What a Lady Needs for Christmas (15 page)

“Madam, I am in excellent health,” her husband retorted, and something about the way Spathfoy smirked at his wife suggested he, too, had started his day with an exhibition of marital devotion.

“No, Tiberius, you are not in excellent health, for at this very table, I witnessed a display of rudeness from you, which could only have been the result of bilious humors. Mr. Hartwell is a guest of my lord Balfour’s, and you treated him as if he were a French spy. I have never seen you behave so poorly. What were you about?”

Hester Flynn, formerly Hester Daniels, was young—not much more than twenty—and diminutive. Balfour had not thought her up to Spathfoy’s weight, as countesses went, and then he’d seen the lady in action.

She would scold the earl over breakfast, more or less in public, and Spathfoy would be purring like a very large kitten by the time she’d finished dressing him down. Gave a Scottish earl some hope, to see that even Spathfoy—English to his big, fussy bones and in line for a marquessate—could be brought to heel by the woman he loved.

“Have you read the papers, my lady?” Spathfoy asked his spouse.

“No, I have not, because you appropriated them first thing after you sat down. You didn’t even offer them to your sister or Balfour’s
guest
.”

“For an Englishwoman, your wife takes Highland hospitality seriously, Spathfoy. You should be pleased.”

Both husband and wife glowered at Balfour and spoke in unison. “Half-English.”

For they were both half-English and half-Scottish, while Balfour was…

“Good morning.” Hannah MacGregor, Countess of Balfour, came sailing into the breakfast parlor, smiling directly at her husband.

Balfour’s heritage lay partly in the Highlands and partly in the New World, but his heart was entirely in the keeping of his American countess. “Good morning, Wife. Spathfoy ate all the eggs. I’m reduced to foraging for porridge, but you’re welcome to share what’s on my plate.”

“Have our recent arrivals been seen yet?” she asked, serving herself a bowl of porridge and taking the place not at the foot of the table, where a proper countess would seat herself, but at Balfour’s right elbow.

“They’ve already eaten,” Hester said. “Tiberius ran them off with his inquisition, though Joan put him in his place easily enough.” Her comment bore as much affection as reproof.

“Hand me that paper,” Spathfoy said, gesturing at Balfour.

Spathfoy was not a bad sort—Hester approved of him, and her judgment was sound—but he was terribly assured of his own consequence, and single-minded to a fault.

“Say please,” Balfour replied while Hannah kissed his cheek. “I’m practicing for the coming paternal ordeal, when my children are in need of correction, and I must stifle the impulse to indulge them as my countess indulges me.”

“I am going to be sick,” Spathfoy informed the ceiling. His manners would not allow him to reach for the paper when in company at table. “My lord Balfour, mine esteemed host, mine pain in locations unmentionable before the ladies, would you please pass the paper down this way, that I might enlighten my wife as to my motives?”

“Better,” Balfour said, surrendering yesterday’s copy of the Edinburgh daily. “Though your pleading wants polish, Spathfoy.”

Hester patted Spathfoy’s big paw.

“Read that,” Spathfoy said, tapping a finger at a small article on what looked to be the Society pages. “Joan has suffered a blow.”

Balfour had passed Lady Joan in the corridor. She had looked magnificent in deep purple, while Dante Hartwell had trundled along obediently beside her. This blow did not appear to have daunted the lady in the least.

Though Hartwell had looked slightly dazed.

“What sort of blow?” Hannah asked as Balfour poured her a cup of tea.

“Edward, Viscount Valmonte, is engaged to Lady Dorcas Bellingham,” Hester murmured, studying the newspaper. “I’d say Lady Dorcas is the one enduring a blow. I’ve always found her charming, while Valmonte is a prancing ninny with artistic pretensions.”

“Joan fancied Valmonte,” Spathfoy said in the same smug tones somebody at the British War Office had once read a pigeon dispatch reporting Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon. “She was forever turning down the room with him, whispering about hems and gussets and fichus. Mama was hopeful Valmonte might offer for Joan.”

Balfour left off watching his wife eat porridge, though nobody ate porridge any more appealingly than his Hannah. “Do you even know what a gusset is, Spathfoy?”

