Lady Louisa's Christmas Knight (25 page)

He looked at her in some consternation, as if the subject of their conversation were only now dawning upon him. “God preserve me from any baronies—and that would be two cuckoos in the nest. I married a woman who needed a friend, not a husband. I abandoned her to go play soldier, and you are suggesting one need not be concerned about the consequences.”

Play
soldier?
“You've been tormenting yourself over this since Cynthia's death, haven't you?”

He remained silent, his gaze on Fleur and Amanda shrieking with glee as they tried to pelt each other with snowballs.

“I should not have left any wife of mine to shoulder her burdens alone, Louisa. That isn't what marriage means. It can't be.”

“It certainly shouldn't be.” And yet, despite the burden they'd created, Louisa was not going to tell him about the poems in that little red book. Not yet. Compared to the lives of children, children who bore no responsibility for or control over their circumstances, a passel of naughty poems meant little.

She would examine that interesting thought later, in private.

“I owe my life to a child.” Joseph's gaze was glued to Fleur and Amanda, and Louisa had the sense the words had been wrenched from him.

“Tell me.”

She led him to a bench some conscientious servant had dusted clean of snow and seated herself, keeping her gaze on the children rather than on the awkward business that was Joseph lowering himself to sit beside her.

“There isn't much to tell. I frequently carried orders from one general to the other, or dispatches headed back to Portugal. Spain was… difficult. Napoleon's court had spies everywhere, territory changed hands with each campaign, and the people were left to shift with whatever armed authority was in the vicinity. We tried not to involve civilians, but an army must eat. It must drink. It must sleep somewhere.”

Fleur wadded up a snowball and aimed it at Amanda, but it flew high into the branches of a pine tree over Amanda's head. The resulting shower of snow put Amanda in pursuit of her younger sister, both of them screaming bloody murder as they darted around bushes and shrubs.

“I was bringing orders back from the coast—arguably a dangerous proposition—when I stopped by a village that was frequently on my route. The good sisters there ran an orphanage out of their convent, and everywhere one saw children doing men's jobs. They worked the gardens, they dug the irrigation ditches, and they served up the food at the cantina. I was famished, the food there was cheap and nourishing, and as it lay on my path that trip, I stopped at Vera Cruz.”

Each girl had taken shelter behind a bush, and the air rang with their taunts about how many snowballs they were making and where they would aim each one.

“I rode a fine gelding, though he wasn't much to look at. The damned horse never let me down, never put a foot wrong, but the stable boy—Sebastian—he insisted my mount had a loose shoe. I told him to find the farrier and tack the thing on tightly while I ate. I had territory to cross where no sane Englishman lingered, and I wanted badly to rejoin my unit before nightfall.”

Louisa tightened her gloved fingers around her husband's hand—when had she linked her fingers with his?

“The farrier was taking his siesta, according to Sebastian. Then the fellow had to find his tools, and then he had to settle an argument between his wife and his
abuela
—his grandmother. Grandmothers are holding Spain together as we speak, trust me on this. I wasted half the bloody afternoon while Sebastian manufactured one delay after another.”

Fleur promised to bury Amanda in snow; Amanda promised to dig herself out in time to see what Father Christmas had brought and to make sure the dear old gent knew what a fiend her younger sister was.

“By the time I got to my unit, they'd been slaughtered to a man.”

Louisa slipped an arm around her husband's back and laid her head on his shoulder.

It made sense. It made sense that a man who owed his life to a child would reciprocate that grace many times over, to many, many children. Louisa waited for Joseph to explain this to her, for him to share with her the wonderful beneficence he was capable of, but Joseph sat there on the cold bench, as unmoving as an ice sculpture, while Fleur and Amanda laughed and played in the snow.

Louisa remained beside her husband until the lowering sky and an increasingly chill wind forced her to gather up the children and return inside.

***

“You females and your silences.” Joseph scratched Lady Ophelia behind her ear and was treated to a blissful porcine grunt in response. “I almost told her, almost informed her we have not two bastard children but a small regiment of them.”

He switched ears, and Lady Opie obligingly shifted her great head. “I ought to take a journey, lest more time in my wife's presence turn me into a man with no dignity, no pride.”

No
secrets.

He wanted to be a man without secrets, without secrets from Louisa, in any case, but what sort of holiday would they have if he put all his cards on the marital table and even Louisa's pragmatic, generous heart were overtaxed?

“I have become that most pathetic of creatures, a man in love.” The situation was dire indeed, because he felt not just enthusiasm for Louisa's company and desire for her intimate attentions—a younger man's version of being in love—but also… respect, affection, protectiveness, and a possessiveness that was foreign to his nature.

“And then there's the matter of what I should get her for Christmas, my last shopping spree in Town having been thoroughly derailed by other priorities.” Joseph peered at his friend. “A pet pig would be a novelty. If your progeny grow to your size, then I might be spared the purchase of ponies.”

Lady Ophelia apparently took offense. She wandered out from under Joseph's hand and rooted in the straw of her pen.

“Don't go into a decline. Perhaps love will find you again in the spring, my lady. We all sit out a dance occasionally.”

She ignored him. Joseph put a little more feed in her dish, wished her a good day, and considered taking himself back to the house. The ladies were preparing to go calling at Morelands, and Joseph would not allow them to face such a challenge without his escort.

Christmas was still a few days away. He did not want to endure that holiday with secrets remaining in his heart, but the right moment for a disclosure of the situation in Surrey was going to have to present itself.

He was encouraged, though, to think Louisa hadn't batted an eye to know his daughters had been sired by another. A cuckoo or two in the nest hadn't daunted his wife in the least.

Fourteen cuckoos might be another matter altogether.

