The Christmas Countess: A Valor of Vinehill Novella

by K. J. Jackson

  In five minutes, he’d cleared more than she had been able to do in a half hour with her hands.

  “Bloody stubborn lass.” He flipped a mound of snow into the air, the flakes separating and creating a glowing white curtain in the moonlight. “Ye always were too headstrong for your own good.”

  She stared at the width of him, the ease with which he plowed through the bank of snow. “And you were always too strong for your own good.” She took another sip of the whisky.

  He stopped, standing upright and turning around to her, his brow furrowed. “What?”

  Her fingertips went over her mouth. “Did I say that out loud?”

  “Aye. Ye did.”

  Her lips pulled inward for a long breath.

  “What did ye mean, Karta?”

  “I meant…” A long exhale escaped her chest. “I meant everyone always wanted to use you because of it—you were wanted for your brawn—the strongest man around. That’s why you’re too strong for your own good. Those at Vinehill never wanted you for your mind. For your kindness. For your astute observations. For the person you truly are.” She paused, tipping the flask up to her mouth for a healthy swallow. “That’s what I always wanted—you. Not for what you could do with your muscles, but for who you are. Your soul.”

  His eyes narrowed at her, his fingers tightening around the edge of the board. “I knew that, Karta. I did.”

  “Did you?” She shrugged, looking to her left at the horses waiting impatiently in the snow. “For if you had, you would have shown at the ball.”

  He spun from her, thrusting the board deep into the drift of snow before him and continuing to dig in silence. The set of his shoulders was rigid—taut and angry.

  She took another swallow of the whisky as she watched his jerking movements.

  It wasn’t fair and she knew it.

  She couldn’t keep blaming him for how they were parted. He hadn’t known what was at stake by not showing at the ball. But the fact that he didn’t arrive in time still burned bitter deep in her belly. The humiliation of it. The loss of everything she’d truly thought she could have. If he had loved her—wanted her enough—he would have shown. If she’d been the most important thing to him, he would have upheld his promise to be at the ball on time.

  But she wasn’t.

  They hadn’t been anything that she thought they were. And that stung most of all.

  Domnall got to the last corner of the drift by the barn, clearing it quickly. Sticking the board into the tall mound of snow he’d just shifted, he went to the door of the barn and pulled it open. The four horses inside whinnied at the gust of air going into the stable.

  Karta stepped to her horse and grabbed the mare’s reins, leading her into the stable. Domnall brushed past her as she went in, then went to retrieve his horse and followed her.

  So he was staying.

  She eyed him over her shoulder as she led the mare into an open stall and started to work free the girth of the sidesaddle. He’d led his horse into the empty stall next to her and busied himself with removing his saddle.

  How long did he think to stay here?

  Five minutes? An hour?

  And why?

  Hell.

  She shook her head. She knew exactly why. That was the trouble.

  Her look went forward and she concentrated on the leather of the strap she was attempting to free. Her fingers were still shaking from the cold. The whisky had warmed her belly but not her limbs.

  His feet shuffled across the floor, stopping at the entrance to her stall. “Why is it ye cannot come back to the abbey, Karta?” His words, soft and raw, drifted across the stale air to her.

  She didn’t turn to look at him, instead setting her focus on her trembling fingers on the leather strap and wishing them still.

  Her shoulders lifted in a shrug, her gaze locked on her hands. “I don’t have the answer for that. Not now. You appeared in that field last night—oddly and magically so, and it wasn’t something I was expecting. I was expecting death to come for me. Not you. You were not something I ever could have dreamed. So I don’t yet know what to think on it.”

  Her head lifted and she looked at him over her shoulder. “But I cannot be near you—not without you drawing me into something I cannot control.”

  “Why do ye want to control it?” The heat in his dark blue eyes seared her. “We never could fight what was between us. And now ye are free. I am free. So why is that something to run away from?”

