Snowed In Anthology by J.M. Snyder

Author:J.M. Snyder [Editor, J.M. Snyder]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JMS Books LLC
Published: 2020-12-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Kit discovered himself the first person in the breakfast room, shivering and glowering at frostbitten windows, heavy thick rugs, silver dishes of bacon and eggs and kippers and toast. He’d planned to be first, under the circumstances, though he’d not been certain he’d manage it; he did not know the household routine. No servants were present; no surprise, though, given the informality he’d been met with.

He scowled at the bacon and eggs. Of course the Earls of Fairleigh had food displayed in silver dishes. Even in the face of snowbound roads, Edward and Harry wouldn’t starve. Harry—

Harry. Who had been leaving his brother’s rooms in the dark. Moving soundlessly. Long after any reasonable person should’ve been in bed.

Never mind that Kit himself had been up. He knew he personally was a suspicious bastard, but he wasn’t out to murder an Earl.

No, his crime had been imagining everything he couldn’t have. And never would, now.

The betrayal raked across his soul like claws. It shouldn’t; there was nothing to betray. Nothing between him and Harry.

Only a shared moment, an intimation of heat, the closeness of bodies in a library. The grip of a hand on an ungloved wrist.

He crossed arms. Prepared for a confrontation. Feet planted.

Conversation came down the hallway, light and airy as the weather wasn’t. Harry Arden was saying, presumably to his brother, “—so of course there I was, halfway through singing ‘The Milkmaid’s Lost Pail’ with Mr. Parry, since he was feeling so much better, when his wife came in, and she looked at me like I’d grown two new heads—”

“What did you expect, when everyone thinks you’re too—”

“If you say dignified I’ll upend a bowl of porridge on your head.”

“We’re returning to our childhood classics? Keep an eye out for fish where fish aren’t meant to be. No, anyway, I would’ve said too innocent to know those songs. No one thinks you’re dignified, Harry.”

Harry, unbothered by his brother’s commentary, laughed.

The laughter preceded them into the breakfast room. Twirled around with forks and muffins and serving-trays. Turned the ordinary into the spectacular, and came back to support Ned’s careful steps.

Harry didn’t quite play nursemaid, but very obviously tailored that active stride to remain at his brother’s side. They had dressed finely but warmly, neat and casual; Harry was more plainly ready to forge out into the estate and find an elemental, having put on sturdy boots and a sensible shirt, and carrying a greatcoat over the arm that wasn’t unobtrusively next to Edward.

Kit stared at the amusement, the solicitous affection, and couldn’t square that with last night’s clandestine movements or his own sudden leaping pulse of want. Seeing Harry, hearing Harry laugh, went straight to someplace dark and smoldering inside him and stayed there, a knot of perplexed profound need.

He wondered whether Harry would laugh in bed that way: unguarded, free, wholeheartedly happy.

And it might all be untrue. False. Concealing greed and treachery.

Unable to work out the paradox, and angry about it, he hurtled that direction, “What were you doing in the Earl’s rooms last night?”

He hadn’t intended the words to land that harshly.

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