Christmas Kiss (A Holiday Romance) (Kisses and Carriages) (8 page)

The girl didn’t seem to notice she was no longer alone, so Bree opened her mouth to call out her name. Then she realized she didn’t know it.

“McKinnon, what is the girl’s name?”

He glanced at the floor, then looked away. “I call her Cherub.”

“Surely that’s not her real name.”

“I was never given her name. The nurse disappeared before I could ask. Not unlike your coachman.” He was daring her to disbelieve him, she guessed.

Bree whistled. The girl turned to her immediately, those little blue eyes wide with wonder. Had she never heard a whistle before?

Each interaction with the child had Bree more and more convinced that her inability to speak was more of an emotional issue than a physical one, especially considering the child was able to hear normally. And if Bree wasn’t able to help the child before she escaped the McKinnon Loony Bin, she’d make sure Pseudo Daddy knew how to get the kid the help she would need.

And some pink outfits.

“Hey, pumpkin!” Bree gave her a big smile.

McKinnon grunted. She ignored him.

“I think it is time you told me your name,” she said, both with her voice and her hands. Although the girl could hear, she would be more at ease, signing, if she weren’t the only one doing it.

The girl shrugged her shoulders and started dancing again.

Bree caught her shoulder and shook her head. Then signed and spoke again, showing her the signs that went along with the words. “My name is Bree.” She signed the letters slowly. The girl copied her.

“Very good! You’re so clever! You learn so quickly.” Again she added the signs to what she said. “Your...name...is...” She left the words hanging, hoping the girl would finish.

Then little Miss Cherub signed,
I have no name
. She gave a little shrug then went back to dancing.

McKinnon cleared his throat. She wasn’t going to make him beg, but it took a minute for the surprise to wear off before she could face him. It was just so sad!
If
the girl was telling the truth. But she’d seen no reason to think the kid was playing them.

“Well?”

Bree said quietly, “She says she has no name.”

He winced. Poor guy. He’d already said the kid couldn’t be his, so he shouldn’t be taking on the blame if the child hadn’t been properly cared for. Well, at least enough to have some sense of identity. Someone must have cared enough to have her taught how to sign. That was kind of a big deal. And she had to admit, the girl hadn’t seemed particularly sad about anything else, just not having a name. And she didn’t look too sad about that, really.

“You’re just going to have to give her a name, that’s all. And it can’t be Cherub or Pumpkin, or something silly. She’s going to want a real name.”

The girl twirled around and caught Bree’s hands, then pulled her into a music-less dance. Bree didn’t want to mess with whatever tune was playing in the girl’s head, so she picked up the rhythm and danced along silently.

McKinnon watched. At first, he watched the child dancing with a mixture of longing and pity on his face. But then he started to frown. Bree could feel the storm clouds gathering in his brain and knew he was going to open his mouth and become that jackass again.

She shook her head at him while she spun past.

“What is the matter with you now?”

“Ye have yet to ask her what she hopes to find in a Christmas gift.”

Bree stopped dancing and got the girl’s attention.

“Do you know what tomorrow is?” she asked and signed.

The girl nodded, then made the sign for Christmas. At least it could have been interpreted as Christmas.

“And what do you hope you get for Christmas, young lady?”

The child didn’t even hesitate. She made the sign for the moon and pointed at the window.

Great. Something McKinnon couldn’t get her. He wasn’t going to be happy.

“And what did she say?” he asked gruffly. She started to think he had read the sign just fine, but she said it anyway.

“She says she’s expecting the moon.”

Only after the words left her mouth did she realize how bad it sounded, like the kid thought she was going to get the world laid at her feet—like she might be expecting to come into a lot of money.

McKinnon knelt on one knee and held out a hand. The child hurried to take it.

“Tell me, Cherub,” he said gently. “Have ye heard Miss Colby and I speak of a coachman?”

The child nodded.

“And do ye ken this coachman? Have ye ever met him yerself?”

The kid grinned, then nodded again.

