Page 82 of All I Want for Christmas… Is You
She reached out and caught his arm. Her touch sent a sudden jolt through him and he thought again of her bed, and her lying in it, and how much he craved being an intimate part of such a scene.
“There’s no need for you to be so gallant, Mr. O’ Flaherty, especially in response to my own stubbornness. Here.” She took off the coat and offered it back to him. “Take your coat. I’ll go to the kitchens and find something hot for you to drink when you come back in. And if you don’t return within ten minutes, then I’ll come looking for you. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough.”
He went out into the night, the open door admitting a blast of wind and sleet, snow and damp and dead leaves, all of which swept into the foyer and swirled in a brief dance of mad abandon before he pulled the door shut behind him and was gone.
Katharine stood there for a moment. Then she hurried to the window and watched him move through the snow, a tall, resolute form whose horse instantly recognized him and lifted its head, whinnying. Something moved heavily in Katharine’s heart. Sympathy for his plight. Curiosity. Fascination. Longing. Her mind went back to her dream, visited it for a while, then invited in other cameos of thought. The baby Jesus and his family, spending the first Christmas Eve in a stable because there was no room at the inn. Noel O’ Flaherty, here on another Christmas Eve far removed from the original, finding shelter beneath their roof because he’d been driven from his home. Salvation ... it came in the form of tiny babies from poor families and would-be highwaymen with Irish accents, didn’t it? God worked in mysterious ways. Unexpected, unpredictable, unbelievable ways. Charity and love, kindness and forgiveness, holiness and mystery and things that weren’t mere coincidence, and the real meaning of the word,birth.
Because birth wasn’t about the appearance of a new soul, but something else.
It was about hope.
Was there a reason that a man named Noel, a man whose name in Gaelic meant Christmas, had come to her on this most holy of nights?
Was there a reason that he had found the cracked, cold and broken places inside her soul and filled them with warmth and permission to forgive herself for the things she had done in the past, the envy and despair that had polluted her actions and turned others away from her?
Was there a reason why, and how, he seemed to understand so much?
Verily I say unto you...
No, he was not the Lord Jesus.
But maybe, just maybe, the good Lord had sent him, this man named Noel, on a dark and wintry Christmas Eve to a woman who had lost all hope of finding either redemption or love.
CHAPTER9
And so Lucien de Montforte rode back through the snowy night, across dark, lonely pastures and through a stand of wood until the lights of Blackheath Castle called him in from the darkness.
Perry, the earl of Brookhampton, staggered back to his bed and into the thick, bottomless sleep of nightmares and nothingness with no further thought for either their strange visitor or his sister.
And Lady Katharine Farnsley found her reticule and as much pin money as she could scrabble together, went to the kitchen and with some effort, figured out how to get boiling water from a kettle to a teapot without burning herself. She was standing there watching it steep when Mr. O’ Flaherty returned.
He smiled at her and took off his hat. Firelight caught his dark hair, threw shadows beneath his cheekbones. He smelled like leather, horses, cold wind and winter.
“I’m making tea,” she said, gesturing to the little table near the fire atop which she’d set the teapot. The table was scuffed and scarred and beaten to a smooth patina, much like Katharine herself had felt up until a few hours before. One of its wooden legs was shredded, and she realized that Cook’s cat probably used it as a scratching post. Did Cook even have a name? Of course she must. And she would make an effort to learn it.
“Tea sounds divine.”
“Divine?”
They both laughed, and something unspoken passed between them. Katharine felt her face growing warm at his nearness. “I’m not sure how ...divineit will be. I have no idea where cream and sugar are kept. I’m sorry....”
“It will be perfect.” He took off his coat and hung it on a peg. “After all, it’s the warmth which matters ... not the cream and sugar.”
She realized that such a statement was true of life, as well.
Mr. O’ Flaherty pulled out a chair for her.
Or was he Lord Dunmore?
Did it matter?
“So you are of noble birth, then,” she said.
“Humble birth. Briefly elevated and cast back down yet again. But it’s not so bad, really. I could have been shot by your neighbor tonight. I could be dead. Instead, here I am in a warm house with a beautiful woman who thought, for the briefest of moments, that I can walk on water, cure the sick and raise the dead.” He grinned, and again Katharine was struck by how strong and white his teeth were, how his mouth was made for smiling and yet his eyes were dark and warm, their depths such that she felt she could lose herself in them forever.
“Happy Christmas, Noel O’ Flaherty.”
