Tye moved aside some bank draft or other and appropriated the comfortable chair behind Balfour’s estate desk.
“Some people might think my sister is plain, and that she dresses so magnificently to compensate for her looks.”
Hartwell brought him a drink, saluted, and downed a shot in a single swallow. “Those people would be idiots.”
Tye took a savoring sip of indecently lovely whiskey. “My former admonition regarding your continued well-being stands, Hartwell: murder, in every sense but the criminal if you break my sister’s heart. Other than that, welcome to the family.”
Hartwell smiled and poured himself another drink. “Understood, my lord.”
***
Pandora was the smallest and youngest of the adult Flynns, which in Joan’s opinion had also made her the most stubborn. That stubbornness was all too evident when she stood in the doorway to Joan’s bedroom several evenings after Joan’s engagement to Dante Hartwell had become fact.
“Good evening, Dora.”
“Let us in, or we’ll stand here in the corridor like a pair of drunken carolers until you do.”
“We might even sing,” Mary Ellen added evilly, for though they shared strawberry blond hair, Mary Ellen could sing like a nightingale, while Dora had from earliest youth been encouraged to merely move her lips when the hymns were sung in church.
“How seasonal of you,” Joan said with irony worthy of Tiberius in a foul mood. “It’s late, I’ve had a very trying day—the entire week since leaving Edinburgh has been trying—and I have correspondence to tend to.”
Correspondence to cry over, for Edward Valmonte’s good wishes in light of Joan’s engagement had been among the felicitations to arrive in the afternoon post. Joan tried to push the door closed—her sisters were not her friends and hadn’t been for years—but Mary Ellen wedged her way past Dora and barged into the room.
Dora, of course, followed, but remained near the door. “We are here to tell you that you needn’t marry this Mr. Hartwell for our sakes.”
“Are you really? Thank you for those sentiments, and now I bid you good night.”
Dora and Mary Ellen exchanged a look that included rolled eyes, exasperation, and the conspiratorial condescension of younger sisters who know they hold high cards.
About which Joan honestly cared not one single, bent farthing.
“You may bid us good night when you understand that we’re in earnest,” Mary Ellen said. “Mr. Hartwell is a handsome enough fellow, if you fancy the kilted sort, but if you think you must marry him so Dora and I aren’t overshadowed by your continued…marital availability, then we can’t allow you to make that sacrifice.”
Though she was petite, Dora was in some ways most like their father. She said what she thought, regardless of the consequences, and while she wasn’t precisely nasty—sibling relations excepted—she was blunt.
Mary Ellen, by contrast, had retreated into the role of disinterested diplomat.
“Thank you,” Joan said, though the sincerity of their sentiment upset a balance that had emerged between the sisters in adolescence.
An unhappy but stable, even rigid, balance.
“I’m not making a sacrifice,” Joan went on. “One tires of being leered at by the same bachelors and having one’s feet trod upon by the same tipsy baronets. Mr. Hartwell needs a mother for his children, a hostess, and a chaperone for his sister as she makes the acquaintance of Polite Society. Those are all worthy projects, and I find his company congenial.”
Oddly enough, this was all true.
Dora snorted and appropriated a seat on Joan’s bed. “You’re hardly in his company at all. Tiberius has appointed himself your guard dog, and Hester indulges him. You’re lucky to sit two seats away from your intended at breakfast.”
And yet, Dante had found quiet moments to squeeze Joan’s hand, to wink at her, to steal a peck on the cheek even when mistletoe wasn’t in evidence.
“What’s really afoot, Joan?” Mary Ellen’s question was soft and held a hint of…worry. “Marriage is a drastic, irrevocable step, and while Mama is trying to put a good face on it, decent people don’t marry far below themselves by special license.”
“You want to know if scandal is in the offing?” They were entitled to worry, for scandal was knocking on the very door.
“You are the most ill-natured creature,” Dora said. “We’re asking for information. Forewarned and all that. And stop pacing. You do it solely to make your skirts swish.”
