What a Lady Needs for Christmas (34 page)

***

“How appropriate. You’ve invited me to dine with a mongrel.” Joan took her seat in the brightly lit tea shop without allowing Edward to assist her.

The aspersion was unfair. Joan liked Fergus, for all the dog had bad taste in owners. The terrier perched in the crook of Edward’s elbow, looking jaunty and dapper in a canine waistcoat in a red, black, and yellow tartan pattern.

“Insult me all you please,” Edward said pleasantly, “but I could hardly abandon Fergus to fend for himself. Mama would leave him to freeze in the mews if she had her way.”

Edward kissed the top of the dog’s head and earned a lick to his cheek in response.

“Have you brought me some sketches in your reticule, perhaps? Christmas draws near, and I wanted to present Lady Dorcas with a few ideas.”

Joan drew off her gloves, and when she wanted to slap them across the cheek Fergus had just kissed, she instead took the lace of her cuff between her fingers.

“I have been in the constant company of my new husband, Edward. I have some ideas, but if I’d spent hours with my sketchbook this week, Mr. Hartwell would have remarked it. He would also notice that I was sketching dresses not for myself, but for a woman of a different conformation entirely.”

Edward set the dog on the floor, where it obediently sank to its haunches. The affection between owner and dog was not feigned, and what did it say about Edward’s family, that he had to protect his pet from his own mother?

“What shall I give my fiancée for her Christmas token, then?” he asked, his tone belligerent. “I am relying on you, Lady Joan, and you will not like the consequences of my disappointment.”

The lace of Joan’s cuff had the soft, uneven texture her fingertips craved, and yet to stroke the lace would betray the nerves unsettling Joan’s stomach. Children twitched at their hems and petted their dolls to settle nervous stomachs.

And fiddling with a cuff was a good way to weaken its stitching.

Joan sat back, hands in her lap. “Lady Dorcas is fond of sweets. Give her a recipe book. Give her French chocolates. Give her something that shows you have paid attention to her wants and whims, not a dress to advertise the ideas you’ve purloined from me.”

“She likes chocolate,” Edward said, tugging gently on the dog’s ears. “I like chocolate too, probably the only thing we have in common, but I need that dress, Joan.”

He sounded honestly regretful to be bullying her.

“Hire a Frenchman. They’re full of ideas.”

“I tried that. In the first place, Frenchmen cost a prodigious sum of money. In the second, they gossip. All I need is for tattle to circulate that Uncle tipples and Mama—”

He fell silent, his expression shifting from a house bedecked for the holidays to a house denuded of all wreaths, window candles, cloved oranges, and mistletoe.

The change was intimidating. Joan picked up her gloves rather than give in to the compulsion to fiddle at her lace.

“Edward, you are a
gentleman
. You are threatening my reputation, my happiness, my marriage, my everything over a few fancy dresses, and I haven’t done anything to deserve such treatment from you.”

She made the appeal as much for him as for herself, because Edward Valmonte wasn’t given to meanness. He was a charming flirt, frivolous, and also—Joan had bet her future on this—harmless.

“I’m glad you understand what’s in the balance here, Joan. And don’t forget the harm to your sisters’ reputations if it becomes known you took up with Mr. Hartwell to avoid the scandal of your behavior with me. Then too, from what I hear, dear Mr. Hartwell is looking for funds—perhaps he knows fancy dresses cost a fortune, and they are what his new wife needs to be happy.”

Was that what Society thought of her, that she required
dresses
to be happy?

And what did it matter what Society thought—what did Dante think?

Joan withdrew a pencil and small sketch pad from her reticule. “Place your order—yours and Fergus’s. I won’t be having anything.”

“Stay with Lady Joan,” Edward instructed his pet, and the dog shifted to sit at Joan’s feet when Edward rose.

Joan’s lucky dress would not work on a woman of Lady Dorcas’s dimension, but the dress Joan had been considering for Dora’s Christmas gift might. Full sleeves and generous skirts, but along softer lines than most women were wearing lately. Pastels, of course, a fairy-tale blue with not pink, but—

What? What would flatter Dorcas’s coloring and provide an eye-catching contrast without being a trite red or black?

