Norah blinked. “And I have an ounce of good taste?”
Jasper smiled admiringly at her. “Of course, miss! You are always very nicely turned out. I do admire such elegant restraint in a lady.” He peered at her closely. “Although it is amusing to overdo once in a while, don’t you find?”
Norah smiled up at the ridiculous joyous holiday display on assembly all about her. “Like at Christmas?”
Jasper nodded. “Lord Matthias does love a nice garland.”
Or a clear hundred of them. Norah grinned at her two new partners in excess. “Hello again, Mr. Brand. And Mr. Tanner. Any relation to a charming young man by the name of Arthur?”
Tanner nodded earnestly. “My nephew, miss. His da is me eldest brother.”
“Oh dear.” Norah put a gentle hand on the young footman’s arm. “My condolences on the loss of your mother this year. I know this is your first Christmas without her.”
Mr. Tanner was a well grown fellow of twenty years or more, but his wide brown eyes filled at her words. “Thank you, miss. It’s terrible kind of you to be concerned. We are all a bit low, but Artie was Nan’s special pet and he’s taking it very hard.”
From across the room, John watched from his place at Lady Emmeline’s side as Miss Grey spun yet another prominent Haven family into her web of kindness.
He shook his head. “And she’s only been here a few days!”
Lady Emmeline followed his gaze. “Oh yes. Norah is always one to befriend the staff. At Kewell Abbey they all adore her.”
John frowned at Lady Emmeline’s not-quite-dismissive tone. “And how do you get on with the Abbey staff, Lady Emmeline?”
She twinkled adorably at him. “Oh, they like me just fine, especially since I made Papa pay all their back wages after I inherited.”
John smiled and relaxed. She was a lady-with-a-capital L, as Simon would say. Of course she wouldn’t have as easy a time crossing the boundaries of class and status as someone like Miss Grey. It was very honorable of her to see the debts paid to the servants, something John wished more of the nobility would manage responsibly. Not every master was as fair and generous as Matthias.
John waited for his inevitable feeling of betrayal at the thought of Matthias and was pleased and gratified to feel no such thing. All he felt for Matthias was goodwill and admiration and also a comfortable faith that Matthias would keep yesterday’s confidence to his grave.
Suddenly restless with a sort of bubbling energy, he turned to Lady Emmeline. “Shall I find you a cup of tea? Perhaps a few of Cook’s famous chocolate confections? He trained with a displaced French chocolatier, you know.”
Lady Emmeline’s expression became carefully polite. “Tea would be lovely, but I don’t care for sweets.” Then she looked across the hall where Miss Grey was now ordering Brand and Tanner about like her personal Christmas army. “Norah is quite partial to them, though. I’m sure she would enjoy them very much.”
John rose and bowed. “Then I shall serve you both.”
He was about to rush off when a dainty hand landed on his arm with a surprisingly firm grip. “Best bring Norah extra. Double.” She sighed and wilted back upon her cushions, looking absolutely stunning and pitiful at the same moment.
John walked away thinking it was an odd sort of request. Had it come from someone less sweet-natured, he might almost have thought it a feminine slight, a catty reference to Miss Grey’s more rounded figure.
John himself didn’t mind a generous shape on a lady. It seemed very warm and womanly to him. His wayward male brain reminded him of the quite satisfying impact of Miss Grey’s lush form on his own that morning in the hall.
Also, her smooth cheeks dimpled quite appealingly when she smiled. He enjoyed it so much he’d set out to amuse her with silly stories of village life on their walk back, just to wrest more smiles and earn that husky gurgling laugh.
The famous Havensbeck cook, hired by Lady Marianna herself, stood like a general on a battlefield in one of the manor’s three vast kitchens. Around him, his minions chopped, steamed, braised and did all manner of activities about which John knew very little.
“Ahem.”
Actually, the admirable fellow was rather polite about John’s clearly strange request. John realized a little too late that in a great house like Havensbeck, one didn’t simply leapfrog over the chain of command to speak to the cook.
