Jonathan and Amy Read online

  She scanned the document, and he knew exactly what she saw:

  What is proper conduct when serving tea to another man?

  How precisely does one offer and render escort to a lady in public?

  Where is the order of precedence listed?

  Why is thirty the usual number of guests at a dinner party?

  How does a man properly assist a lady from a conveyance?

  Under what circumstances, if any, might a gentleman raise his voice?

  On and on the reckoning went, a list of every mistake Jonathan had made since arriving to his wealth, every misstep, and not a few of his regrets. His late wife had tried, gently, for a time, to guide him into genteel behavior, but then even she had given up.

  He could only hope Miss Ingraham viewed his list of humiliations as a pile of social straw she could spin into gold behind the closed doors of Jonathan’s home.

  She wrinkled her nose, which did not bode well for his aspiration as a pupil of gentlemanly deportment. “You want me to teach you to waltz?”

  “Most assuredly.”

  “But not the minuet, the gavotte, the polonaise, the other ballroom dances? Do you know the contredanses?”

  “I know the parlor dances, and enough of the ballroom dances to get by. Most of them are such lumbering affairs they can be learned at sight, but the waltz is a recent addition to the ballrooms—” He looked down at his hands. The left bore the most scars, having been half smashed in a quarry accident when he was twelve. “I cannot fathom it.”

  She started chattering about how simple the waltz was, while Jonathan watched her mouth and pondered the desperation of a man who’d stoop to such a subterfuge. The Irish engaged in several activities without limit—they worked like beasts, but when not working, they danced and sang. Some would say they also procreated, abused hard liquor, and prayed with equal fervor—some English.

  “Mr. Dolan, are you paying attention?”

  “I always pay attention to you, Miss Ingraham.” The words came out sounding like a rebuke, not a compliment or the simple truth, which they were. Given the state of his nerves, a rebuke was probably safest for them both.

  “See that you do pay attention. We have only a week, and this is not a short list. I will need time to organize our approach.”

  While Jonathan would need time to tie his hands behind his back lest he reach forward and touch her pretty, golden hair. In the morning sun, she wasn’t merely blond. Her hair was shot with highlights of red, wheat, bronze, and more, indefinable colors that played along each individual strand. Spread out over a pillow, her hair would be an entire palette…

  “I have a suggestion, Miss Ingraham.”

  She arched a brow, all starchy business and brisk efficiency. No wonder Georgina’s education was progressing at such a great rate.

  “If we are to maximize the time between now and our departure, then it makes sense for you to take your meals with me.”

  Such a delicate frown had Miss Ingraham. “That…does…make sense.”

  And so reluctant. Jonathan’s despair eclipsed the desire that simmered in his veins whenever he beheld his daughter’s governess. “Only for a week, Miss Ingraham, and I assure you I will be on my best behavior.”

  “Yes, you will.” She studied him until the corners of her mouth curved up and an impish light gleamed in her eyes. “Keeping you on your best behavior shall be my personal mission.”

  And thus began his week of heaven—and hell.

  She showed him how to tie his cravats in the more fashionable knots, though how she knew such things was a mystery. This exercise required her hands on his person, making it a wonder of biblical proportions that Jonathan mastered anything beyond the fussed-up reef knot he’d been using for years.

  She lectured him through three meals a day plus tea—high bloody tea!—and gave him little books to read on the subject of table manners.

  She inspected his turnout each morning and each time before he left the house, tugging on a shirtsleeve or adjusting his boutonniere. He was no longer permitted to refer to it as a damned posy.

  And then the real torment began.

  “We must do something about your hair.” Miss Ingraham made this pronouncement at breakfast on Thursday, and their departure was scheduled for Saturday morning.

  “You will not be parading me around all slicked down with grease and perfume, Miss Ingraham. I like my hair clean.”

  While Georgina grinned at her eggs on Jonathan’s left, Miss Ingraham sat back in her chair on his right, her expression alarmingly pensive. “You have lovely hair.” He did not roll his eyes, but her compliments always preceded some dire pronouncement, and she did not disappoint on this occasion. “Your hair is in want of a trim.”

