His Christmas Countess. Louise Allen

      ‘Grantham Rivers, at your service. Call me Grant.’ He poked at the grate, went into the stable and came back with wood. His voice was pleasant, his expression, what she could see of it, unruffled, but she could sense he was not happy about this situation. For all the easy movement, the calm voice, he was on edge.

      ‘Grantham?’ Incredible the effect of a little warmth and a lot of reassurance, even if she was all too aware that her rescuer wished he was somewhere else entirely.

      ‘I was conceived there, apparently, in the course of a passionate wedding night at the Bull Inn.’ He was striking a flint on a steel cupped in his palm and surrounded by some sort of tinder. It flared up and he eased it into the wood, nursing the flame with steady, competent hands. ‘It could have been worse. It might have been Biggleswade.’

      She had never imagined laughing again, ever, at anything. Her snort of amusement turned into a moan as the contraction hit her.

      ‘Breathe,’ he said, still tending the fire. ‘Breathe and relax.’

      ‘Relax? Are you mad?’ Kate lay back, panting. Breathing was hard enough.

      ‘No, just male and therefore designed to be unsatisfactory at times like this.’ His mouth curved into a smile that she could have sworn was bitter, but it had gone too fast to be certain. ‘What is your name?’

      Caution resurfaced. She was at his mercy now. If he were not the good man he appeared to be, then there was nothing she could do about it. Her instincts, sharpened by the desperate need to protect her baby, told her to gamble and trust him. But with her life, not with her secrets. Should she lie about her name? But that would serve no purpose. ‘Catherine Harding. Miss,’ she added as an afterthought. Might as well be clear about that. ‘My friends call me Kate.’

      Dr Rivers began to break the legs off the table and heap the pieces by the fire. Either it was very rotten or he was very strong. She studied the broad shoulders flexing as he worked and decided it was the latter.

      ‘Where’s the baby’s father?’ He did not seem too shocked by her situation, but doctors must be used to maintaining a neutral front, whatever their patients’ embarrassing predicaments.

      ‘Dead.’ That was a lie and it came without the need for thought. Then, hard on the heels of the single word, the wariness resurfaced. This man seemed kind and promised to help her, but he could still betray her if he knew who she was. And, almost certainly, if he knew what she had been part of. He was a gentleman from his voice, his clothes, his manner. And gentlemen not only helped ladies in distress—or she hoped they did—but they also stuck together, protected each other against criminal conspiracies.

      ‘I’m sorry about that.’ Grant Rivers laid the tabletop on the earth floor, heaping up the drier straw on it. He was asking her something. She jerked her mind back to dealing with the present. ‘Have you any linen with you? Shifts, petticoats?’

      ‘In my portmanteau. There isn’t much.’ It had been all she could carry.

      He dug into it, efficiently sorting through. A nightgown went on one side, then he began to spread linen over the straw, rolling her two gowns into a pillow.

      ‘Dr—’

      ‘Grant.’

      ‘You are very efficient.’ A contraction passed, easier than before. He was making her relax, just as he had said.

      ‘I had a short spell in the army. Even with a batman, one learns to shift for oneself. Now, then.’ He eyed her and she felt herself tense again. ‘Let’s get you into something more comfortable and on to this luxurious bed.’ It was getting darker and she could not read his expression. ‘Kate, I’m sorry I’m a man, I’m sorry I’m a complete stranger, but we have got to get you into a nightgown and I have got to examine you.’ He was brisk, verging on the impatient. ‘You’re a patient and just now you can’t afford to be shy or modest.’

      Think of the baby, she told herself. Think of Grant Rivers as a guardian angel. A Christmas angel, sexless, dispassionate. I have no choice but to trust him. ‘Very well.’

      He undressed her like a man who knew his way around the fastenings of women’s clothing. Not sexless, then. She was out of her stained, crumpled gown and underclothing before she had time to be embarrassed. He’d placed the nightgown so it had caught a little warmth from the fire and soon she was into that and on to the bed, sighing with relief at the simple comfort of it, before she had the chance to realise her nightgown was up around her waist.

      ‘There, we just place this so.’ Grant swung the greatcoat over her. ‘Now a light, something hot to drink. Lie back, concentrate on getting warm.’

      Kate watched from between slitted eyes as he built up the fire, brought in a bucket of water and set it by the hearth. He lit a small lantern, then dipped water into a mug, adding something from a flask balanced on a brick by the flames, and washed his hands in the bucket. His actions were rapid, yet smooth. Efficient was probably the word. A man who wanted to get things done and who wouldn’t waste time. A man who was forced to wait on this baby’s schedule. Both his efficiency and, strangely, his impatience were reassuring. She was seeing the essence of this man.

      ‘Where did the lantern come from?’

      ‘I carry one in my saddlebags. I’ll just find something else for water. We’ll need a fair bit before we’re done. Luckily the last occupants were fairly untidy and there’s a promising rubbish heap outside.’

      He ought to seem less than masculine, coping so handily with domestic tasks, but he merely appeared practical. Kate studied the broad shoulders and narrow hips, the easy movement, the tight buckskin breeches. She never expected to feel the slightest flutter of sensual need for a man again as long as she lived, but if she did, purely theoretically, of course, Grant Rivers was more than equipped to provoke it. He was definitely very— ‘Ooh!’

      ‘Hang on, I’ll be with you in a minute.’ He came back in carrying an assortment of pots, water sloshing out on to the floor. He held out his hands to the fire. ‘My fingers are cold again.’

      What has that got to do with...? Kate sucked in an outraged breath as, lantern in hand, he knelt at her feet and dived under the greatcoat tented over her knees.

      ‘It is remarkable how one can adapt to circumstances,’ she managed after five somewhat stressful minutes. Incredibly she sounded quite rational and not, as she felt, mildly hysterical.

      Grant emerged, tousled but composed, and sat back on his heels, shaking thick, dark brown hair back out of his eyes. He smiled, transforming a face she had thought pattern-book handsome into something approaching charming. ‘Childbirth tends to result in some unavoidable intimacies,’ he said. ‘But everything seems to be proceeding as it should.’ The smile vanished as he took a pocket watch from his waistcoat and studied it.

      ‘How much longer?’ She tried not to make it sound like a demand, but feared it had.

      ‘Hours, I should think. First babies tend to be slow.’ He was at the fire, washing his hands in yet another container of water, then pouring something from a flask into a battered kettle with no handle.

       ‘Hours?’

      ‘Drink this.’ He offered the brew in a horn beaker, another of the seemingly inexhaustible contents of his saddlebags. ‘I’ll get some food in a minute. When did you last eat?’

      That needed some thought. ‘Yesterday. I had breakfast at an inn.’

      Grant made no reply, but when he brought her bread and cheese made into a rough sandwich, she noticed he ate nothing. ‘What are you going to eat? This is all the food you have with you, isn’t it?’

      He shrugged and took a mouthful of the liquid in the horn beaker. ‘You need the energy. I can live on my fat.’

      He rested his head against the rough stone wall behind him and closed his eyes. What fat? With a less