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

“Perhaps when we’re in private, then. I had no idea until I saw you in boy’s clothes how they enhance a shapely female figure. It should become the fashion – except no man in Scotland would do a scrap of work, he’d be too busy looking at the lassies.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” she said, although a distinctly feminine corner of her soul warmed to know he’d admired her, even when she was a scruffy stableboy.

He came to a halt in front of a closed door. “Here we are.”

Here they were.

The nerves that had eased during his silly, teasing conversation coagulated into a frozen ball of terror. She’d fled Appin to avoid wedding a stranger. Yet here she was in Glen Lyon in the very predicament she’d struggled so hard to evade.

Now a wedding night waited on the other side of that door. Kit might like Quentin. She might almost say she trusted Quentin – which felt like a huge concession. But nonetheless she stood on the brink of giving herself to a man, and she was so scared, she was trembling.

Quentin studied her with more of that perception. “You’ve suddenly gone very green around the gills.”

“I…I’m not afraid,” she said in a voice that vibrated with dread.

“No, I can see that,” he said dryly. “Now hold tight.”

“What…” As he swung her up into his arms, she squeaked with shock. “What on earth are you doing?”

“Carrying my lovely bride over the threshold.”

She went stiff in his arms, as she fought the urge to curl into his body. He was so deliciously warm, and she felt as if she’d been cold since her father died. “Put me down.”

His grip tightened. “Don’t you like it?”

“You’re acting like this is a real marriage, yet you must know that there’s nobody to see.”

His smile was gentle. “It felt like a real marriage when Reverend Kinney heard our vows.”

“You know what I mean,” she said uncomfortably.

“I do. But that doesn’t mean I like it. Now put your arm around my neck so I don’t drop you. It’s the first time I’ve carried a stableboy. I mightn’t have the knack.”

Despite everything, a choked giggle rose. “You’re a lunatic.”

“Undoubtedly.”

He jiggled her briefly as he opened the door, then he strode into a candlelit sitting room. The space might have looked dauntingly masculine if it hadn’t been decorated with vases of Christmas greenery and flowers from Hamish’s heated greenhouses.

“Someone’s been busy.” Quentin sounded surprised. “This isn’t how it looked when I left it.”

“It’s lovely,” Kit said, gazing around in wonder. She was so touched by the efforts everyone had made. Touched and guilty. The clansfolk acted as if this cobbled-together match with Quentin was grounded in true love. “But everyone adores you.”

Including me.

“I think they’re rather fond of you, too. Shall we investigate the bedroom?”

>

“Perhaps later,” she muttered.

His laugh held more of that breathtaking fondness. “Courage, young Kit. I promise you’ll survive to tell the tale.”

Kit wasn’t convinced, so she took issue with one thing she was sure of. “I’m not that much younger than you are.”

“No. That’s true.”

“You can put me down now, you know,” she insisted, because the longer she stayed in his arms, the more she liked it.