The Laird’s Christmas Kiss (The Lairds Most Likely 2)

She would embrace the fact that she was dull and drab. No longer would she eat her heart out for what she could never have. A new, free life started today, and may she be hauled through thistles in her nightie before she devoted another moment to yearning after handsome young men who wasted their best years in idleness and dissipation.

To prove she’d claimed the higher ground, the mature woman made a face and poked her tongue out at her uninspiring image.

***

Brody Girvan, Laird of Invermackie, was altogether a dashing fellow. Or at least that was what people told him.

But as he sauntered down from his bedroom at Achnasheen, crossed the medieval great hall with its decorations of holly and pine, and approached the breakfast room, he harboured the unwelcome suspicion that he wasn’t quite as dashing as he wanted people to think.

On his first night back in his cousin’s home, he’d stayed

up with Hamish and Diarmid, drinking far too much of Fergus’s excellent whisky. It was good seeing his friends, but he greeted the morning with a headache and the grim knowledge that he frittered away his life and youth on pleasures that began to pall.

For months, this feeling had been growing on him. At first, he’d given it the cut direct. After all, what else could any man want but plenty of reckless women to warm his bed and the freedom to pursue whatever vices beckoned?

But his lurking dissatisfaction hadn’t taken its dismissal in good spirit. It had pursued him, like bailiffs harrying a laddie who hadn’t paid his tailor’s bill. Over recent months, its clamor had risen to the point where ignoring it took more effort than anything else in his hedonistic, useless life.

Good God, was that really how he’d describe his gilded existence?

He refused to admit that it was. But last night and too many nights before that, he’d sat up late carousing with cronies, while wishing he’d gone to bed with a good book instead.

What a shameful admission for a rake to make.

There was no arguing that today he hadn’t slept until noon as was his habit, but instead was up at the unheard-of hour of eight. The devil knew why. Nobody else seemed eager to face the snowy morning. The castle was as quiet as the grave, and as was the norm in Scotland in December, outside it was howling a gale. In dreich weather like this, even a bloody parson could find an excuse to sleep late.

Grumpily Brody slouched into the breakfast room. He caught the smell of bacon and kippers and whatever the hell other instruments of torture his cousin Fergus had set out in the name of sustenance. His stomach rebelled. He swallowed sour bile and told himself that under no circumstances would he start his day by casting up his accounts.

Anyway, he placed the blame in the wrong quarter. He should credit the menu to that black-eyed, half-Italian witch Fergus had married a little over a year ago.

Except that wasn’t fair. Brody liked Marina, Fergus’s unconventional bride. Although he couldn’t help noting that his restlessness with a perfectly pleasant life dated from seeing his once self-sufficient cousin in thrall to a woman. And as happy as a Scotsman in a haggis factory.

Blast it, at this rate, Brody might start considering marriage, too.

At first, he thought the breakfast room was empty—which suited his curmudgeonly humor. Then he saw a girl watching him from the shadowy corner beside the buffet.

“This room is as dark as a deuced coalmine in Hades,” he growled, before he reminded himself that he was supposed to be a gentleman, with at least a distant acquaintance with manners.

“And good morning to you, too, Brody,” the girl said in a flat tone, carrying her plate across to the table. She chose a seat that offered her a view across the snowy lawns to the loch.

It was the Douglas chit, the youngest sister, the quiet one. The only brunette in a family of blazing, golden blonds.

“I’m sorry. I’ve got a devil of a head,” he said, before wondering if confiding the night’s excesses to a well-born virgin was quite the thing either.

“Then by all means, don’t feel you have to make conversation,” she said, with more of the faint sourness that had tinged her greeting.

Shocked, Brody paused on his way to the buffet, seeking not food but the coffee pot. The lassie spoke to him as if he didn’t deserve her attention. When he appeared, girls always brightened up and played with their hair and went all giggly and arch.

He frowned across at this wee brown wren. She looked anything but giggly or arch. In fact, she showed no pleasure in his company at all.

How bizarre.

The lassie began to eat her porridge with dogged dedication, as if he wasn’t there. Surprise thundered through him, stole his breath. Good Lord, she was ignoring him. Girls never ignored him.

He shouldn’t be piqued. But he was.

Feeling grumpier than ever, Brody prowled across to the coffee pot and raised it in her direction, wondering if he’d catch her observing him under her lashes. She wasn’t. Instead, she was staring out the French doors at the unencouraging weather. With Christmas only four days away, today promised snow all through the festive season.

“Would ye like some coffee?” he asked, to interrupt whatever profound, non-Brody-related thoughts she enjoyed.