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

“Thank you. Mamma loved poetry.”

“Coleridge?”

She looked startled. “You know it?”

“I do. It’s a strange and beautiful work. The name suits you.” He gave a huff of wry laughter. “No, don’t go all prickly on me again. I can’t help noticing what a bonny girl you are. Nonetheless I can restrain my masculine impulses.”

He didn’t push for the rest of her name. Not yet.

After a bristling pause, she went on. “To Mamma’s dismay, I was more interested in horses than books, so Kit was the name that stuck.”

“You’re very good with the horses.” He kept his voice neutral.

“Horses don’t lie, and there’s no spite in them.”

Something cold hardened her expression, made her look momentarily older. Most stable lads were twelve or thirteen. Quentin had assumed Kit might be sixteen or seventeen, perhaps eighteen. Now he looked more closely, he saw signs of maturity that he’d missed. “How old are you?”

“Twenty, nearly twenty-one.”

Not much younger than his twenty-four. “Your parents are still alive?”

If they were, what did they make of their daughter’s disappearance? When she spoke of them, he’d heard affection in her voice. Surely they wer

en’t the people who had made her scared enough to embark on this mad escapade. The moment he recognized how afraid she was, he’d discounted the slim chance that she played some prank. Whatever the reasons for her disguise, they stemmed from no idle whim.

Sadness shadowed her large eyes. By God, he’d heard sentimental nonsense about the eyes being windows to the soul, but in Kit’s case, it really was true. “Mamma died when I was ten. Papa died two years ago.”

Quentin frowned. “So you told me the truth about that?”

“Aye, sir.” The answer was a touching reminder of the shy stableboy.

“So the stepbrother exists, too?”

“Aye, sir.” The edge to her voice had the hairs prickling on the back of Quentin’s neck, and he suddenly felt sick. Had the bastard attacked this beautiful girl, once he had her in his charge?

Her eyes sharpened on Quentin. “No, he didn’t assault me.”

Quentin sucked in a relieved breath. He abhorred anyone who hurt those smaller and weaker than themselves, but something more powerful than principle revolted at the idea of Kit suffering such horrors. “But he’s the man you’re hiding from.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Aye.”

“Why?”

She was back to watching him as if she expected him to eat her alive. “I’ve told you enough.”

He had no right to push her. Beyond the right of someone who felt a burning need to protect her. Quite how burning was rather a surprise, although he’d always been a lad with a powerful sense of justice.

Right now, he’d like to take a horsewhip to Kit’s stepbrother. Even though Quentin was yet to learn what the bastard had done. It was enough that he’d frightened this gallant girl and placed that haunted look in her eyes.

“Who else knows Kit the stableboy is really Christabel the runaway lady?”

“Mr. Laing, obviously.”

Quentin noted that she didn’t deny his description of her as a lady.

“He’s not your uncle?” But he’d already guessed that.