Page 2 of Lady Mistletoe by Midnight (Lords and Undefeated Ladies)

O ne shop window caught Victor out of his reverie. There was printed paper on an easel next to that candle. It drew him in, the sweet tinkle of the bell above its door completely at odds with his mood and the violent sweep of his cape.

“How may I serve you, sir?”

As he swept in from the dank London air, a shopkeeper leapt away from the customer he’d been attending to bow eagerly. Had Victor not been so battered by half a year of argument in the Netherlands, followed by a rushing journey to London only to be too late, the genuine offer of assistance would have been welcome.

He looked around, past the harried man with curls matted down with sweat. He was in a book shop.

“Have you any news bills? Leaflets? Anything printed just today?”

At least the man didn’t glare like his father’s servants. He ought to have been able to look forward to the absence of his father’s constant disapproval now the man was dead. But no, he’d missed the last hours of his lordship’s deathbed, so even the servants took it upon themselves to hint with their eyes that he was no kind of suitable heir.

He looked around. Allenby’s. He knew the place.

Without trying, he had come to the perfect place to pretend that he was someone else, living a more pleasant life.

In fact, he could pretend longer if he purchased a book.

“Yes.” Victor swept off his hat and surveyed his leather and paper surroundings. “What have you that is a travel story? Not a diary, something fantastical. I enjoyed Gulliver’s Travels, for instance.”

“Of course, sir.” The young man gestured smoothly and politely to a shelf nearby. “Do you care for history? There is a new novel this year called Waverly, very popular, if you would like to try traveling to the past. If not, Mrs. Thomas’s The Prison-House is selling well, if Minerva Press suits your taste. Though of course it wouldn’t.” Having proffered the book, he retreated just as quickly.

Victor wanted to snap his fingers and demand it back. As his father so often pointed out, given his shortcomings, real women were beyond his reach. A fictional woman might at least give him insight into such mysterious creatures.

For the his friend in the foreign minister’s office, Victor’s ability to sit for hours tracing out the details of a contract was an invaluable quality. Women did not find it so.

Unfortunately, it was the best quality he had to offer.

His father’s mocking laugh echoed in his mind. Would that had died with the man.

With the silent sound ringing in his ears, he was more curt than he wished to be. “Allow me to study your selection of newer novels. I have been abroad.”

The messy-haired man waved to where the previous patron had slipped behind a shelf and was examining each volume closely.

A patron who was a woman.

His first thought when he saw her was of cake.

He was hungry, but he didn’t think of his hunger. She was round, and sweet, and looked toothsome. She required nibbling. Like cake.

He became lost in wondering how he knew that.

He had so long been repelled by food that he had extended the revulsion to anything physical. His father’s constant encouragement to take up frequenting whores, as he did, had crystallized the matter in Victor’s mind. Women were on the side of the world that held butter sauces and jam; he was on this side. Alone.

But the woman before him wasn’t a butter sauce in a mask; she was real. A person, like him. No matter how delicious others found such things as oysters, or beef stew, or melted cheese, he would never eat such things; yet in her he saw the appeal of something hot and liquid caressing his tongue.

The next moment he shook himself. This was a public place of trade, and he did not purchase women.

It was also clear from her manner and dress that she was not for sale. Her thick plain clothing spoke of work as a governess, possibly even a housekeeper. It did nothing to frame her soft smile or curves.

She was simply sampling the books, taking them up one at a time from one of the shop’s long tables and examining their endpapers and first few pages thoroughly, as if for the secrets of ancient mysteries. Golden curls spilled from her dark bonnet and stood out on the dark gray of her serviceable coat.

Her story was the one that interested him most.

She moved to the next heap of volumes.

The shopkeeper, trying to serve all his patrons at once, was kept hopping. There were half a dozen souls in the store already and more coming. He occasionally threw a glare at the young woman, but she pretended not to see it. Or perhaps truly did not.

That cemented Victor’s admiration.

His dire need for foreign news forgotten, he picked up a volume on birds that did not interest him at all. It only allowed him to stay in one place, pretending to turn over the plates, peering over drawings of feathers to watch this fascinating creature before him stalk her pleasure among towers of books.

