What a Lady Needs for Christmas by Grace Burrowes Page B

and my missus will have held supper for me.”
    The only other person in the station was the lone porter, who also apparently served as stationmaster. He was a man of middle years and prodigious salt-and-pepper whiskers. His eyes were tired, and he was already wrapping a red plaid scarf about his neck.
    “Can you hail me a cab before you go?”
    He paused between donning one glove and next. “A cab? We’ve no cabs in Ballater village, miss. You can wait in the pub for your people to fetch you, but in this weather, nobody would make a decent beast loiter about in hopes of custom. I can lock up your bags for you, if that would aid matters.”
    Joan’s bag or the oxen and horses were due more consideration than she was herself, and she had her own ignorance and folly to blame for this.
    “I can wait in the pub,” she said, though she’d never entered such an establishment without a male escort before. “Will I be able to hire a vehicle in the morning?”
    “Depends on the weather,” the fellow said, blowing out one candle after another. “And depends on where you’re going—and how much coin you have.”
    Joan had no idea whether Tye’s house party was two miles from the station or twelve. She left the station with the stationmaster, and for the first time allowed that velvet might be more pretty than warm.
    The stationmaster toddled off, nipping from a flask, leaving Joan standing before the dark station. A team approached, harness bells jingling, and her spirits lifted. Somebody was willing to hire their conveyance despite the weather, and she would find her way to her brother’s temporary household.
    She’d come this far safely, and in this season of Christian fellowship—
    The dray trotted past, and because Joan had been in anticipation of hailing it, she’d approached the street more closely than was wise. Frigid slush splashed up her cloak to the knees, ruining the fabric and dashing Joan’s spirits.
    “So much for Christmas.” Joan clenched her jaw against the possibility her teeth might start to chatter, and took stock of her surroundings. Not a soul walked along the streets; not a beast of burden was in sight.
    And she had no clue where the pub might be.
    ***
    “Are you lost?” Hector asked.
    Yes, Dante was lost—or his common sense had gone begging. “Nobody was at the station to meet Lady Joan.”
    “The train was on time,” Hector said from Margs’s other side. “Nobody expects the trains to be on time.”
    “Dante’s right,” Margs said from the depths of her scarf. “We should not have left her there alone.”
    Margs’s support had the feel of an opportunistic swipe at Hector, and yet, Dante was grateful for it.
    “I liked Lady Joan,” Charlie volunteered from Margs’s lap. “She’s nice, and she shares her chocolates.”
    She shared her favors too, or believed she had. She’d spoken as if she hadn’t been forced, but inebriating a lady was the opposite of gaining her consent.
    He turned the team back into the oval before the train station, the baggage sleigh following behind, and at first saw nobody.
    Well, more fool he. “Her ladyship must have found accommo—”
    A figure emerged from under the eaves at the station’s door. Tall, clad in a cloak far too light for the weather. For Dante, genuine relief replaced the feigned variety, despite a niggling unease that rescuing the same damsel twice in one day could not be a positive trend. He passed Hector the reins and leaped down, the cold sending a hard ache up his legs.
    “You daft woman, have you nobody to take you in out of the weather?”
    She wiped at her cheeks with her fussy purple glove. “Don’t scold me. I was about to ask a passerby where the pub was.”
    Dante whipped off his scarf and wrapped it around her fool neck. “A fine plan, as long you don’t mind freezing to death in the next quarter hour.” When she might have offered some genteel retort, he wrapped the scarf directly over her mouth.
    “You,”