Five minutes later, Bree and Miss Cherub were munching down Bree’s lunch—the lunch left back in her little prison, the prison the two of them were apparently going to share.

CHAPTER NINE

Heathcliff was aware that the horrible day he’d lived through on the twenty third of December paled in horror to the twenty-fourth. But that did not mean he couldn’t fight back. Unfortunately, he didn’t know whom he needed to fight.

Why did he not see it before?

Their hair was so similar in shade. They were both able to speak with their hands. Of course he knew there was a school in Paris for deaf people, teaching new ways to communicate. Perhaps it was their ability to do so silently that convinced the coachman the lasses made a fine pair of accomplices. The woman could easily pass a message to the man through the very window, as could the child.

Perhaps they’d been compelled to help him.

Of course his heart was grasping for any reason that might redeem the two blondes from villainy. The cruelest crime they’d committed, however, was to give him the weakest thread of hope that the child might remain in his keeping, only to take away that hope. Like sending a boat for a drowning sailor—a boat with a gaping hole.

From the start he’d known, somehow, that the child would be taken from him. It was simply too miraculous to be true. He’d feared it from the moment she’d been left with him.

And she’d been as good as taken from him already.

At the thought, pain arced through his chest like a mean bit of lightning. It was likely only a taste of the pain that would have come if he’d spent another week playing father only to find she was part of the conspiracy.

Yes. It was a lucky thing he’d caught on right away.

To be truly helpful, his Muir blood should have warned him to leave town days ago, instead of warning him, too late, that wickedness approached. By then, the wicked had already been inching their way toward his heart.  

But there was more wickedness afoot, and he was going to discover it.

With the only key to the room tucked into his pocket, he was free to turn his castle upside down if necessary to find those who would aid the little thieves. If his suspicions proved true, the lass was not his responsibility. But even so, it was reassuring to know that she was looked after. Surely, as the child’s mother, or older sister at least, the woman could keep her safe, warm, fed... Dear lord, but the fatherly concerns were going to take a fine time leaving him.

If the woman had never come along, he’d be the happiest adoptive father alive and none would be able to take the lass from him without a fight to the death. But he would entertain not another moment of hope if it might break his heart in the end. He’d had enough.

For fear of flushing any culprits outside and away, he started out of doors and worked inward, hoping to corner the guilty inside the castle. He’d barred the front door from the outside. Thanks to the heavy snow, it took little enough effort to do so. A sturdy board shored up the ice already forming against the thick wood. As most castle doors did, it opened outward, but not this day.

The weight of the barbican gate was enough to close out any stealthy carriage deliveries, or collections—of any one or any thing.

The stables held no surprises. No strange mounts huddled there against the still raging storm. No fresh footprints in the snow.  All his animals had long since been moved down into the glen for the winter. The only things left in his care for the twelve days of Christmas were his own mount, Macbeth, and the goose he was to roast for his Christmas supper. The pair had been sheltered inside the stone barn together and it was likely the harassment from the goose that kept Macbeth moving and therefore, warm. It also meant that in making itself useful, the goose had won another day of life.

“The pair of you should be grateful for each other. Ye’ll both still be alive for Christmas.”

Heathcliff closed up the barn and checked the rest of the out buildings but found not a sign of disturbance. Few of the structures were still in use, but they’d been built too well to see torn down. By the time the nineteenth century arrived, his family castle was no longer a bustling town unto itself; the villagers had gradually distanced themselves from the home of the Muir Witch in spite of it also being home to their laird.  After his grandmother died, activity increased in and out of the castle, but none lived too near.

Managing his tenants and investments kept him busy enough during the day. When a man has no family to distract him, he has time to improve both his own lot and that of his people. Truth be told, if he did nothing but sit on his arse and grow fat, his wealth would continue to grow. And if being the grandson of a Muir Witch was his first problem, his money was his second. It was easy to suspect anyone who showed up on his doorstep.

