Her Christmas Earl Page 11

  “Are you hurt?” Kinvarra asked, casting a quick eye over him.

  “No, I thank you, sir.” The effete blond fellow turned back to the carriage. “Come, darling. Let me assist you.”

  A graceful black-gloved hand extended from inside and a cloaked woman emerged with more aplomb than Kinvarra would have believed possible in the circumstances. Indications were that neither traveler was injured, so he concentrated on the trapped horse. When he spoke soothingly to the terrified beast, it quieted to panting stillness, exhausted with thrashing. While Kinvarra checked its legs, murmuring calm assurances, the stranger helped the lady up to the roadside.

  The horse shook itself and with a few ungainly jumps, ascended the bank to trot along the road toward its partner. Neither animal seemed to suffer worse than fright, a miracle considering that the curricle was beyond repair.

  “Madam, are you injured?” Kinvarra asked as he climbed the ditch. He stuck his riding crop under his arm and brushed his gloved hands together to knock the clinging snow from them. It was a hellishly cold night. Christmas tomorrow would be a chilly affair. But then of course his Christmases had been chilly for years, no matter the weather.

  The woman kept her head down. With shock? With shyness? For the sake of propriety? Perhaps he’d stumbled on some elopement or clandestine meeting.

  “Madam?” he asked again, more sharply. Whatever her fear of scandal, he needed to know if she required medical assistance.

  “Sweeting?” The yellow-haired fop bent to peer into the shadows cast by her hood. “Are you sure you’re unharmed? Speak, my dove. Your silence troubles my soul.”

  While Kinvarra digested the man’s outlandish phrasing, the woman stiffened and drew away. “For heaven’s sake, Harold, you’re not giving a recitation at a musicale.” With an impatient gesture, she flung back her hood and glared straight at Kinvarra.

  Even though he’d identified her the moment she spoke, he found himself staring dumbstruck into her face. A piquant, vivid, pointed face under an untidy tumble of luxuriant gold hair.

  Furious and incredulous, he wheeled on the milksop. “What the devil are you doing with my wife?”

  Alicia, Countess of Kinvarra, was bruised, angry, uncomfortable, and agonizingly embarrassed. Not to mention suffering the aftereffects of her choking terror when the toppling carriage had tossed her around like a pebble in a torrent.

  Even so, her heart lurched into the wayward dance it always performed at the merest sight of Sebastian.

  She’d been married for eleven miserable years. Their short interval living as man and wife had been wretched. She disliked her husband more than any other man in the world. But nothing prevented her gaze from clinging to every line of that narrow, intense face with its high cheekbones, long, arrogant nose and sharply angled jaw. He looked older than the last time she’d seen him, more cynical if that was possible. But still handsome, still compelling, still vital in a way nobody else she knew could match.

  Damn him to Hades, he remained the most magnificent creature she’d ever seen.

  Such a pity his soul was as black as his glittering eyes.

  “After all this time, I’m flattered you recognize me, my lord,” she said silkily.

  “Lord Kinvarra, this is a surprise,” Harold stammered, faltering back as if anticipating violence. “You must wonder why I accompany the lady—”

  Oh, Harold, act the man, even if the hero is beyond your reach. You’re safe. Kinvarra doesn’t care enough about me to kill you.

  Although even the most indifferent husband took it ill when his wife chose a lover. And Kinvarra had always suffered an overabundance of pride. There wasn’t the slightest hope that he’d mistake Alicia’s reasons for traveling on this isolated road in the middle of the night. She stifled a rogue pang of guilt.

  Curse Kinvarra, she had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.

  “I’ve recalled your existence every quarter these past ten years, my love,” her husband said equally smoothly, ignoring Harold’s dismayed interjection. Although the faint trace of Scottish brogue in Kinvarra’s deep voice indicated that he reined in his temper. His breath formed white clouds on the frigid air. “I’m perforce reminded when I pay your allowance. A substantial investment upon which I receive woefully little return.”

