Page 80 of All I Want for Christmas… Is You
“Blackheath!You of all people are not welcome in my house, will never be welcome in my house. Get the bloody hell out.”
Blackheath never lost his composure. He simply looked up, his gaze finding Perry standing up there on the stairs, and studied him for a long, assessing moment. Nobody moved. And then the duke reacted in a way that Katharine would never have predicted. He swept off his hat, bowed deeply to the man who had once been a family friend, replaced the hat and turned to Katharine. There was something in his eyes, something inscrutable.
He took her hand in his own gloved one and raised it to his lips. “I see that my assistance here isn’t needed after all. Your ... guest’s horse is tethered to a tree just outside. I’d advise you find the beast some shelter. Good evening, Lady Katharine,” he murmured, and as he relinquished her hand and turned away, Katharine thought she saw the corner of his mouth twitching in a suppressed grin.
She watched him go, and let out her breath in a sigh of relief that seemed to go on forever.
Outside, Lucien de Montforte descended the steps and swung up on his horse in one fluid, easy motion. He set off into the snowy darkness, thinking about the highwayman coming to Lady Katharine’s defense and her own blushing, totally feminine response to him. There was nothing to worry about after all. His neighbors were in no danger, the robber hadn’t crawled off to a painful death, and he could finally go home and spend the rest of this miserable night in bed with his beautiful duchess.
He smiled.
Not a bad way to spend Christmas Eve, really.
CHAPTER8
“You can start by explaining who you are, why you are in my house, and why you came to the defense of my sister.”
The words were as flat as the surface of a brick and about as hard, too, but Noel looked at this man with the loosely curling hair that wasn’t quite blond and wasn’t quite brown, the wounded blue eyes rimmed in red and the gauntness of his cheeks. He smelled the fumes of brandy that still clung to him and noted the strange little twitch of his right eyelid and recognized something he’d seen in soldiers who’d tasted a little too liberally of battle and never managed to get that taste out of their mouths.
There was lasting damage here. Lots of it.
“Nollaig O’ Flaherty, late of Dunmore House in Dublin.” He bowed. “Your servant, sir.”
The man eyed him with a scrutiny Noel wouldn’t have thought possible, given the fact he was obviously half-soused. Or maybe he wasn’t. The fellow was a wreck, really, if not on the surface of things than deeply beneath it.
“And you are in my house, why?”
Lady Katharine, who had been staring at him in the sort of way the fairer sex so often did, not as if he were the Christ incarnate (thathad been a First), but with a feminine interest that was far more comfortable than his sudden and temporary deification, found her voice.
“Mr. O’ Flaherty, may I present you to my brother, Peregrine Farnsley, the Earl of Brookhampton. Perry, this is Mr. Nollaig O’ Flaherty, who sought refuge with us on what has been a very difficult night for him. You don’t need to be looking at him as if he were about to rob us. He was injured and showed up on our doorstep asking for help. I provided it. It was the right thing to do.”
The earl’s bleak blue eyes swung into focus. “And how did you get injured?”
“I held up your neighbor’s coach. The one you just threw out of your house, in fact.”
The blue eyes focused some more. “You held up Lucien de Montforte’s coach?”
“Aye. I believe I did.”
Lord Brookhampton just stared at him, one brow raised. He made a little noise of amused disbelief, as it if were inconceivable that anyone, ever, would dare to hold up Lucien de Montforte’s coach.
“And how were you injured? You look quite healthy to me.”
“My horse reared up and fell over backwards on me. In fact, that’s her outside. Given the weather, I’d ask if I can settle her in your stables until I can be on my way in the morning.”
“So you’re a highwayman.”
“By necessity I can assure you, not by choice or trade.”
“That tends to be the excuse of them all, is it not?”
Noel was aware of Lady Katharine still quietly watching him. He could feel her blue eyes taking in his face, the curl of his hair, the span of his shoulders and probably the little scar on the underside of his jaw where he’d cut himself shaving before he left the inn in Ravenscombe hours before. And Lord Brookhampton was scrutinizing him too, but with suspicion mixed with a weary resignation—as though he felt he needed to know, was obligated to plumb this odd situation until he found its bottom but that really, he did not care.
Damaged, indeed.
“Let me present you with a picture, Lord Brookhampton. A picture of a man in possession of a captain’s commission, finding himself far away from his native Ireland in a place called New York, wearing the king’s red coat and leading troops against the rebels. A picture of a man who was the second son of a gentrified family, who received a letter saying his eldest brother had succumbed to the galloping consumption and that he was now the heir. A picture of a man who sold his commission in the army and went back home to take up his duties as lord of the manor, duties which he performed quite successfully until a stranger arrived a few weeks later claiming to be the real heir through some half-brother he’d never heard of. An English one, of course, which changes everything.”
Both Brookhampton and his beautiful, enchanting sister were staring at him.
