Free What a Lady Needs for Christmas by Grace Burrowes Page B

into the aristocratic strata of investors. What a lovely coincidence. Lady Joan’s people had to include at least an earl, or she wouldn’t be called lady.
    Her ladyship fingered the mended lace of her cuff. “Marriage is a serious business.”
    “It’s a permanent business,” Dante said. “I do recall occasionally laughing with my first wife.” Not often, and not until they’d rubbed along together for a few awkward years. “She broke me in, I’ll have you know. Put some manners on me, though it was uphill going, I’m sure.”
    She’d put a terrible lot of sexual restraint on him, too, though Dante would hardly burden Lady Joan with that truth.
    Her fingers slowed as she stroked the mended cuff. “I like you too.”
    “Does that surprise you?” For it surprised him—and confirmed his sense that marriage to Lady Joan was a brilliant solution to several problems.
    “My husband cannot be titled, because the child might be a boy—if there is a child.”
    “I’m in no danger of acquiring a title. Are you sure you’re carrying then?”
    She stopped fussing her lace altogether, her gaze going to the darkness beyond the windows.
    “I have not had occasion to familiarize myself firsthand with all of the definitive symptoms… That is to say, I might… Or I might not. I don’t know. Yet. I ought not to be discussing this with a gentleman.”
    A gentleman would pretend that babies arrived from celestial realms with little involvement from the mother, and that such arrivals were attended by angelic choruses instead of a lot of fuss, discomfort, and bother.
    “My dear, I’m not likely to be mistaken for a gentleman. You will take that into account when considering any proposal of marriage from me. You would be marrying quite beneath you.”
    He was compelled to point that out to her, not because he was a gentleman, but because fair play alone called for such a reminder. Women got muddled when they were expecting. Men grew muddled when their women were expecting, too.
    “A failure to marry on my part would occasion disaster for my good name,” she said, “and for my child, while marrying down happens to somebody every day. I suppose we’d best try a kiss.”
    Fair play poked Dante hard in the arse.
    “Before we endure that trial, you need to understand that I’m offering you a real marriage, not some prissy little formality that sees you in Paris and me in Scotland. You will be a mother to my children, my hostess, the lady of my households.”
    He’d expect her in his bed, in other words, which was probably ungentlemanly of him.
    “I like to sew.”
    “I beg your pardon?” And could they please get to the kissing part, because now that the notion was running loose in Dante’s imagination, he was curious to see if they could manage it.
    “I wanted… I love fabrics, love the feel of them. Did you know you wear merino blends? Did you know Margaret’s clothes are all wrong for her? From the colors, to the fabrics, to the designs?”
    She took his hand and ran it over the wool of his kilt, then the wool of his jacket.
    “Can you feel how soft those are? How full of warmth? There’s lamb’s wool in this weave too.”
    He hoped she was soft and full of warmth. “You can sew all you like when we’re married, woman. If we marry.”
    Whatever point she was trying to make, he was missing it. That happened regularly between spouses too, and yet, Lady Joan kept her hand over his.
    “I not only sew, I design clothing. I design my own clothes, and sew them myself. I love working with fabric.”
    While Dante ran three textile mills, which was probably irrelevant to whatever queer start she was on.
    “You love fabrics,” he said. “You will love your child, too, I think.”
    That got her attention. “You will treat my baby the same as you do Charlie and Phillip, or we have no bargain. A child born into circumstances such as these will be especially in need of a father’s guidance and protection.”
    She