Page 79 of All I Want for Christmas… Is You
“Your Grace,” Katharine said with cold deference. “Rather an odd hour for you to be out paying a visit, don’t you think?” She did not step back to allow her neighbor into the house. “If you want Perry, he’s long abed and I’m certain he has no wish to see you tonight, tomorrow, or any other night, even if itisChristmas.”
The duke looked pointedly down at the steps on which he stood, then back up to her. “This is not a social call. I’m looking for an injured man. Tall, dark-haired, scruffy. Irish accent. Have you seen him?” He focused that omniscient, all-seeing black gaze on her, and Katharine thought fleetingly that if Nollaig O’ Flaherty was the baby Jesus all grown up, then Lucien de Montforte was surely his Satanic counterpart.
“An injured man?” She gave a derisive snort. “No, Your Grace, I have been safely in my bed and dreaming of sugar plums and roast beef and kisses under the mistletoe that I shall likely never get. Now please leave. It’s one o’ clock in the morning and I would like—”
“Because there are tracks in the mud leading up to this house and blood on your steps.”
To her credit, Katharine didn’t flinch before that penetrating black stare. “Well that’s news to me. Perhaps Perry will know something. Come back tomorrow and ask him.”
“I would ask him now.”
“No, you will not. He’s in bed sleeping off a bottle of spirits that your cunning machinations drove him to, and whatever insanity you’re pursuing, Blackheath, can wait until daylight. Good night.”
She tried to close the door in his face.
One booted toe prevented it.
And in that moment, Katharine saw that Blackheath was looking up, past her shoulder, and beyond her to the stairs that led to the first floor where not only Perry slept, but where Nollaig O’ Flaherty, formerly and briefly known as Him, was supposed to be safely tucked in her bed.
Except Nollaig O’ Flaherty wasn’t tucked in her bed. He was standing at the top of her stairs, tall, formidable and commanding. He was wearing the same muddy, bedraggled wet clothes in which he’d arrived, a pistol in his hand and a look in his eye that most certainly didn’t mirror the loving, gentle kindness with which she’d associated his supposed alter-identity not a half hour before.
The two men locked eyes.
“Are you bothering the lady?” Mr. O’ Flaherty asked in a still, challenging tone.
Lucien de Montforte’s lips curved in the tiniest of smiles, like a predator sizing up his prey before making the attack. “I would ask the same of you.”
“What right do you have to come into Lady Katharine’s house and upset her?”
“Again,” Lucien de Montforte said with menace, “I would ask the same of you.”
“I was invited. Whereas you, sir, were not.” Mr. O’ Flaherty began to come down the stairs, the pistol looking very deadly in what Katharine assumed was his very capable hand. “And since you were not, and the lady has already asked you to leave, I suggest you do so.”
“And if I do not?”
“Then I shall be forced to ensure that you do.”
Katharine found her tongue. “That will be enough, both of you. Mr. O’ Flaherty sought refuge here, Blackheath, and I gave it to him. It is no business of yours why he’s hurt or why he’s here, and I’m asking you to leave.”
“Ah, but it is my business,” the duke murmured, studying the way Mr. O’ Flaherty was moving down the stairs and noting, surely, the tautness around his mouth, the pallor of his skin, the pained way he moved despite his attempts to hide it. “This brigand held up my coach and attempted to rob me. Do you really wish to give refuge to a criminal?”
“It’s Christmas,” she shot back. “I would give refuge to anyone who asked it!”
One of Blackheath’s aristocratic brows rose in disbelief. “You?”
Mr. O’ Flaherty had reached the bottom of the stairs and was now moving purposefully across the foyer. Blackheath’s miniscule smile was spreading in anticipation. In another moment there was going to be bloodshed.
“Yes,her,” Mr. O’ Flaherty said, moving ever closer. “Unless my ears fail me, you’ve just insulted the lady in her own house.”
Blackheath said nothing, just tilted his head in an amused and calculating way, and Katharine wondered what he was enjoying more: the idea of doing bodily harm to Mr. O’ Flaherty or this exchange itself.
And then, suddenly, Mr. O’ Flaherty was there beside her, dwarfing her with his height and bristling with male power and affront, and for the first time in her life, Katharine got a taste of what it felt like to have a strong, virile male come to her defense, to stand guard over her honor, to be there for her and her alone.
And in that moment, she also felt something else for the first time in her life.
What it felt like to fall just a little bit in love.
Mr. O’ Flaherty was raising his pistol. Lucien de Montforte hadn’t moved a muscle. And in that moment of slow-moving, frozen certainty that someone was going to get hurt, and very badly at that, Perry’s voice thundered from the top of the stairway.
