Page 2 of Marquess of Mistletoe
The Ox and Ass was festooned with pine roping, wreaths hung in the windows, and red ribbons had been twined about the porch pillars. Evening was an hour away, but the lamps in the yard were already lit, and two noisy boys were pelting each other with snowballs.
“We’ll stop long enough to rest the horses and get warm,” Leo said. “Then we push on to Chelsea, because I must be punctual for my appointment tomorrow morning. A gentleman does not keep a lady waiting, no matter the weather.”
Or the holiday.
“A gentleman,” Rafe said, “does not marry a lady he’s never met, nor undertake his courting in the office of a bedamned, useless, sniveling solicitor on Boxing Day.”
Next Rafe would visit the topic of the head injury Leo had supposedly sustained at Badajoz, or the daft notions of the Quality, for if nothing else, acquiring a title had promoted Leo from gentry to Quality.
“My solicitors don’t snivel,” Leo retorted. They fawned though, and they sent along bills for services at a great rate.
“Methinks you need a toddy,” Rafe said. “The cold has gone to your brain.”
“For once, I agree with you. A toddy is in order, and we can drink to the health of my bride.” His potential bride. Nobody had signed any settlements, nobody had agreed to anything, but Leo was prepared to be generous.
“He’s gone barmy,” Rafe informed his horse. “Poor sod left the better part of himself on the battlefields, and this damned title has about finished off his common sense. What has the world come to, when a man whose bravery was noted by Old Hooky himself, an officer whose men marched through hell for him without complaint…”
Rafe’s litany continued as they rode into the inn yard, ceasing only when the ordeal of dismounting had to be faced. Leo swung down carefully, and his frozen feet accepted his weight with a predictable agony of protest.
Nothing for it, but to solider on. Leo hoped the woman he was to court was more sanguine about their union than he could be. Fate had landed him at the last place he’d kissed Marielle, and the least he could do was raise a warm glass of spirits to feckless dreams and the woman who’d inspired them.
* * *
The dreariest excuse for a Christmas Day blew snow squalls about beneath a bleak sky beyond the window of Marielle’s sitting room.
“I was an idiot for choosing to spend the night here.” A sentimental idiot.
“Yes, milady,” Petunia muttered as she poured Marielle another cup of tea.
“You aren’t supposed to agree with me that easily,” Marielle countered, returning to her seat near the fire. The room was chilly, except for the small area near the hearth circled with fire screens. Even there, the carpeted floor was drafty.
“Yes, milady. I mean, no milady.” Petunia passed Marielle a teacup that did not match its saucer. “Shall I ask the innkeeper’s wife for a tisane, milady?”
Milady, milady, milady. Marielle had been born a plain miss, and then she’d become Lady Drew Semple, wife to the third son of a marquess. Nearly a decade after becoming a wife, she still wasn’t comfortable being addressed as my lady.
Which she’d just have to get over.
“I do not need a tisane. Traveling at the holidays ought not to agree with anybody.”
Petunia’s face was carefully expressionless, suggesting she’d heard the talk about Marielle’s ancient history. A competent companion walked a slippery path between status as a family member—Petunia was a cousin-in-law at some remove on the Semple side—and the upper servants. She was unfailingly polite, but never quite warm.
As Marielle’s feet hadn’t been warm for days. “I have good memories of this inn,” Marielle said, rubbing one slippered foot over the other.
She also had sad memories.
Petunia wrapped a linen towel about the tea pot. “I had the maid put your sheets on the beds, and we’ve a private dining room reserved for supper.”
A Christmas feast, the innkeeper had said, though from what Marielle had seen, nobody else had been demented enough to travel on Christmas Day, braving weather that would freeze Lucifer’s ears off.
“You might as well eat the shortbread, Petunia. I don’t care for it.” Leopold had loved shortbread, and so Marielle had made it for him at Yuletide, batch after batch. When adolescence had begun adding inches to his height at a great rate, he’d gone so far as to put both butter and jam on his shortbread.
“I do care for it,” Petunia said, “especially with a dash of cinnamon to mark the holidays. I have never met a proper Englishwoman who takes so little interest in the Yuletide season as you do, milady.”
The tea was tepid and weak, which did not stop Petunia from dunking her shortbread into it.
“Do you imply I’m not a proper Englishwoman, Petunia?”
“Of course not, milady. I suspect the holidays make you sad.”
