Lady Louisa's Christmas Knight Read Online Free PDF Page A

a family tree for centuries. Abeyance befell the old baronies, when the holder of the title left only female descendants, who increased and multiplied and were fruitful, making it impossible to choose to whom the title ought to descend, because various heirs had equal claim on it.
    â€œYou do not sound pleased about this.” He sounded horrified, in fact.
    â€œI am in fervent hopes a fourth cousin, Sixtus’s descendant of the same name, the only other contender, will shortly be in expectation of a happy event with his young wife. Each year, I await his Christmas correspondence, hoping a new little cousin of the male persuasion will have arrived in the preceding year.”
    â€œYou don’t want a title?”
    They stopped perilously close to a dangling spray of mistletoe, and he… shuddered. The broad-shouldered, plainspoken man who’d been knighted for bravery shuddered. “Consider, Lady Louisa, that our regent is nigh profligate handing out titles. What if he took a notion to elevate the title above a barony? What if he recalled that my knighthood was earned in combat? What if his great capacity for sentiment should affect his generous heart, and… a knighthood is bad enough. A barony would be nigh intolerable, and anything worse than that enough to send a sane man to Bedlam.”
    Perhaps Sir Joseph’s courage was not limitless. Louisa’s certainly wasn’t. “You would be Lord Somebody, Sir Joseph. You’d sit in the Lords, you’d have your pick of the debutantes.”
    She managed to stop herself from pointing out that even his hog farming would be overlooked. Farming was not trade; it was solidly agricultural. Bacon, ham, lard, and leather being necessities, every title in the land probably raised some swine.
    Louisa also did not ask the man what he thought of dukes—or dukes’ daughters—if baronies were nigh intolerable. “You must marry in part because of this title.”
    Sir Joseph huffed out a sigh then moved them away from the Mistletoe of Damocles. “I did not say I must marry. I am not averse to the notion because of the girls, and then there is this remote, distant, though not quite theoretical business of a title. Titles come with responsibilities, and my cousin is not young.”
    A duke’s daughter grasped his point: he’d need an heir. A title should not languish for two hundred years in abeyance, only to fall into the Crown’s greedy clutches through escheat immediately thereafter.
    â€œPerhaps this year, your cousin’s union will be fruitful.”
    â€œOne offers prayers to that effect, though this is his third union.”
    The couple before them was whispering, heads bent so close the young man might have stolen a kiss with less impropriety.
    â€œSir Joseph, I find I’m thirsty. Would you be offended if we abandoned the promenade and sought some refreshment?”
    He said nothing. He fairly yanked her out of the line of other couples and headed for the table where more poor quality, not-quite-warm, gaggingly sweet wine awaited them both. She went along with him and pretended to sip her drink, though the evening stretched before her as an interminable exercise in appeasing seasonal social obligations and evading strategically hung boughs of mistletoe.
    Meanwhile, across the room, Miss Horton pressed, Lord Lionel laughed, and the orchestra played on.
    ***
    â€œThe secret to a short and successful courtship is to pick a desperate woman.”
    Lord Lionel Honiton’s cronies laughed predictably at this sally from one among their number. Lionel took a sip of good brandy—Petersham was hosting, and he was still too new to Town to understand that those who drank his brandy and fondled his housemaids were not necessarily his friends.
    â€œYou miss the mark,” Lionel drawled to the wit lounging in a cushioned chair near the hearth. “A desperate girl is the secret to a short courtship