Lady Louisa's Christmas Knight (18 page)

“You missed a spot on your jaw, Husband.”

Husband.
Her
very
own
husband.

He turned, flecks of lather dotting his visage, and held his razor out to her. Not quite a challenge, but something more than an invitation. The moment called for a shaving sonnet.

Louisa set her tea aside—tea Joseph had prepared for her—and climbed off the bed. She took the razor from him and eyed his jaw. “Were you trying to spare my sensibilities last night?”

“You were indisposed.”

They both fell silent while Louisa scraped the last of the whiskers from Joseph's cheek. She appropriated the towel he'd draped over his shoulder and wiped his face clean.

“I know I was indisposed, but you blew out all the candles before you undressed. I've seen naked men before.” She'd never slept with one wrapped around her, though. Such an arrangement was… cozy, and inclined one toward loquaciousness.

“You've seen naked men?”

There was something too casual in Joseph's question. Louisa set the razor down and stepped back. “Growing up, there was always a brother or two to spy on, and I think they didn't mind being spied on so very much, or they wouldn't have been quite as loud when they went swimming. I attend every exhibition the Royal Society puts on, and the Moreland library is quite well stocked.”

He kissed her, and by virtue of his mouth on hers, Louisa understood that her husband was smiling at her pronouncements. He gave her a deucedly businesslike kiss though, over in a moment.

As Louisa lingered in her husband's arms, sneaking a whiff of the lavender soap scent of his skin, she wondered if married kisses were different from the courting kind.

“I have married a fearlessly naughty woman,” Joseph said, stroking a hand down her braid. “And to think I was concerned that I was imposing by asking you to share my bed last night.”

“You needn't be gallant. I talked your ears off.”

And he'd
listened
. He hadn't fallen asleep, hadn't patted her arm and rolled over, hadn't let her know in unsubtle ways that the day had been quite long enough, thank you very much.

“You had an interesting upbringing. Not many women study astronomy, ancient history, and economics.”

“The calculus makes measuring the stars easier. I'm having my telescopes sent over from Morelands—our daughters will have great good fun staying up past their bedtimes, learning the constellations. I don't know who enjoyed the midnight picnics more, His Grace, my brothers, or myself.”

His hand on her hair went still, cradling the back of her head. “Do you even know you refer to them as our daughters?”

And with one question, they were on tricky ground indeed. Not the stuff of poetry, but possibly the stuff of marital discord. “I don't mean to presume. I can refer to them as Amanda and Fleur—such pretty names.”

He pulled back enough to frame her face with his two warm hands. “Because you say it is so, Louisa, they
are
our daughters. This is more than a wedding gift, because you give it not just to me but also to two small girls who very much need a mother.”

This kiss was different, reverent, tender, lovely… beyond poetry.

Louisa dropped her forehead to her husband's naked chest and, for the dozenth time, silently cursed her female organs for their poor scheduling. “We'll never get to Kent if we aren't on our way soon.”

Joseph patted her bottom and stepped back. “We will not let your parents serve us breakfast, or your sisters dragoon you into their private lair. I suspect the worst offenders will be your brothers, though. I've never met such a lot of mother hens.”

He splashed on his cedar-and-spice scent, then started laying out clothing, making trips from the wardrobe to the bed. Joseph continued striding around the bedroom in nothing but riding breeches, as casual as you please.

And Louisa did please. Her husband was well endowed with muscle and masculine pulchritude, and he thought her brothers were mother hens. He had listened to her in the dark, and he had held her and rubbed her back when she hadn't even known she could ask for those considerations.

Maybe love was not a matter of ringing declarations and rhyming couplets. Maybe it wasn't bloodred roses and dramatic sentiments. Maybe love was a pat on the bottom and a tender kiss, a shared good night's sleep, and a man considerate enough to build a quick stop by the ducal mansion into the start of the wedding journey.

***

“You get her for the rest of your life, Carrington. At least let us say a proper good-bye.”

