What a Lady Needs for Christmas (27 page)

“Am I supposed to be?” She thought perhaps she was, because having established her wetness, her husband seemed to gather a sense of purpose.

“I love that you’re wet,” he said, kissing her cheek. “And you’re luscious and hot and wonderful too.” More kisses, to her jaw, her ear. Gentle, beguiling kisses to go with a careful joining of their bodies.

His compliments were curious, and accompanied by the peculiar sensation of a male body entangled with Joan’s in the coital act. She wanted to ask him if she should
do
something—kiss him back perhaps? But they’d already kissed for some time—and interrupting her husband as he sought to consummate their union didn’t seem quite the done thing.

Hold
still
, he’d said.

The bed bounced rhythmically, distractingly. Dante’s breathing became labored, Joan’s nightgown bunched up between their bodies, and the temptation to squirm nigh overwhelmed her self-restraint.

“A bit more,” her husband rasped. “Almost… Ah, blessed, holy…
God
.”

She held still as he thrashed and thrust, until like a locomotive, he decelerated, moving more and more slowly until he came to rest against her.

That was it then. They were married, and though Joan felt a sense of disappointment that was somehow physical, and her feet were still not warm, she was also left with a puzzle.

If she’d undertaken this behavior with Edward Valmonte, she could not recall it, not in any detail of sight, sound, scent, or sensation. Kisses, yes, some rough handling of her breasts, and then Edward’s weight—insubstantial compared to Mr. Hartwell’s—but nothing more intimate than that.

Another reason to thank God.

Joan kissed her husband’s temple and brushed a hand through his hair, grateful beyond measure that, despite her disappointment and cold feet, her only memories of this intimacy would be with her very own Mr. Hartwell.

Thirteen

Worse than dirty looks from a new wife were no looks at all, and the sinking conviction that dirty looks were deserved. A man on his second wedding night should have at least pleasured his bride.

Fortunately, Joan did not seem aware of her husband’s poor showing, while Dante could focus on little else.

“Do you favor coffee, tea, or chocolate?” Dante asked, though sitting across from him at the small breakfast table, Joan was entirely capable of pouring her own drink, and looking elegant while she did. He simply wanted to know her preferences.

“Chocolate, I think, to celebrate our first morning as man and wife.” Her smile was a crumb, tossed his direction as she turned the pages of the Aberdeen newspaper. Hector didn’t read the paper with that much focus. Dante himself—

She studied the page as if it were holy writ, or as if she indeed sensed that her one and only wedding night had been less than she deserved.

“They used your word:
demure
. They say my dress was a demure, elegant concoction in a shade between celadon and jade, with tastefully understated lace adornment suited to the solemn joy of the occasion.”

His lovemaking hadn’t put a smile like that on her face—yet. He vowed that one day soon—one night very soon—it would.

“Your chocolate, madam. I gather you’re pleased with the account of the wedding?”

“I’m pleased with the account of the dress my sisters and I made for the wedding.”

Dante wasn’t pleased, though the dress, the wedding, and the bride had been lovely. His sole consolation lay in the realization that the wedding night had attained the goal of confusing the paternity of any child Joan might bear nine months hence.

He nonetheless battled a compulsion to take Joan by the hand and drag her back to bed, so he might acquit himself well enough to put
that
smile on her face in the next twenty minutes. The wedding night had been a success from a pragmatic perspective, and only from a pragmatic perspective, but as a lover, he’d finished the race well behind a dress.

At least he’d finished. With Rowena…

He snipped that thought off like a loose thread that could unravel an entire seam, even as he admitted that such memories had contributed to his lack of deliberation with Joan the previous night.

“What will you do now, with your demure, elegant, tastefully understated…dress?”

She stirred her chocolate, much as a general might have stirred chocolate while looking over his battle maps.

“I will add more lace, perhaps a lavender lace fichu, a stripe of purple embroidery about the hem, bodice, and cuffs.” The chocolate was set aside, while eggs and toast grew cold on Joan’s plate.

“You’ll fuss it up,” Dante said, taking a bite of his eggs. “Is that your mother’s influence?”