As Joan considered removing Dora bodily from the room, Mary Ellen came to roost in Joan’s rocking chair.
“She’s ill-natured only around you, Dora, and in all fairness, you’re at your nastiest around Joan. And all over a silly dress? It’s time for the two of you to move beyond that.”
Dora lay back on Joan’s bed, kicked off a pair of pink velvet mules, and crossed her ankles, as if getting comfortable for a nice long squabble.
“That dress was not silly,” Joan said, recalling a green carriage dress with the loveliest peacock blue underskirt and a darker green gathered overskirt. That outfit was the first time she’d realized the potential of nacre buttons, and with a few plumes of peacock feather arranged both in a brooch and in the matching hat…
“Look at her,” Dora said. “She’s still in love with that dress, and all I wanted to do was borrow it.”
Edward Valmonte was intent on blackmail, holy matrimony with all the intimacies attendant thereto was breathing down Joan’s neck, scandal would likely come calling by Christmas, and Dora wanted to have this old argument?
Joan ceased her pacing before the hearth.
“Dora, I do not care that you typically spill coffee on every item of apparel you’ve worn for fifteen minutes. I do not care that I’d worked for weeks on that dress, for every moment was a labor of love. I do not care that you were in the act of borrowing it without my permission—which activity the law has unpleasant names for—when I came upon you trying to take up the hem. I do not even care that you ruined the dress for me when you went snipping away at it. I care very much that you would have looked ridiculous in that dress.”
Dora sat up, her mouth open as if to fire off a retort.
“I told you,” Mary Ellen interjected. “Joan isn’t mean, she simply doesn’t know how to express herself outside the sewing room.”
Mary Ellen wasn’t mean either, precisely, and yet, her comment—as insightful as it was—stung.
“That was a beautiful outfit!” Dora said, bouncing off the bed. “The perfect outfit for gaining Nathan Hampstead’s notice—but, no. You would not allow me to wear it even the once, so all I had for the carriage parade was that infantile little cream business, and there he was, jabbering away to Matilda Carnes. He didn’t even recognize me when I waved, and then they were engaged.”
For the first time since childhood, Joan chanced a look at Mary Ellen in the midst of one of Dora’s tirades. Not a conspiratorial look, but a look verifying that Dora was once again sounding sixteen years old, at the mercy of every adolescent insecurity, and passionately in love for the third time in as many weeks.
“Nathan Hampstead is notoriously shortsighted, Dora,” Joan said gently. “He’s also running to fat. Tiberius says the man plays too deep, as well. That cream business was your lucky dress.”
For every girl needed a lucky dress. Joan had been designing hers for years.
“So you say now,” Dora huffed, tossing herself onto Joan’s fainting couch. “I was convinced at the time you wanted him for yourself.”
This was news—also ridiculous. “You’re daft. He’s three inches shorter than I am. Do you know what he gazes at when we dance?”
Dora sat up and considered Joan from across the room. “I hate it when the fellows do that.”
“We all do,” Mary Ellen added. “Is this topic finally behind us?”
Peace on this subject would make a lovely wedding present. Joan knew better than to say as much.
“Dora,
deep green does not become you. Your coloring is more genteel than my own or Mama’s. She and I cannot wear the subtler colors, while you and Mary Ellen carry them off wonderfully. If you still want that dress, I’m happy to make it for you all over again, but we’ll choose colors that flatter you.”
“You wouldn’t lend me the dress because I can’t wear green?”
Not on your person. And yet, how odd to think that Dora—forthright, curvy Dora—could still feel stung by a long-ago sense of invisibility.
“Bad enough we all made our come outs in the shadow of a mama who commands every room she enters,” Joan said, settling on the fainting couch beside Dora. “Much worse if we try to emulate her and fail.”
“Joan was being protective of you,” Mary Ellen translated. “My sisters are dunderheads.”
Rather than acknowledge any dunderheadedness, Dora rose to pace.