Yet he walked away unscathed, followed by a liveried footman toting a tray holding a delicate tea service, a plate of tiny eggy pastries—“for Lady Marianna’s cousin, who needs to regain her strength”—and a selection of screamingly elegant chocolates set in a probably priceless jeweled silver box.
I suppose I should’ve simply asked Jasper. It had been a very long time since John had lived in a house with a full staff—and they’d never actually been his staff, had they?
Chapter 10
S
OON NORAH BEGAN to enjoy herself in earnest. Brand and Tanner were peas in a pod, both young enough to turn nearly everything into a game. Norah challenged them to a decorating race and divided the grand curving stair railing into three.
She showed them what she wanted and then climbed onto a ladder to reach her portion. “Ready. Steady. Go!”
There was a trick to winding the garland so that the twine stringing it together didn’t show and Norah had more practice with it than the lads. When she saw she was winning, she hooted at them, reminding them of all the teasing they’d receive from the rest of the staff.
She needed to move the ladder. She knew she ought to, but she was so close and if she stopped now the young men with their longer arms would win. If she held on tight with one hand and just reached—
Too far. She realized the moment when the ladder began to tilt beneath her. In a panic she grabbed for the uprights of the stair rail but her fists only closed on balsam needles and twine.
“Norah!”
JOHN CROSSED THE room, smiling at the garland race. Several of the maids had stopped to watch and were cheering Norah onward.
“C’mon, miss! You’ve got ‘em half frighted now, y’do!”
John slowed, balancing his tray. After Lady Emmeline had been served, John had snapped up the beautiful box of sweets to take to Norah, no footman required. He was going to make her laugh, bowing with his best butlery form, one arm crossed behind his back. She would play along and call him “Barton” and thank him with languid aristocratic indifference.
She was laughing now, twining her garland around the upright balusters with swift, sure movements. Her eyes were bright and her dimples were showing and her bottom was nicely outlined by her gown when she reached—
The ladder looked wrong. All wrong. Please, God!
His tray went spinning off to the side as he raced forward. “Norah!”
John didn’t so much as catch her as he broke her fall, being that he was physically between her and the hard marble of the hall floor. She fell into him and he fell back into a press of bodies that gave way behind him. He heard gasps and shrieks and then he and Miss Grey both sprawled hard and awkwardly onto the floor.
Amid the cries from the others and the way the wind had been knocked right out of his lungs, it was all John could do to clutch at Norah, trying to keep her head from impacting the floor.
For a very long moment as his chest ached for lack of air and her wide eyes stared into his, John could not bear the fear that still filled him. Norah injured. Norah broken like a doll on the marble.
Norah gone.
John realized that he was lying on his back on the floor with a lady splayed on top of him and he was desperately clutching ... her bottom.
Then she was shoving at him, pushing herself up and away from him. John became aware that they had caused a ripple effect. Footmen and maids and guests were sprawled in a large area around them, inspiring images of concentric circles of collision, rippling outward.
Many hands reached to aid Norah to he
r feet and he could tell by the hot, painful flush on her face that she could scarcely bear not to knock away their hands.
He’d done a clumsy job of it, that was true, but he had certainly saved her from some serious injury and possibly death.
Norah gone.
He certainly hadn’t been aiming for her bottom—soft and squeezable as it may be!
Pardon me, God.
I hope I don’t get an erection. Oh damn, don’t think about erections!
He scrambled up off the floor with the aid of a footman or three. Good Lord, his back hurt! Straightening with effort, he gently put aside the hands that tried to brush the fallen needles from his suit. “I’m perfectly fine, yes, thank you, no, all is well with me—” Actually, he was a mess and there was something sticky down the back of his surcoat.
The hall was a muddle, too. Spilled trays and shattered glass ornaments and fallen greenery lay within the impact area, looking like an inexplicable Christmastide battlefield. Well, that is simply appalling.
Norah cast one humiliated, furious look his way. Her very posture said she’d like nothing better than to disappear. “Why are you so upset?” He moved closer. “Were you so very frightened?”
She jerked back from him.
