Regency Christmas Wishes(9)

Just as he let the knocker fall, a gust of wind, stronger than before, blew up. It would have carried a hat away, if he’d been wearing one, but it played havoc with his hair instead—and with the roses. Adam did not have time to smooth his hair again for the door immediately opened to reveal a butler so niffy-naffy he could have served in a duke’s residence. Hell, Adam thought, the fellow could have been a duke. At his side was Miss Relaford herself, her mouth open in an O of astonishment. Even the superior servant seemed taken aback.

Adam bowed, and handfuls of rose petals fluttered off his head and his shoulders, swept by the wind onto the tiled hall. A few were lodged in his neckcloth and lapels and the top of his waistcoat.

Dashing? He felt like dashing for a hackney to carry him away! Well, that tiled floor was not going to swallow him up, and a fellow seldom died of mortification, unfortunately, so Adam did the only thing possible: he held his collection of now bare stems out to Miss Relaford and said, “For you.”

Her lips twitched. The butler’s lips twitched. Adam’s lips twitched, and then they all burst out laughing. The butler recovered first, recalling his position and his dignity, even if his mistress and her unconventional guest had forgotten theirs. He cleared his throat, announced that he would see about a broom, and made a decorous exit, although they could hear one last chuckle as he headed down the hall.

“That’s what comes of a poor country clodpole trying to impress a princess, I suppose,” Adam said, still grinning.

“Are you?”

He laughed again. “Poor? Countrified? A clumsy fool? All of them, my lady, I assure you.”

Jenna brushed a rose petal off his shoulder. “Trying to impress me?” It was little more than a whisper.

Adam could only sigh, take up her hand, and bring it to his lips. “With all my heart, if only I could.”

The butler returned and cleared his throat again.

“Are you coming down with something, Hobart? You would not wish to be ill at yuletide,” Jenna said. She did, however, take her hand out of Sir Adam’s and invite him to follow her to the library where some of her father’s other curios were displayed, until her uncle returned for tea.

They admired carved jade horses and purple beads made of clamshells, examined a case of dead butterflies and another of oddly shaped pearls of different colors, for her maid’s sake.

The maid was mending in the corner, for propriety’s sake.

What they were actually doing was admiring each other, examining their startling new feelings. They let their hands touch over each ebony figurine and their shoulders brush in front of the paintings. They compared their tastes, learning about each other in the process and liking what they learned, very much indeed.

As they went from object to object, Jenna told Adam about her merry papa, the second son of an earl, who had fallen in love with a merchant’s daughter and eloped with her aboard one of her father’s ships. She died in childbirth, but James Relaford stayed at sea, becoming wealthy in his own right, ignoring the scandal, ignoring his family, ignoring everything but the baby daughter left with his wife’s brother and sister-in-law. Now he was gone, as was Jenna’s dearest aunt, and the grandfather earl who had never acknowledged her birth.

Adam in turn told her about his beloved Standings and his horse-mad father whose schemes had sent them into penury, if not yet bankruptcy.

“We have both had great losses in our lives,” Jenna said. “And yet you have your lands and I have an uncle who cares for me as if I were his own daughter, so we are more fortunate than many others.”

Adam agreed just as they heard the front door opening, then steps heading down the tiled hall in their direction.

“Uncle,” Miss Relaford said, “may I present Sir Adam Standish. Sir Adam, my uncle, Mr. Ezekiel—”

“Beasdale!”

“Standish?”

“This is your uncle?”

“This is your hero?”

“This is your niece?”

“This is preposterous!” Beasdale looked about to suffer an apoplexy, his face was so red. “How dare you, you villain, dangle after my niece when I particularly warned you against such a course? Here I was thinking of relenting on that payment date, but now? Extend further credit to an encroaching, unethical parasite? You might consider yourself clever to scrape up an acquaintance with my niece on such short notice, but I consider you no better than a worm, a slime-slithering—”

“I take it you two have met?” Jenna asked in a quavering voice.

But Adam was not daunted, not at all. He raised his chin, bruises and all. “I do not consider myself the least clever, else I would have asked the name of Miss Relaford’s uncle before I leaped to her assistance. As it is, you impugn my honor, sir. If circumstances were otherwise, I would ask you to name your seconds. Instead, for Miss Relaford’s sake, I shall bid you good day.”