Kate sighed. “Oh, Harry, how I wish I could have been with you. I wouldn’t have minded the heat, and goodness, all the excitement—”
“Now, that’s not something for a countess to wish, old girl. Cursed rough work, you know.” He paused and gazed around the elegantly furnished chamber. “Lord, I never thought to see you so regally placed.”
“It does seem strange. I daresay, though, that Kate Brandon never wanted or sought such honors.”
“Ridiculous, sister. Don’t you remember we couldn’t find a solution for you and Sir Oliver when I left for Oxford? Then the earl of March, dashed fine fellow, by the way, swoops down and rescues you, just like in those romantic novels.”
She lowered her eyes and drew her lips tightly shut.
Harry eyed her with a frown. “I can see you’ve indeed fallen into a depression, and that isn’t good for you. Now, my dear, trust me to cheer you up.”
“Harry, you will stay here at St. Clair, will you not?” she thought to ask, her voice pathetically eager.
“Think I very well might. The earl already asked me, you know. Sir Oliver won’t quite like it, but I shall pay him a visit or two. Surely three visits to him would be overdoing it, don’t you think?”
“You must call him Julien, Harry. He would not care for such formality from his brother-in-law.” At the mention of her husband’s name, she lowered her head and asked with forced lightness, “You’ve seen him, then?”
“He met me downstairs and told me of your accident. I’m sorry, my dear. Bound to have more children.” He felt suddenly that he had stepped into uncharted land and was quite out of his ken. He could not unsay the words he’d already spoken, so he merely looked at her hopefully.
“Of course, Harry,” she said, her voice as dull and gray as the overcast day.
As he could think of nothing to say for the moment, Harry picked up a periodical from the table at his elbow and casually flicked though the pages.
Kate sought to divert his attention, chiding herself for making him feel awkward and uncomfortable. “It will be Christmas in but two weeks. If you don’t think your military dignities will suffer, we could decorate the hall. There are holly and berries in abundance in the home wood.”
Harry readily agreed to her suggestion, though secretly he thought it would be a dead bore. He suddenly remembered the mantilla carefully wrapped in tissue paper in his portmanteau. Kate loved presents. Surely it would be just the thing to cheer her up.
He rose and tried for a mysterious air. “Don’t want you to move, Kate. I have a surprise for you.”
He was rewarded, for Kate’s eyes lit up, quite in the carefree manner of his hoydenish little sister.
“A present, Harry? Oh, how very kind of you. May I have it now?”
“Of course you may. Let me fetch it, and while I’m about it, I’ll see if the earl— Julien— will now join us. Said he didn’t want to interrupt our reunion, but we’ve had plenty of it by now, I’d say, and I’m sure he would enjoy seeing you. He’s very worried about you, you know.”
Kate said nothing to this suggestion, and Harry strode in his finest military fashion out of the room, feeling a bit more encouraged than he had only minutes before.
Dear Harry, she thought, so innocently does he step into the boiling kettle. She planted a smile on her lips, for Harry’s sake.
39
By the time Christmas Day arrived, St. Clair had undergone a magnificent change. Under Harry’s very nominal direction, the servants had festooned countless bunches of bright-green holly, dotted with deep-red berries, all along the walls and beams in the hall, even going so far as to fasten clumps— most disrespectfully, Mannering thought— atop the armored knights. Colorful paper strings of red and green garland were hung in deep scallops over the doors, and much to Kate’s delight, Julien and Harry had hauled in a mammoth Yule log for the giant fireplace.
On Christmas morning, after Julien and Kate had ceremoniously dispensed gifts among the staff, they went to the library to join Harry. Julien presented Kate with an elegant pair of diamond drop earrings and a narrow gold bracelet dotted with small exquisitely cut diamonds that matched those of the earrings. She accepted them with a smile, conscious that Harry was watching at her elbow.
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