  She spun on her heel to face him, her fingers lifting to point at his face. “Because of this. Because of how you look at me. How your voice drops into a low rumble. When you stare at me like that, when you talk to me like that, I am the exact same girl I was years ago when I would get lost in everything about you. But I’m not that same girl anymore. I can’t be. So this thing between us—it has to be controlled. You look at me as you do and I have to hold stalwart against it. I once risked everything for that look of yours, and I paid dearly for that gamble.”

  For a long moment his stare pierced her, more heated than a breath ago. Then he smiled, forced, covering whatever it was he truly wanted to say. “So let us take care of the horses and then go into the dower house, warm up, and prove how very controlled we can be.”

  Karta blinked hard, her head snapping back.

  Spoken by the very devil himself.

  Controlled? The two of them?

  Her chest tightened.

  There were secrets she needed to keep and if she didn’t gain some semblance of control, she would break.

  Something she was determined not to do.

  { Chapter 8 }

  ”It’s still chilly in here.”

  “It’s a large room to heat.” Resting on his heels as he jabbed at the coals at the base of the fire he’d started, Domnall lifted himself to standing and leaned the fire poker against the grey marble that lined the hearth. Theodora nudged his leg from where she sat next to him and with one scruff behind Theodora’s left ear, he turned to Karta. Where she’d disappeared to for the last twenty minutes, he didn’t know.

  She’d stopped just inside the doorway to the drawing room. She hadn’t yet removed her cloak, the dark folds of it still swallowing her whole. He’d removed his great coat when he’d come in, but for how warm he usually was, even he could feel the snap of cold hanging in the air of the drawing room. “Should I go up and start the fire in your bedroom?”

  “No, this room will be fine. The settee is comfortable enough to sleep upon.” She lifted her hands from the drape of the cloak and held up a thick-cut crystal decanter full of amber liquid and two glasses that clinked together. “I tried several times to light the fire in the kitchens to warm up water for tea, but my fingers wouldn’t cooperate. So this will have to do.”

  He resisted lifting an eyebrow. His flask had been noticeably lighter when she’d handed it back to him outside. But if a touch more spirits would take the cold blue from her lips and quiver from her fingers, he wasn’t about to argue with the method.

  Three long strides and he was across the drawing room to her. “It’s what I would prefer, as it is.” He needed something to steady his hands against touching her—he’d not but minutes ago promised her control inside the house, so now he had to deliver.

  He took the glasses from her grip and set them down on the side table next to the settee he’d shifted into place in front of the fire.

  She moved next to him, filling both tumblers half full with the brandy from the decanter.

  She handed him one, then motioned to the fire. “Come, sit?”

  His brow furrowed. “You are encouraging us to be in the same room, to sit on the same cushion?”

  “I am. Just being apart from you for a few minutes has given me time to breathe. Time to regain my equilibrium.” Her hand wrapped around her glass. “And now that I have my senses back about me, I realize I’m being rude if I demand that you return to the abbey post-haste. For I am grateful that you appeared when you did
. I do not have quite the same capability that you do for clearing that snow.” She lifted her glass to him. “And I believe that the mare I borrowed is the most thankful of all.”

  The side of his mouth quirked upward. “I didn’t imagine you would be thanking me for following you. You are thanking me, are you not?”

  She nodded, a wry smile crossing her lips as she moved to sit on the settee. “Yes, I am. And why would I not?”

  “You’re stubborn.”

  A guffaw left her mouth. “Yes, but I’m also older and wiser than I once was and my fingers were about to crack off of my hands out there, so I’m not so stubborn I cannot thank you.”

  He couldn’t hide a smile as he went to the fire. He turned the top log, scruffed Theodora’s head as she splayed onto her belly close to the fire, and then moved to sit on the opposite end of the settee.

  Taking a sip of the brandy, he studied her profile. She was as beautiful as the day he had first seen her—more so, even, as she had the look of the world about her. The confidence that only times of sorrow can bring a person—confidence in the quiet acceptance that the world is not all sunshine and rainbows. Her gaze was decidedly set forward, her fingertips tapping on the glass.

