Kitabı oxu: «The Louise Allen Collection»

Praise for
Louise Allen’s
Those Scandalous Ravenhursts

THE DANGEROUS MR. RYDER

“Allen’s latest adventure romance is a roller-coaster ride that sweeps readers through Europe and into the relationship between a very proper baroness and a very improper spy. The quick pace and hold-your-breath escape plans turn this love story into a one-night read that will have you cheering for the appealing characters.”

—RT Book Reviews

THE OUTRAGEOUS LADY FELSHAM

“Allen’s daring, sexy and, yes, outrageous spin-off of The Dangerous Mr. Ryder gently borders on erotic romance because of the manner in which she plays out her characters’ fantasies (including a marvelous bear rug!) without ever losing sight of Regency mores.”

—RT Book Reviews

THE SHOCKING LORD STANDON

“Allen continues her collection of novels centering on the ton’s scandalous activities with another delightful and charming Ravenhurst story of love and mayhem.”

—RT Book Reviews

THE PIRATICAL MISS RAVENHURST

“With a cast of dangerous characters, an honorable hero and a courageous young heroine…Allen sets the tone for a lively adventure and immensely entertaining read.

—RT Book Reviews

Chapter One

In a charming breakfast parlour overlooking a sweep of wintry parkland in the county of Nottingham, three people were partaking of the first meal of the day in an atmosphere of quiet refinement and elegance.

Miss Ross placed her slice of toast neatly upon her breakfast plate, wiped her fingers in a ladylike manner with her linen napkin and smiled at her sister-in-law.

‘Over my dead body.’

‘Dessy!’ Charlton spluttered into his morning coffee. Decima felt dizzy, as though something inside her had snapped. Had she really just said that?

Charlton put down his cup and wiped his lips with an irritable dab. ‘What is the reason for that outburst? Hermione merely suggested that we should pay a visit this afternoon to our neighbours the Jardines. I told you about them—they have only been at High Hayes for six months and are a most charming family.’

‘Who just happen to have a most charming and eligible gentleman staying with them, if what Hermione told me last night is correct.’ Some stranger was inhabiting her body, uttering all the things she had always thought and had never dared articulate.

Nine years of increasingly desperate attempts by her family to marry her off had left Decima with an acute sense of when another ‘suitable’ match was threatening. She always did as she was bid and trailed along obediently to make painful conversation to the unfortunate gentleman concerned.

Obediently and spinelessly, she told herself, staring blankly at the platter of ham and eggs before her half-brother. Now, without any conscious volition on her part, it seemed the spineless worm was finally turning.

‘We could have visited them at any time in the past fortnight, but I collect this gentleman only arrived two days ago and therefore we must go now,’ she added, heaping coals on the blaze.

She glanced out of the window, suppressing a shiver despite the warmth of the room. The lowering sky was threatening snow after a week of dry, cold weather, but to escape this fresh humiliation she was quite ready to pack her bags and set forth at once. Why had walking out never occurred to her before? It was hardly as though she were a prisoner with nowhere else to go.

‘Why, yes, Mrs Jardine’s brother. An unmarried, titled gentleman as it happens, but that is not why I suggested we call.’ Lady Carmichael, an unconvincing liar at the best of times, faltered to a halt as Decima’s grey eyes came to rest on her and looked imploringly at her husband for support.

‘One does not wish to intrude upon family Christmas gatherings,’ Charlton blustered, slapping down his newspaper. His wife jumped. ‘Naturally we could not call before.’

Decima regarded her half-brother with a calm that she was far from feeling. What she wanted to do was enquire bitterly why he persisted in humiliating her by parading her in front of yet another potential suitor whose lukewarm attempts at civility were bound to remind her yet again why she was still a spinster at the age of twenty-seven. But even her new-found rebellious courage failed her at that point.

‘We have made upward of a dozen calls this holiday, Charlton, and have received as many,’ she said mildly. ‘Why should the Jardines alone be so exclusive?’

Really, Charlton’s expression of baffled frustration would be amusing—if only she did not know that he was quite incapable of understanding her feelings and would most certainly plough on with his insensitive matchmaking come hell or high water.

‘It is nothing to do with Mrs Jardine’s brother,’ he stated with unconvincing authority, ignoring her question. ‘I don’t know why you cannot oblige Hermione by accompanying her on a social call, Dessy.’

