Page 9 of All I Want for Christmas… Is You
“I don’t think so,” she laughed over the sound of her belt buckling.
“Do you presume to tell me I don’t know my own name?” he asked crossly.
“Not at all, but I’ve been introduced to Johnathan de Lohr, Earl of Worchester at the Countess of Bainbridge’s ball a few years past, and have it on good authority that he’s very much alive. Also, the de Lohrs lost the Hereford title sometime in the eighteenth century.”
He frowned, bloody irked by the entire business. “And how would you know that?”
Her rueful sound vibrated through the dimness. “My mother always wanted me to marry a peer, so I’ve studiedBurke’smore than the Bible, the encyclopedia, and most literature combined. More’s the pity. I find it tedious in the extreme.”
Hope leapt into his chest. News of his kinsmen never traveled to this place, and he always wondered about the fate of his family. “Tell me about him? About the Earl.”
“Well…” She drew the word out as if it helped her retrieve a memory. “He’s attractive but not in that charming, handsome way of most gentlemen. More like brutally well-built. Tall and wide, golden haired like a lion. His hand was warm and strong when we were introduced. And his eyes…his eyes were…” She drifted off, though the little sounds of friction and fabric told him she still dressed herself.
“Blue?” he prompted after the silence had become untenable. De Lohr eyes were almost invariably blue.
“Yes. But I was going to say empty.”
“Empty?” he echoed.
She made a melancholy little sound. “He stared at me for a long time, and I could sense no light behind the eyes. They were cold and hollow as a hellmouth, I’m afraid.” She seemed to shake herself, her voice losing the dreamy huskiness and regaining some of the crisp starch his countrywomen were famous for. “But worry not, he’s possessed of an impeccable reputation and an obscene fortune, so you should be proud of your legacy, all things considered… When were you the Earl, my lord?”
“Please, call me John,” he requested. “I’ve technically no title now; I died during the Jacobite rebellion of seventeen forty-five. My brother, James, became the Earl after I perished at the battle of Culloden.”
“You had no heir?”
A bleak and familiar ache opened in his chest. A void that existed whenever he thought of the life he didn’t have the chance to live. “I had no wife.”
She made that noise again, one that made him wonder what she was thinking. That made him want to turn around to search her beautiful face. Her remarkability was evidenced in the description she’d made of his kinsman. Most people, when asked, would recount reputation and accomplishments, not impressions of one’s soul behind their eyes. Miss Vanessa Latimer observed the world in a different way than most.
“It remains strange to me,” she was saying, “that you are here. Culloden is miles and miles away.”
“Yes. Well. I’ve gathered from listening to locals that we English won. That Scotland is firmly beneath the rule of King and Crown.”
“Queen,” she corrected. “Queen Victoria.”
“Still?” he marveled. “Surely she’s dead by now.”
“She’s ruled for fifty-three years. Though, while we’re on the subject, I don’t know many Scotsmen who would deign to call themselves British, though we are technically united under one sovereign. It’s no longer a blood-soaked subject, but it’s still a complicated one, even after all this time.”
Of that, he had no doubt. “I always respected the Scots. I fought because it was my obligation. I was no great supporter of the Stewarts or the bloody King. The de Lohrs prosper regardless of what idiot ass sits on the throne, but we do our duty by our birthright, and sometimes that means going to war.”
“Why, then, do you think you’re stuck here haunting a small village inn some seventy miles from Culloden?”
He shrugged. “It’s been a mystery I’ve been grinding on for one hundred and fifty years.”
“Maybe I could help you,” she offered, her voice bright with optimism.
“How could you possibly?”
“I’m stuck here too now, aren’t I? At least until the storm blows over, and I love a good mystery. You’re obviously not going anywhere, so why not?” She emitted a short sigh one might after completing a task. “There. You can turn back around.”
The first thing he noticed when he did was that her damp undergarments were pinned to the fireplace mantle, drying in the heat.
Which meant beneath her clothing she wore… nothing but her corset. Somehow that knowledge was just as arousing as the idea of her completely naked.
Well. Almost.
He locked his jaw, glaring at her strange garments as if he could see through them. As if he’d never seen them before. The skirts of this decade were odd but ultimately flattering, spread tight and flat over the hips and flaring like a tulip toward her knees. A wide belt with an ornate buckle accentuated her impossibly small waist, and the bodice was made of some fabric other than silk. Something lighter that bloused out at the shoulders and bust.
