What a Lady Needs for Christmas (11 page)

Hector reached a hand down to Miss Hartwell. Rather than wait for the same courtesy, Joan rose and poured the marbles into a decorated jar. Her cloak was a bit wrinkled, but otherwise in good repair.

“Will your family meet you?” Hector asked, for Miss Hartwell had taken on the burden of fetching her brother.

“My arrival will be something of a surprise. I’m sure a conveyance is available to take me to them.”

“And all you have is that cloak to keep you warm?”

That
cloak?

“I love this cloak, Mr. MacMillan. I stitched every seam and buttonhole of it myself, chose the fabric and created the design.” His expression wasn’t contemptuous, so much as disbelieving, and Joan had the thought: So what if he doesn’t appreciate my cloak? After today I’ll likely never see him—

Except, after today, she very well might see Hector regularly for years. A sense of unreality wrapped her more closely. She was alone, in the Highlands, with little money, and—quite possibly—a child on the way. Yesterday at this time, her only dilemma had been which pattern to cut out first.

“As long as the station’s open, you should be safe enough,” Hector said. “Charlie, come here and let me do those buttons.”

The station at Ballater was a low, unprepossessing gingerbread cottage, nothing like the granite edifices Joan was familiar with to the south. The Hartwell party was the only one to debark, and as the train chugged away, Joan appropriated her traveling bag from the heap of luggage on the platform.

The cold and dark here exceeded even what Joan had grown up with in Northumbria. Breathing through the nose was a curiously invigorating exercise, and more stars blanketed the night sky than the eye could count in a lifetime. Pine roping adorned with red velvet bows decorated the little station, the ribbons whipping in an arctic breeze.

Joan had to wait while Mr. Hartwell groused at the lone porter and tossed trunks about—weren’t his knees cold, for pity’s sake?—before she could have a word with him.

“Mr. Hartwell?”

His gaze was on Miss Hartwell, who herded the children into the small waiting area while Hector took over the transfer of bags from the platform to the street side of the station.

“Lady Joan?”

“I wanted to thank you.”

He peered down at her, as if she’d used a strange word or two. “Thank me? For proposing marriage?”

“
What?
Oh, yes, for that too. For bringing me this far.”

His brows drew down, suggesting Joan had misspoken.

“You’re welcome. Here.” He passed her a folded piece of paper. “My direction for the duration of my holiday sentence. You’d best get into the station. When it’s this cold, the horses can’t stand for long.”

She heeded his suggestion, for her teeth were about to start chattering, also because this exchange with her possible intended had been toweringly awkward.

Though kissing him had not been awkward at all.

“You’ll be in touch?” he asked when Joan had moved several yards away.

He stood on the platform, the bitter wind whipping his kilt around his knees and playing havoc with his hair. His expression was unreadable, and Joan abruptly didn’t want to leave him.

He was practical, he was kind, he was competent, and he didn’t judge her, as her family must should they learn of her folly.

Joan offered him her most brilliant smile. She’d perfected that smile when faced with yet another dancing partner half a foot too short, or overheard yet another comment about the pathetic lot of a Long Meg.

“I’ll send a holiday greeting to Miss Hartwell, at the very least.”

“Aye, do that.” He turned his back on her—a mercy more than a rudeness—and marched off in the direction of the porters wrestling with the luggage trolley.

“Happy Christmas,” Joan whispered to his retreating back.

From the chilly confines of the station, she watched as the Hartwell party organized itself into two sleighs—one for the people, one for baggage. Hector and Margaret each took a child on their laps, Margaret and Charlie wedged between the men. Lap robes covered Margaret and the children nearly to their eyes.

How warm the Hartwell womenfolk would be.

“I’ll be closing up now, miss. We’ll have no more trains through here until Monday, and my missus will have held supper for me.”

The only other person in the station was the lone porter, who also apparently served as stationmaster. He was a man of middle years and prodigious salt-and-pepper whiskers. His eyes were tired, and he was already wrapping a red plaid scarf about his neck.

“Can you hail me a cab before you go?”