So of course he noticed when the man approached her.

Victor couldn’t hear what the man said. He abandoned birds and moved to a table of books on cookery. The words before him were a blur; he focused only on hearing.

The man’s voice sounded coarse, accustomed to swearing, perhaps shouting. His words were even coarser.

“Come on, love, just round the corner. I’ll show you a good time.” He moved even closer to the woman’s immaculate wool sleeve.

She was immobile, perhaps from surprise.

Victor had never felt part of society, perhaps not even part of Britain. Sailing abroad had not carried him beyond the reach of his private struggles, but it had carried him away from his father’s venom. It was from habit that he looked to see the shopkeeper, to see London police its own.

The shopkeeper had two other patrons on the far side among Roman histories. No one was coming.

Victor pushed habit aside.

“My lady,” he called, charging around the shelves to approach the young lady with the confidence of someone who knew her well. He had never in his life approached a young lady that way before.

He dropped the book in his hand atop a stack and faced down the ruffian. “I heard what you said.”

The man blustered, casting most unwelcome study over the lady’s figure. His chin was a bit crooked, scarred from shaves, or fights, gone wrong, his cap a bit greasy. She might be dressed below her station in life, but he was certainly dressed high for his, his once-fine waistcoat soft from wearing, his coat sleeves beginning to fray.

As Victor drew closer, his bluster faded. The more he waved at the woman beside them, the more Victor’s anger swelled, far higher than the burst of temper he’d expended upon a disappointing newspaper.

Victor drew off a glove and slapped it hard across that stinking unshaven face.

The sound of angry leather across skin in the bookshop was shocking. Everything stopped, everyone looked.

Perhaps the months in the Netherlands had done something to him, as Victor had no trouble acting as well as any man who trod the theater boards.

“How dare you speak to my wife?” It might not be acting. The anger was real.

The ruffian tripped backwards, nearly falling into a table full of books. “I beg yer pardon, sir, I didn’t see you with the girl?—”

“And what of that?” He turned to the young woman frozen by the table. She was far more intimidating. He swallowed, but moved closer. If she were his wife, after all, that was what he would do. “You’re not harmed?”

She blinked. Her eyes were so large, so bright. In the dimness of the shop he could not discern their color. “I’m quite well,” she said faintly, swaying a little.

The swaying terrified him.

Moving even closer, he put his hands under her arms. Unforgivably forward, but if she fainted, he would catch her.

She looked like she might, color bleached from her face; but she only said, “I didn’t understand his question?”

“He can be grateful for that.”

Reluctant to touch the man, Victor gave him a glare that felt very natural. “Remove yourself. Be grateful for the lady’s mercy, and that I am unarmed, and that blood ruins books.”

Turning back to the woman, Victor noted out the corner of his eye that the man stumbled out the door. The sweet shop-bell rang again.

He tried to sound just as sweet, saying the first thing that came to his head. “The shop hasn’t got any bound copies of The Lady’s Assistant .”

The woman touched a slender finger to the book he’d put down. “But you were holding a copy of The Lady’s Assistant .”

Then she slapped a hand over her own mouth, regarding him with open horror.

Why her own voice upset her, he couldn’t guess, but at least her color had come back. Indeed, her cheeks blushed the same rosy, golden color as a summer peach, and again he thought of nibbling.

The shopkeeper chose this moment for his belated arrival.

Victor couldn’t tear his eyes away from the woman, still as wide-eyed as if she were pinned to a sled skewing out of control down a mountainside.

Her alarm moved him to stay where he was. He committed to his actions as fully as he had committed to the action to sail abroad and never see his father again.

Close enough to smell the warm scent of violet soap, a scent that must be coming from her, Victor fought the urge to close his eyes and breathe her in and said, “Your mother will have to wait for us to order it for her.”

“My lord, I’m so sorry.” That damnable shopkeeper.

Victor’s anger had not faded. “For the way you let utter villains accost women in your shop, or for the lack of books ready to sell in a bookshop?”

