Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Justin woke to thesound of Christmas bells pounding against his skull. He rolled over in bed, buried his face in the pillow, and groaned.

Last night.

He had a hundred regrets about last night, and only seventeen or so were whisky-related.

He dragged himself to a sitting position and rang for his valet. Today, he could not afford to stay abed. He had a great deal of damage to undo, and the first steps were a headache powder, a bath, and a shave, in that order.

After that...Well, it was Christmas. He should probably go to church and do some repenting. Couldn’t hurt.

And once it was well enough into the day to ensure they’d be awake and ready for callers, he must go to the Garland residence. Only the Christ child in the manger knew how that would unfold. Once he confessed the truth of last night, he might find himself staring down a pistol or four. She did have several brothers.

But the prospect of a bullet-riddled torso was of no moment. His concern must be for Chloe.

Last night, everything had happened so fast. In the moment, he hadn’t known how to correct her mother’s bizarre assumptions. But he could not allow anyone to besmirch her reputation or character on his account. Not even her own family. Most especially not her own family. He knew how dear she held them.

He stumbled over to the washstand, where he splashed cold water over his face and gave his teeth a vigorous scrubbing with tooth powder. By the time Smithson arrived bearing his headache powder and a glass of fizzy water, Justin was feeling slightly human again.

He downed the headache remedy in two swallows and returned the glass to the valet. “Ask the cook to send up two soft boiled eggs and dry toast, if you would.”

“Yes, my lord. Since I’m off to the kitchen, what would you have her do with the goose?”

“The goose? What goose?”

“A young lady called this morning. She was bearing a Christmas goose. A gift from her family, I understand.”

A young lady, appearing out of nowhere on Christmas morning? He could only think of one person it might be. Chloe.

“When did this happen?” he demanded.

“Not long ago. A quarter hour, perhaps.”

He cursed. “Why am I only hearing of it now?”

“I’m certain the butler meant to tell you as soon as you’d risen for the day.”

“He should have roused me, damn it.” He stormed to his dressing room and began yanking garments from the shelves. A shirt. Trousers. Socks.

Smithson set the tray aside and hastened to his aid. “Allow me to assist you, my lord.”

“What I need from you are answers. What did she look like?  Fair hair, blue eyes? Tempting figure, lips meant for kissing?”

Smithson turned red as a beet. “I... I’m sure I couldn’t speak to most of that. But I believe she had fair hair, yes.”

“Did she give her name?” Justin stripped off his nightshirt and yanked a clean shirt over his head.

The valet began assembling a cravat, vest, and coat. “I imagine she did, but it was Moore who spoke with her. I didn’t hear.”

“Damn it.”

“She asked to speak with you, I believe. To pass on holiday regards from her parents. Moore told her you weren’t at home to callers.”

A certain butler would be getting coal in his Boxing Day gift tomorrow.

He shoved one leg into the trousers and hopped on the other foot, pulling them up. When he tried for the second leg, he nearly fell on his face. Once he’d buttoned enough buttons that the trousers wouldn’t fall down and leave him bare-arsed, he called it good enough. He tossed the socks aside. He took the first pair of shoes he saw and jammed his bare feet into them, then dashed from the room.

“A cravat, my lord,” Smithson called. “A vest and coat.”

“No time.”

If she’d been here and gone within the past quarter hour, he might be able to catch her.

He charged down the corridor, all but threw himself down the stairs, and ran to snag his greatcoat from a hook before flinging open the door. He stepped over the threshold and looked wildly about the streets and square.

“Chloe!” he bellowed into the bright Christmas morning. “Chloe!”

As he shrugged into his greatcoat, he heard steps behind him in the entrance hall. His worthless butler. “Damn it, Moore. Did she come by carriage or on foot? Precisely how many minutes ago did she leave?”

“I didn’t leave.”

He whirled about so violently, the tails of his greatcoat knocked over a vase on the entrance table and sent it crashing to the floor. He cursed in a very un-Christmasly fashion.

But none of it mattered. She was still here.

Chloe surveyed the shards of porcelain strewn across the floor. “I told your butler I’d wait in the parlor.” She surveyed him next. Her gaze roamed his half-dressed figure, unshaven face, and wild hair. “You look different.”

“I look like a madman, no doubt.” He tried to catch his reflection in the glass case of the clock, pushing both hands through his hair to tame it. He only made it worse.

