Lady Louisa's Christmas Knight Read Online Free Page B

mine.” He winged his elbow at her. That’s all. As overtures went, it had a certain compelling simplicity.
    While Lord Lionel scribbled on Isobel Horton’s dance card, Louisa took Sir Joseph’s arm. She assumed her place at his side among the other couples preparing to stroll their way through the opening of the evening, and was assailed by a troubling thought: Was Sir Joseph partnering her because he thought she was in need of rescuing? Was this charity on his part?
    The possibility was not as lowering as it should have been. Louisa instead found it… intriguing.
    She could not marry, not while the threat of scandal hung over her like a blighted sprig of mistletoe, but she ought to be allowed to stroll the perimeter of a ballroom on the arm of a handsome man, shouldn’t she?

Two
    â€œI can recite poetry to you,” Sir Joseph said when Louisa had walked with him halfway down one side of the room. “Poetry would preserve us from silence and yet require no thought on anybody’s part.”
    Poetry? Louisa’s heart tripped. “Are you teasing me?”
    â€œOh, perhaps. You could nod occasionally or beat me on the arm with your fan, and no one would know we’re ducking the obligation to converse. I have a friend who’s partial to the Shakespeare sonnets.” He paused while Louisa cast around for something—anything—to say, but he spared her by launching into a quiet, almost contemplative recitation: “‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold, when yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang on boughs which shake against the cold…’”
    Across the room, Isobel Horton smacked Lord Lionel’s arm with her closed fan.
    Louisa adored that sonnet, which Sir Joseph had begun with just the right balance of regret and warmth. “Why don’t you instead tell me why you’re hunting a spouse, Sir Joseph?”
    He grimaced. Her question was graceless, but there was no calling it back. “Hunting? Striding about in my gaiters, my blunderbuss primed and ready to take down some unsuspecting little dove in midflight? I suppose the image is not inaccurate. I require a wife for two reasons.”
    He required a wife. Women longed for a husband, they dreamed of children to love. They were not permitted to require a husband. Brave he might be, and possessed of marvelous taste in poems, but Louisa wanted to smack Sir Joseph, and not with her fan.
    â€œTwo reasons. Please explicate.”
    They were forced to a halt by the couple before them, who appeared too busy flirting to manage even forward steps in time to the music.
    â€œFirst, I am responsible for two girl children, and the influence of an adult female in the maternal role is desirable on their behalves.”
    In the part of her brain that reveled in language, that regarded every spoken sentence as aural architecture, Louisa noticed that Sir Joseph managed to allude to being a parent without acknowledging any relationship. He did not say, “My daughters need a mother,” nor did he say, “I am in want of a wife to mother my children.”
    He fashioned a job description, though an accurate one under the circumstances.
    â€œThe second reason?”
    He glanced around. He waited until the lovebirds ahead were moving along, proceeding as a three-legged unit, heads bent so close as to ensure talk. Louisa wanted to smack them, as well, perhaps with the butt end of Sir Joseph’s blunderbuss.
    â€œThere is a title.”
    She forgot the lovebirds and nearly forgot Lord Lionel halfway across the room, suffering the press of Miss Horton’s udder against his arm.
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    â€œThere is a title.” He sounded weary as he spoke, his voice barely above a whisper. “The barony has been in abeyance for more than two hundred years, and God willing, it will remain in abeyance.”
    Abeyance. Abeyance could keep a title dangling just out of reach on