He let the man sputter while he himself settled into his boots like a man with all the time in the world. He had seen government negotiators take just such positions, and knew they conveyed immovability; he wanted to convey the same. To the woman still covering her own mouth beside him, he said, “The printer has unbound copies, and ought to be able to deliver one before twelfth night. Surely that is time enough for a Christmas present? Your mother has never struck me as an impatient woman.”

Her mouth only fell open.

Victor had the sense that she was about to say something that would give the lie to his little play.

“Excuse us,” he told the sweating shopkeeper. “I must speak to my wife alone.”

And shifting his grip to just one of her elbows, which was far too little, he ushered her out the door, making the shop bell tinkle one more time.

Isabel was horrified with herself.

All her parents’ warning lectures were coming true in the space of minutes. She had traveled unaccompanied; it had gotten her unwanted attention. She’d been accosted; she’d frozen, not knowing what to do or say. And worst of all, when a gentleman— a real gentleman, that was obvious from his gold watch-chain and the fur of his hat—had rescued her, she had corrected him like a schoolboy.

She had made herself this walking nightmare.

Now he ushered her out of the shop, quietly asking, “Are you quite well?”

“No!” It felt like a shout but sounded like a whisper. “I am frightened and ashamed. I still have no book. And you’ve never met my mother.”

Even now she said everything she shouldn’t. This was why Mr. Ball and Mr. Wheelock had married distant friends, not her.

The gentleman before her winced. His deep-set eyes kept peering at her, alarming her, then the softness of his lips let her breathe. A muscle flexed in his square-set jaw and the cycle began all over again.

His eyes shifted after the man who’d departed.

“Sadly, I do not know your mother,” he said, keeping his voice quiet. “It was all I could think of to say.”

“I’m so sorry. I am so sorry. It’s only that you were holding a copy of The Lady’s Assistant .”

He brushed away the idea of books. “The gentleman was accosting you.”

“Yes.” Isabel looked over her shoulder. He was gone. The itching feeling crawling up her spine had not gone away. “I’m so sorry.”

The gentleman slid his hands under her forearms again. As before, it both steadied her and made her want to rear back. He was such a dark glower of a man.

His lips weren’t frightening. Slowly Isabel tried to breathe and only see the softness there.

He murmured, “You did nothing wrong.”

Had she not? She still had only the haziest idea what the man intended. She had just been immobilized by the shock of it, by the need to parse what he was saying very carefully. Somehow even by holding still she had done something wrong. It had been nothing like sitting with Mr. Ball or Mr. Wheelock in a parlor while her mother knitted by the fire. She couldn’t tell if masculine attention was supposed to come in a form like this. “I came out of doors.” She couldn’t explain herself; the words just tumbled out.

Confusion flickered through his shadowed eyes. Isabel hated herself.

“And now,” she said on an indrawn breath, “now you will think I am simple atop everything else, and I am not, I don’t think I am, it is only that my maid went home for Christmas and I thought it would be an adventure to buy a book but—” She caught at the words running away like an untethered horse, bit the stream short, then added with obvious reluctance, “I’m not supposed to have adventures, am I?”

His confusion flickered and went out like a flame leaving him stony. “Madame, you did nothing wrong .”

“How should I know? ” The last she nearly hissed at him. “I have spent my life in a drawing room waiting for some man to notice me, and that one did.”

It was more than she’d ever planned to say to anyone. About her sad lack of prospects, about her dull life, about any of it. Yet it had just come tumbling out after the other words. Words were betraying her.

She’d never had this much trouble being quiet with any man before.

His hands felt big, huge in fact, and Isabel thought it odd that she mostly noticed when they dropped away. The cold air soothed her hot cheeks.

And the gentleman before her began to lecture.

There was no other word for what he did. He settled into his own words and brooked no interruption.

“Madame. It may be the case that you have resided in a county of fools and no man has taken it upon himself to visit you or court you appropriately. And now for whatever reason you find yourself alone in the city, in straightened circumstances.” His eyes wandered over her coat. “Nonetheless, I assure you that the attention you were just paid is not the sort a lady deserves. I cannot believe I have to explain this.”