***

“He's visiting Lady Opie,” Fleur confided as she tugged Louisa toward the house. “She is Papa's best friend. Sonnet is his friend too but Sonnet is a gelding, and he sometimes gets cranky. Lady Opie never gets cranky.”

“Ophelia is a formidable lady,” Louisa replied. The hog was enormous, though placid for all her size. “Do we need a Christmas present for her ladyship and Sonnet?”

“Oh, they would like that,” Amanda said, kiting around on Louisa's other hand. “They both eat carrots, and we've tons and tons of carrots in the root cellars. Papa doesn't like carrots.”

“However would you know such a thing?”

“We don't know such a thing,” Fleur said. “But
we
don't like carrots, and if you think Papa doesn't either, you won't put them on our menus.”

Amanda turned big blue eyes on Louisa. “That will mean more for Sonnet too.”

“You are a pair of minxes. Their Graces will adore you, but nothing will preserve you from having to eat the occasional carrot. You must accept your fate with dignity.”

Mention of Louisa's parents occasioned many questions and much what if-ing—“What if the
dewk
and the duch-
ess
want us to come live with them?”—but Louisa wasn't about to make her first post-wedding call on her parents in the cozy old dress she'd worn to the barn.

She sent the children up to the nursery to make lists of appropriate presents for Sonnet and Lady Ophelia, picked up the day's mail, and headed for the library.

Only to stop short outside the library door.

The handwriting gave away the nature of the missive. Louisa shuffled the offending note to the bottom of the stack, locked the library door behind her, and went to Joseph's desk.

Before she slit the seal on the letter, she got out the nasty note she'd found in the Surrey ledger and compared the handwriting.

“Somebody seeks to bedevil us both. Somebody with execrable penmanship.”

She opened the note and scanned it quickly, lest Joseph find the door locked and become alarmed.

Won't your husband be surprised to find he married a lady with the imagination of a whore? Won't all of polite society be surprised? And to think, a little coin might spare you this shame… or perhaps a lot of coin.

Louisa did not toss the note in the fire, much as she wanted to. Instead, she put it in her pocket and unlocked the door, then sat back down at Joseph's desk.

Thinking productively was, for the first time in Louisa's experience, heavy going. There were only a dozen or so of the books left unaccounted for according to Westhaven's last reckoning, but all it would take was one copy of the dratted thing, and Louisa's future—and very likely the future of her marriage—were done for.

Soon, after a few more notes intended to unnerve her and make her desperate, she'd find a demand for money. She had money—Joseph's allotment for the household was generous, and she'd been saving back from her pin money for years—but money would not solve the problem, because there would always be another demand and then another.

The difficulty admitted of two solutions. The first was to identify the blackmailer and put him to rout. The second, no easier than the first, was to locate each and every copy of the book and destroy them all.

And either solution required nothing less than a miracle to effect.

***

“I'm looking for a specific book.”

Christopher North raked his customer with an assessing look: decently turned out, though the cuffs were threadbare, the seam near one elbow of the fellow's greatcoat was starting to unravel, and the toes of his expensive boots showed wear and want of care.

Quality but without
quality
.

“I pride myself on knowing my inventory, good sir. What book do you seek?”

“
Poems
for
Lovers.
It's a small volume in stitched red leather, very pretty, and I know you have it, because I pawned my copy of it just two weeks past, along with a box of other books of a similar nature.”

The young nob had gotten the title wrong. If a man was going to own something as precious as a rare volume of poetry—and very good poetry at that—he ought at least to know the book's proper title.

“I'm afraid you're laboring under a slight misunderstanding, my friend.” North beamed a smile at his customer, though the fellow looked like he hadn't an ounce of seasonal good cheer to his name. “I am the proprietor of a book shop. I sell books. I do not own a pawn shop, and were I to hold myself out as the owner of same—”

The man made a slice through the air with one large hand. “Spare me the commercial details. I need that book back, now if you please.”

Felicitations
of
the
season
to
you
too.

“The book has been passed into the hands of another customer, and I doubt he'll be bringing it back.”

While North tried to make his voice sympathetic, in his heart he knew that little volume had ended up exactly where it ought to be. A purveyor of fine books had an instinct about these things.

“Describe this other customer. Was he a city man? I need that book.”

“Is the book to be a gift?”

The fellow's eyes took on a shifty humor, presaging an attempt to dissemble, unless North was much mistaken. “In a manner of speaking, it shall be a gift. I've tried every bookshop within ten blocks to find another copy, and nobody has a single one to sell. I know it was in the box my man brought here to you. Tell me where this other customer can be found—a name would be very helpful, or a crest from his ring or carriage—and I'll trouble you no further.”

The fellow wasn't offering to pay for the information, wasn't even pretending to peruse the shop as if in anticipation of making a purchase. Mrs. North would have a few choice words to say to such a person.

“I'm afraid the gentleman you seek wore no signet ring, nor did he arrive by carriage such that I might have seen a coat of arms.” Sir Joseph had, of course, left his card and his exact direction, not that North would divulge either to this miserable specimen.

“What about a name? If he purchased a book, then he either gave you his particulars or a bit of the ready.”

“He paid in cash, and I have no other information from him other than that he was off to rusticate for the holidays.” North aimed a smile across the shop at the Misses Channing, regular customers, and both of the old dears were avid readers in several languages.

“What else did he purchase?”

From the scowl on the fellow's face and the way he slapped his gloves against his thigh, North concluded this customer was not simply determined, he was desperate. The book must not fall into the hands of such a one. Even Mrs. North would agree a spot of prevarication was called for.

“He appeared a very learned gentleman, choosing three volumes of Spanish poems of a similar ilk, three copies of
Gulliver's Travels
, and a book regarding the history of horse racing in Surrey.”