Would it help to make a joke? Persuade her to laugh off the matter?
“I suppose I could have done that a bit more gracefully,” he said to her with a self-deprecating shrug. Ow.
She flinched. “Yes, you could have. I’ve seen you do it, if you recall.”
Ah yes, his rather stylish mid-air catch of Lady Emmeline. He’d had much more time to prepare that time, and she seemed to have forgotten that on that occasion he’d also landed on his arse. Or perhaps that bit hadn’t been visible from her position in the carriage?
How could he explain that it was the fact that he might lose her which had stolen all sense and logic from his mind? How could he think about angles and velocity when he’d been blinded by visions of her shattered at his feet?
“Ah, perhaps this time I merely had stage fright before so many witnesses.”
Her eyes flashed wild anguish at the thought of so many witnesses—or victims? Definitely the wrong tack to take. She looked around at the devastation and her complexion became blotchy with mortification.
“Or perhaps I am simply not beautiful enough to inspire your inner hero.” Her voice was a familiar snarl but her eyes were filled with an extraordinary misery that he could not understand.
I offended her? I don’t understand.
Then her words sank in and he could only stare, stunned by her unjust charge.
Lady Bernadette and Miss Higgins the maid were there now, urging Miss Grey to come along so they could check her over for injuries. He started to follow, but Jasper and Matthias were there, dragging him away for the same reason.
“I’m confused,” he confessed to Matthias. “I saved her from a terrible fall. You saw that part, didn’t you? Yet she seems to dislike me more than ever.”
Matthias shook his head. “John, you’re a bit of an idiot when it comes to women.”
“I am not!” He glanced at Jasper, who only made a regretful face. “Am I? I am?”
Matthias guided him around a lake of spilled mulled wine being soaked up by rafts of deviled ham sandwiches. “John, women definitely prefer to be caught when they fall. They do not, as a rule, enjoy appearing like a breaching whale swamping a fishing boat. It violates some sort of directive of delicacy, I believe.”
Jasper sighed. “Too right, milord. Ladies do dislike calling attention to their own physical existence.” He peered at John, then shook his head. “Ladies don’t like it when they’re made to look fat.”
Fat? Norah? John supposed she was a bit more well-formed than some ladies. His body was still trying not to react to the feeling of double handfuls of rich, soft bottom in his hands. And her bosom had squished very nicely against his chest as she lay upon him on the floor. But fat? Impossible. Norah wasn’t fat, she was just ... just Norah. “That is the daftest thing I’ve ever heard. You two just made that up.”
Before they had taken more then a few more steps, Lady Emmeline appeared. Her tear-streaked face only seemed to set off those limpid violet pools she called eyes. Her pallor made her look as if her perfect features were carved of alabaster and the tiny crinkle between her brows turned her beauty tragic.
She flung both arms around his neck and pulled his head down to kiss his cheek. Oh my flaming back.
“Thank you, dear John, dear wonderful John! You saved my dear Norah! Oh, thank you!” She came in for another grab. John flinched.
Matthias must have felt it, for he gently detached Lady Emmeline and physically turned her around. “Your cousin needs you now, Lady Emmeline. Go to her.” He even gave her a masterful little push that sent her trotting gracefully away, trailing her costly fur wrap on the spattered floor.
John gasped aloud at the continuing twinges shooting up his back. “Matthias, I take back every terrible thing I’ve ever thought about you. And the million times I almost hated you.”
Matthias grunted as he slung John’s arm over his shoulder. “That many?”
Jasper carefully took John’s other arm on his shoulder. “Hot bath and a whiskey, Vicar Barton? Two whiskeys perhaps?”
“You are the world’s most amazing butler, Jasper. There should be a gold cup for winning such a prize.” He turned to Matthias, giddy in his gasping attempts to push aside the pain shooting down his legs. “Jasper needs a gold cup, my lord. Right away.”
“It will be in his stocking when he wakes up on Christmas morn. Now, John the Valiant Vicar, shut it and walk.”