Isabel’s nerves had already been tightly wound by walking through the city alone through so many people. She had trembled with agitation when the man had accosted her, her training toward silence warring with her instinct to scream.

The terror of it was so deep that it made her angry, and that helped hold her tears back.

“I am not an idiot,” she told him clearly, glad they had come outside. She stayed quiet enough that the passers-by would not necessarily hear; but she was angry enough not to care if they did. “In fact, I can read. That is why I am shopping. At a bookseller’s. My circumstances are not straightened; this is a very serviceable coat. And the men of my county are not fools?—”

Suddenly she heard what she was saying and drew in a quick breath.

She’d never said it aloud. The men were not fools. She was simply no prize.

Blinking fast enough to keep back the tears, the flooding sudden realization that there was nothing wrong with the men in her neighborhood, that her parents were right, that it was her , it all made Isabel press a hand to her waist inside her muff, hoping he would not notice.

She managed to say, “And you also addressed me very familiarly.”

“I didn’t offer to ravish you in an alley.”

The word ravish did something horrible to Isabel’s insides. Her terror tripled. “You dragged me outside!”

His exasperated huff drew her attention back to his face, and she realized he had never stopped looking at her.

“You are right. My deepest apologies. I have spent too much time in the company of men, and only abrupt ones. And too much time lecturing. If you wish to shop, then let me accompany you.”

That simple offer made Isabel’s heart pound harder than the crude words of the man who had just accosted her.

This man had a regal tilt to his head and tall hat. The clothes he wore were clearly not his only ones. His very bearing screamed quality. And he was offering to shop with her because he wished her to be safe.

“No.” What was wrong with her mouth today? She’d just let a common rogue say things to her no lady should hear; now this gentleman offered to accompany her shopping and she rebuffed him. Perhaps she had caught a fever by walking out of doors.

And the gentleman just peered at her with those deep-set eyes. “Truly?” he snapped as if he could not believe what he was hearing either.

“No.” Isabel’s knees almost buckled with the relief of the opportunity to take back her stupid words, think them through again, say something different. “I mean, no, I do not truly mean it.”

If she were going to speak, she must do better at it.

“Please.” She did not like beginning that way. She pretended she hadn’t said it. “Sir. Of course I don’t wish to be attacked. He spoke quietly to me; you spoke quietly to me. He was unwashed while you are clean, though both of you show a lack of recent shaving. You are clearly wealthier; is that how I should know this is safe conversation?”

“ NO. ” Catching himself, he reined in his temper. He seemed prone to bursts of that. Isabel was not frightened of that, but it was precisely her lack of self-preservation they were discussing.

Making another dissatisfied, irritated noise, he reached a hand toward her again; then stopped and pulled it back. Isabel only watched with interest.

“No.” This time he said it more calmly, one wide gloved hand upright like a stone street-marker between them. “Plenty of wealthy men are worse villains than the one we sent away.” His already deep eyes narrowed. “But you know that.”

“I don’t.”

“You do.” He pointed at the street. Isabel turned to look at the people walking by, rolling by in open barouches despite the chill weather, or atop wagons of barrels and bales for sale. He pointed at a passing man, one who gave him a look that said I beg your pardon? and kept walking. “Does that man make you recoil? Like a snake you found under a rock?” His voice was pitched to reach only her ears.

“I’m not frightened of snakes. But no.”

“There is your instinct. Snakes do not set out to harm you. Nor do some men. But many do, and you must heed your instinct.”

Isabel studied him closely. His fine voice sounded note-like as it rose and fell, as clear as plucked strings on a harpischord. No, she decided, more like the higher, vibrating notes of an organ that at a moment’s warning could sink very low.

“You’re an intimidating man,” she said, voice quivering but determined to be used even in the face of his storm-cloud eyes and bristled bones. “You are lecturing me on my own instincts. Should I trust someone like you?”

He winced, and Isabel jumped backwards, horrified again at the things she said.