Edward returned to the table and kept his bullying, threatening mouth closed.

“The bodice is always the biggest challenge,” Joan muttered. “Get that, and the neckline, skirts, and hems fall into place.”

“If you say so.”

“The foundation color isn’t much of a challenge. Dorcas will look lovely in blue, but the contrasting and complementing shades…”

She wasn’t about to ask
his
opinion.

The sketch took about fifteen minutes to complete, and when it was finished, Joan wasn’t satisfied. Edward, however, was wreathed in smiles.

“There, you see? You think you must wait for inspiration, but you’re wrong.
Mater
artium
necessitas
and all that. I’ll expect more invention from you when you return to Edinburgh.”

Necessity was the mother of desperation, in Joan’s opinion, and desperation was conducive to stupidity rather than invention. She’d been desperate to hear somebody rhapsodizing over her designs.

And now somebody was.

“The hems need work, but nothing too fancy,” she cautioned. “Peach and a soft, understated light brown for contrast. Think of a roe deer on a sunny winter’s day.”

Edward stroked Fergus’s head absently, and Joan shifted her skirts aside, lest his hand touch her clothing.

“Brown, blue, and peach? That’s different.”

“Different is what gets a woman noticed, provided it isn’t too different. Dorcas has a lovely bosom, an excellent complexion, and a pretty laugh. She can afford to take small risks with her wardrobe.”

Why couldn’t Edward, the man who was to marry Dorcas,
see
this?

“When can you have a finished design to me?”

Giving him the sketch had been a mistake, for now, like an ill-trained dog, his bad behavior and unreasonable expectations had been rewarded.

“You finish it. Ask her what she thinks of your creation, modify the details and palette to suit her preferences. You can do that much.”

He was so absorbed with the sketch, he didn’t even react to the insult. God help Lady Dorcas.

“You know, Edward, I might tell your wife I’ve designed her wedding dress at your insistence.” Joan liked that idea exceedingly. “Tell her you weren’t talented enough, that you made an offer you couldn’t live up to. I might even tell your mother you’ve threatened me with ruin if I don’t yield to your schemes.”

He folded the sketch in exact thirds and tucked it away, and with it went a piece of Joan’s happiness, a piece of her integrity.

“You’re welcome to take tea with Mama any time you please. Provided she hasn’t overindulged in the Madeira, she will likely applaud my enterprise, for it’s all that stands between her and economies she’s incapable of exercising. And as for Dorcas…”

He picked up his dog, setting the beast on his lap, pouring cream from the small pewter pitcher into a saucer, and letting the dog lick from the plate.

“Dorcas,” he went on, “would never have allowed herself to be private with a bachelor, much less take spirits with him in quantity. She’d find my willingness to maintain silence on your behalf for a few silly dresses generous. Her own silence I cannot guarantee.”

As the dog lapped at the cream, Joan came to a daunting realization. Edward Valmonte was frivolous by nature, but circumstances had made him desperate, and like any beast backed into a corner, he’d become capable of viciousness.

Joan was his last, best hope of solving whatever problems he considered so dire, and he would go to any lengths to see his scheme come to fruition.

The dog kept licking, though not a drop of cream remained.

Edward set the empty saucer out of reach of Fergus’s tongue.

“There’s a good fellow.” He rose with the dog in his arms. “A half-dozen more sketches will do for now, and you should know, Dorcas and I will attend Lady Quinworth’s New Year’s ball. I could hardly turn down an invitation from the family of one of my oldest and dearest friends, could I?”

He leaned in to kiss Joan’s cheek, but she pulled back.

“You haven’t paid your bill yet, Edward. I’ll wish you good day.”

Not happy Christmas. Joan would never wish him or Lady Dorcas that again.

She tugged on her gloves and left without a backward glance.

***

Joan hurried out into the gloom of a midwinter afternoon, though Aberdeen was so far north, the daylight was all but gone. She paused on the corner and pulled her scarf up around her chin.

The tea shop glowed merrily as a few snowflakes danced on a chilly breeze, shoppers bustled all about, and down the street, a charity choir mangled Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.”