‘Well, Charlton, one reason is that I will be leaving today.’ Decima put the lid on the preserve jar, concentrating on stopping her hand shaking. Never before had she been able to stand up to his bullying, but then, she saw in a flash of self-realisation, never before had she been legally and financially free of him. At least, she would be in two days’ time, on New Year’s Day.

‘What! Don’t be absurd, Dessy. Leaving? You have hardly been here a sennight.’ Around the walls the footmen stood, blank-faced. Charlton ignored their presence as usual; it never occurred to him that browbeating his sister before an audience of what he considered to be menials might cause her distress, or them discomfort.

‘Two weeks and a day, actually,’ Decima interjected, and was ignored.

‘I made certain that you would stay here at Longwater for at least a month. You always stay a month at Christmas.’

‘And I told you when I arrived that I intended staying for a fortnight, did I not, Hermione?’

‘Why, yes, but I did not regard it…’

‘And Augusta will be expecting me. So I must finish my breakfast and set Pru to packing or the morning will be well-advanced before we set out.’ Charlton was becoming alarmingly red. Decima took a last bite of toast she found she no longer had any appetite for and turned to smile at the butler. ‘Felbrigg, please will you send to the stables and ask the postilions to have my carriage at the front door for half past ten?’

‘Certainly, Miss Ross. I will also send a footman up with your luggage.’ Decima suspected that Felbrigg rather approved of her; he was certainly able to ignore his master’s infuriated gobblings with aplomb.

‘You will do no such thing, Dessy! Just look at the weather, it will be snowing in a minute.’ As she got to her feet Charlton glared past her in frustrated rage to a portrait of his own father, side by side with the petite figure of their mother. ‘I can only assume that you get this stubborn, disobliging streak from your father, along with so much else. You certainly do not inherit it from our dear mama.’

Decima glanced at Hermione’s distressed face and bit back the bitter retort that was on her lips. The worm that was turning seemed to be a full-grown adder, but to let it loose now would only wound her sister-in-law. She forced a smile. ‘It was a lovely stay, Hermione, but I really must be leaving now or Augusta will fret.’

Decima made herself walk calmly to the door. As Felbrigg shut it behind her, she heard Hermione say with disastrous clarity, ‘Oh, poor dear Dessy! What are we going to do with her?’

Six miles away Viscount Weston raised a dark and sceptical eyebrow at his youngest sister. ‘What are you up to, Sally? You know I said this was a flying visit and I was leaving by the end of the week.’

‘Up to? Why, nothing, Adam dear, I only wanted to know if you were going to be here in case our neighbours, the Carmichaels, call.’ Lady Jardine fussed with the coffee pot. ‘Another cup?’

‘No, thank you. And what is the attraction of the Carmichaels?’ Sally assumed an air of innocence, belied by her heightened colour. Adam smiled slightly—Sal had always been as easy to read as a book. ‘An eligible daughter?’

‘Oh, no, not a daughter,’ she replied, with what he could tell was relief at being able to deny something.

‘An ineligible middle-aged sister,’ his brother-in-law put in suddenly, emerging from behind his Times with an irritable rustle of newsprint. ‘Carmichael’s desperate to get her off his hands by all accounts. I do not know why you let yourself get drawn into this silly scheme of Lady Carmichael’s, Sally. If Adam wants a wife, he is more than capable of finding one himself.’

‘She is not middle-aged,’ his affronted wife snapped. ‘She is under thirty, I am certain, and Hermione Carmichael tells me she is intelligent and amiable—and very well-to-do.’

‘Adam is in no need of a wealthy wife,’ her loving spouse retorted, ‘and you know as well as I do what intelligent and amiable means. She’ll be as plain as a pikestaff and probably a bluestocking to boot.’

‘Thank you, George, a masterful piece of deduction if I may say so. I gather neither of you has set eyes on the lady?’ Adam flicked a crumb off his coat sleeve and thought about what his brother-in-law had said. He was certainly in no need to hang out for a well-dowered bride, but as for finding himself a wife, he was not so sure.

Not sure whether he ever wanted to be leg-shackled and not sure either that the woman for him was there to be found in any case. With a ready-made and eminently satisfactory heir already to hand, the matter was one that could be very comfortably shelved.

‘No, we have not met her.’ Sally sounded sulky. ‘But I am sure they will call today—look at the weather, anyone can see it is about to snow soon and tomorrow might be too late.’

‘It will certainly be too late, my dear.’ Adam stood up and grinned affectionately at his favourite sister. ‘In view of the weather, I will be setting out for Brightshill this morning.’