“It’s not a bad sort of different.” Her gaze lingered on his unbuttoned shirt and the exposed wedge of his chest. Her cheeks bloomed with pink. “It’s interesting to see you when you’re not so starched and buttoned up.”

“Well, you look the same as always,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Beautiful. Devastating.”

“You’ve scarcely glanced at me.”

“It doesn’t matter. By now, I just know. You could be wrapped in a shroud on a moonless night, and I’d know.”

She knotted her fingers together. “Could we talk, perhaps? Somewhere with more seating and less broken pottery?”

“Yes, of course.” He was an idiot.

They went into the parlor. She took a seat on the divan. He headed for an armchair, but she patted the stretch of upholstery beside her. He couldn’t refuse.

“Your housekeeper was good enough to send in tea.” She poured out two cups, lightening his with a splash of milk before passing it to him. Exactly the way he took his tea. She didn’t even have to ask.

It was all so...normal. Unexceptional. Suddenly, they were like an old married couple.

No. Don’t think that way.

“I’m sorry to have burst in on you without any warning. I needed to speak with you, in case you were forming any rash ideas of defending my honor. My mother, I am happy to say, does not actually believe me to be a brazen hussy.”

“Then she must think me an unprincipled knave.”

“No. Believe it or not, somehow she already knew that you loved me.”

He couldn’t resist pointing it out. “You see? I told you it must be obvious to anyone.”

“She’s not anyone. She has some kind of oracle embedded in her eyebrow. It’s uncanny. You’ll learn.”

He’d learn? When? How? Why?

“She didn’t want anyone to know about our little assignation. That’s why she wouldn’t allow you to speak to Papa. It would have forced me to accept you, and she believed I should have a choice.”

“Your mother was right. I was a jackass, truly.”

She sipped her tea. “We were neither of us exemplars of behavior last night. But the important thing is that no one thinks me a scheming seductress, and she won’t tell anyone what happened, and so you needn’t come to my father and brothers to fall on your sword or offer yourself for target practice.”

“It is some relief that to know I won’t be shot today.” He drained his cup. “That would be the worst sort of Christmas.”

“For us both.” She confronted his gaze. “Justin, why did you never say anything, in all those months?”

He settled into the divan. Somehow it was easy to speak about it this morning. Maybe the daylight banished the melodrama, or perhaps the quotidian ritual of tea put it into perspective. He  was grateful to unburden himself.

“I know it must sound absurd, but I genuinely thought there was no need. I spent an inordinate amount of time in your company. I thought my admiration to be obvious. When you began to tease and provoke me, I was idiot enough to mistake it for flirtation on your part. Encouragement.”

“That is an understandable assumption, I suppose.”

“You made attempts to engage me in conversation. When we conversed, you shared your thoughts freely. I saw it as a compliment that you would entrust me with your honest opinions. I strove to repay that compliment, even when we disagreed.”

“That makes a distressing amount of sense.”

“My hovering about, my beholding you with admiration... Those we have addressed. I didn’t realize my manner might seem critical or intimidating. That is a flaw in my character, and I shall own it. I’m not accustomed to concerning myself with how I appear to others.”

“I imagine most earls likely aren’t. Nor dukes, marquesses, or viscounts for that matter.”

“And then last night. The party. That abominable vest. You told me it was a tradition among gentlemen of the family. When you made an effort to include me in it, I hoped...”

He paused, letting the full weight of his idiocy settle on her.

“You hoped I wanted you as part of the family. You believed I was hinting at marriage.” She set her teacup on the table and pressed both hands to her heart. “That’s why you planned to propose. You bought a ring. You wore the ugliest garment in England. Only to find out I’d played you a trick. Oh, Justin.”

“Please. I beg you, don’t make it sound that pitiful. Leave a man a few shreds of pride.”

“I’m so very sorry. Truly, I’m ashamed of myself.”

“I’m ashamed of the way I spoke to you afterward. I made it sound as if it’s been a trial to love you.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “The fact is, it’s been rather wonderous. If not for our entirely one-sided romance, I might have gone my whole life without knowing what it is to be in love.” He would never regret that, despite how it had ended.

“I brought this.” She drew a lace handkerchief from her pocket. One corner was knotted around the sapphire ring.