  “Then I shall cut it. More tea?”

  She remained silent, until she leaned forward and feathered her fingers through his hair. “You have marvelously thick hair, and the color is unusual. Titian.”

  Which meant however dark it was, it was still red, and thus the wrong color. She repeated the caress of her fingers through his hair, while Jonathan tried to ignore the pleasure of her touch.

  In this, at least, the week had been successful: Amy Ingraham showed no more compunction about touching him than if he were a five-year-old boy and truly one of her charges.

  “May I help cut Papa’s hair?”

  Jonathan spoke a bit too loudly. “Certainly not. Finish your eggs.”

  “You may keep a curl for a locket,” Miss Ingraham said. The females exchanged a look, one Jonathan recognized, as any man with seven sisters would.

  “You two are conspiring,” he said, pouring more tea for Miss Ingraham. “This does not bode well for my peace of mind. There are laws against conspiracies. Females plotting to overthrow the order of a man’s household is likely some sort of felony. Old George sired six daughters. I can’t believe he’d fail to address such potential unrest in his kingdom.”

  “Papa’s eggs are getting cold,” Georgina remarked to no one in particular.

  “So are yours, young lady.”

  “A gentleman never argues with a lady.” Miss Ingraham’s expression was positively bored, while her gray eyes danced gleefully.

  “She’s an imp from h—the depths, not a lady. Not yet.” When Georgina grinned at him, Jonathan brushed his finger down her nose in a parody of a reprimand. “And a very pretty imp, too.”

  He dawdled over his eggs and complained at length about being denied his newspaper at the breakfast table, but in the end, the ram went meekly, even willingly, to be shorn.

  ***

  The week flew by, a whirlwind of moments for Amy to dread and then treasure, tumbling one right after another.

  Mr. Dolan studied his own betterment with an intensity Amy found daunting. If she handed him a book on manners after dinner, he had it memorized by morning. If she suggested an outing to the park with Georgina for the sake of variety, he used it as an opportunity to practice everything, from his polite conversation to the proper means of handing a lady down from a vehicle.

  “You haven’t taught me to waltz, Miss Ingraham. If I’m someday to escort my daughter to social functions, I’ll need that skill.”

  Georgina had darted out of the breakfast parlor to take her dog to the garden, leaving Amy alone with her employer for much of the meal.

  “Georgina won’t be waltzing for another ten years,” she remarked. “You have plenty of time to learn.”

  “Miss Ingraham—” He sounded as if he were going to sail into one of his well-reasoned, volume-escalating tirades that Amy so enjoyed, provided they were directed at others.

  His jaw snapped closed. He touched his napkin to his lips. “Miss Ingraham, it’s entirely likely Deene’s marchioness will take it into her pretty head to have a da—a deuced ball in honor of this visit or some such rot. I will not be made a fool of for the sake of your faintheartedness.”

  “Faintheartedness, Mr. Dolan?”

  “You do not relish the
idea of an Irish bear mincing around the da—the blasted ballrooms of proper—Mother of God.” On that exhalation, he leaned forward and used the side of his thumb to brush at the corner of Amy’s lip. “You’ve a crumb…of toast.”

  One more fleeting caress and he sat back, scowling mightily. “A toast crumb is distracting, and it’s not in the rule books.”

  Amy reached for her tea but didn’t trust herself to bring the teacup to her mouth. The feel of his callused thumb grazing her skin so gently—a butterfly-soft thumb-kiss that sent warmth sizzling through her person—was more than a lady should have to bear without swooning.

  “Sometimes, one must improvise, Mr. Dolan.”

  “But a gentleman doesn’t touch—”

  Before she could stop herself, Amy placed a finger to his lips. “A gentleman can hardly allow a lady to be embarrassed by toast crumbs, can he? Moreover, you would not have used the same measures had Lady Deene been the one sporting a crumb, would you?”

  He still looked a trifle tense. “Of course not. Deene would draw my bloo—my very cork. More tea, Miss Ingraham?”