He pulled her closer again, hand unreasonably large and so warm she could feel it even through her coat.

“No,” he said through teeth gritted so hard she could see the muscle clench in his jaw. “I rescind everything I said. You were right, I was wrong. There is no way to tell who I am from a glance, or what I might do in five minutes or five years. Avoid everyone like me.” He consulted the gold watch from his watch-pocket, slid it back. “But I am here now, and might never have been of use to anyone before, so you might as well make use of me now. If you wish to shop, let me accompany you.”

His words were sad, but Isabel felt an odd thrill at the way he spoke of her making use of him. “I believe I do trust you.”

The muscle jumped again. “You shouldn’t,” was all he said before his hand rose again under her elbow and he ushered her back inside.

The shop was all the same, warmer than out of doors but dark, and the shop-bell tinkled overhead.

This time the bookseller abandoned his other patrons with speed like the wind. “Sir. Since you and your wife both asked for novels, I took the liberty of placing a selection over there.” He gestured to a small table back from the window, against the far wall, out of the swirl of other patrons. “I hope you will be comfortable. Allenby’s is very grateful for your custom.”

Isabel’s heart pounded again.

If it was a bit dim for perusing printed pages, it would be quite companionable for two.

For this gentleman. And his wife.

Just as he’d had no difficulty putting on the ruse when driving off her aggressor, the gentleman now accepted from the shopkeeper that of course she was his wife, and of course they wished to peruse novels together. “Excellent,” was all he said with a nod before escorting her to the table in the corner.

She knew her hand was still trembling. The work of her nerves this past hour! She steadied it by picking up the top book. “ Gulliver’s Travels, ” she read from its spine.

“Foolish of him. I gave him that example. I’ve read it, why would I buy another?” The gentleman’s impatience was palpable, yet he only said, “What else has he given us?”

Us. There was a word no one had ever applied to her before.

It steadied her. She picked up the next book with surer hands, as if she were indeed a wife—she, a wife —helping her husband choose something to read for his entertainment. “This one is Mrs. Burney’s latest, but you won’t want that.”

“Why not?” His question was as keen and clear as the sound of his voice. He sincerely wanted to know why this book might not serve.

“It is called The Wanderer, or Female Difficulties. ” Isabel didn’t explain why she doubted that a man would want to read it.

“I find myself very curious about female difficulties.” He expressed no mockery, only sharp interest. “What do you think of the first page?”

Unlike her previous accoster, this gentleman’s attention was on all of her. Not just her body, which had never been of interest to anyone before, but her eyes on the page, her mind reading the words. The things she said.

The previous man, the first ever who had spoken to her without introduction, was like the thick green sludge at the edges of ponds, sticky and repulsive.

This man was like a wave from the sea threatening to topple her over.

As new experiences went, it was overwhelming. Beyond any adventure she could have expected traveling alone on Christmas Eve.

Amid her jangled nerves, pounding heart, and flushed skin, she realized she was enjoying it.

Adventures have ups and downs to them, she realized. No wonder she had always been warned away from them.

Isabel turned all the pages of the book’s long dedication. The author apparently had a great deal to say to her husband in print.

When the Roman numerals disappeared, she drew the book closer to her eyes. “Quite a thrilling story, I expect.”

“What makes you say so?” He had no subterfuge to the question, no sly innuendo. He wanted to know why she thought what she thought. Of a book.

“It opens during the Terror. In the dark and damp of December.” She smiled at him, eyes lifting from the page, and his serious expression was still fixed on hers. The parallel of the moment, their own damp December though the sun had not yet set, connected the two of them then, and their eyes showed they both recognized the connection, between them and the novel. “It is English passengers in a boat preparing to embark for Britain, I suppose, when a French voice cries out for pity.”

“Man or woman?”

“Are we to guess from the title? No, it does say.” Isabel turned the page, skipping words to pick out the answer to his question. “A woman. Cries of agony, it says!”

“Cries of agony? That sounds frightful. I suppose a novelist must have grist for her mill. What say you, my lady, is it worth reading on?”