Downe winced again, then scowled at the room in general. "Nothing that murder won't cure."
"Whose?"
"Letitia Hornsby's,"
Seymour
answered, grinning.
"Feather-skulled, bacon-brained child from hell," the earl muttered.
"What happened this time?" Alec glanced from one friend's brooding face to the other's grinning one.
"One word, Seymour. One bloody word and I'll call you out," Downe threatened.
"Should have been there, Belmore. 'Twas better than the Christmas Ball. Downe never saw it coming."
"You're a dead man."
"Only if I manage to stand too close to the Hornsby chit," Seymour goaded with a laugh. "And her dog."
"The beast should be shot, along with its mistress."
"Her dog bit him on the ass."
"Dawn tomorrow, Seymour."
"That's what got you into this in the first place. If you hadn't gotten in your cups and called out Hanford this never would have happened."
"Speaking of asses. Who's the ass who told her?"
"
I
didn't tell her. She was hiding behind a potted palm at Maitlands' ball and overheard the whole thing.
Destiny, you know."
"He doesn't know when to quit and he doesn't know when to shut up." Downe's face turned redder with each comment.
"You wish I'd shut up because you don't want to hear about your own follies. Hanford's a crack shot, Downe. You know that as well and I. 'Twas a stupid move. Your hand was shaking so badly from your excesses the night before I doubt you could have hit a tree at three paces."
"And I doubt you can keep your mouth shut for more than five minutes."
"Letitia saved his drunken hide," Seymour told Alec, then added, "Although from what I saw, the hound's teeth had a good hold on most of it. Surprised the animal didn't get the hiccups."
"Hudson Green, Seymour."
"Do you suppose the beast is hung over?"
"At the crack of dawn."
"You're not going to call me out, Downe. I'm the only one willing to be your second."
"A pound of good you did me when I met Hanford at dawn." The earl turned to Alec. "Seymour was crawling around on all fours searching for a bloody four-leaf clover."
"Found it too," Seymour said, stroking the rabbit's foot on his watch fob, "just before the chit's hound came bounding up the hill." A thoughtful look crossed his face. "Do you suppose that's prophetic?"
"No doubt it was planted there by the dueling fairy." The earl swigged down his brandy, then frowned at the empty
Alec watched in pensive silence as his two friends glared at each other. He gave the earl's glass a significant look and said seriously, "If you don't stop swilling that stuff, all of Seymour's charms and fairies won't help you. Something or someone worse than a dog is going to put you out."
Downe drilled Alec with the look of the damned. "What I do is my own bloody business, Belmore. Stay out of it."
Alec and Neil exchanged a glance, and the viscount shook his head to indicate that talking to the earl did no good.
The tense silence was broken when the doors to the drawing room opened with a bang and Joy rushed inside, the deep ruby red of her skirts swirling and swishing and rustling, her face eager and expectant, as if the most wonderful experience of her life was occurring this instant. Alec had seen that look before— whenever it rained rose petals.
Her ruby silk dress was the finest his wealth could buy, yet something told him she would look just as vibrant in a ragged gown of drab flannel. Her heavy mass of shimmering brown hair was swept up on one side, away from her expressive face, elegant and formal, but a cascade of long curls fell from the other side, framing her flushed cheek and flowing over a pale feminine shoulder. Diamonds and deep rubies sparkled at her ears and neck and on the toes of her slippers, but no one would notice because her smile outshone them.
Her appearance suggested what she was—a bewitching sprite of a woman who found adventure in a walk through the snow or a sleigh ride in the park, a woman so untouched by cynicism that she saw the essence of all things in the smallest leaf and in each crystalline granule of snow. She was an unusual beauty whose eyes at times could make Alec forget he was duke.
He watched her greet his friends—Seymour with a genuine welcome, Downe with tolerance mixed with apprehension. Then she scanned the room, her gaze seeking and finding his, then pulling away when Seymour spoke to her. Downe had stood when she entered and raked his gaze from her head downward, randomly stopping to stare at prime parts. Alec had to quell the urge to cuff him. His hand tightened on his own drink.
Henson announced dinner, and Alec acknowledged him with a curt nod, while his friends escorted his wife toward the dining room. He tore his brooding gaze away from the empty doorway.
He'd married for convenience and gotten none. He'd gotten a witch. He almost laughed at the irony. Almost. He took a drink and looked back to the spot where she'd stood, wondering if protecting the Belmore name was his only reason for hiding Scottish. He set down his glass and pushed away from the wall with more force than necessary. Then he followed them, and not liking the answer his conscience gave him.
***
During the next few busy days, Joy learned social behavior under the tutelage of her frustrated husband. It took her a whole morning to master the royal curtsy; her knees ached from the ridiculous and unnatural position in which they'd been bent. When she suggested that Englishwomen must have knee joints different from those of the rest of the world, he countered that she was part English. She decided her knees were Scot.