The musical brother—Lord Valentine—delivered this observation with a paucity of good cheer as Joseph watched Louisa being hugged yet again by St. Just, Westhaven, and each sister in turn. In an odd display of diplomacy, Their Graces had retired inside the mansion after wishing Joseph and Louisa safe journey.

“You had your sister for the first twenty-five years, my lord, and I'm starting to wonder if you've waited until she's leaving to appreciate her.”

Dark brows rose in a gesture very like the duke's. “What is that rudeness supposed to mean?”

“She's studied practically every modern European language, but her only opportunities to speak them have been when your parents entertain diplomats. She can do math in her head you and I couldn't follow even on paper, and yet she's lucky if Westhaven lets her tag along to the occasional economics lecture. She summarized half a millennium of Roman military strategy for St. Just—knows Caesar's letters by heart in the original and in translation—and yet St. Just's epistles back to her from the Peninsula dealt with ladies' hats. You compose little bagatelles for her when what she needs is to be working on a translation of
The
Divine
Comedy
.”

Lord Valentine blinked, and then his lips curved up in a rueful smile.

“I suppose when it comes down to it, we haven't known what to do with Lou. I realized early on that as much passion as I have for music, she has that passion too, but she can turn to practically any intellectual pursuit. I would have been sent down my first term if not for her.”

He fell silent while Louisa accepted a small parcel from St. Just and tucked it into her reticule. Lord Valentine had passed her a similar present, as if little tokens made up for a quarter century of fraternal neglect.

“You should have been sent down. She should have been allowed to matriculate.”

“She went through much of the curriculum by correspondence with me. I struggled in every class mostly because I spent too many hours at the piano. Latin was the worst. She did my translations for me and for a few of the other fellows, though it was cheating. Once she understood what we were about, she put a stop to it, but by then…”

Lord Valentine went quiet again, his smile nowhere in evidence.

“By then you'd learned enough Latin or Greek or mathematics from her to limp along yourselves, while she was left to rusticate in Kent and stare at the stars as her sisters embroidered their stays and drew nude sketches.”

“Merciful heavens. Nudes?”

“Miniatures, I'm thinking, because the only models they had were the brothers they spied on.”

On that parting shot, Joseph stepped forward, waiting just long enough for Louisa to slip yet a third parcel—this one from Westhaven—into her reticule. Lady Genevieve passed along a small packet of documents tied with twine, which also went into the reticule, and then at long, long last, Joseph was bundling his wife into the traveling coach.

“One has a sense of escape every time one departs from your family, Louisa.”

She switched sides so she was again on his right.

“Husband, you say the most comforting things. When Sophie stole a few days of solitude for herself last Christmas, I finally realized I am not the only Windham sibling longing for peace and privacy. I love my family, but they are just so…”

She turned her head to peer out the window. Joseph passed her his handkerchief, thinking she'd wave it at them in parting.

“I am being ridiculous.” She did wave the handkerchief, but then she dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “I'll see them all again in just a few days at the Christmas gathering, and the children too. I suppose an excess of sentiment can be forgiven. I hadn't seen St. Just in months, and Maggie is expecting, but I'll see a great deal of Sophie—”

He hauled her against his side and gently pushed her head to his shoulder. “We'll visit all you like, all over the realm, even the perishing West Riding if St. Just insists on ruralizing there. I did want to take you to Paris in the spring, however, and you'd like Lisbon too, even if it gets quite hot. I'm not as fond of Rome, though Sicily has all manner of ruins you might find interesting.”

Her head came off his shoulder. “May we take the girls? Children need exposure to the greater world, you know. One can't learn everything sitting in some dusty schoolroom.”

No, one could not.

While Louisa started fashioning an itinerary for summer travels, Joseph cast around for a way to explain to her that journeys beyond a certain duration would be difficult for him. There were a dozen children in Surrey from whom he did not want to be too far away for any length of time. His children.

Not
ours
, not yet. Likely not ever.