  Amy blinked at her teacup. He’d certainly taken to offering her tea, but even she had a limit for how much jasmine-scented libation she could down at one meal. “No, thank you.”

  “So when do we waltz, Miss Ingraham?”

  Amy did not want Georgina underfoot when they danced; she did not want the lesson to be hurried. She also did not want candlelight threatening her good sense beyond all recall. “Now, unless you have other plans?”

  “I am at your service.” He rose and offered his bare hand as politely as if he’d been to the manor born. Amy made the trip through the house on his arm, allowing him to escort her through the hallways, up the stairs, and into the largest of the public parlors.

  The week had seen a shift in this at least: he was no longer so wary of bodily proximity to her. When their hands brushed, when she took his arm, he no longer tensed at each and every contact.

  And neither did she. Amy was learning to handle the flood of pleasure she felt when she was near him, learning to ignore the riot of sensations his scent and warmth provoked. His height and size, his expressions and intonations had become wonderfully familiar in a whole new way.

  Mr. Dolan stopped in the middle of the parlor. “We’ll need music.”

  “Soon.” Amy dropped his arm. “First, we’ll need the doors folded back and the rugs rolled up.”

  While the footmen saw to the arrangements, Amy noted the subtle signs of unease in her pupil. He shot his cuffs, an indication that he’d rather roll them back. He ran his hand through his hair, his shorter locks making him frown each time he repeated the gesture. He paced, he looked out the window, he looked anywhere, in fact, but at her.

  When the last footman withdrew to warn the housekeeper she might be needed at the piano, Amy approached the window. “Georgina is a lucky girl, Mr. Dolan. Not all parents are as devoted as you are.”

  He glanced down at her. “I’m her father, of course I love her.”

  Amy kept her gaze on the child and the spaniel frolicking in the grass outside. Something about Mr. Dolan’s brusque use of the word “love” made Amy regard him yet still more highly.

  “Not all fathers can say the same. Are you done stalling?”

  His lips quirked up in the fleeting, devilish smile Amy enjoyed so much. The only one she liked better was the one he saved for his daughter, which was so full of affection and approval, it took Amy’s breath away.

  “I do not stall, Miss Ingraham. I consider my options, I develop strategy, I choose my moment.”

  “You miss her mother.”

  The words slipped out, completely inappropriate to the moment, and to Amy’s position in the household. Mr. Dolan’s smile became wistful, then sad.

  “I miss her terribly. But as much as I miss what I had with her, I miss as well what was taken from us when she died.”

  An inappropriately honest reply to a wholly misguided observation, but Amy couldn’t leave it alone. “What was taken from you?”

  “We were just becoming friends. She was always my ally, even when I thought she was only carping and correcting to keep me in my place. A man overly endowed with pride doesn’t always make a good husband when he marries so far above himself.”

  He had regrets. That he would carry such sentiments without ever giving a hint of them ought to have occurred to her.

  “We all have regrets, Mr. Dolan. One makes choices without being able to guess their consequences, and one can’t always choose wisely.”

  He turned from the window, his gaze betraying a lurking amusement. “Can’t one? Are you stalling now, Miss Amy?”

  Oh, how she liked the sound of her name in his rumbling baritone. How she liked that he looked at her when he teased her and baited her.

  “Mr. Dolan—”

  He touched her mouth as she had touched his at the breakfast table, with a single, gentle finger. “A gentleman may address a woman familiar to him as Miss Christian Name in informal circumstances if the lady does not object.”

  His recitation of the rule was word-perfect. Amy removed his finger from her lips and set her hand on his muscular shoulder. “The time has come to dance.”

  Two

  “The time has come to marry.” Nigel Herodotus George Ingraham, ninth Viscount Wooster, infused his tone with as much indifference as he could muster—which was considerable.

  “Done all the time.” His friend, Angel Bonham, the Baron Bonham of Hartley, poured them each a bumper of brandy and passed one to his guest. “Heartiest congratulations. When will you tell your cousin of her good fortune?”