She'd learned forms of address, proper responses, and who was who among the ton, and she'd been cooped up in Belmore House until her need for nature had made her as fidgety as a child on Christmas Eve. 'Twas then that dear Neil and Richard had suggested an outing and now all four of them were in the carriage just pulling away from Belmore House.
"Are you warm enough?"
Joy looked at her husband and nodded. "I'm fine, truly." He settled back in the carriage seat, then absently rubbed a hand over his arm. That was the third time he'd asked the same question, so she asked, "Are you cold?"
"No," he answered too quickly, as if she had asked him something so personal that her question offended his masculinity. He looked out the window. "Must be the damp air."
Half an hour later, the team's hooves clattered with a hollow sound as they passed over
London
Bridge
. For the first time in over a century the
Thames
had frozen. The river was now alive with milling dark-clothed crowds enjoying this wondrous event—the Frost Fair. Between
London
Bridge
and
Blackfriars
Bridge
the river was known as
Freezeland Street
. There, enterprising watermen were charging an ice toll of twopence to walk along the ash-covered aisles.
A few minutes later, Joy and Alec followed Neil and Richard through the wooden entrance to the icy walkway. At river-level, bright pennants and banners—yellow, green, and blue—red and white flags, and multicolored swagged bunting were strewn from booth to shopkeeper's booth, each proclaiming the fair's best goods. Crusty beef pies and roasting mutton warmed the bitter air with their sweet scent while tavern keepers emptied hogsheads of frothing ale to sell to the hordes of fairgoers.
"I don't know how I let them talk me into this," Alec said under his breath, his glare pinned on the viscount and the earl.
Joy whipped her head from left to right trying not to miss one exciting thing. "You promised to take me to a fair."
"You attended one, without my permission, and that's how we ended up with a deaf butler whose voice could wake the dead and a Caribbean cook who sings his recipes."
"You said yourself that dinner was superb."
"I happen to like lobster."
"So did your friends."
He grunted some kind of response, frowned, and fastened the brass frog on his greatcoat.
"Alec, are you sure you're not cold?"
"I'm fine."
"I say, Joy. Need some advice, here." Neil waved them toward a booth at the west end of the ice aisle.
"Which do you think I should purchase?" The viscount held up a small vial of blue oil and a watch fob made of ivory.
"What are they?"
'This"—he held up the bottle—"is protection oil."
"Protection from what?" the earl asked.
"Ghoulies, ghosts, goblins, and the like," the shopkeeper said, then added, "and witches."
"I believe I could use that," Alec said dryly, and Joy frowned up at him.
"No harm in being safe, Belmore," Neil said seriously. He held up the other item in question. "And this is a tooth from a hellhound."
"What, no garlic ropes?" The earl leaned against the corner of a booth.
"Over there, yer lordship, next to the hex dolls and the bogey charms," the wiry little shopkeeper said with a gap-toothed grin. "The garlic's fer bloodsucking vampires."
"I've known a few bloodsuckers in my time, but haven't seen any vampires. I'm certain, however, that Seymour has."
"Have not. But this morning I saw you fight off a hellhound." He dangled the fob in the earl's line of vision.
"Don't remind me." The earl winced and rubbed his hip.
Neil turned to Alec and said, "I daresay, Downe needs the hair of the hound that bit him." Then he chuckled and asked, "What do you think he needs, Belmore?"
"I think—" Alec stopped in mid-sentence. "Bloody hell. I thought you said none of the ton would be here."
Neil turned to follow Alec's scowling look.
"Oh, look who's here! Eugenia! Claire! Look! If it isn't His Grace!" Lady Agnes skittered toward them like a foraging squirrel to plump nuts. "What a small world!"
"Too small," the earl commented while the three gossips sidled through the crowd.
Joy clutched Alec's arm. His hand moved to rest atop hers just as a cheer cracked through the icy air and the crowd shifted to gather around a circle of gamblers who were winning at
rouge et noire.
"Hurry!" Alec pulled her through a space between the booths, the earl and viscount following. They wormed their way past a fat grinning kettledrummer and a dancing fiddler, then ducked behind a makeshift stage where a small crowd of fairgoers watched a Punch and Judy show.
"Quick thinking, Belmore. Now I can enjoy my ale without having to listen to that noodle-headed woman and her gaggle of gossips." The earl tossed an ale seller a coin, then paused and, in a completely surprising move, ordered a hot mulled wine and handed it to Joy with a gallant bow. Smiling at her stunned expression, he leaned indolently against the stand, sipping ale from a foamy tankard.
"I say, Downe, 'tis a small world—and fast becoming even smaller," Neil said, his voice suddenly amused. "Look there, over your right shoulder, by the skittle alleys. Isn't that . . . ”