***

“How is a man to enjoy a proper drink when his hand is bandaged like this?” Grattingly waved a swaddled right hand. Lionel barely glanced up from the meager fire doing battle with the chill in Grattingly's smallest parlor.

“How is a man supposed to think when you're whining about a stoved finger, for God's sake? It's all over the clubs that Sir Joseph refused to blow a hole in your hide as well he should have.”

Like a hound hearing a puzzling sound, Grattingly cocked his head at Lionel. “You didn't tell me that limping simian was Wellington's personal marksman. Not well done, Honiton. A friend risks his life for you, puts his very existence on the line, and you—”

“You're the one who changed the plan. Wellington's staff did not include a personal marksman, though I'll grant you, Sir Joseph is a dead shot. I tried to preserve you from the folly of dueling with him, and you were the one who insisted on meeting him.”

“And this is the thanks I get? Any girl who's been the cause of a duel won't find a decent husband. I hand Louisa Windham to you on a platter, even when you can't manage to be the one interrupting her scandalous behavior. I put a fat dowry within your grasp, and you can't be bothered to thank me.”

Lionel remained silent, which was as much thanks as Grattingly was going to hear from him. The original idea had been simple: Lionel was to rescue Louisa from a compromising situation and accept her grateful hand in marriage immediately thereafter. No duels had been contemplated—until Grattingly thoroughly bollixed up the matter.

“I should be the one swiving the fair Louisa,” Grattingly muttered. “I like a woman who fights back.”

Lionel took another sip of inferior wine. “You like a woman who pretends to fight back. Louisa Windham would have gelded you in another moment.”

Grattingly's chair scraped back. “Mother of God, what is
wrong
with you? You need coin. For a small sum certain, I make it possible for you to acquire the same and a wellborn wife into the bargain, and when you can't manage to take what's offered, you turn up nasty on me.”

“My apologies. Impending poverty has quite soured my disposition, this drink isn't helping, and I hardly regard a percentage of Lady Louisa's dowry as a small sum. When did you stop stocking decent libation, anyway?”

And where were the other half dozen or so young men who usually ensconced themselves in Grattingly's town house of a late evening?

Grattingly went to the sideboard. “Madeira isn't cheap, I'll have you know.”

It was not, particularly, being fortified with brandy, but it was cheaper than imported spirits. “I haven't seen that pretty little upstairs maid about lately either. Are you attempting to economize, Grattingly? It's a plebeian turn of mind that stints on the necessities.”

Lionel finished his wine and did not join Grattingly at the sideboard. In his cups, the man could be mean as well as stupid—witness the challenge to Carrington—and goading Grattingly served no purpose other than temporary distraction from Lionel's own difficulties.

“The trades have cut me off,” Grattingly spat. “The pretty little maid disappeared last week, and I won't see another quarterly until the New Year. Happy damned Christmas from dear old Pater's solicitors.”

“One does usually pay off the trades in December,” Lionel drawled. “At least the Quality do.”

“My grandfather is as wellborn as yours, Honiton, and you've no more coin to show for it than I do.”

Lionel knew better than to take that bait—he knew better, but he took it anyway.

“There you would be in error.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak, expecting to dip your fingers into Louisa Windham's dowry without doing the hard work of wooing or marrying the woman. I am not as shortsighted as you and thus have other plans in train.”

Grattingly paused in the act of swigging from a decanter. Lionel had to look away, lest he gag at the sight. “You speak in riddles, Honiton, and riddles that don't even amuse.”

“Ah, but the tailors still accept my custom, don't they? And because I am more resourceful than you, they'll continue to do so, as will the farrier, the coalman, and all the other petty actors whose contributions to a comfortable existence are mandatory, if tedious.”

Grattingly belched, a slow, wet eruption of vulgarity punctuated only by the soft hiss of the fire. Had that indelicacy emerged in the company of a pack of similarly inebriated young men, it might have provoked a round of ribald comments—or no comment at all. As Grattingly's sole companion, however, that Lionel should be subjected to such rudeness struck him more as a reflection on himself than on his host.