  “Second cousin, please.” Nigel took a savoring sip of much better libation than he’d been able to stock at Wooster House for some time. “She’ll turn twenty-eight on the fifteenth of next month, so my courtship will be precipitous.”

  Bonham’s blond brows drew down. “Because of your violent passion for her, after what, twelve years of not laying eyes on the girl?”

  “Nobody is a girl at twenty-eight, Bonny, particularly not after governessing Mayfair’s pampered brats for seven years.”

  Bonham’s handsome face screwed up with consternation. “You’re to marry a governess? Maria will laugh you to scorn, old man, to say nothing of what the fellows at the clubs will think.”

  “Maria…” Nigel peered at his drink and pictured his mistress in all her voluptuous Mediterranean beauty. “Maria is a substantial part of the reason this desperate measure must be taken.”

  Maria and her appetite for pretty tokens played a role, as did the many, many obligations a man of title and taste must meet if he were to have any consequence among his peers. Then, too, Mama’s consequence weighed in the balance and drove Nigel to the otherwise unthinkable step of making Amy Ingraham the next Viscountess Wooster.

  Bonham lowered his lanky frame onto a leather ottoman. “The solicitors have given up all hope?”

  “They’ve been nattering at me since she turned twenty-five. They have no objection to keeping wealth in the family, lest their own bottomless pockets go untended, but they’re nervous and making noises of the wrong sort.”

  Bonham was a pretty man, all blond good looks and hail-fellow-well-met, but he wasn’t stupid. “You’re a peer. You can’t be tossed into the Fleet for bad debts.”

  “I can be blackballed from the clubs.”

  A silence befell them, one indicative of the unfathomable suffering involved in such a fate.

  “Best be about your wooing,” Bonham said, staring at his drink morosely. “But if she’s been governessing for seven years, an Irish tinker on a lame donkey would probably look like a knight in shining armor to her.”

  “Which does nothing to enhance the lady’s charms in my own eyes. A peer of the realm has certain standards.”

  Bonham got up to fetch the decanter. “Think of Maria, Wooster, and do what must be done. At least your brother has some sons, so it isn’t as if you have to ge
t brats on the gi—on your second cousin.”

  “I will take my consolation from that signal fact while you, dear Bonny, see that for the nonce I get roaring, stinking, knee-crawling drunk, if you please.”

  Bonham didn’t even glance at the clock, which was chiming an obscenely early hour. “What are friends for?”

  ***

  Waltzing was not difficult. Jonathan’s late wife had taught him well, and he’d delighted in being her equal in that, at least.

  Relearning the waltz with Amy while arousal tried to blossom in Jonathan’s breeches was difficult in the extreme. From some fluffy white cloud, Jonathan’s late wife was no doubt laughing her pretty, aristocratic arse off.

  “I need music,” he muttered. Something to focus on besides the occasional lemony whiff of Amy, the brush of her skirts against his legs, the way she moved his body around, her hands on his torso and shoulder, pushing him this way and that.

  “Soon. Do you want your housekeeper to see you step on my feet, sir?”

  “I’ll not step on your bl—blessed feet, Amy Ingraham.”

  “Again.” She got a solid hold of him, and one-two-three’d him down the room and up the other side. He liked the corners the best, when she pulled him in close and then forgot to turn loose of him for a few steps.

  But enough was enough.

  “My turn to lead, Miss Amy. You’re too good at it for a fellow’s peace of mind.”

  “I am not too good—” She fell silent, the slight, self-mocking smile lurking at her lips. “Oh, very well. You lead, but please don’t toss me about like a sack of grain. Take it slowly at first and trust me to follow.”

  “Right. You’ll follow as long as you’re giving all the directions.”

  He danced her in a slow triple meter along the same path she’d taken him, but this time was different. She did let him lead. She moved with him, not quite in anticipation of his maneuvers, but in complicity with them.

  He could feel her humming softly under her breath, feel her lithe body surrender to his guidance. The lesson became torturous when he pulled her close on the first twirling turn and her breasts fleetingly brushed his chest.