NORAH ONLY JUST made it to her chamber before bursting into silly useless tears. Lady Bernadette seemed to think she needed a whiskey. Miss Higgins headed out to call for a nice hot bath.
Alone for a moment, Norah fought to pull herself together. What was wrong with her?
I am furious with him. With myself. With my life. With my face and my figure and my stupid tendency to say the oddest things.
He liked that about her, though. At least he seemed to.
Oh, she had been silly, hadn’t she? Replaying that masterful catch off the frozen bridge in her mind, dreaming of such a romantic moment for herself someday. Emmeline had experienced that romantic moment and she didn’t even remember it.
Well, Norah wasn’t ever going to be able to forget hers. Oh, what a hideous mess!
Now Norah was shaking and the tears were still coming and she thought she might like to vomit every time she remembered the terrible moment when she overbalanced and realized with a sickening awareness that she’d climbed too high on the ladder and the fall was going to be very, very bad—
And then he came.
Lady Bernadette arrived with the whiskey and by the force of sheer lady-of-the-manor will persuaded Norah to drink it. It was awful. Then warmth and a sort of lightheaded relaxation began to ooze through her body. Her tears slowed and then stopped entirely.
“That’s better.” Lady Bernadette was kind but matter-of-fact. “Now, I certainly understand being frightened. That was a very close call. You could have been seriously injured.”
With the distance of half an hour and a gulp or four of whiskey, Norah could nod calmly at that without starting up again with trembling and tears. She took another sip.
“I think I’d better take that now. Your mother might not approve.”
Norah was herself enough to slide a wry look at Lady Bernadette. “You know, I’m fairly certain that I’m older than you are.”
Lady Bernadette shrugged. “Only by a year. And I’m wed to a man who indulges me entirely, so I win. No, really. I win every single time.”
She set the glass aside and turned to gaze at Norah with her arms folded. “Now, I’d like you to explain your rather rude attack on John Barton. You recall him? The man who raced across the room to fling himself bodily between you and simply
miles of dangerously hard marble?”
He had?
“He must have been watching you quite closely. None of us had the slightest idea you were in trouble until he shouted your name. Then it was all falling pine needles and crashing ladders and most of the occupants of Havensbeck hitting the floor.”
Norah felt just awful. “Oh the beautiful garland!” Then she hiccupped. She blinked hard. “I feel a bit odd.”
“Well, you would feel odd, seeing that you’re almost drunk.” Lady Bernadette sighed. “My fault. I usually pour for Matthias and he’s had a bit more practice than you have.”
“Oh. That explains a great deal.” Norah rubbed at her tingling face. “I fell on him. I squashed him flat, like stepping on a bug. The entire room falling down, because I’m too—too—” The memory hurt so. It was yet another sign that she was no man’s lovely heroine. She looked up at Lady Bernadette and sniffled. “I’m too round. Too stout. Not like Em. He caught Emmeline like you might catch a falling leaf.”
“Well, that’s just nonsense,” Lady Bernadette scoffed. “He wrenched his back and bruised his arse catching Lady Emmeline. He went to bed that night walking like a hundred-year-old man.”
Norah blinked. “He didn’t say anything to me.”
Lady Bernadette crinkled her brow. “Whyever would he? And John didn’t tell me, the doctor did.”
No wonder John had been so cool to her at first. Goodness, she must have seemed so ungrateful to him! Oh, she wished she could go back.
“It’s me,” she whispered in a wash of wobbly shame. “I’m despicable when I’m frightened. I just snarl and snap!” She looked at kind, lovely, lucky Lady Bernadette. “It’s panic. And then I can’t bear for anyone to see me be so weak—” The sobs threatened to return, the nasty snotty maudlin sort. There might be wailing in her future as well.
Oh yes. Definitely wailing.
“Hm.” Lady Bernadette’s voice sounded resigned through Norah’s yowls. “Higgins, if we put her in the bath right now, she’s likely to drown. Leave it until we get some tea into her and for pity’s sake, don’t tell her family I gave her a man-sized glass of whiskey!”
While You Were Dreaming Page 9