He paused between donning one glove and next. “A cab? We’ve no cabs in Ballater village, miss. You can wait in the pub for your people to fetch you, but in this weather, nobody would make a decent beast loiter about in hopes of custom. I can lock up your bags for you, if that would aid matters.”

Joan’s bag or the oxen and horses were due more consideration than she was herself, and she had her own ignorance and folly to blame for this.

“I can wait in the pub,” she said, though she’d never entered such an establishment without a male escort before. “Will I be able to hire a vehicle in the morning?”

“Depends on the weather,” the fellow said, blowing out one candle after another. “And depends on where you’re going—and how much coin you have.”

Joan had no idea whether Tye’s house party was two miles from the station or twelve. She left the station with the stationmaster, and for the first time allowed that velvet might be more pretty than warm.

The stationmaster toddled off, nipping from a flask, leaving Joan standing before the dark station. A team approached, harness bells jingling, and her spirits lifted. Somebody was willing to hire their conveyance despite the weather, and she would find her way to her brother’s temporary household.

She’d come this far safely, and in this season of Christian fellowship—

The dray trotted past, and because Joan had been in anticipation of hailing it, she’d approached the street more closely than was wise. Frigid slush splashed up her cloak to the knees, ruining the fabric and dashing Joan’s spirits.

“So much for Christmas.” Joan clenched her jaw against the possibility her teeth might start to chatter, and took stock of her surroundings. Not a soul walked along the streets; not a beast of burden was in sight.

And she had no clue where the pub might be.

***

“Are you lost?” Hector asked.

Yes, Dante was lost—or his common sense had gone begging. “Nobody was at the station to meet Lady Joan.”

“The train was on time,” Hector said from Margs’s other side. “Nobody expects the trains to be on time.”

“Dante’s right,” Margs said from the depths of her scarf. “We should not have left her there alone.”

Margs’s support had the feel of an opportunistic swipe at Hector, and yet, Dante was grateful for it.

“I liked Lady Joan,” Charlie volunteered from Margs’s lap. “She’s nice, and she shares her chocolates.”

She shared her favors too, or believed she had. She’d spoken as if she hadn’t been forced, but inebriating a lady was the opposite of gaining her consent.

He turned the team back into the oval before the train station, the baggage sleigh following behind, and at first saw nobody.

Well, more fool he. “Her ladyship must have found accommo—”

A figure emerged from under the eaves at the station’s door. Tall, clad in a cloak far too light for the weather. For Dante, genuine relief replaced the feigned variety, despite a niggling unease that rescuing the same damsel twice in one day could not be a positive trend. He passed Hector the reins and leaped down, the cold sending a hard ache up his legs.

“You daft woman, have you nobody to take you in out of the weather?”

She wiped at her cheeks with her fussy purple glove. “Don’t scold me. I was about to ask a passerby where the pub was.”

Dante whipped off his scarf and wrapped it around her fool neck. “A fine plan, as long you don’t mind freezing to death in the next quarter hour.” When she might have offered some genteel retort, he wrapped the scarf directly over her mouth.

“You,” Dante barked at the coachy driving the baggage sleigh. “Trade with me. Charlie and Phillip, mind your aunt and Hector.”

“Or we’ll get lumps of coal for Christmas,” Charlie yelled.

“Into the damned sleigh,” Dante said to the shivering bundle of womanhood beside him. She managed it, despite the folds of her cloak, and Dante soon had hot bricks under her feet and thick wool lap robes layered over them both.

“Budge up,” he said, taking up the reins. “We’ve only a few miles to travel, but a little Highland cold goes a long way.”

“Th-thank you.”

“Keep your damned manners, and pray God you don’t get a lung fever for your holiday treat.”

***

Joan tucked herself under the heavy lap robes and reviewed a day that had been a series of revelations, starting with the awful realization of how precarious a woman’s good name truly was. In a few hours, Joan had laid waste to a lifetime of decorous behavior and risked her family’s standing too.

Matters had deteriorated from there, for Joan had the lowering suspicion that her maid had suffered from an attack of self-preservation rather than a bilious stomach. If Bertha had pieced together the details of Joan’s previous evening, then the maid’s search for another post was already under way.