“I know what heartbreak is,” Spathfoy retorted, chin jutting. “Joan isn’t the typical simpering dimwit, she’s getting long in the tooth, and her preoccupation with fashion doesn’t help matters. Valmonte might have indulged her little hobby, or even encouraged it through the Valmonte family enterprise. Now she’s likely scurried north to avoid all the pitying looks.”

Lady Joan would not know the first thing about scurrying.

“So naturally,” Balfour said, “you had to offend Mr. Hartwell, whose great crime was to share a ride out from Ballater with your sister. Makes perfect sense to me.”

Hannah gave him a chiding look, but Spathfoy’s wife had declared open season on her earl, and public thrashings were the English way.

“I can’t have Hartwell sniffing about Joan’s ankles,” Spathfoy said. “She’s tenderhearted, is Joan, and has her head in the fabric shops to the exclusion of an appreciation for conniving scoundrels. Besides, Hartwell owns
mills
.”

This last was offered with such dark foreboding that even making allowances for fraternal concern, Balfour could not remain silent.

“I’m looking into owning a few
mills
,” he said. “As much wool as we raise here in Scotland, it seems to me our mills ought to be in Scottish hands.”

“But he married those mills,” Spathfoy shot back. “Married the owner’s daughter, knowing she’d inherit them. A man like that bears watching around a fellow’s brokenhearted sister.”

“Now that is odd,” Hannah said from Balfour’s side. “Husband, would you like more tea?”

“No thank you, my love.” And because he was a well-trained husband, Balfour served up the rest of the line. “What strikes you as odd?”

“I’m under the impression all three of your brothers married wealth, and yet, Spathfoy doesn’t hesitate to break bread with them. Didn’t you suggest to me that Spathfoy himself might take a look at investing in these mills? I must have misheard, based on his lordship’s comments this morning. Perhaps your brothers would like to invest in those mills if Spathfoy isn’t interested.”

Spathfoy’s countess set the paper aside and patted her husband’s hand, while the English earl busied himself with the remaining portion of the eggs growing cold on his plate.

***

Anger, like excessive height, did not become the woman exhibiting it, but Joan lacked the cleverness to mask either effectively as she and Mr. Hartwell escaped the breakfast parlor.

“Have you brothers, Mister—Dante?”

“I do, twins. They’re in school in Edinburgh. A younger sister, too, twelve going on twenty-nine. She terrifies me, rather like spending my holidays among all these titles terrifies me.”

They paused to let a footman go hustling by with a bucket of peat.

“The Earl of Balfour is new to his title, relatively,” Joan said, because she owed Mr. Hartwell—Dante—as much information as she could convey to him. “He trained as a physician and turned to the New World to ply his profession. I gather he disappeared into the wilderness for several years and was presumed dead.”

“Don’t.”

She had apparently amused her escort. “I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t start concocting schemes that see you and your unborn, possibly
unconceived
child, living on bread crusts and bear meat in the northern woods of Canada.”

Drat his perceptiveness. “Italy is said to be cheaper and warmer.”

They’d reached the nursery, and while the corridor was chilly, part of Joan wanted to tarry with Mr. Hartwell, choosing a destination where she could serve out the sentence for her disgrace.

He took her hand, courtier-fashion. “Bear meat is disgusting, and much of Italy is hot. If you flee there, no more wool blends or velvet cloaks for you,
signorina
.”

Joan took the space of a silly kiss to her knuckles to comprehend that Mr. Hartwell was teasing her—mostly. “You’ve never eaten bear meat.”

“And you should never have to.”

The moment was sweet, and put Tiberius and his infernal meddling at a slight, much-needed distance.

“Did you come to play marbles?” Charlie had opened the door to the nursery suite, and stood peering up at them. Her hair was in one tidy braid, her pinafore clean. At the sight of her, something in Joan’s insides turned over.

I
might
even
now
be
carrying
a
daughter.
Mr. Hartwell’s word choice came to mind, for the notion was, indeed,
terrifying
.

“Good morning, beloved child,” Mr. Hartwell said in Gaelic, lifting his daughter to his hip. “I smell bacon, toast, and mischief. Have you broken your fast?”

“We did. A footman named Donal brought it, and the nursery maid—her name is Our Daisy—says Donal is cheeky but quick, so the food is still hot when it comes up to us from the kitchen. Did you know we’ll have a bunny here in the nursery next week when Fiona comes to see her family? Did you know Lord Balfour’s family used to take in paying guests here? Did we have to pay to visit?”