  “It warms the cockles of my heart to know that I linger in your thoughts,” she sniped. She refused to cower like a wet hen before his banked anger. He sounded reasonable, calm, controlled, but she had no trouble reading the tension in his broad shoulders or in the way his powerful hands opened and closed at his sides as if he’d dearly like to hit something.

  “In faith, my lady, you speak false. Creatures of ice have no use for a heart.” A faint, malicious smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Should I warn this paltry fellow that he risks frostbite in your company?”

  She steeled herself against Kinvarra’s taunting. He couldn’t hurt her now. He hadn’t been able to hurt her since she’d left him. Any twinge was merely the result of temporary shakiness after the accident. That was all. It couldn’t be because this man retained the power to stick needles into her feelings.

  “My lord, egad, I protest.” Fortunately, shock made Harold sound less like a frightened sheep. “The lady is your wife. Surely she merits your chivalry at the very least.”

  Harold had never seen her in her husband’s company, and some reluctant and completely misplaced loyalty to Kinvarra meant she hadn’t explained why the Sinclairs lived apart. The accepted fiction was that the earl and his countess were polite strangers who by mutual design rarely met.

  Poor Harold, he was about to discover the nasty truth that the earl and his countess loathed each other.

  “Like hell she does,” Kinvarra muttered, casting her an incendiary glance under long dark eyelashes.

  Alicia was human enough to wish the bright moonlight didn’t reveal quite so much of her husband’s seething rage. But the fate that proved capricious enough to fling them together tonight of all nights wasn’t likely to heed her pleas.

  “Do you intend to present your cicisbeo?” Kinvarra’s voice remained quiet. She’d long ago learned that was when he was most lethal.

  Dear God, did he plan to shoot Harold after all?

  Her hands clenched in her skirts as fear tightened her throat. Lacerating as Kinvarra’s tongue could be, he’d never shown her a moment’s violence. But did that extend to the man she planned to take into her bed? Kinvarra was a crack shot and a famous swordsman. If it came to a duel, Harold wouldn’t stand a chance.

  “My lord, I protest the description,” Harold bleated, sidling further away. He’d clearly also heard the unspoken threat in Kinvarra’s question.

  Oh, for pity’s sake. Was it too much to wish that her suitor would stand up to the scoundrel she’d married as a silly chit of seventeen? Alicia drew a deep breath of freezing air and reminded herself that she favored Lord Harold Fenton precisely because he wasn’t an overbearing brute like her husband. Harold was a scholar and a poet, a man of the mind. She should consider it a mark of Harold’s superior intelligence that he was wary of Kinvarra.

  But her insistence didn’t convince her traitorous heart.

  How she wished she really was the callous witch Kinvarra called her. Then she’d be immune both to his insults and to this insidious attraction that she’d never conquered, no matter how she tried.

  “My lady?” Kinvarra asked, still in that even voice that struck a chill into her soul sharper than the winter wind. “Who is this…gentleman?”

  She stiffened her backbone and leveled her shoulders. She was made of stronger stuff than this. Never would she let her husband guess that he still had power over her. Her response was steady. “Lord Kinvarra, allow me to present Lord Harold Fenton.”

  Harold performed an uncertain bow without stepping any nearer. “My lord.”

  As he straightened, tense silence descended. Alicia shifted to try and warm up her icy feet, fulminating against the bad
luck that threw her in Kinvarra’s way tonight.

  “Well, this is awkward,” Kinvarra said flatly, although she saw in his taut, dark face that his anger hadn’t abated one whit.

  “I don’t see why,” Alicia snapped.

  It wasn’t just her husband who tried her patience. There was her lily-livered lover and the perishing cold. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees in the last five minutes. She shivered, then silently cursed that Kinvarra noticed and Harold didn’t. Harold was too busy staring at her husband the way a mouse stared at an adder.

  “Do you imagine I’m so sophisticated that I’ll ignore discovering you in the arms of another man? My dear, you do me too much credit.”

  She stifled the urge to consign Kinvarra to perdition. Just as she stifled the poignant memory that once he’d called her his dear and his love and he’d meant it. Once, briefly, long ago. “If you’ll set aside your bruised vanity for the moment, you’ll understand that we merely require you to ride to the nearest habitation and request help. Then you and I can return to acting like mere acquaintances, my lord.”