“Is more protectiveness fueling this engagement, Joan? We know Eddie Valmonte was in your gun sights, and now he’s to marry that Lady Bon-Bon. I thought you simply liked to talk dresses with him, but Mary El says Eddie’s regard for you was becoming marked. I cannot see you talking about dresses with Mr. Hartwell.”
“He wears the loveliest wool blends. Lamb’s wool, angora, even cashmere.”
Mary Ellen laughed, Dora joined in, and to her surprise—so did Joan.
“He won’t be wearing any of those on your wedding night,” Dora said, bouncing back up onto the bed. “Has Mama mortified you with that little lecture yet?”
“About five years ago,” Joan replied, “but she was surprisingly encouraging about the entire undertaking.” Which left one to wonder vague, uncomfortable things about one’s own parents.
Though here was a difficulty—another difficulty: Would Mr. Hartwell expect to see his wife unclothed?
“First things first,” Mary Ellen said. “What will you wear on your wedding day?”
“I can’t make myself think about that,” Joan admitted, because she had nobody else to whom she might have made such a confession. “I’ll wear something, though I look ghastly in white. Fortunately, not everybody follows the Queen’s example in this, even now.”
“I have a lovely cream carriage dress we could alter for you,” Dora said. “Though I’m fairly certain it’s in London. Possibly Edinburgh.”
Which would not be a problem in this age of miracles. Dante had, in less than a week’s time, procured the special license. To have a dress sent up from London would be no difficulty at all.
“Have you invited Edward?” Mary Ellen asked quietly.
Oh, God. Just when the day could not have become worse.
“Mama did the guest list, and I’m sure he’s not—”
“You’re sure he is on it,” Dora interrupted. “Mama has never avoided a potential confrontation, and never held one in private that could be carried off in public. Blast and damnation. We ought to have said something to Papa.”
“No matter,” Joan said. “If Edward attends, he attends. We’ll talk about dresses, which is all we ever really did.”
That she could recall. His note hadn’t mentioned blackmail, but it had confirmed that Joan’s drawings were in his possession, and were likely to remain there. Edward was a viscount, after all. His coercion would be the smiling, sly variety.
“Which brings us back to our first order of business,” Mary Ellen said. “You’re getting married in a week’s time, and everybody will come up from Edinburgh to look over this Mr. Hartwell. You’ll need a dress.”
Joan thought of her lucky dress, the one she’d designed and designed. The one she sketched in low moments, the one she saved for thinking about on bleak days and in black moods.
“There isn’t time to make up something new,” she said. “One of the qualities I treasure most about Mr. Hartwell is that he understands appearances for what they are—stage trappings rather than substance.”
“Please don’t inform Mama that appearances are of no consequence,” Dora said. “She’s confused on the matter. Mary Ellen’s right, though. On your wedding day, you need a dress. For Mr. Hartwell’s sake if not your own.”
Dora, blast her, was not wrong.
“You need a dress,” Dora reiterated, grinning, “and we’re your sisters. You have to let us help you make it.”
“Both of us,” Mary Ellen said. “We’ll forbid Dora to go near the coffeepot, and have Lady Balfour muster reinforcements if we need them. Hester would help, and Lady Balfour might as well. Between the ladies assembled here, we could sew you anything your heart desired.”
How happy Mary Ellen was to contemplate this project.
And despite Joan’s anxiety over the marriage, her fury at Edward, and her contempt for her own behavior—also her worry over the wedding night—how relieved Joan was to have her sisters’ support.
Though for once, her heart’s desire had nothing to do with sewing or fabric.
“I have some ideas, but they need refining.”
“Come here, Mary El.” Dora patted the bed. “I excel at refining.”
“And so modest,” Mary Ellen said, climbing onto the bed. Joan scooted to the foot of the bed, back supported by a bedpost, sketch pad open on her lap. They spent an hour strategizing, until Dora threw the first pillow, and the second.
Before the room was coated in feathers—as had once happened when Joan was eleven—Joan had come up with a lovely, simple gown that could be made up in the time remaining. She sent her sisters on their way, tidied up the bed, and tried to calculate the fabric estimates, but made little progress.