And could he order Hector to develop some reports on ladies’ fashions? Because apparently, the topic would figure prominently in marital conversations. Perhaps he should have spoken to his wife of silk and nacre in bed?

“My mother?”

Dante put a bite of egg on a corner of toast and passed it to his wife, whose figure, he had occasion to know, had little need for her corsets.

“You said your mama likes to dress loudly, too much flounce and whatnot. You looked lovely yesterday, and I know every person with eyes in that church envied me my bride.”

Joan clearly wanted to argue—not to the point of dirty looks—but she instead took the toast.

“Thank you. I
felt
pretty, though my wedding dress isn’t my lucky dress.”

The first time he’d shared breakfast with Rowena, she’d given him a list of rules she had wanted enforced in the mills, half of which had been damned silly. The list had been a test—would Dante prove himself a fool by enforcing the rules they both knew were silly, or would he prove himself a fool by battling his wife over silly rules?

They had been so young, so unsure of themselves, and so unable to trust each other’s support. He felt a stab of compassion for his immature, furious first wife—and for her husband.

Dante knew better now—or hoped he did. “What is a lucky dress? Should I be searching for a lucky kilt?”

Though he suspected he’d been wearing his lucky kilt yesterday, wedding night disappointments notwithstanding.

“It’s
that
dress,” Joan said, sitting back, eggs, toast, chocolate, quite possibly
husband
, and even her unimpressive wedding night forgotten. “That dress you put on, and you feel like the smartest, most lovely, beneficent woman in the world. You feel like your best self, and like you want to share that best self with all of creation. A lucky dress is comfortable, too, though, and it need not even be all that showy. It’s your lucky dress.”

“Can a woman have a lucky dressing gown? The one you’re wearing is fetching.”

And held together with nothing but a sash, or pair of sashes, inside and out.

“I love that you tease me,” Joan said, tucking into her eggs with a hint of a smile. “Friends tease each other.”

“Spouses do too.” Had she recognized the sexual innuendo? Her smile held a fortifying hint of mischief. “Would you please pass the butter, and what do you mean, the dress makes you feel beneficent?”

He asked, because a marquess’s daughter might have a different view of spending money than a mill owner’s wife. Joan’s pin money was spelled out in the settlements, and wasn’t much more than Dante set aside regularly for Margs.

“Beneficent to me is sweet, openhearted, in love with the world,” Joan said, passing him the butter. “Generous of spirit.”

Like a woman should feel after her husband had shown her a proper wedding night.

“You’ll not be making one of these lucky dresses for Margs, then. She can nigh bankrupt me with the Christmas baskets she gives out to the workers each year.”

Dante had yet to have his annual argument with Dear Margs on this topic, though it was imperative that expenses be kept to a minimum this year more than ever.

“You do Christmas baskets.” Joan’s look was the farthest thing from dirty—she
approved
of the Christmas baskets, God help him. “Do you hand them out yourself on Boxing Day?”

“I hand them out with Margs, because she insists that Hard-Hearted Hartwell be seen committing at least one act of wanton generosity. When we send the workers home on Christmas Eve, we send them home with the baskets.”

Joan set aside the next bite of eggs and toast her doting husband had so generously provided her.

“You expect people to work on
Christmas
Eve
?”

Dante spread butter on his scone—something a doting wife might have done for him.

“They expect to be paid; I expect them to work. It’s a quaint system, but has a certain pleasing symmetry. Will you finish those eggs?”

She considered her remaining eggs, she considered her chocolate, and then she considered her husband, and still she didn’t give him a dirty look.

She gave him a
pitying
look.

“The holidays are an occasion to celebrate, Dante. People need times to celebrate, to gather with family and express their thanks for the good things in life. Especially when winter closes in, so cold and dark, we need Christmas to cheer us.”

He was a papa. He didn’t need anybody to explain Christmas to him. Christmas was about storybooks and spinning tops for the children, mistletoe for the maids and footmen.

A free ham for the workers, rum punch, that sort of thing.