While behind the cheerfully decorated window of the tea shop, Edward lounged with his tea, his little dog, and Joan’s sketch. For Christmas she’d given Edward exactly what he wanted and did not deserve, while she’d given her husband lies and looming scandal.

Dante was at that very moment likely back at the hotel, glasses perched on his nose while he wrestled with some column of figures. He toiled not for his own gain, but because he managed his children’s legacy, and felt responsible for the people he employed.

While Edward fed cream to his terrier from a porcelain dish.

Fergus had apparently had enough indulgence, for Edward rose, donned his greatcoat, and left the shop. He set Fergus down when they reached the stoop, and Fergus lifted a short back leg right at the top of the steps.

As if to give the dog privacy, Edward glanced about at the passersby, his gaze lighting on Joan less than four yards away.

“You waited for me,” he said, coming down the steps. “You needn’t. Shouldn’t you have a maid or some footmen with you?”

His concern was ludicrous—Joan’s maid was in the bookshop—and his dog was done turning the snow yellow.

Edward scooped up his dog, and right there in the busy street, kissed Joan’s cheek. “You forgot to wish me happy Christmas, Joan.”

The air was thick with coal smoke overlaid with wet dog, but what nearly gagged Joan was the additional scent of Edward’s cologne—though she’d once found it pleasing.

“You’ll bring me those sketches,” Edward said. “I’ve been a good boy, and a little Christmas token between intimate friends isn’t too much to ask.”

Against her cheek, the cold leather of his gloves made a tactile contrast to his soft words and presuming kiss.

“I am not your friend, intimate or otherwise. And you may call me Mrs. Hartwell.” Of that, she was dead certain.

In the soft light from the tea shop windows, something flickered in Edward’s eyes. Regret, or remorse? “You will bring me those sketches.”

Behind the window, people were laughing and talking, gobbling up sweets, and making holiday plans. All that good cheer, all that noise and merriment, had only made it easier for Edward to trespass on honor and long acquaintance.

With a sense of inevitability, Joan took in a breath and prepared to negotiate with Edward a time and place where she might pass over the sketches without drawing the notice of her family.

Or her husband.

But something happened. She took in a steadying breath of cold Scottish air, and felt…

The bodice of her dress.

She, who was too skinny for fashion, felt the bodice of her dress confining her breasts and her breathing. While Edward stood there, one supercilious eyebrow arched in anticipation, Joan felt for the first time a sense of being confined by her fashionable attire.

Because Dante laced her up snugly, because he fed her sweets,
and
because
she
was
apparently
to
have
a
child
.

“I will not provide any more sketches, Edward, not without compensation, not without an acknowledgment of my work.
Now
you, Lady Dorcas, and your little dog may have a happy Christmas.”

She might have slapped him, so stunned was his reaction—so satisfying.

“I assume you understand what ‘no’ means, Edward, but let me explain something further. I am
married
, and my husband will be the father of my children. I cannot have a parasite like you threatening my family’s future, and if that means you tell all the world that I spread my legs for you, then be prepared for them to hear also that you lured me into your trust, plied me with drink at least, and otherwise behaved like a man who holds his intended in no esteem whatsoever.”

“You can’t do that,” he said, taking a step closer. “I’ll tell everybody you begged me for attention, and I felt sorry for you. A woman of your modest endowments and excessive height doesn’t get many offers.”

Fergus whined, as if Edward clutched him too tightly.

“You make odd noises,” Joan said evenly. “Your breath stinks, and you say stupid things when engaged in your petty attempts at seduction.” And the best part? “Your wardrobe lacks style and imagination. Why Fergus puts up with you, I do not know.”

She flounced away—flouncing was supposed to be great fun, wasn’t it?

“Where are you going?” Edward called as Joan strode off toward the bookshop. “This isn’t finished! I have those sketches, and I will not keep silent!”

“I’m going shopping for a Christmas present for my husband,” Joan called back, though a lady never raised her voice. “And for all I care, you can run back to your mama and tell her whatever lies you please.”

***

When traveling alone, Dante bought himself a second-class ticket and looked for a compartment full of the weary, downtrodden, or cup shot. Though the stink of such company might be trying, they tended to be quiet enough to let him do some reading.