  He laughed and she struggled to suppress the sensual awareness that rippled down her spine at that soft, deep sound. “Some things haven’t changed, I see. You’re still dishing out orders. And I’m still damned if I’ll play your lapdog.”

  “Can you see another solution?” she asked sweetly.

  “Yes,” he said with a snap of his straight white teeth. “I can leave you to freeze. Not that you’d notice. Your blood has always been colder than Satan’s icehouse.”

  Her pride insisted that she send him on his way with a flea in his ear. The weather—and what common sense remained under the urge to wound that always flared in Kinvarra’s vicinity—prompted her to sound more conciliatory.

  It was late. She and Harold hadn’t passed anyone on this country road. Bleak, snowy moors extended for miles around them. The grim truth was that if Kinvarra didn’t help, they were stranded until morning. And while she was dressed in good thick wool, she wasn’t prepared to endure a night in the open. The chill of the ground seeped through her fur-lined boots and she shifted again, trying to revive feeling in her frozen feet.

  “My lord…” During the year they’d lived together, she’d called him Sebastian. During their few meetings since, she’d clung to formality to keep him at a distance. “My lord, there’s no point in quarreling. Basic charity compels your assistance. I would consider myself in your debt if you fetch aid as quickly as possible.”

  He arched one black eyebrow in an imperious fashion that made her want to clout him. Not a new sensation. “Now that’s something I’d like to see.”

  “What?”

  “Gratitude.”

  He knew he had her at a disadvantage and he wasn’t likely to rise above that fact. She ground her teeth and battled to retain her manners. “It’s all I can offer.”

  The smile that curved his lips was pure devilry. A shiver with no connection to the cold ran through her.

  “Your imagination fails you, my dear countess.”

  Her throat closed with nerves—and that reluctant physical reaction she couldn’t ignore. He hadn’t shifted, yet suddenly she felt threatened. Which was ludicrous. During all their years apart, he’d given no indication he wanted anything from her except her absence. One chance meeting wasn’t likely to turn him into a robber baron ready to spirit her away to his lonely tower where he could have his way with her.

  Having his way with her was the last thing Kinvarra wanted, as she was humiliatingly aware.

  Nonetheless, she had to fight the urge to retreat. She knew from dispiriting experience that her only chance of handling Kinvarra was to feign control. “What do you want?”

  This time he did lean closer, until his great height overshadowed her. Close enough for her to think that if she stretched out one hand, she’d touch that powerful chest, those wide shoulders. “I want—”

  There was a piercing whinny and a sudden pounding of hooves on the snow. Appalled, disbelieving, Alicia turned to see Harold galloping off on one of the carriage horses, legs flailing as he struggled for purchase without stirrups.

  “Harold?”

  Her voice faded to nothing in the night. Her beau didn’t slow down. In fact, he kicked his mount’s sides to encourage greater speed. She’d been so engrossed in her battle with Kinvarra, she hadn’t even noticed that Harold had caught one of the stray horses.

  Kinvarra’s low laugh mocked her. “Oh, my dear. Commiserations. Your swain proves a sad disappointment. I wonder if he’s fleeing my temper or yours. You really have no luck in love, have you?”

  She was too astonished to be upset at Harold’s departure. Instead she focused on Kinvarra. Her voice turned hard. “No luck in husbands, at any rate.”

  Kinvarra suffered Alicia’s hate-filled regard and wondered what the hell he was going to do with his troublesome wife out in this frigid wilderness. The insolent baggage deserved to be left where she stood, but even he, who owed her repayment for countless slights over the years, wouldn’t do that to her.

  It seemed he had no choice but to help.

  Not that she’d thank him. He had no illusions that after she’d got what she wanted—a warm bed, a roof over her head and a decent meal—she’d forget any promises of gratitude.