  “Ye know it’s Christmas the day after tomorrow,” he said.

  She glanced at him, then quickly shifted her stare back to the fire as a shiver shook her body. “Yes. And I thought to be alone. Well, alone with Maggie.”

  “Why alone? You did not think to travel back to your father’s home?”

  She shook her head. “No. Certainly not back to father. Christmastide hasn’t been happy there since my grandmother died. And the sadness of that is most poignant there.”

  “Your grandmother—you never truly told me about her, just that she raised ye after your mother died in childbirth.”

  Her right cheek lifted in a mischievous smile. “Well, there was never any time for long conversations between us when we were alone together. The short walks. The moments stolen in the stables.” She took a sip of her brandy, her brown eyes warm honey as she looked at him. “It was hard to think of much else besides wanting to touch you.”

  He chuckled, a grin taking over his face. “There was that.”

  “There was.” She nodded.

  “Take off that blasted cloak you’re hiding in and come here.”

  “Why?” Her countenance went from gaiety to trapped rabbit.

  “You’re still shivering. Your cloak is clearly damp and is just keeping the chill to your body instead of warming ye. I, on the other hand, am very toasty.”

  She gave him an incredulous look, her fingers flipping between them. “You realize this will do nothing to improve the control we lack over what happens between us when we are too close.”

  “Or it will prove how much restraint we can have.”

  Her eyebrows cocked.

  “I wouldn’t take advantage of a shivering cold lass, Karta. Ye know that.”

  Her head tilted to the side and she sighed. “I do.” She handed him her glass. “Fine.”

  She unhooked the clasp on the front of her wool cloak and peeled it away from her body, then draped it off the side arm of the settee. Hesitating for a moment, a shiver racked through her body. It set her into motion and she scooted along the rose damask upholstery until she was next to him.

  Close, but only barely touching him. The edge of her thigh was the one point on her body that slightly grazed him.

  She wasn’t going to get warm like that.

  He handed her glass back to her and wrapped his left arm around her shoulders.

  A second of stiff resistance and then she slightly relaxed, letting him tug her tight along his torso. She pulled her feet up from the floor, quickly untying her boots with her free hand and then slipping them and her stockings off. She tucked her toes under her skirts along the back of the settee.

  Still slightly stiff, she snuggled into his chest, the cold blanket of her taking over his warmth. She was far colder than he’d guessed. He should have demanded this earlier.

  Just as he settled his arm down along her side, she flattened her body as much as she could against his mass, expanding the amount of warmth she could suck from him.

  Absurd extraordinary pride flooded him. For all he could never give her, he could give her this. Heat.

  Her shivers ceasing, her body went limp along him.

  “You were talking of your grandmother—tell me more of her.”

  Though her arms were folded and curled tight to her chest, she managed to lift her glass that was wedged between them and take a sip of the brandy. She had to clear her throat before talking. “She died…maybe ten years before I met you. She was everything to me. It was the two of us, always together. Women of grand purpose, she would call us—so silly to the little girl I was. But she was so intelligent.”

  A soft smile came to her lips. “And she created these marvelous marzipan candies that were shaped like tiny animals at Christmastide every year. Rabbits, and dogs, and cats, and birds. And then she would hide them throughout the estate. Half of them—the best ones—she would tie strings to that weaved throughout the rooms, and I would follow the strings to find them. It would take days to discover them all and father hated the mess of it.”

  Her head shook as her eyes glazed over. “But grandmother, she loved it. Her face when I found one—she was almost in tears she was so happy, because I was so happy—like it hurt her physically to see me laughing and so joyous. I loved each and every one of those candies, those odd little marzipan masterpieces. They were perfect times—those days on Christmas.”

  “But then she passed?”

