal. Your father and siblings are too.”
Mama kissed her cheek—Mama must kiss at least a dozen cheeks a day—and swished from the room, leaving Joan amid her dresses, sketch pads, knitting, and embroidery.
The time had come to put away her things, though, because no matter how many times Joan flipped through the pages of her sketch pads, no matter how long or hard she stared into the bottom of her empty trunk, the drawings she treasured most—the drawings she’d taken with her to have tea with Edward Valmonte and his mother—were no longer in her possession.
Like Mr. Hartwell’s wife, looking in the mirror and seeing a form changing before her very eyes, Joan’s inability to lay her hands on her sketches was proof, like nothing else had been, that Joan was, indeed, facing scandal.
When she’d hung her dresses up in their proper order, from bright to dark, and stacked her sketchbooks in date order, and refolded the blanket at the foot of the bed in exact quarters, she went in search of Mr. Hartwell.
Nine
“And here’s the bank draft for the insurance premium,” Dante said, adding the document to a stack on Hector’s side of the desk. “Wouldn’t want to forget that.”
“God, no. The ghost of Mr. Shatner would haunt us for a certainty,” Hector said, rising. “At least the sun’s out. Shall I offer to take Margaret and the children into town with me?”
The sun was out, though it wouldn’t be for long. Such was the reality of daylight and darkness in the depths of a Highland winter.
“If you take the children, the nursery maids will remember you in their prayers for years.”
Dante rose too, because he’d spent the entire morning sitting behind the mahogany acreage of Balfour’s estate desk, in hopes a certain nervous Englishwoman might come to further inspect a portrait.
Or a prospective spouse.
“They’ve even hung mistletoe in here,” Hector said, an assessing gaze on the greenery overhead.
“At a gathering that’s mostly family, there’s little harm in it,” Dante replied, taking a place near the fire’s warmth. “The MacGregor ladies are a comely lot.”
“Fertile too,” Hector murmured, taking a swig from his flask. A bachelor sharing a roof with a passel of babies, and not one but two women in anticipation of a blessed event, was entitled to his fortification.
And that tally did not include Lady Joan.
“The Quinworth daughters aren’t hard to look on either,” Dante observed, though Joan was clearly the best of the lot. Too bad she was burdened with Spathfoy for a brother.
“So why aren’t they married?” Hector asked. “Their papa’s a wealthy English marquess, and those women could have married into the best families in Europe—a German prince or an Italian count, at least. And yet, they’re here, threatening to learn to play hockey with a lot of kilted heathen.”
“German princes and Italian counts are thick on the ground. Kilted heathen with the luxury of time to play hockey have become worse than scarce.”
Though why hadn’t any of Quinworth’s comely, well-dowered daughters married?
“I’m off to muster the troops,” Hector said, putting his flask away. “Sand that bank draft, and I’ll add it to the lot on my way out the door. If we’re not back in three days, don’t you dare marry that Englishwoman. She’s trouble, mark me on this.”
“All wives are trouble,” Dante countered. “They’d say the same about husbands. Part of the charm of the institution.”
Hector let him have the last word—continued employment being a dear privilege, apparently—and headed for the door. It opened before Hector reached it, and Lady Joan moved into the library.
Hector and Joan swung a few steps wide of each other, like predators observing the etiquette of the watering hole.
“My lady.”
“Mr. MacMillan.”
Nothing more, and yet, hackles had gone up on both sides, which was tiresome when Dante might marry the one and depended daily on the other.
The library door clicked shut, and Joan stopped four paces from the hearth.
“Good morning, my lady.” They’d seen each other at meals and in the evening, when the house-party guests gathered in the largest parlor and tried entertain one another. More family would arrive as Christmas came closer, so Dante was biding his time and assessing his prospects.
“Mr. Hartwell.”
Joan was quivering with some news, and in a rusty, sentimental corner of his heart, Dante experienced a pang of disappointment, for what could co
mpel her to seek him out again in private, except proof that she was not carrying a child?
“You agreed to call me Dante.”
“Dante, then.”
She was a lady, and despite her ability to play marbles with the children or bluntly admit her recent folly to a stranger on a northbound train, she would hardly know how to discuss a woman’s bodily functions.
And yet, he would not make it easy for her to dismiss him.
He waved a hand toward the painting over the hearth. “Have you come to assess the laird in all his dirt?”
“No. I have come to speak with you.”
“Shall we sit?” An Englishman would send a footman for tea, and leave the library door open when he did. Those polite maneuvers would placate propriety and give the lady time to gather her wits, while bringing the temperature in the room down considerably.
Dante had not one drop of English blood in his veins.
Joan seated herself on the sofa, the warmest spot in the room. Dante took the place beside her, uninvited, and waited.
“You know I am in serious difficulties.”
“I know you are in fear of scandal. You appear to enjoy good health, you have a comfortable roof over your head, and your pin money would keep most families in haggis, neeps, and tatties handily. What troubles you strikes me more as a challenge than a serious difficulty.”
He’d baited her on purpose, because this pale, hands-clasped, red-haired martyr annoyed him on her behalf. Joan should be more like her mother, hurling thunderbolts of audacious charm, and leaving lilac-scented kisses on the cheeks of handsome men twenty years her junior.
Though Dante generally avoided the marchioness and her noisy chatter. Her own husband appeared to do likewise.
“I’m facing a challenge then,” Joan said, hands clasped more tightly. “The challenge has become more pressing.”
What A Lady Needs For Christmas Page 14