“We need coin to pay our rents,” he said. “While we’re sitting on our backsides, singing carols and swilling wassail, those rents go unpaid.” On that point, he’d never taken issue with Rowena. “Besides, Christmas is more English than Scottish. We Scots focus on the future, on the New Year, and the opportunities it brings.”

“So you give your workers New Year’s Day off?”

Now
his
eggs had gone cold, but he finished them anyway. A new husband needed to keep up his strength, for marriage encompassed many nights when a wife might need her spouse’s warmth.

“We relax our vigilance about tardiness on Boxing Day and New Year’s, and we close ninety minutes early on Christmas Eve. Any day my people work and the other mills are silent is a day when I’m making profit and the others aren’t. That profit is what keeps the mills safe, and puts the Christmas hams in those baskets.”

He was happy to explain business to his wife. Joan was a smart, sensible woman, and fifty years discussing ladies’ fashions would be a trial to any husband.

“But if the other mills are silent on Christmas Eve and New Year’s, then you wouldn’t be falling behind them by giving your workers a holiday.”

“Suppose not. Might you pass me the paper?”

“Maybe we English need Christmas more than you Scots do, but Christmas is still important to the Scots.”

Christmas pudding was important to them, witness all that nonsense in Balfour’s kitchen over the damned pudding. Dante didn’t reach for the paper though, because he had a sense his new wife was about to deliver her version of a dirty look.

Over his business practices—an oddly cheering thought. They had years to learn each other’s preferences at the breakfast table
and
in bed, after all.

“I’m willing to concede that Christmas has its uses,” he said, “else I would not be attending Balfour’s holiday house party. Then too, the Yuletide festivities brought you to me, for which I must esteem them greatly.”

He assayed a smile and got nowhere with it. Perhaps Lady Joan could accept only compliments to her clothing.

“Dante, please give the workers Christmas Eve and Boxing Day off. Families need to be together at Christmas, and the ladies will work all the more happily in anticipation of your generosity.”

Not a dirty look, not a pitying look, but
a
hopeful
look
.

“They’ll miss two days’ pay, Joan. Some of them will miss it terribly.”

“I have pin money. Surely we can cover two days’ pay out of my pin money?”

She made this offer without hesitation, suggesting either it was important to her, or she had no idea what two days’ wages amounted to for three mills’ worth of hardworking women and girls.

He named a figure, because he knew to the last groat what it took to keep labor on the floors of his—their—mills.

“If I let you cover the wages, who will make up your spring dresses, my lady?”

She waved a hand, no lace at the cuff of her dressing gown. “I make up my dresses—I enjoy it, and I get ideas when I’m doing the cutting and stitching. I have enough fabric to keep me busy for years. Give the ladies time away from their labors, Dante. I’m asking this of you, and making my funds available to see it done.”

Her casual offer provoked all manner of thoughts and feelings.

Dante was arguing with his new wife, and nobody was shouting, slamming doors, or silently fuming.

Then too, Joan did make up her own dresses. When he’d inquired of her sister Dora about Joan’s whereabouts several days ago, Dora had delivered a lecture on what it took to put together a lady’s dress, from sketch to finished garment. According to Lady Dora, those tasks had absorbed his fiancée’s every waking hour.

Beneath those realizations lurked another: Joan wasn’t wrong. When morale was good, the mills were more productive. Even Hector grudgingly admitted that much, though Margs had to bludgeon him into it.

“I can’t let you squander your pin money.”

“I’ve been squandering my pin money for years on dresses. It’s my pin money to squander, isn’t it?”

“It absolutely is.” Just as Margs’s pin money was hers, and Dante did not allow himself to wonder what she did with it.

“Well, then. I believe we have a bargain.” She smiled, a faint, smug, mysterious smile that was more maddening than a world of dirty looks, for he didn’t want a
bargain
with his wife.

He wanted a marriage, and he wanted that smile from her not for his concessions at the mill owner’s negotiating table, but for his ability to please her as her husband.

And
as her lover.

***

The first day of Joan’s married life was both pleasant and harrowing.