But a child? Even a child he’d come to care for? Had hoped to make his own?

What the devil had become of him?

Heathclilff stopped in his tracks, struck immobile by his thoughts. Was it the fresh air that helped him to think more clearly?

He often thought of his home as a large empty box made of stone. No wife and children waiting inside for him. But that day, as he stood knee-deep in snow, ignoring the buffeting of the wind as it tried to push him out of his boots, there
was
a woman and child waiting inside.

Of course the letter made it clear the woman, to whom he was unusually attracted, was conspiring against him and should not be trusted. But the cherub? What had possessed him to ask the child if she knew the coachman? Doesn’t every child know a coachman? What if she hadn’t understood that he was asking about a specific man?

What a coward he was! He’d been given a miracle and for fear of a bit of bruising to his heart, he’d doubted it.

But perhaps the damage could be undone.

“The pair of ye should be grateful for each other.”
It was if the wind blew his own words back to him.  And yet, the sound still hummed in his ears. It hadn’t been a memory at all. The words had been murmured! And not by him!

He whipped around, expecting to find the coachman at his back.

From the drift against the barn wall, snow blew across his footprints and splattered against the old tanner’s cottage, like a massive ghost moving from one grave to the next.

“Show yerself!” His voice boomed loud and clear, chasing away the murmur, shaking the roof of the stable just behind him.

He heard a roar but had no time to turn before he felt a terrible weight crash into his back, force his breath from him, and send him into oblivion.

* * *

After extensive experimentation, Bree proved that rubbing two sticks together was not the key to starting a fire. It helped warm her up, but she wasn’t sure it if was due to exercise or anger, just like before.

How could that man just let them freeze?

Sitting cross legged on the floor in front of the hearth, she pulled the quilts off the little girl and draped them over her own shoulders, then opened her arms so the kid could crawl onto her lap.

“We’re just going to have to keep cuddling until he comes,” she said.

The kid rolled her eyes and grinned, her shaking shoulders the only indication she was laughing—or would have been laughing if she had a voice. Then she bent and collected the little box of odds and ends Bree hadn’t been able to make odds and ends out of.

“I don’t think you should be playing with that,” Bree said, but didn’t take the stuff away from her. What was the worst that could happen? She’d start a fire?

And damned if she didn’t!

Sparks shot out from between the rock and the metal thingee, landed on the fluffy stuff and caught fire! A minute later, actual pieces of wood were lighting up.

“So sue me,” she said. “I’m a city girl. My idea of girl’s camp was going to a hotel to swim and have a sleepover.”

It was getting late in the afternoon, but the shadows that had been falling were chased away by their happy little fire. The little girl sat down on Bree’s lap, but jumped back to her feet in surprise when Bree’s stomach growled.

Bree laughed. “I guess I’m hungry. Are you getting hungry?”

The girl shrugged and climbed into the chair. The room was warming enough so they no longer needed to sit so close to the flames. Bree got up and draped a blanket around the kid so her back wouldn’t get cold, then she went to the lunch tray to see if there was anything left that the girl might eat. And maybe if Laird Gorgeous-but-Mean heard them moving around, it might remind him there was someone in the castle besides himself.

She bent over the tray and found just what she’d expected. Nothing. They’d been pretty hungry at lunchtime too.

Something large crashed downstairs.

Bree stepped to the door and pressed her ear against it.

She could hear him moving around down there, but the door was thick and she couldn’t tell much, only that someone was making noises. Clumsy noises.

Is he drunk?

Man, if they’d been freezing their butts off because he’d been drinking and forgot about them, she was going straight to the police as soon as she got out of there. No way would he get custody of a child he’d nearly frozen to death not once, but twice!

She heard stomping on the stairs. But he only took a few steps, then stopped. Then started again. Her anger bubbled hotter every time he stopped. Was he messing with them?

The whole point of coming to Scotland was to get a better grasp on her life. To take control again, to find herself again. But since she’d stepped off the train in Burnshire, she’d lost control completely.