Page 73 of All I Want for Christmas… Is You
No sleeping footman. No drunken, damaged Perry wandering the halls with a glass dangling from his fingers and his eyes seeing things he could never forget. Nothing but the house, cold and still all around her—and that Irish highwayman with the odd name, upstairs in her rooms.
In her bed.
Herbed.
Katharine took a deep and sustaining breath and clutching the bandages, moved silently up the stairs.
She found Mr. O’ Flaherty in her bed all right, fast asleep. His wet and muddy clothing was neatly laid out by the glowing coals to dry. He hadn’t thrown them carelessly on the floor, the rug, the silk-upholstered chair, any or all of which would surely have been ruined by such careless abuse. It was a small gesture but one that Katharine couldn’t help but notice and appreciate—especially from a brigand.
It hit her all over again.
A brigand.
In her house.
In her bed.
Her gaze strayed to that bed, and she shivered. She wasn’t cold. But the sight of a strong, virile male in such an intimate setting as her bed, beneath her sheets and blankets, framed by her headboard and the bed-hangings, did something funny to her insides, sent strange, fleeting sensations through her belly and made her nipples feel raw and tingly against a bodice that was suddenly too tight.
She took a step closer to him, clutching the bandages and now pressing them to her breasts to quell their odd tingling. In the soft glow of candlelight, his features—starkly planed, clean-cut, not an ounce of extra flesh, bone, or wastage on that face—were softened. The chin was slightly cleft beneath a shadow of dark bristle, the mouth purposeful and firm, the nose commanding, the brows dark and slightly arched. The ears were set close to the head, the hair not quite black but a deep, dark cocoa, spilling in thick, riotous waves back from an intelligent forehead and down to her pillow where it curled haphazardly and looked very dark against the white casing. She watched the slow rise and fall of his chest beneath the sheets, looked at his hand lying across the counterpane and noted the length and strength of the fingers, the breadth across the palm. A man’s hand, but not a working man’s. A masculine hand, but not one that she’d associate with a laborer. Just as in the face, there was breeding in that hand, strength touched by a hint of elegance.
Katharine stood, undecided. She ought to wake him and bind his ribs, as had been his wish and her reluctant intent. But in that moment he sighed in his sleep, the sound oddly peaceful with the snow whispering against the windows, the moan of the wind outside as it howled around the corner of the house and back out into the darkness. Mr. O’ Flaherty’s fingers twitched once, his head turned against the pillow and his breathing deepened.
Katharine quietly set the bandages down on her night table. It would be cruel to disturb him only to cause him what would likely be more pain. She’d let him sleep. Chances are she wouldn’t find any peace in her own dreams tonight, and would be back in here before the servants—what few remained, with most having been given a few days off to be with their families down in the village—were even awake to come in and stoke up the dying fire.
The fire.
Oh, dear....
Katharine had never stoked a fire in her life. It was a job reserved for servants, but she’d seen them do it plenty of times even if she’d never paid a lot of attention to the procedure. She bit her lip, quietly padded to the hearth, added a log to the embers and with a poker, pushed it up against the red-glowing, charred wood. She waited. Soon, smoke began to rise from the fresh log and a moment later, a tongue of flame was licking the darkness. Shadows danced against the brick behind it. Katharine let out her breath in a heavy sigh, feeling a bit proud of herself. It was the best she could do.
Outside, the wind howled and whistled, and the tinkle of snow broke the silence as it beat against the window.
She glanced at the man sleeping in her bed.
For once, I’ve done the right thing ... and it feels good.
She stole quietly past Mr. O’ Flaherty and out the door, carefully shutting it behind her.
CHAPTER5
Amile away, Lucien de Montforte pulled his black stallion, Armageddon, to a halt where the robber had held up his coach.
Thick wet snow sifted down from above, quickly filling the depression in the mud where the highwayman’s horse had gone over backwards, lining the ruts of the carriage and hissing down all around him. His breath plumed the darkness as he scanned the area of the attack. The rogue was nowhere to be seen though his horse, a piebald beast with shaggy fetlocks and a back as broad as a warship, stood nearby, pawing at bits of grass stabbing up through the building crust of frozen sleet and snow.
Lucien hadn’t really intended to come back. He’d figured the highwayman would have mounted his horse and disappeared into the night from which he’d come. But the horse was still here, which meant that he couldn’t, in good conscience, leave the animal out here to the elements nor the robber, who had to be somewhere....
“Hell and damnation,” he muttered, and pulling his pistol free of its holster, swung neatly down from Armageddon’s back. His boots crunched through the frozen crust of snow and into the mud. Wind dislodged his tricorn and impatiently, he yanked it more firmly down. It was a wretched night to be out and about. He’d only just returned from a madcap trip across the Atlantic and back in pursuit of his errant sister, and hunting down a highwayman in a snowstorm was the last thing he felt like doing on Christmas Eve—or any other eve, for that matter. How he longed to be home, warm and dry and holding his duchess in his arms.
Where was that cursed rogue?
Leading Armageddon, he scanned the snowy darkness but there was no sign of the robber and Lucien wondered, impatiently, if he’d crawled off somewhere to die. Then he spotted the footsteps leading off the road and into the verge, where they were quickly fading beneath the building mantle of white. There were enough of them to note a pattern. Lucien’s black, omniscient gaze lifted and followed their direction. Far off into the darkness, the lights of his nearest neighbor glowed like a beacon.
He stood there for a long moment, frowning, as the raw, brittle wind whipped his greatcoat around him. Brookhampton was probably deep in his cups and passed out, and he suspected that the Farnsleys, like himself, had probably given the night off to most of his staff. They were alone out there. Unprotected against whatever malice the highwayman intended. Lucien swung up on Armageddon, caught the reins of the loose mare and struck off across the dark, snowy pastures toward where that single light stood like a lonely beacon against the wintry night.
A hell of a way to spend Christmas, he thought.
But it could be worse.