‘Running shy?’ Sir George enquired with a straight face.

‘Running like a fox before hounds,’ Adam agreed amiably, refusing to be insulted. ‘Now, don’t pout at me, Sal; you know I said this would only be a short stay. I’ve a house party due in two days, so I’d have to be leaving tomorrow morning at the latest in any case.’

‘Wretch,’ his loving sister threw at him as he left the room. ‘I declare you are an unrepentant bachelor. You are certainly an ungrateful brother—you deserve a plain bluestocking!’

Decima stared unseeing out of the carriage window at the passing landscape. It gave her no pleasure to be at outs with Charlton and Hermione; she would have quite happily stayed another week at Longwater if only they had left her in peace. Cousin Augusta, the placid eccentric whose Norfolk home she shared, would greet her return with pleasure, or her absence for a little longer with equanimity—just so long as she had her new glasshouse to occupy her.

This ability not to fuss was much prized by Decima, although she did wish sometimes that Augusta could comprehend how miserable her other relatives’ attempts at matchmaking and their scarcely veiled pity made her. But then Augusta had never had any trouble doing exactly what she wanted, when she wanted to, and found it difficult to understand Decima’s compliance.

Widowed young with the death of her elderly, rich and extremely dull husband, Augusta had emerged from mourning and scandalised all and sundry by declaring that she was devoting herself to gardening, painting—very badly, as it turned out—and rural seclusion.

At the age of five and twenty Decima, in disgrace for failing to please when paraded in frilly pink muslin before a depressing dowager and her equally depressing and chinless son, was sent to rusticate in Norfolk. The cousins formed an instant attachment and she was allowed to stay there.

‘Out of sight and out of mind,’ she had said hopefully at the time. Although not, it had proved, completely out of mind. She suspected that Charlton and her various aunts made notes at regular intervals upon their calendars that read ‘Marry Off Poor Dear Dessy’, and took it in turns to summon her to stay while they produced yet another hapless bachelor or widower for her. And always, meekly and spinelessly, she had gone along with their schemes, knowing each and every one was doomed to failure. And each and every one left another scar on her confidence and her happiness.

Enough was enough, she had decided while helping Pru fold garments into her travelling trunk. Why it had taken until breakfast this morning for the penny to drop and for her to realise that, by coming into control of her inheritance, she had also come into not just the ability but the right to control her own life, she did not know. It was part and parcel of the passivity she had shown in the face of her family’s constant reminders of what a disappointment she was to them. Of course, the kinder of them agreed, she not could actually help it. She was a sweet girl, but what, with her disadvantages, could one expect?

Decima bit her lip. If she looked critically at her life since she was seventeen she could see it as a series of evasions, of passive resistance aimed at stopping people doing things to her. Well, now it was time to start being positive. Just as soon as she had decided what it was she wanted to be positive about—that was the first thing.

She certainly had much to learn about taking control of her life. Why, it had just taken three months, since her twenty-seventh birthday, for her to realise that the fortune, which she had always known she possessed, was the key to more than financial independence. Charlton had been very cunning, giving her a generous allowance that more than covered her needs and her occasional fancies—nothing to rebel against there, no reason to grasp the prospect of access to her entire capital with desperation.

After today, Decima decided, she would leave immediately on each and every occasion in the future when her relatives tried to matchmake. If she was not there to hear them, what did it matter how much they lamented her shortcomings?

She was reviewing this resolution, and deciding that it was an admirable one for New Year, when Pru exclaimed, ‘Look at this weather, Miss Dessy! This is taking an age—we only passed that dreadful ale-house, the Red Cock, twenty minutes ago.’

Startled out of her reverie, Decima focused on the view. It was indeed alarming. Although it was only about two in the afternoon, the light was heavy and gloomy as it fought its way through the swirling snowflakes. Great mounds of snow hid the line of roadside hedges, the verges were an expanse of unbroken white and the trees, which at this point formed a little coppice, were already bending under their burden.

‘Oh, bother.’ She scrubbed at the glass, which had clouded with her warm breath. ‘I thought we would make Oakham for a late luncheon quite easily, now we will be lucky to arrive there for supper. I suppose we will have to stay at the Sun in Splendour overnight.’

‘It’s a good inn,’ the maid remarked. ‘It will be no pain to stay there, and in this weather I don’t expect there’ll be that many folks out on the roads. You should get a nice private parlour with no trouble.’ She sneezed violently and disappeared into a vast handkerchief.

