Lady Louisa's Christmas Knight Read Online Free PDF

ending in marriage, I’ll grant you, but better still if her parents are desperate, in which case the settlements will see the thing done successfully .”
    A round of right-hos, hear-hears, and what-whats followed, along with another circulation of the brandy decanter.
    â€œAnd then”—the wit held up his glass as if to toast—“there’s the wedding night.”
    More hooting and stomping, because the hour was growing late, and the decanter was seeing a great deal of action. These same fellows would cheerfully call one another out over a slur to a woman’s honor before dinner. Four hours later, they were degenerating into the overgrown schoolboys they were, ready to hump anything in skirts and to cheer one another on in the same cause.
    While the assemblage began to debate just how many Seasons it took to create desperation in a decent young woman, much less in her parents, Lord Lionel topped up his glass.
    â€œYou’ll regret that in the morning,” said a voice to his right.
    Lionel held the glass in both palms, letting the heat of his hands warm the liquid. “I will do no such thing. You are far too sober, Harrison, if you think I’ll even be abroad during anything approaching morning.”
    Harrison was visually appealing, lounging against the mantel, a lean, dark contrast to Lionel’s own Nordic coloring. He was also serious to a fault, which allowed Lionel to appear the wit by contrast. All in all, a useful association—for Lionel.
    â€œYou’ll be abroad in daylight.” Harrison’s tone was mocking, condescending even.
    â€œPerhaps I’ll be making my way home in the morning, as the term technically applies past the witching hour, but as for the broad light of day”—Lionel paused for another sip—“heaven spare me.”
    â€œYou’ll be about because Lady Carstairs’s Christmas breakfast is tomorrow, and very likely, all three Windham sisters will be on hand. You’ve been currying the favor of that trio all year.”
    â€œHave I?” Lionel yawned, scratched in the general area of his… upper thighs, and peered at his drink. “Three of them, you say?”
    Harrison’s dark eyes narrowed.
    Elijah Harrison was a hanger-on. He painted portraits, which meant he wasn’t even a gentleman, though he was somebody or other’s heir, so he was titled and tolerated. Then too, the Regent fancied himself quite the patron of the arts, and Harrison enjoyed a certain cachet with the Carlton House set.
    â€œMoreland has three unmarried daughters,” Harrison said. “All pretty, all well dowered, and you’re just trying to decide which one will be the least work.”
    If Harrison’s tone had been accusatory, Lionel might have been alarmed, but Harrison spoke as if merely stating facts, and boring facts at that.
    Boring, accurate facts.
    â€œYou’re trying to decide which one is vain enough to insist on having her portrait painted,” Lionel replied. “Or you might be thinking of approaching His Grace about doing all three, as it were.”
    He let the innuendo hang delicately above his spoken words.
    â€œI have never found it attractive in a man to pursue a woman publicly, while privately maligning her. Smacks of… desperation.” Harrison eyed the glass in Lionel’s hand. “Desperation and dishonor. I bid you good night, my lord.”
    He wafted off, all elegant good looks and sly innuendo, making Lionel long to lift a foot and plant it in the encroaching bastard’s backside. He resisted this urge not because Harrison was right—Lionel was growing desperate and had seldom regarded honor as more than a convenient disguise for bad motives—but he was also intent on having some fun with one of Petersham’s plump, giggling upstairs maids. A public row with a nobody of a painter would queer the chances of that altogether.
    ***
    Sir Joseph