Christmas With The Duke. Katrina Cudmore

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       Talk about making a holy show of yourself.

      But instead of feeling her bones crunching against a hard surface she fell into a solid grip.

      Winded, she threw her head back in confusion to come really close to those silver eyes.

      ‘You’re still a terrible climber, I see.’ His voice was a low rumble.

      She tried to leap out of his arms, but they tightened around her. And she had to bite back the crazy temptation to say, Welcome home, Tom, you’ve been missed.

      Cursing under his breath, Tom pulled the wriggling Ciara closer, trying to ignore the energy surge flooding his body at having her hip pressed against his stomach, her tumble of auburn hair softly tickling his wrist.

      Other staff were starting to crowd around them, fussing over Ciara. He needed to make sure she was okay. He needed some space to think.

      He shifted around and caught a horrified-looking Stephen’s eye. ‘Please bring tea to the morning room.’

      He moved quickly away, Ciara still in his arms. Past the tapestries and family portraits lining the wide corridor. Not looking down. Trying to remember that he had come to Loughmore with one single purpose.

      Boarding his private plane earlier that day, at the City of London airport, he had been determined to approach the next week logically. Even though he had done a double-take when he had seen Ciara’s name as he’d glanced through the names of personnel employed at Loughmore that the estate office at Bainsworth Hall had sent through, he had remained determined that he was taking the right decision in returning to Loughmore and making the announcement that had to be made.

      But as he had wound his way from the outskirts of Dublin city and into County Wicklow, the Garden of Ireland, past familiar landmarks—the rolling Wicklow mountains, the hidden lakes, the silent narrow roads with towering trees and road signs for ancient monuments, the Christmas lights threaded across the narrow main street of Avoca Village, the doors of the brightly painted terraced cottages wearing Christmas wreaths—something had shifted in him.

      And when he had come to the brow of Broom Hill and Loughmore Castle had appeared below him in the valley he had pulled his rental car to the side of the road and climbed out. Standing on the edge of a ditch, in the fading light of a winter afternoon, he had buttoned his coat against the sharp breeze carried all the way in from the distant Irish Sea with bittersweet memories confounding him.

      Loughmore Castle hadn’t changed. It still sat proudly in the valley, its medieval tower standing pencil-sharp against the blue winter sky, the Victorian addition flanking it to the west, the Georgian courtyard to the rear. To the front of the castle sat Loughmore Lake, where Tom had learnt to sail and had had his first experimental kiss in the shadows of the boat house, with Hatta Coleridge-Hall.

      To this day, his mother still dropped not so subtle hints that Hatta would make a good duchess.

      It hadn’t been until Ciara, though, that he had understood what a kiss should really be.

      To the rear of the castle, beyond the walled garden and orchards, lay Loughmore Wood. The place where he and Ciara used to escape to, to talk and poke fun at each other at first and then, over the long weeks of that final summer together, to make love.

      Standing there on the edge of that ditch, with the icy breeze whistling around him, he had winced at all those wonderful and sad and painful memories and he had known more than ever that he had come to the right decision on the future of Loughmore. It was time he put the ghosts of his past in Loughmore behind him for once and for all.

      And as he had driven through the imposing limestone arched entrance to the estate, and along the three-quarter-mile entrance avenue past the wide open fields, where deer were sheltering under oak and chestnut trees, he had been pulled back to his excitement as a child, when he had travelled to Loughmore each summer, relishing the freedom he’d got there, away from the ever-present sense of failure that had marked his schooldays.

      His younger sisters, Kitty and Fran, had brought friends for company, and on occasions, to satisfy his parents’ insistence that he ‘socialise and network’, Tom had too, but in truth he had wanted nothing more but to immerse himself in castle life. He had driven tractors, helped bring in the hay and milked the cows. He had spent hours with Jack Casey, the Yard Manager at Loughmore’s stables, learning about horses, and even more hours in the kitchen with Jack’s wife Mary, at first devouring her home baking and then, to his own surprise, cooking and baking himself under her guidance.

      She had grown nervous about his visits, politely asking what his father would say, but he had charmed his way around her resistance. In time he had learned of his father’s attitude to his passion for cooking but back then it had been his secret.

      And then, one summer, Jack and Mary’s granddaughter Ciara Harris had blown into the estate—like a turbo-charged breath of fresh air. Funny, outspoken, often unknowingly irreverent, she had questioned everything. And for the first time he had seen that his life could be different...

      A fire was lit in the morning room, where table lamps cast faint shadows over the pale pink embossed wallpaper. Before the fire on a Persian rug was a footstool, still bearing the business and scientific journals and periodicals his father had insisted were to be ordered for all three of the estate’s main properties—Bainsworth Hall, the two-thousand-acre main seat of the family in Sussex, Loughmore Castle, and Glencorr, the family hunting lodge in Scotland.

      He lowered Ciara on to the sofa in front of the fire and stood back. Too late he remembered the time he had found her in here cleaning, and had dragged her giggling in protest to the sofa and kissed her until they were both breathless, hot with the intoxicating frustration of unfulfilled desire.

      He shook away the memory and tried to focus on the woman before him—not the girl he had once known ‘Are you injured in any way?’

      Immediately she stood and moved away from him, stepping behind the arm of the sofa as though that would shield her from him. She folded her arms and gave a wry shrug. ‘Just my pride.’

      For long moments they regarded each other, the crack and hiss of burning wood the only sound in the room.

      Ciara tucked a lock of her long red hair behind her ear and rubbed her cheek. She rolled back on one heel. as though fighting the urge to move even further away. She regarded him warily and then, in a low voice, asked, ‘How have you been?’

      She’d always used to do this to him. Disarm him with the simplest of questions that left him floundering for an answer. How did you sum up twelve years?

      ‘Good. And you?’

      She tilted her head, the deep auburn tones of her hair shining in the light of a nearby Tiffany lamp and answered, ‘Yeah, good too.’

      A discreet knock sounded on the door to the room. Stephen entered, carrying a tray bearing a silver tea service and china cups. Storm bounded into the room behind him and jumped up on Ciara, his paws clawing at the denim of her black jeans.

      He called to Storm, but the terrier ignored him as Ciara bent over and patted him, murmuring, ‘Hello, cutie.’

      Stephen placed the tea service on a side table, along with some delicate triangular sandwiches and some mince pies, before awkwardly considering Ciara. Then, clearing his throat to gain her attention, because she was still chatting with Storm, СКАЧАТЬ