He waved it off. “I don’t want it back. Mind, I’m not going to tell you I could never bear to wed another. I will eventually have to marry. That’s how earldoms survive. But whomever I marry, I don’t expect I’ll like her very much, much less love her, and the chances that she’ll have eyes the precise color of summer skies the day after a rain are so small as to be infinitesimal. So keep the thing.”

“You’re certain.”

“Do with it as you wish.”

“Very well. I’ll take you at your word on that.” She refilled his tea. “So after you left, my mother told me to search my heart. And that’s what I did, all night. I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t a cursory search, either. I turned my heart out like a pocket and shook it for loose coins.”

“Find anything of interest?” He lifted the tea to his lips.

“Well, apparently I’m in love with you.”

The teacup and saucer slipped from his hands and fell to the floor, sending tea sloshing on her slippers. “Christ.”

She laughed. “You are a curse on good china.”

“Nevermind the china. Go back to the bit where somewhere between the hours of midnight and five this morning, you deluded yourself into believing you love me.”

“Deluded myself? Give me more credit than that.”

“Don’t tease me, Chloe. Not today, not about this.”

“I’m not teasing.”

“I don’t trust my own perceptions. I’ve misunderstood you at every turn.”

She smiled a little. “You understood me better than I understood myself. I was awake all night, reliving the history of our acquaintance. Every word, every look, every incidental touch. I remember all of it so clearly, as though I’d been saving up the memories. Making treasures of them.” She picked at the lace edging of the handkerchief. “From the start, I cared so deeply what you thought of me. I could never understand why. You were handsome and worldly and intelligent. A caring guardian to your cousin. A perfect gentleman. I couldn’t hope to match you for those things, and that hurt to admit. So I was your opposite. Teasing, improper, shameless at times. Looking back, it’s embarrassingly juvenile. I was desperate to draw your attention, to draw you out.” Her eyes lifted to his. “To draw you closer.”

Her words planted a kernel of hope in his chest. He tried to uproot it before it could take hold.

“You were so hopelessly above me, you see. So I teased you and provoked you and treated you with impertinence—always trying to knock you down a peg. Because if I knocked you down enough pegs, perhaps...” She sighed. “Perhaps then you’d be within my reach.”

Within her reach?

Justin looked out the window and laughed. He couldn’t help it.

“At least I’ve finally managed to make you laugh.”

“Chloe. From our first meeting, I have been your servant. Helpless to follow you like a pup, hanging on your every word. If you allowed it, I would always be within your reach.” He stroked her cheek. “And you, within mine.”

He watched as she unknotted the handkerchief in her lap. She struggled with it, as if her fingers were unsteady. At last it came loose, and she shook the ring into her palm.

“Would you put it on my finger? If you still want to.”

Of course he still wanted to. He wanted to jam that ring on her finger and dip her whole hand in lacquer or glue, just to make sure it stayed there forever.

He shook his head. “No. It’s too hasty.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“I’ve been thinking of marrying you for months, and you’ve had one night to consider the idea. ”

“Yes, but I crammed a lot of consideration into that one night, and my feelings were there all along. I’m a highly efficient thinker, and I’m a woman. When it comes to marriage, a woman can consider more things in one night than a man considers in a decade. I have thoughts on the headstone, by the way.”

“The headstone?”

“Yes. The headstone that you said we’d be buried under, side by side. I want to be clear from the outset that it must have my name. There’s nothing worse than a headstone that says ‘Mr. Manford Manly McManning’ in engraved letters, and then in tiny chiseled script at the bottom, ‘his wife.’ I won’t be a ‘his wife,’ Justin. It must say the full thing. Chloe Anne Garland Montague, Lady Cheverell. If not, I shall haunt the house with a vengeance. I’d be good at haunting. Sounds more amusing than heaven, if I’m honest. Maybe I can divide my eternity. You know, the way people summer in Ramsgate or Bath.”

Justin rubbed his face with one hand, amused. She truly was astounding. This was going to be an interesting forever.

“You may put whatever you like on the headstone,” he said. “I don’t care if you reduce me to ‘her husband.’ However, we will write an engagement announcement first. And that will take place after I have proposed to you properly. Sometime in March, perhaps.”

“March?”She made an indignant little bounce. “You will make me wait until March?”

“It’s only three months.”

“That’s a quarter of a year.”

“Correct. It’s also approximately thirteen weeks, or ninety-one-and-a-quarter days.” He held out his palm. “Give the ring here. I’ll put it in the lockbox for safekeeping.”