  In spite of the punishing cold, heat flooded him as he briefly let himself imagine Alicia’s gratitude. She’d shed that heavy red cloak. She’d let down that mass of gold hair until it tumbled around her shoulders. Then she’d kiss him as if she didn’t hate him and she’d—

  From long habit, he stopped before the flaring images became too interesting. A thousand fantasies had sustained him the first year of their separation, but he’d learned for sanity’s sake to control them since. Now they only troubled him after his rare meetings with his wife.

  This was the longest time he and Alicia had spent together in years. It should remind him why he eschewed her company. Instead, it reminded him that she was the only woman who had ever challenged him, the only woman who had ever matched him in strength, the only woman he couldn’t forget, desperately as he’d tried.

  He smiled into her sulky, beautiful face. “Poor Alicia. It seems you’re stuck with me.”

  How that must smart. The long ride to his Yorkshire manor on this desolate night suddenly offered a myriad of pleasures, not least of which was the chance to knock a few chips off his wife’s monumental pride.

  She didn’t respond to his comment. Instead with an unreadable expression, she stared after her absconding lover. “We’re only about five miles from Harold’s hunting lodge.”

  The wench didn’t even try to lie about the assignation, blast her impudence. “If he manages to stay on that horse, Horace should make it.” Fenton showed no great skill as a bareback rider. Even as Kinvarra recognized the wish as unworthy, he hoped the blackguard ended up on his rump in a muddy hedgerow.

  “Harold,” she said absently, drawing her cloak tight around her slender throat. “You could take me there.”

  This time his laughter was unconstrained. She’d always had nerve, his wife, even when she’d been little more than an untried girl. “Be damned if you think I’m carting you off to cuckold me in comfort, madam.”

  She sent him a cool look. “I’m thinking purely in terms of shelter, my lord.”

  “I’m sure,” he said cynically.

  Still, in spite of his jaded view of the world and its inhabitants, he couldn’t completely stifle his rankling surprise that Alicia had at last chosen a lover. In spite of their lack of communication, he’d always known what she was up to. Since leaving him, she’d been remarkably chaste, which was one of the reasons he’d allowed the ridiculous separation to continue. Clearly living with him for a year had left her with no taste for bed sport. A bitter acknowledgement for a man to make, by God.

  Recent gossip had mentioned Lord Harold Fenton as a persistent suitor, but Kinvarra thought he knew enough of his wife to consider th
e second son of the Marquess of Granville poor competition. Bugger it, he should have listened to the gossip.

  By all that was holy, her taste had deteriorated since she’d abandoned her marriage. The man was a complete nonentity.

  Perhaps one day she’d thank her husband for saving her from a disastrous mistake.

  And the bleak and stony moor around them might suddenly sprout coconut palms.

  “No, my love, your fate is sealed.” He slapped his riding crop against his boot and tilted his hat more securely on his head with an arrogant gesture designed to irritate her. “Horatio travels north. I travel south. Unless you intend to ride the other carriage horse or pursue the clodpole on foot, your direction is mine.”

  “Does that mean you will help me?” This time, she didn’t bother correcting his deliberate misremembering of her suitor’s name.

  She was lucky he didn’t call the toad Habakkuk and skewer his kidneys with a rapier. Alicia was his. Kinvarra had known that from the first moment he saw her, slender, unsure, but full of a wild vitality that still beckoned him, whatever else divided them. No other damned rapscallion was going to steal her away. Especially a rapscallion who lacked the spine to fight for her.

  Kinvarra strode across to his bay mare and snatched up the reins. “If you ask nicely.”

  To his surprise, Alicia laughed. “Devil take you, Kinvarra.”

  He swung into the saddle and urged the horse nearer to his wife. “Indubitably, my dear.”

  Her suddenly cavalier attitude made it easier to deal with her, but it puzzled him. Her lover’s desertion hadn’t cast her down. If she didn’t care for the fellow, why in Hades accept his advances? Yet again, Kinvarra realized how far he remained from understanding the complicated creature he’d wed with such high hopes eleven years ago.

  He extended one leather-gloved hand and noted her hesitation before she accepted his assistance. It was the first time he’d touched her since she’d left him and even through two layers of leather, he felt the burning shock of contact. She stiffened as though she too felt that unwelcome surge of response.