Page 68 of All I Want for Christmas… Is You
“You are drunk, Perry. You should go to bed.”
“Yes, I am. Quite foxed, and happily so.” He raised his glass. “Happy Christmas, Sister.”
“Happy Christmas,” she returned.
He drained it in one swallow, set it down, and pushing himself to his feet, mumbled a goodnight. He stood swaying for a moment, one hand anchoring himself against the back of his chair, the other dragging through his wheat-colored curls as though he had something else to say, something he’d forgotten, before staggering off toward the great staircase. A few moments later, a door slammed upstairs and Katharine was alone.
She sat unmoving. Around her, the stillness grew large, quietly condemning. The portraits of her ancestors who had once gathered around this very table gazed down at her, and she all but heard their voices in her head. Voices echoed by a brother too drunk to care what he said and who wouldn’t remember it in the morning, anyhow.You are a shrew. It’s no wonder you’re alone at Christmas. Perry at least has an excuse. What’s yours?
She stared at the single candle still burning on the table. Its flame wavered as drunkenly as Perry himself had just done, bending to the cold drafts sliding in from the window casings. Katharine gazed dully into it, emptying her mind of thoughts, her heart of emotion. It was easier not to think too much, to avoid looking too deeply into the consequences of her own behavior and far, far less painful.
Lord Charles ... Lord Gareth ... Viscount Bisley.
You are a shrew, and destined to be alone.
She became aware that the sound of rain against the windows had changed and now pinged and hissed and whispered, tinkling like tiny bells. The weather had worsened and had become sleet.
And she became aware of something else. A relentless pounding.
She cocked her head, listening. Was it her imagination? Something loose in the wind, banging against the house?
Thump ... thump ... thump.
No, it was not her imagination. Picking up the candle, she got up, went to the door and stood there in the hall, listening carefully. The persistent pounding was coming from the front entrance and for a moment she wondered why a footman hadn’t answered the door. But of course; it was late, the staff were long abed or back in their homes in Ravenscombe, and unless she herself answered the door, that pounding wasn’t going to go away.
She pulled her heavy ermine shawl more closely around her shoulders and moved down the long corridor. Lord, it was cold tonight. Damp, even here in the house. The candle in her hand wavered and danced. Her footsteps echoed against the walls. The pounding had stopped and she allowed herself a brief flight of fancy, thinking maybe it was a regretful Bisley out there, a Bisley who’d ridden hard through the night to take back the stinging words of his letter, to declare his everlasting love and devotion to her after all, to sweep her away to the life he’d been promising her for the last three years....
Katharine reached the door, pulled it open to a frigid blast of winter, and saw nothing out there in the darkness. Nothing but a wild, dark-as-Hades night of sleet and snow swirling out of inky heavens, wind biting her face, bare-branched trees clawing against the sky and moaning under the onslaught. She frowned and was about to close the door when something touched her foot.
Stifling a scream, she looked down and there, lying on the step, was a man, his fingers, bare of any mitten or glove to warm them, gripping her ankle.
“Oh!” she shrieked, nearly dropping the candle as she leaped back in sudden alarm. Her ankle tore from the man’s fingers. “We are not an alms house, sir! This is the residence of the Earl of Brookhampton and you have come to the wrong place.”
At her feet, the man looked up. She saw a pale visage beneath a wet, snow-encrusted tricorn, black brows, a strong nose and dark, soulful eyes before he dropped his head to the frozen step once more.
Katharine retreated and slammed the door, leaving him outside on the step.
Filthy beggar! Drunken lout! Just who did he think he was, lying like a dog out there on the very stairs of her brother’s home?
Head high, her heart still pounding with the sudden fright, she began to move back down the hall, the dark, pleading eyes of the man outside in the snow, the sleet, the cold beyond that door, piercing her shoulder blades even though that door was solidly closed.
You are a shrew ... a shrew ... a shrew.
Katharine Farnsley paused, the candle wavering in her hand.
She couldn’t justleavehim out there. If he was a drunken beggar, he was likely to die from the cold. She might be a shrew, but she was no murderess. She might be cold-hearted, but she had a conscience. She might lack a heart, but she didn’t lack a brain, and her brain told her that if a dead, frozen body was discovered on the steps outside come morning, the resultant scandal would make themisfortuneof “Lady K—” pale by comparison.
But it was more than that and Katharine knew it.
If she walked away, that pale, suffering face out there in the snowy darkness would haunt her all the days of her life.
Don’t be a shrew. Just this once. After all, it’s Christmas.
She turned and headed back to the door, her steps resolute. It loomed larger and larger, shadowy in the flickering light of a wall sconce, the candle in her hand. She grasped the cold iron handle, yanked the door open and looked down, words of grudging apology ready to roll off her tongue.
The man was gone. In the snowy film that covered the steps where he’d lain, she saw dark splotches that looked shockingly like blood, saw the trail left by his body as he’d dragged himself off the steps. He had not got far. There, twenty feet off in the darkness beyond the meager light cast by her candle, he lay motionless in the snow, a sad, crumpled form of defeat.
Lady Katharine Farnsley, Shrew, put down the candle and hurried down the steps. The icy wet slosh penetrated her slippers and sleet stung her cheeks as she moved quickly toward the fallen form. She knelt down, putting a hand on his shoulder.