Tears, it seemed, were also to be her newfound companions. Joan had just balled up Edward’s infernal note, intent on pitching it into the fire, when a quiet knock sounded at her door.
Ten
“Let’s be honest, Margs,” Hector said. “If you don’t want to spend time in my company, then I’ll take one of the nursery maids along when the children and I fetch the post tomorrow.”
His casual suggestion had Margaret bolting off the sofa as if a ghost had joined her in the library.
“Good evening, Hector.” She’d been embroidering, peacocks or doves, something pretty and shimmery. By firelight, her birds seemed to flutter amid leafy green silk-thread boughs.
“Shall I light you to your bedroom, Margaret?” He’d had to lie in wait among the gentlemen in the parlor before tracking her here when the rest of the house was abed. For that much effort, a man deserved some reward.
“No, thank you. Would you rather I sent a nursery maid with the children to the village?”
He’d rather she left the children at home, rather she didn’t sit them between the adults every damned time Hector took the sleigh to the posting inn, rather she didn’t hover by the couch like a hare ready to bolt from cover when the hounds came too close.
“You should do as you please, Margaret. That was the point of my comment.”
The point of his comment had been to provoke her into assuring him she loved spending time with him and wished he’d go into the village every day rather than every other.
When pigs danced the Highland fling.
She drew in a breath, which did agreeable things to her bodice. “The children benefit from—”
Hector took four steps closer, close enough to see the fatigue in Margaret’s eyes. Firelight was usually flattering to women, softening signs of age, but the flickering shadows made Margaret look more like a shade than herself.
“You’re up early with the weans each morning,” he said, “then you put yourself at Lady Balfour’s beck and call. At meals you barely say anything, and in the afternoons, you pretend you have correspondence to tend to if I don’t get you out of this monument to dead pine boughs and holiday cheer. You’re miserable, Margaret Hartwell, and I cannot abide that. If I’m making you more miserable, then you must say so.”
Women comfortable with their needle had a competence of the hands that fascinated Hector, as if they played a musical instrument, except the result was
pretty colors instead of notes in the air. Margaret opened her embroidery hoop and anchored her needle in a corner of the fabric. She folded the peacocks and doves away in neat, precise movements, so all the lovely birds were hidden from view, and a confusion of colored threads showed on the back of the fabric.
“The children need to get outside,” she said. “Dante is busy wooing his investors and future in-laws, and I can barely keep straight the names of all the people we sit down to meals with.”
Hector took the cloth bag into which she’d stuffed her stitching, and set it on the desk behind him. “The children will be fine. What do you need?”
The question baffled her, and that drove him…that drove him to distraction. Margaret Hartwell, whether she knew it or not, was what had held Dante’s small family together in recent years. That she’d be uncertain in any regard was untenable.
“Dante is taking a wife,” Margaret said in the same tones she might have reported fading eyesight or the loss of some other precious faculty. “Lady Joan is wonderful with the children, and she’ll be a much better guide for Charlie than I could ever be. I like her, and she’ll be good for Dante.”
Insight struck, welcome and startling. “You want to hate Lady Joan. So do I.”
“Not hate her…only resent her. This is very bad of me, for Joan is a good woman.”
He’d come in here looking for a reckoning, and had found so much more—he’d found something he alone had in common with Margaret.
“You’re worried about your brother,” Hector said, taking Margaret by the hand and leading her to the desk. One didn’t sit on desks in the households of earls, but one didn’t stand on ceremony when wooing a lady, either. Hector hiked himself onto the desk, then patted the place on the blotter beside him.
For Margaret, the maneuver wasn’t exactly graceful—she was substantially shorter than Hector, but with his help, she managed.
“I am fretting about Dante,” Margaret said, studying her slippered feet. “I’m worried about the children, and I’m worried about me. I should not burden you with my silly anxieties.”
What A Lady Needs For Christmas Page 16
