The Highlander's Christmas Countess (The Lairds Most Likely #8) - Anna Campbell Page 0,11
a huff of wry laughter. “No, don’t go all prickly on me again. I can’t help noticing what a bonny girl you are. Nonetheless I can restrain my masculine impulses.”
He didn’t push for the rest of her name. Not yet.
After a bristling pause, she went on. “To Mamma’s dismay, I was more interested in horses than books, so Kit was the name that stuck.”
“You’re very good with the horses.” He kept his voice neutral.
“Horses don’t lie, and there’s no spite in them.”
Something cold hardened her expression, made her look momentarily older. Most stable lads were twelve or thirteen. Quentin had assumed Kit might be sixteen or seventeen, perhaps eighteen. Now he looked more closely, he saw signs of maturity that he’d missed. “How old are you?”
“Twenty, nearly twenty-one.”
Not much younger than his twenty-four. “Your parents are still alive?”
If they were, what did they make of their daughter’s disappearance? When she spoke of them, he’d heard affection in her voice. Surely they weren’t the people who had made her scared enough to embark on this mad escapade. The moment he recognized how afraid she was, he’d discounted the slim chance that she played some prank. Whatever the reasons for her disguise, they stemmed from no idle whim.
Sadness shadowed her large eyes. By God, he’d heard sentimental nonsense about the eyes being windows to the soul, but in Kit’s case, it really was true. “Mamma died when I was ten. Papa died two years ago.”
Quentin frowned. “So you told me the truth about that?”
“Aye, sir.” The answer was a touching reminder of the shy stableboy.
“So the stepbrother exists, too?”
“Aye, sir.” The edge to her voice had the hairs prickling on the back of Quentin’s neck, and he suddenly felt sick. Had the bastard attacked this beautiful girl, once he had her in his charge?
Her eyes sharpened on Quentin. “No, he didn’t assault me.”
Quentin sucked in a relieved breath. He abhorred anyone who hurt those smaller and weaker than themselves, but something more powerful than principle revolted at the idea of Kit suffering such horrors. “But he’s the man you’re hiding from.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Aye.”
“Why?”
She was back to watching him as if she expected him to eat her alive. “I’ve told you enough.”
He had no right to push her. Beyond the right of someone who felt a burning need to protect her. Quite how burning was rather a surprise, although he’d always been a lad with a powerful sense of justice.
Right now, he’d like to take a horsewhip to Kit’s stepbrother. Even though Quentin was yet to learn what the bastard had done. It was enough that he’d frightened this gallant girl and placed that haunted look in her eyes.
“Who else knows Kit the stableboy is really Christabel the runaway lady?”
“Mr. Laing, obviously.”
Quentin noted that she didn’t deny his description of her as a lady.
“He’s not your uncle?” But he’d already guessed that.
“No. He was my father’s head groom.”
More evidence, should he need it, that Kit came from society’s upper echelons. Humble crofters didn’t have head grooms.
“He’s a good man.”
“Aye, that he is.” For the first time since Quentin had started this interrogation, he caught a hint of a smile on her face. “He put me on my first pony, not long after I could walk. While I was growing up, nobody could keep me out of the stables. Joseph was always kind to me.”
“So a natural choice when you needed help?”
She frowned. “I told you I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
He rose and threw some more peat on the fire. “You may as well tell me everything, Kit. We could be stuck here for days on end, and we’ll need to talk about something.”
He was sorry he’d been so flippant, when she lurched to her feet and regarded him in dismay. “Days on end? Surely not.”
“Sit down,” he said wearily. “I told you you’re safe.”
She regarded him for an uncertain moment before subsiding back onto the stool. “We don’t have anything to eat.”
He smiled with what he hoped was reassuring confidence. “Let’s worry about that if it turns into a problem. At least there’s plenty of peat so we won’t freeze.”
“If you hadn’t found this hut, we could have died out there,” she said, her expression somber.
“Don’t think about that.”
“Lucky you remembered this place.”
“I love Glen Lyon and I know it well. The Douglas family is a close one. There are frequent visits in both directions between Hamish and his sisters’ families. I’m his sister Prudence’s oldest son. My father’s