My First Noel Page 5

  Except Nollaig O’ Flaherty wasn’t tucked in her bed. He was standing at the top of her stairs, tall, formidable and commanding. He was wearing the same muddy, bedraggled wet clothes in which he’d arrived, a pistol in his hand and a look in his eye that most certainly didn’t mirror the loving, gentle kindness with which she’d associated his supposed alter-identity not a half hour before.

  The two men locked eyes.

  “Are you bothering the lady?” Mr. O’ Flaherty asked in a still, challenging tone.

  Lucien de Montforte’s lips curved in the tiniest of smiles, like a predator sizing up his prey before making the attack. “I would ask the same of you.”

  “What right do you have to come into Lady Katharine’s house and upset her?”

  “Again,” Lucien de Montforte said with menace, “I would ask the same of you.”

  “I was invited. Whereas you, sir, were not.” Mr. O’ Flaherty began to come down the stairs, the pistol looking very deadly in what Katharine assumed was his very capable hand. “And since you were not, and the lady has already asked you to leave, I suggest you do so.”

  “And if I do not?”

  “Then I shall be forced to ensure that you do.”

  Katharine found her tongue. “That will be enough, both of you. Mr. O’ Flaherty sought refuge here, Blackheath, and I gave it to him. It is no business of yours why he’s hurt or why he’s here, and I’m asking you to leave.”

  “Ah, but it is my business,” the duke murmured, studying the way Mr. O’ Flaherty was moving down the stairs and noting, surely, the tautness around his mouth, the pallor of his skin, the pained way he moved despite his attempts to hide it. “This brigand held up my coach and attempted to rob me. Do you really wish to give refuge to a criminal?”

  “It’s Christmas,” she shot back. “I would give refuge to anyone who asked it!”

  One of Blackheath’s aristocratic brows rose in disbelief. “You?”

  Mr. O’ Flaherty had reached the bottom of the stairs and was now moving purposefully across the foyer. Blackheath’s miniscule smile was spreading in anticipation. In another moment there was going to be bloodshed.

  “Yes, her,” Mr. O’ Flaherty said, moving ever closer. “Unless my ears fail me, you’ve just insulted the lady in her own house.”

  Blackheath said nothing, just tilted his head in an amused and calculating way, and Katharine wondered what he was enjoying more: the idea of doing bodily harm to Mr. O’ Flaherty or this exchange itself.

  And then, suddenly, Mr. O’ Flaherty was there beside her, dwarfing her with his height and bristling with male power and affront, and for the first time in her life, Katharine got a taste of what it felt like to have a strong, virile male come to her defense, to stand guard over her honor, to be there for her and her alone.

  And in that moment, she also felt something else for the first time in her life.

  What it felt like to fall just a little bit in love.

  Mr. O’ Flaherty was raising his pistol. Lucien de Montforte hadn’t moved a muscle. And in that moment of slow-moving, frozen certainty that someone was going to get hurt, and very badly at that, Perry’s voice thundered from the top of the stairway.

  “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.

  Chapter 8

  “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 (that had 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.

  “Picture coming to London to appeal what can only be described as theft, only to have the entire lot of them turn against you, beat you senseless for daring to rise above your Irish station, throw you out on the street with nothing to your name but the clothes on your back.” Noel looked at the earl. “And then tell me what you would do to survive while you figured out what you were going to do to make things right.”

  “I see,” said Brookhampton, rubbing at his eyes.

  Lady Katharine found her voice. “I think, Perry, that you and I should both go to London and make an appeal on behalf of Mr. O’ Flaherty. They might not listen to him, but they’ll certainly listen to you.” She eyed him ruefully. “That is, if you can manage to leave off the drink for a few hours.”

  Brookhampton looked dubious; whether it was from doubt that he could reunite Noel with his lost inheritance or that he could abandon the bottle for the time it would take to present his case, Noel didn’t know.

  “I will see what I can do. The fact that you scored a hit against Blackheath wins some favor with me, but this is all highly irregular and too much for my head to absorb. I’ll be able to consider the matter further in the morning. In the meantime, I’m going back to bed. Good night.”

  Noel bowed, conveyed his gratitude, and watched this broken man turn and trudge wearily up the long stairs; to watch him it seemed more that he was scaling the world’s highest mountain than the stairway of his own home. Good people, these Farnsleys. The best ones he’d met yet, in England. Things weren’t going so badly after all, even if his ribs hurt with every breath he took, his head ached and his bloodied back felt raw against his clothing. Maybe Brookhampton had friends in high places in London. Well, surely he did… He was an earl, after all.

  Yes, a most fortuitous night this was turning out to be.

  He was aware of Lady Katharine standing beside him and felt, as he so often could when others were quietly suffering, her pain and sorrow as she watched her brother disappear around the landing. A moment later a door thudded wearily upstairs and they were alone.

  “I’m surprised he let you stay,” she murmured. “And that he left us alone. How improper. He doesn’t even know you.”

  “Maybe the Christmas spirit has touched us all, tonight.”

  “The only spirits that have touched my brother are the ones in a bottle,” she said sadly. “He doesn’t care about anything anymore.”

  “He’s had much suffering in his life. I can feel it emanating from him.”

  “That is fair to say, and all of it, caused by the doings of Lucien de Montforte.” She turned to him. Her eyes were soft in the gloom. He could lose himself in their depths, could lose himself in her pink, pretty mouth, the lower lip of which was as full and plush as a ripened strawberry. He thought of kissing it. Thought of—

  “You really ought to be abed yourself, Mr. O’ Flaherty.”

  He shrugged, thinking about beds, and this woman’s bed, and this woman in that bed (preferably with him) and how that made such a warm and cozy thought on this cold and wintry night.

  Lady Katharine. In a bed. With him.

  No, nothing Christ-like about that now, was there?

  She must have sensed his thoughts; she looked down, caught her hands together, and glanced up at him through her lashes. He took a step closer to her. He saw her eyes widen and even in the darkness, the color suffusing her cheeks.

  He paused. She was a lady, not a strumpet. She had shown him kindness, and he wasn’t so coarse as to take advantage of that by seducing her.

  “Let me see to my horse first.” He stepped back and the moment, fragile as it was, was lost. He turned toward the door.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “’Tis nasty out there,” he said, and turned to find her following so close that she bumped into him and bounced back, her eyes widening with surprise. “You’ll catch your death of a cold.”

  “You’re hurt. You shouldn’t be all alone.”

  “I’m hurt, but not dying.”

  “I still think I should go with you.”

  “Don’t you have a reputation to protect?”

  “And who is here to notice?”

  He shrugged. “Very well, then.” He took off his coat, the heavy wool still damp but at least warmed by his own body, and draped it over her shoulders. A tendril of her soft golden hair brushed the back of his hand and his fingers lingered, taking longer to adjust the coat than needed. “But if you insist on accompanying me, at least come prepared.”

  “But then you’ll have nothing.”

  He moved toward the door. “I’ll survive.”

  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.

  Chapter 9

  And so Lucien de Montforte r
ode 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…divine it 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.