She snatched her hand away. “You will not. You just told me the ring was mine to keep. That I could do with it as I wish. And I wish to wear it.”

“Chloe.”

“I know that you mean well,” she said. “You are concerned for my reputation and you would like my family’s blessing first. Most of all, you want to be sure that I’m sure. I adore you for being protective of me and my family.”

“It’s no less than my duty as a gentleman.”

“Justin, you’re very good at doing what you should. But sometimes you need a nudge to do what you truly want. That’s where I come in.”

Hah. If he did what he truly wanted at the moment, the divan beneath them would require new upholstery, and they’d need to marry by the end of the week. She would do well to be careful with those nudges of hers.

Carnality aside, however, she was doing remarkably well at reading his thoughts.

“You weren’t exaggerating,” he said. “You did do a lot of thinking last night.”

She grinned. “You’ve no idea.”

“I don’t even want to know the full extent of it, do I?”

“No. You’d be terrified.”

“Well, then. Let’s just close that Pandora’s box, shall we.”

She held up the ring. “Here is my proposal. You put the ring on my finger today, but I promise to keep it secret for now. I’ll only wear it to bed until you ask my father’s permission and formally propose. Twelfth Night would be the perfect occasion, in my view.”

“That’s less than two weeks away.”

“Precisely.” She squeezed his wrist, and his pulse pounded under her touch. “I love you. I don’t want to spend another minute pretending I don’t. I want to show off this gorgeous ring. And I want everyone to know I’m yours, and you’re mine. You want that, too.”

He pretended his chest wasn’t exploding with joy. He couldn’t be a complete milquetoast, giving in to her every whim, or they’d never get on. She needed him to be resolute and practical on occasion, just as much as he needed her to remind him of life’s delights. “If I agree to this...”

“When you agree to this. Which will be a minute from now, if that.”

“I insist we add three months to our engagement. Six months in all.”

“A June wedding would be acceptable.”

“And I must be allowed to call you dearest and darling.”

“As long as I am allowed an endearment for you.”

He was wary. “Which endearment?”

“I haven’t yet decided.”

“That’s worrisome.”

She shrugged.

With a dramatic sigh, he plucked the ring from her grasp. “This is a very big leap of trust, you know.”

“Yes, I know.” She caressed his arm sweetly. “I love you for taking it.”

He held the ring poised at the tip of her third finger. “Will you marry me?”

And even though they’d been talking about it for the past half-hour, negotiating everything from wedding dates to grave markers, his heart battered his ribs for the brief-but-endless moment it took her to answer.

“Yes.”

Thank God.

He slid the ring on her finger. She twisted her hand back and forth admiring the way the gems sparkled. He propped his elbow on the arm of the divan and admired the sparkle in her eyes. “Are you happy, my dearest darling?”

“I am ecstatic, Manford Manly McManning.”

“No.” He sat up at once. “No.”

She played innocent. “But we agreed.”

“I did not agree to that.”

“It’s the endearment of my choosing.”

“Give me that ring back.” He lunged for her hand.

She eluded his grasp. “Too late, Manford.”

Oh, now this was serious.

He caught her by the waist, and she shrieked with laughter as he hauled her into his lap. Her body fit perfectly against his.  All her soft, generous curves complemented his unyielding edges. “Do you know how much I love you?”

“Which answer will get me more kisses? Yes, or no?”

“Excellent question. Try both, and we’ll find out.”

When he kissed her, he did so tenderly. This morning, he had nothing to prove in a few stolen moments, no resentment simmering beneath his desire. She was his now, and he was hers. They had all the time in the world.

She pulled away with a gasp. “Oh, dear. Oh, no.”

“What is it?” Blood powered through him in a primal response. He was ready to leap fences, or punch something, or carry her over his shoulder to safety. Whatever she required.

“The goose,” she said. “I have to take it back home.”

Justin was nonplussed.

“My parents didn’t send it. It’s our goose, for our dinner. I stole it. I needed an excuse to knock at your door and ask to speak with you, and I couldn’t think of anything else.” Her mouth tugged to the side. “This is awkward, but I must ask for it back. It should be plucked and roasting already. The cook must be beside herself.”

He tucked a finger under her chin. “I’ll have the carriage readied at once.”

She exhaled with relief. “Thank you.”

“Happy Christmas, my darling.”

“Happy Christmas, my love.”

He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Much better.”