Then had come the lowering news that despite an uncommonly competent grasp of economics for a lady, Joan wasn’t very familiar with money.

What did a meal cost?

A train ticket?

A plain wool cloak ready-made?

She knew even less of train schedules, or she would never have debarked halfway to Aberdeen to ensure passage back to Edinburgh for her ailing maid.

Small shocks had followed: How did a lady unlace herself without aid at the end of the day? What food was safe to eat at a train station? Did pickpockets frequent such locations?

After overimbibing, did memory never fully return? How did men endure the frequent occasion of overimbibing?

“Are you falling asleep, my lady?”

“I’m thinking.”

“About?”

Brave fellow, or perhaps Mr. Hartwell was simply bored.

“This day had some positive aspects.” Joan was tucked up against one of them, and Mr. Hartwell’s sheer animal warmth featured prominently among his winning qualities.

“Always a good day when one doesn’t die of exposure in the Highlands. If you’d like a wee nip, my flask is in my hip pocket.”

He thought she was an idiot, and Joan agreed with him.

“Drinking spirits is part of how I nearly died of exposure in the Highlands.” She fished in his pocket nonetheless, a curiously intimate undertaking.

“Firstly, if we share that flask, there’s not enough to get either one of us drunk. Secondly, it’s too damned cold to tarry by the roadside, even for the pleasure of sampling a lady’s charms. Thirdly, if we do not appear at our destination directly behind my family, a searching party will soon come looking for us.”

Joan took a very
wee
nip, cautiously, for she was stupid but could learn from her mistakes.

“This tastes of…sherry? I find it odd that the same spirits that authored my social downfall now serve to warm my insides.”

And warm them
agreeably
. She did not find it odd that her charms were no temptation to Mr. Hartwell, despite his references to the weather.

“Good whiskey goes down with all manner of subtle glories, and it wasn’t the spirits that authored your downfall, if indeed you’ve fallen.”

As the road climbed, the sleigh ahead marked the path at a greater distance. The baggage sleigh didn’t sport harness bells, giving Joan the sense of all gaiety and light receding from her life the farther they traveled from the village.

She burrowed closer to Mr. Hartwell. “I authored my own downfall, and I have the sorry premonition that the consequences are only beginning to manifest.”

“Then you’ve nothing left to lose, have you?”

Mama would kill her, Tiberius would lecture her within an inch of her life, and Papa would shout.

“I have nothing to lose but my good name, my welcome in my own family, my self-respect, and my dreams of designing clothes that make a woman feel pretty without beggaring her pocketbook.”

“If your family turns their backs on you now, then they aren’t much of a family.”

Joan passed him the flask, and after he’d taken a considerable swallow and handed it back, she capped it and tucked it into his pocket. She kept her hand in his pocket too, for warmth.

Or something.

Because Mr. Hartwell’s observation about Joan’s family turning their backs on her was the most lowering of the entire miserable day.

“Are you crying, my lady?”

She had the oddest conversations with him. “Would you mind I if were?”

“A cold wind can bring tears to the eyes, but mine host would likely take it amiss if I showed up with a blubbering female among my baggage. Charlie will be enough of a trial to the man’s hospitality. Hector and Margs’s feuding will add a cheery note to the festivities too.”

A shaft of insight struck, every bit as warming as the whiskey. Mr. Hartwell was teasing her, or riling her, distracting her. In any case, he was trying to help with a problem so much larger than a mere awful day.

“You are a nice man, Mr. Hartwell. I like you quite well.”

“No more whiskey for you, Lady Joan.”

His tone was gruff, which Joan suspected meant he might like her a little too.

He turned the horses down a dark tree-lined drive. Up ahead, the outline of a sizable edifice loomed, though ten windows sported a single candle each, in a four-three-two-one pattern. The effect—a rising triangle of illuminated windows—was lovely, rather like a Christmas tree.

Hector and Miss Hartwell had already shooed the children into the house before Mr. Hartwell handed Joan down from the sleigh. She retrieved her bag, which Mr. Hartwell plucked from her grasp, and accepted his escort as a footman held up a lantern, porters tackled the luggage, and a groom dealt with the horses.