We, us, we.

“A guest in any house is expected to repay his host’s hospitality with excellent manners and a future invitation, not money. Laddie, what are you reading?”

Phillip sat at a table positioned to take advantage of the window’s natural light, while a short, plump, red-haired nursery maid sprang to her feet from a reading chair near the hearth. Peat was burned here too—had that been at Mr. Hartwell’s request?

“Down to the kitchen with you, miss,” Mr. Hartwell said. “Grab yourself a cup of tea.”

Our Daisy bobbed a curtsy and slipped away, probably to share that cup of tea with the cheeky, quick footman.

Joan took a chair at the table, envying Daisy the innocence of her assignation.

Mr. Hartwell sat as well, but rather than read to his son, something Joan’s father had been known to do with his children long, long ago, he instead asked Phillip about the book. Soon the boy was prattling on about breeds of sheep, and which ones were big, which ones woolly.

“Do you suppose you could draw them, these breeds of sheep?” Mr. Hartwell asked.

“He could,” Charlie replied, dipping her finger in a jar of honey on the breakfast tray. “Our Daisy showed us where the paper and pencils were, and even the pastels.”

“Charlene Brodie Hartwell.” Her papa took her finger and wiped it off on a linen napkin. “You are a
guest
here.”

The child’s expression was comical, and easily read. Joan could all but taste the pleasurable sweetness of the honey Charlie had anticipated.

“Sorry, Papa. C’mon, Phillip. Let’s draw some sheep. I want wings on mine, and a horn, like a unicorn.”

As the children scrambled off to assemble supplies on the floor before the blazing hearth, an argument ensued about what arrangement of horns would best suit flying sheep.

“Did you love their mother?” Joan asked, for Mr. Hartwell surely loved his children.

He lifted a covering quilted in the MacGregor red-and-green plaid from a plain white teapot, and peered into the pot. “Fancy a cup?”

“Please.”

He served her a cup of warm, weak, milky tea sweetened with honey, and while Joan appreciated the solicitude and the sustenance, she also understood that Mr. Hartwell was stalling.

“I loved Rowena, and it might relieve your fears to know she loved me, after her fashion.”

Nothing would relieve Joan’s fears.

“My parents love each other ‘after their fashion,’ which is often loud, dramatic, and unhappy. In fairness to them, the unhappy part grew much worse after my brother Gordie died.”

“I’m sorry you lost a brother.”

So was Joan. Gordie had had charm, and not the superficial ballroom variety. He could be a selfish lout too, of course, but he’d also had the ability to make even his awkward, too tall, younger sister feel like the most important person in his world.

For a few minutes at a time.

“Tell me about your wife, Mr. Hartwell.”

“My first wife,” he said, rummaging about on the breakfast tray. Before the hearth, the children had quieted down as the serious business of drawing winged sheep got under way.

“Ro was a scrapper,” Mr. Hartwell said, his tone wistful and affectionate. “It took several years to understand what she was about. I’m not one for noise and rumpus. I like an orderly existence with a certain amount of routine. Ro kept things stirred up, and I realized, eventually, she mostly wanted to know I was paying attention. Charlie takes after her in this regard, or maybe many women do because men leave them little choice.”

Was that what Mama’s great rows had been about, making sure Papa noticed her?

How could one not notice the Marchioness of Quinworth?

“How did you meet your wife?”

He applied a dollop of butter to a thick slice of toast. “My father was a foreman in her father’s mine. I would have been far beneath her notice, of course, but then came a fire.”

“You rescued her from a fire? How romantic.” And here he was again, offering to rescue Joan.

“I did no such thing. Their big, fancy house burned to the ground, and while Darrell Shatner had insurance for his mines and mills and even his railway cars, he had no insurance on that house or its contents.”

The tea was very good, and just the right balance between bland and sweet. “So you rescued your lady from poverty?”

“Hardly.” He drizzled honey on the buttered toast, a slow, careful operation punctuated by a squabble from the hearth over who got to use the green pastel. “To appearances, the fire was nothing more than an inconvenience to Shatner. He had another house, in Edinburgh, and a fellow who owns mines and mills is hardly in straitened circumstances.”