The prospect of a roaring fire, an excellent supper and the Sun’s renowned feather beds was appealing. And there would be no one to nag her. She could kick off her shoes, drink hot chocolate curled up in a chair with a really frivolous novel and go to bed when she felt like it. Decima contemplated this plan with some smugness until the carriage came to a sudden halt.

‘Now what?’ She lowered the window and leaned out, receiving a face full of snowflakes. ‘Why have we stopped?’ Through the snow she could just make out that they had halted at a crossroads and that another vehicle, a curricle and pair by the look of it, had stopped on the road that intersected with theirs.

One of the postilions swung down from his horse and made heavy weather of stamping back through the snow to the door. ‘Can’t go no further, miss. The snow’s too deep, drifting right across the road. Look.’

‘Then we’ll have to go round.’ The snow was blowing down her neck now and she pulled the velvet collar of her pelisse tighter.

‘Round where, miss?’ the man asked bluntly. ‘This isn’t just some little local shower, it’s a regular blizzard—I’ll wager it’s this bad right across the Midlands. Only thing to be done is to go back to the Cock—the horses won’t manage to get further than that, not until this lets up. There’s nowhere else for five miles.’

‘The Cock?’ Decima stared at him, horrified, the vision of the Sun’s snug private parlour dissolving like a snowball in a muddy puddle, into an image of the squalid alehouse. ‘That is out of the question. They have no bedchambers, let alone a private parlour, and we could be stranded there for days, in goodness knows what company.’

The man shrugged. ‘Not much option, miss. We’d better be getting back now, before the place fills up with other travellers in a like fix.’

‘Might I be of assistance?’ The man’s voice reached them clearly, despite the snow, and Decima strained to make out the speaker through the thickening whiteness. The voice sounded reassuringly deep and pleasant, but as the figure loomed up she gasped. It was a giant.

Then he came nearer, wading through the drifts, and she realised that he was simply a particularly tall gentleman wearing a many-caped driving coat and low-crowned hat.

‘Ma’am.’ He doffed the hat, revealing dark hair that instantly became spangled with white, and came right up to the carriage. ‘I suspect, like me, you have come to the conclusion that the road ahead is impassable for carriages.’

‘Indeed, sir. My postilion is convinced that the only shelter is the alehouse back a mile or so, but—’

‘But that is quite unsuitable for a lady, I could not agree more.’ What Decima could see of him was reassuring. A formidable breadth of shoulder, a pair of level grey-green eyes, a determined chin and a mouth that, although serious now, seemed ready to smile. And he agreed with her, a definite point in his favour in a world of men who all seemed determined to point out to her that she was just a foolish woman.

‘Yet there seems no alternative, unless you know of some more reputable hostelry in the vicinity, sir.’

Adam dug beneath his greatcoat and found his card case. What a lady with only a maid as companion would make of his proposal, goodness knows, but as her alternatives were to be snowed up in a flea-ridden drinking den or to freeze to death in her carriage, he suspected that all but the most straitlaced would agree.

‘My card, ma’am.’ She took it and studied it, giving him an opportunity to study her. Large, wide-set grey eyes, now masked by thick lashes as she read; brown hair peeping from beneath a stylish green velvet bonnet; a generously wide mouth, set in serious lines, and a wild sprinkling of freckles all across her nose and cheeks.

Her maid began to sneeze violently and she glanced across, a slight frown between her brows. ‘Bless you, Pru.’ She turned back to Adam, eyes frankly searching his face as the snow blew between them, her mouth now set in a thoughtful pout that made him want to lean forward and nip its fullness in his teeth. Adam blinked away the snow and took a grip on his imagination.

‘Lord Weston. I am Miss Ross and this is my maid Staples. If you have some alternative suggestion to make, I would be extremely glad to hear it.’

There was no point in beating about the bush. ‘I am travelling to my hunting box near Whissendine, about five miles distant. I do not believe I can drive any further beyond here with these drifts, but my groom is with me and two of my hunters. I propose that we unhitch my carriage horses and use them to carry our valuables and essential baggage. My groom will take up your maid on one of the hunters and I will take you on the other. It will not be an easy journey, but I can promise you a warm refuge at the end of it. Your postilions can take your carriage and our remaining baggage back to the alehouse where they can take shelter until the weather breaks and they are able to collect you and take you on to your destination.’

