Her Christmas Earl

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.”