She made a helpless gesture. “I feared that you might guess I wasn’t what I pretended to be. I feared that you might notice that I was…watching you, too.”
“I did notice. I hoped one day that you’d trust me enough to tell me your story and let me help you.”
“A snowy night granted your wish.”
He didn’t exactly smile, but his austere expression eased a fraction. “Aye. A snowy night, where interest and admiration and the itch of physical attraction tumbled over into something much more momentous. Tumbled over into…love.”
The word shuddered through her like a blow, although she’d been preparing to hear it again since he’d launched his explanation. She stayed quiet as he went on. “Then I faced a dilemma. In your short life, you’d already been compelled to so much. I’d already decided to court you, once you were free of Neil and able to make a choice of your own volition. But because we’d been alone together overnight, you were compelled yet again, this time to marry me. I hated that, even if it meant my dearest wishes coming true.”
She swallowed to shift the jagged lump of emotion blocking her throat. Then swallowed again. “I wanted to marry you, too.”
It was as if he didn’t hear her. He went on in that low, grave, very un-Quentin-like voice. “Yet instead of offering me a grudging acceptance, you welcomed me as your husband with such generosity and passion last night that I fell in love with you all over again. Now I’m so deep in love with you, I’m never going to surface again.”
His voice turned husky with emotion. “Kit, tell me I have a chance. Tell me that one day you might love me as I love you. Tell me that I can live with hope. Because I die of love for you, my beautiful wife.”
She blinked back tears, and her legs trembled beneath her. Her heart expanded until it felt ready to burst out of her chest. “Quentin…”
“Can you love me, Kit?”
She raised shaking hands to dash the tears from her eyes, and a tremulous smile lifted her lips. “I can. I will.” She stepped toward him. It seemed obscene that she wasn’t in his arms right now. “I do. Always.”
He studied her, as if he needed to winnow her words before he could trust them. “You…love me?”
A choked giggle escaped, and she spread her hands. “I love you, Quentin. I loved you even before you coaxed me into that hut and ruined my reputation.”
Relief filled her, as a smile set appealing creases around his eyes. “Well, that’s all right, then.”
She stepped closer, until she was only a foot away from him. “I think…I think this is the moment you should kiss me.”
An arrested expression passed across his face. That dear, quirky, beautiful face that had filled her dreams for so many weeks. Since she’d first seen him. The face that would watch over her for the rest of their lives together.
“You know, you may have that right, my lovely countess.”
With breathtaking power, he drew her into his arms and pressed his lips to hers in a declaration of love victorious. Kit kissed him back with all the adoration in her heart and a silent promise for a golden future stretching ahead of them.
She’d come through. She’d won. Now the world offered her an unrivaled gift of love and hope.
It was her birthday. It was Christmas. It was a happy ending for her personal fairy tale.
She was the luckiest girl in Scotland.
Epilogue
Glen Lyon House, Christmas Eve, 1835
Christabel MacNab, Countess of Appin, hooked her gloved hand around her dashing husband’s elbow and smiled with pleasure as she surveyed the crowded ballroom spread out before her. Winter greenery decorated the room and added a fresh scent to the air. Edinburgh’s best dance orchestra played the latest waltz, and sparkling chandeliers cast golden enchantment across the cheerful throng.
Quentin looked spectacular in his Highlander garb, an inevitable reminder of that fateful Christmas ball five years ago, when she’d shaken off Neil Maxwell’s baleful influence and even better, she’d discovered that her marriage was a love match after all. Since then, she and Quentin had established a good and purposeful life at a thriving Appin. A life so busy that this was her first Christmas trip to Glen Lyon since her wedding, although there had been plenty of visits at other times. Hamish and Emily and their children were family, and time had only strengthened the immediate affinity she’d felt with the Douglases.
“Kit, bella, how wonderful to see you here!” Marina, Lady of Achnasheen, exclaimed in her exuberant way, as she rushed up on the arm of her imposing husband, Fergus Mackinnon. A flurry of embraces ensued. “That color is perfetto on you.”
“Thank you,” Kit said. The rose pink gown was one of her favorites, and she was delighted that her hair had grown enough for the elaborately curled hairstyles now in vogue. The countess crop had enjoyed a brief popularity after her wedding, but longer hair had become the mode. “You look as beautiful as ever.”
“It’s been much too long since we’ve seen you, per pietà,” Marina went on.
Fergus laughed down at the dark-eyed, half-Italian beauty. “Do ye no’ recall that we visited Appin in October, mo chridhe?”
Marina flashed him a brilliant smile. “It feels like a long time. I want to paint a portrait of the piccolo Connor while he’s still a toddler.”
“You’ll have to catch him first,” Quentin said drily, a wealth of love for his mischievous son warming his wry humor.
“And he’s fiendishly fast.” Kit’s hands came to rest on her rounded stomach. She was expecting another baby in March. “I haven’t a chance of keeping up with him these days.”
“Perhaps ye should enter him in the Derby,” Fergus said with a laugh, putting his arm around his wife.
“Wait until you see my new colt, and you’ll regret mocking my ambitions,” Kit retorted.
So far, her dream of breeding a champion hadn’t eventuated. Neil had run the once-famous Appin stables down so badly that it had taken years of work to bring them back to standard. But under Laing’s supervision, this last crop of foals showed definite promise, and one particular bay had the fire in his heart and the strength and speed to encourage her hopes.
“Are ye sharing racing tips, Kit?” Diarmid had been waltzing with his pretty blond wife Fiona, but now they stopped to join the conversation. “Och, I won a fortune on that outsider ye recommended last September.”
Quentin snickered at her side. “My wife made excellent use of her time as a stableboy.”
“Nothing like a bit of practical experience to back up all my reading,” Kit said pertly.
“Well, dinnae waste any inside knowledge on Fergus here,” Diarmid said, digging his childhood friend in the ribs. “He’s already far too rich for his own good.”
Fergus laughed again, as Fiona shook her head in sham disappointment. “It’s Christmas, my love. Can’t you laddies be nice to one another just once a year?”
“Fergus would think we were sick if we were nice to him,” Hamish said in his bass rumble from just behind Kit. “He’d sit down in a gloomy corner and fret himself into a decline.”