What a Lady Needs for Christmas Read Online Free PDF Page B

anything.
    Mr. Hartwell retrieved his spectacles from his pocket and picked up a sheaf of papers from a stack on the table.
    “Do you mind if I read, Lady Joan? When I reach my destination, I will have little time to acquaint myself with these reports, and a successful negotiation always starts with a thorough grasp of the pertinent facts.”
    “You’re not traveling for pleasure, then.”
    She had withheld specific permission to read, and Mr. Hartwell must have grasped that subtlety. That’s how desperate Joan was to avoid what memories she had of the previous night.
    He put the papers down and stared into the middle distance. “Had I any other choice, I’d not make this journey. I’m invited to spend the holidays with acquaintances too wellborn to dirty their hands in trade where anybody might notice, and because they cannot abide the notion I might raise such a topic where polite ears could overhear, I’m enduring the fiction that I’m a guest at a house party.”
    House parties could be delightful—though they were usually tedious in the extreme and at least a week longer than necessary to make that point.
    “If you’re not a guest, then what are you in truth?”
    Bleak humor crossed his features. He took out a second plain handkerchief and rubbed at the lenses of his glasses.
    “I’m an opportunity.”
    A shaft of cold tricked into Joan’s belly. Edward had said something similar about Joan, though the exact words refused to show themselves from the undergrowth of her memories.
    “That doesn’t sound very pleasant.”
    “It’s business.” He held his spectacles up to the window, as if inspecting for smudges. “I understand that, and they are an opportunity for me. The land can no longer support the aristocracy in the manner they prefer, and trade is a means of diversifying revenue—of making money in more ways than one. I don’t suppose a lady enjoys talk of the shop, though.”
    Gracious heavens, Mama would have Mr. Hartwell’s suppositions for dessert. “Diversification requires a greater management effort, though it ideally spreads risk.”
    Drat and a half, she ought not to have said that. Pronouncements along those lines—which Joan had heard at the family dinner table since she’d put up her hair—made gentlemen smile as if their baby sister had just recited a piece of the royal succession—without a single error!
    Or the fellows would wince and see somebody else they had to speak with on the other side of the ballroom.
    Immediately.
    Mr. Hartwell unwedged himself from the banquette and knelt before the parlor stove. “Diversification ideally spreads risk. Explain yourself.”
    “Risk has to do with the probabilities and eventualities,” Joan said. “With how likely it is that matters could go awry, or succeed wildly. If you have invested in one solid venture, then your profits are likely to be more reliable than if you invest in two risky ventures. Over time, however, one of the risky ventures might do quite well.”
    Risky ventures could also, however, see a lady precipitously ruined.
    He added coal to the fire, closed the stove door, and dusted his hands, but remained kneeling, as if he could watch the flames dance through the cast iron.
    “I do not believe I have ever heard another female use the word probability regarding anything other than a marriage proposal.”
    The greatest risk of all. Joan tucked her feet up under her and came to two conclusions.
    Mr. Hartwell had noticed that she might be cold, and rather than ring for the porter to tend to the stove, he’d seen to it himself. Trains were messy and smelly, even as far from the engines as this car was, and yet, Mr. Hartwell had dirtied his hands without a second thought. This suggested he was heedless of strict decorum, but not of the consideration due a guest.
    The second conclusion was that Joan’s lapse into territory through which Mama gamboled with heedless abandon had not put Mr. Hartwell off, but rather, had