  Karta nodded, her head rubbing against his chest. “She did, quietly in her sleep. It wasn’t dramatic. She just slipped away. And with it, my whole world just slipped away.” She paused, taking another sip of her brandy. “And then it was just father and I. And you know how he is.”

  Domnall stared down at her dark brown hair, almost black, were it not for the strands that caught amber streaks in the light of the fire.

  He did know.

  He knew too intimately what a bastard her father could be. How he’d told Domnall not to touch his daughter. How he’d sworne he would tear Domnall down if he kept up his inane pursuit of Karta. How he’d threatened to have Domnall removed from Scotland for good.

  But Domnall had never listened to him.

  Maybe he should have.

  Falling in love with Karta had brought him nothing but grief—not that he could have resisted the indomitable draw between the two of them.

  “Your father.” Domnall jerked upright away from the cushions, the shout echoing about the room as brandy splashed wide from both of their glasses.

  “What?” Karta twisted upright, flicking off splatters of brandy from her dark blue skirt. “What about my father?”

  Domnall stared at the fire, working through it in his brain for several seconds—making sure he remembered the whole of it correctly.

  He had it right.

  His gaze lifted to Karta, his words slow, low. “It wasn’t an errand on the lands I was doing for the marquess—it was, but it wasn’t.”

  Wrinkles creased her brow. “What are you talking about, Dom?”

  “I’m talking about the night of the ball. Where I was.”

  Her voice went cold. “And just where were you?”

  “It was your father—how did I never put it together? Of course, I never knew why you left me. But your bloody father planned the whole blasted thing—he was the one that delayed me from the ball.”

  He shook his head, his lip curling into a sneer. “He was the one that sent word to the marquess that one of the Vinehill’s sheep flocks on the southern border by his land had been driven into a gully that they couldn’t get out of. They needed the strongest men to get them out. And of course that meant me.”

  Her head snapped back, her eyes wide. “No…no…he couldn’t have.”

  “He did. He knew exactly wh
at he was putting into motion.”

  Her body deflated, collapsing back against the settee, her hands in her lap, clutching the tumbler in her hand. “No…but we made a deal, father and I.”

  “You of all people know what sort of a man your father is, Karta. You honored the deal your way—with integrity. He honored it in his way—with manipulation.”

  “But—”

  “Has your father ever made a deal where he didn’t get exactly what he wanted?”

  She stared at him, disgust quickly taking over the confusion in her brown eyes. With an exhale, she shook her head.

  “Exactly.”

  Her eyes closed to him, her unsteady breath lifting her chest. A blow to her just the same as it was to him—probably worse, because there would always be a part of Karta that wanted to believe in her father, wanted to believe that there was good in him.

  Good that Domnall had never seen in the man. He’d always guarded his tongue when it came to her father. Maybe he shouldn’t have.

  Her eyes flew open. “But you.”

  “Me what?” he asked, his voice wary.

  “No matter what my father machinated. It was your choice. You didn’t need to go. You didn’t need to help. The marquess would have just sent other men in your stead. It still comes down to the fact that you didn’t appear.” Her voice cracked, her lips pulling inward. “Why didn’t you come for me, Dom?”

  Hell.

  Why didn’t he come for her?

  He hadn’t known what was at stake, yes.

  But that was no excuse.

  He’d told her he’d be there, and he wasn’t. His work at Vinehill had been too important. Too important to set aside for the woman he loved. A choice that had seemed so inconsequential at the time had steered their lives so vastly apart.

  And he’d been paying for that decision ever since. For there was no explanation. Not a good enough one.

  He turned fully to her, bearing the weight of the tormented look on her face. How his actions so long ago wounded her so deeply.

  He set his gaze directly on hers. “I don’t know that I even chose what my life was long ago—I just lived it. I owed Vinehill—the marquess—everything. Everything I had, everything I was. It was because of him. I was an orphan. He took me into his home. Raised me as one of his own. So why would I ever question what was asked of me?”