The Highlander's Christmas Countess (The Lairds Most Likely 8)

But Quentin MacNab? Now there was a fine figure of a man.

Tall and lean and with a mass of untidy honey-brown hair. More, he was always ready with a laugh and an encouraging word, and she noticed how good he was with the children and the servants and the horses. All of that spoke to a good heart. He was clever, too, but not enough to overawe her. A contented man, easy in his rangy, elegant body. A man who looked at advantage on a horse or striding across the wild hills around Glen Lyon.

Kit already had more problems than she could count. She shouldn’t waste her time mooning over the laird’s nephew. But she couldn’t help it. He seemed such a perfect example of his sex.

After yesterday, she knew he had hazel eyes, a fascinating mixture of green and gold. Until the sledding accident, she hadn’t ventured close enough to discover that. When those eyes had stared directly at her, they’d set her heart racing with very un-servant-like excitement.

But Mr. MacNab had seen too much yesterday, and wisdom dictated that if she wished to preserve her disguise, she should stay out of his way. Every instinct insisted that she could trust him, but for the moment, it was safer to maintain the illusion that she was Kit Laing, stableboy extraordinaire.

Which made it irritating in the extreme that so far today, Mr. MacNab had dogged her footsteps. Andy and William had followed her about since she’d arrived. She now discovered the completely different effect of a six-foot-tall man doing the same thing.

“Kit, will you carry me?” Andy whined from behind her. For once, William wasn’t trailing Kit. Instead, he was over with the grooms, making a mess of stacking some pine cones. “I’m tired.”

Now Kit hid a groan and summoned a smile for the little girl. Kit was stiff from yesterday’s mishap with the sled. Today, hauling the laird’s daughter about was too much to ask.

“I willnae carry you, Miss Andy. I’ll give ye a ride on the handcart. That will be fun.”

“It would be more fun if you carry me.” A mutinous expression settled on the fairylike face as happy laughter and shouting echoed from the woods around them.

Miss Andromeda Douglas promised to grow up to become a hoyden, Kit thought, and liked her the better for it. She only wished that she’d managed to find her own spirit earlier. It might have changed the way things had played out.

Or perhaps not.

“What is it, Kit?” Mr. MacNab asked from a few feet away. Despite her best efforts, she hadn’t been able to shake him. “Are you still sore from yesterday?”

She plastered a smile on her face, and cursed those penetrating hazel eyes, however much they might make her traitorous heart skip. “No, sir. But thank ye for asking.”

“I’ll take Miss Andy back to her mother,” Laing said, picking up the little girl, despite her grumbling. “She’s getting troublesome.”

“No…” Kit started to say, because Laing’s departure would leave her alone with Mr. MacNab. And while a reckless part of her might consider that the definition of bliss, native caution warned her to avoid him.

Mr. MacNab was surveying the handcart, with its poor array of holly and pine. “You go ahead, Laing. Kit and I will fill the cart and follow once we’re done.”

Laing bowed his head. “Aye, sir. There are usually better pickings down in the next glen.”

Kit tried to find some assurance in the fact that her stalwart protector saw no danger in sending her off with Quentin MacNab. But then Laing hadn’t caught Mr. MacNab’s arrested expression when he brushed the snow off her yesterday.

A fuss now would only draw undue attention. So she tugged down the ugly woolen hat she wore as part of her disguise and ducked her head. With reluctant steps, she followed Mr. MacNab deeper into the trees, praying that they came across the world’s biggest holly bush within the next few yards. If they filled the cart, they could turn for home and she could disappear into the stables safely away from him.

She told herself that she let her nerves get the better of her. He hadn’t said a word to indicate that he thought her anything but a servant and so far, her disguise had fooled everyone at Glen Lyon. She was just edgy around Mr. MacNab because she’d developed a foolish tendre for him. When he looked at her, he’d only see a skinny lad.

He took the cart’s handle and pulled it behind him across the snow. Because Kit was in a fret, they’d gone a quarter of a mile before she recognized how inappropriate it was for the laird’s nephew to do the heavy work.

“Let me take the cart, sir.” She added a rough edge to her voice in an attempt to sound more masculine.

“No, I’m fine.” He walked well ahead of her. Those long horseman’s legs ate up the yards in a way that she couldn?

??t match. “You must be suffering after yesterday.”

“A few bruises, that’s all. I’m well capable of hauling a half-empty cart.”

“Still, better not.”

She wanted to argue, but a stable lad didn’t defy the laird’s nephew.

When Mr. MacNab next spoke, they were descending a snowy path to the next glen. “How long have you been at Glen Lyon now, Kit?”

It was an innocent enough question, but every hair on her skin bristled in alarm. “A month, sir.”