What a Lady Needs for Christmas by Grace Burrowes

to Lady Joan Flynn before the woman’s brother sent his seconds to call.
    “Mama, please leave. I must have peace and quiet, a pot or two of black tea, and somebody to take Fergus for a stroll in the mews.”
    “I’m here, your ladyship.” Kyle bowed to the viscountess, Edward’s shaving kit in the man’s pudgy hand, a towel over his arm as if he were some damned waiter. “We can be ready in less than an hour.”
    We? As if Kyle were Edward’s nanny, getting him ready for an outing to the park.
    “Excellent. When you are finished with Edward, you can see to the dog. Lady Dorcas deserves her day to preen and gloat, and of course, his lordship must show himself as her devoted swain.”
    Lady Dorcas Bellingham—Lady Dorcas-Rhymes-with-Orcas, according to a zoological wit at Edward’s club—was not a bad sort, though she was prodigiously fond of sweets, and rather an armload to wrestle about on the dance floor. She had an agreeable dimness to her mental faculties, and a nice smile.
    “I am not her devoted swain.” Edward fumbled about beneath his pillows for his nightshirt. “Kyle, procure a fellow a pot of tea, if you don’t mind.”
    Edward set Fergus down, got a nightshirt more or less on, and mentally prepared himself for the ordeal of standing upright. The bed was elevated two steps for warmth, though what good did warm covers do a man when he broke his neck tumbling from bed in the morning?
    “You look positively bilious, Eddie. Were you up late sketching? I must say, those drawings in the sitting rooms are quite the cleverest efforts I’ve seen from you to date.” Mama seemed to look at him for the first time, while Fergus bounded off the bed and turned an encouraging pair of bright black eyes on Edward.
    “I was up quite late.” Joan had been sketching—at first—beautiful, flowing, ingenious sketches that provoked Edward to equal parts envy and admiration. And curiously enough, the sketches were apparently still here. “Mama, you really ought not to be in my bedroom.”
    “Nonsense. You’ve nothing to display I haven’t seen before. We’ll be stopping by the salon on our way to Lady Dorcas’s, and I cannot afford to indulge your penchant for dawdling. Lady Dorcas could cry off, despite the announcement.”
    Edward was focused on navigating the steps, but it didn’t do to ignore Mama’s nattering entirely. “What announcement?”
    “Coyness doesn’t become you, Eddie. The announcement of your engagement to Lady Dorcas. Brilliant match, if I do say so myself.”
    Edward’s ears began to roar, and his stomach rebelled against his mother’s words, even as his headache escalated to a point past agony.
    “I never proposed to Lady Dorcas Bellingham. She and I cannot be engaged.” Though a dim recollection of Mama chattering about productive discussions, and Uncle nodding approvingly suggested Edward’s objection was too little and too late.
    Mama regarded him with her head cocked to the side, making her look like a small, puzzled French bird—a bird of prey.
    “Don’t be tedious. Bended knee and dramatic declarations are hardly necessary among the better families. The girl has pots of money, and she has the look of an easy breeder. Get dressed, lest we be late for a call on your intended. The announcements went out this very morning, and if we’re quick about it, we can have you married before the New Year.”
    Oh, God.
    Oh, Joan.
    “I’m going to be sick.”
    As his mother fled the room in another tattoo of heels, Edward was indeed sick, barely missing her ladyship’s prized Axminster carpets, while Fergus looked on with sympathetic eyes.
    ***
    How soon after conceiving could a woman turn up queasy?
    Joan knew of no treatise she could read on the subject, and she had no doting auntie to whom she might discreetly put the question. Tiberius’s wife, Hester, was a good sort—witness, she’d taken on the care and handling of Tiberius —but Joan could not test her sister-in-law’s