Miss Ross looked down again at the card and then up at his face. He saw her lips move slightly, Adam Grantham, Viscount Weston. Behind her the maid went off into another paroxysm of sneezes. ‘Who else will be at your box, my lord?’ A pleasant voice, even now when it was constrained by both formality and caution.

‘Today, my housekeeper, a maid and a footman. Tomorrow I expect a small house party consisting of two married couples, one of whom is my cousin, Lady Wendover, and her husband.’

‘If they can get through.’ She sounded thoughtful rather than dubious. ‘Very well, my lord. Thank you for your most kind suggestion. Could you ask the postilions to pass my luggage down into the carriage so I can decide what to take?’

He gave the order and trudged back through the drifts to the curricle where Bates stood huddled, holding the carriage horses’ lines in one hand and the reins of the two hunters in the other.

‘We’ll take the women up with us on Ajax and Fox and the baggage up on the greys. Let me sort out a valise—is your gear all together?’

Bates grunted and gestured abruptly with his head towards a battered bag strapped on behind the curricle seat.

‘Good, then unhitch the greys and shorten the reins off.’

Adam rummaged rapidly through his bags and reduced his essentials to one valise, thankful for a lifetime’s habit of travelling light. Goodness knows what a lady with that taste in bonnets would consider she could not do without, and how many bags that would involve. He hefted the rest down and carried them back to the carriage. The snow was deepening by the minute; this was going to be a nightmare of a journey.

‘We are ready, my lord.’ By some miracle the two women were swathed in heavy hooded winter cloaks with not a sign of a fashionable bonnet. On the seat were two valises and a dressing case.

‘I congratulate you on both your dispatch and your packing, Miss Ross. Now, if you will just stand on the step I will carry you across to the horses.’

The wide grey eyes stared at him, then, disconcertingly, she coloured deeply. Now what had he said? Surely a lady willing to go with a stranger on trust was not going to baulk at being carried through a snowdrift?

‘Ma’am?’

The previously assured figure before him seemed to shrink back into herself. ‘My lord, I should tell you…I am five foot ten and one-quarter inches tall.’

Chapter Two

It might, after all, be better to spend days shut up in the Cock rather than to face the shame of being lugged through the snow like a sack of coals. It would probably take both men to achieve it. No previous humiliation lived up to the prospect of this. Obviously the viscount had no idea when he suggested this scheme that he was dealing with a lady who was freakishly tall.

Adam Grantham was looking serious, although it was difficult to read his expression through the swirling snow. ‘Indeed, ma’am? I am six foot three. And one-half,’ he added after a moment’s thought. ‘I would be charmed to stand here all day exchanging shoe, glove and hat sizes, but I really feel we should be making a start.’

‘But you misunderstand me, my lord…’

His expression changed to one of chagrin. ‘You mean you think me incapable of carrying you, Miss Ross? I have to say I resent that slur upon my manhood.’

Completely thrown into disarray, Decima hastened to reassure him. ‘Lord Weston, I did not for a moment mean to imply any lack of strength on your part—’ There was a muffled choke of laughter from Pru behind her and Decima realised she was being teased. Teased about her height! Why, no one did that, no one considered it grounds for anything but the deepest shame and gloom.

Furious with herself, and with him, she threw the door open and stooped to step out. The wind hit her like a cold douche of water and the snow caught her breath in her throat, effectively stopping the stinging remark she was about to make.

She had hardly straightened when he swept her up, one arm behind her knees, the other across her back. ‘Can you free your left arm and put it about my neck?’ Apparently he did not even have to breathe deeply to cope with her weight.

Decima disentangled her arm and did as she was bid. It involved a fair amount of wriggling around and she was perversely gratified to observe a slight flush under the skin of the cheek her nose was so close to. Possibly you are not as strong as you think you are, my lord, she thought smugly to herself. Just so long as he did not fall into a ditch with her.

The snow was deepening by the minute, Decima realised, as the viscount turned and began to wade back through the drifts towards the horses. He was taking it slowly, placing his booted feet with care, which gave her the opportunity to experience this very strange experience to the full. It was the first time she had ever found herself in a man’s arms, and it was doubtless the last, so, in tune with her New Year’s resolution to live life positively, she might as well start here and absorb this new sensation.

The movement of his torso against her body was…disturbing. He was certainly strong and well-muscled. What did a gentleman do to get muscles like that? Charlton, at thirty-two, was already becoming soft around the midriff and she could have sworn he could not carry a toddler without puffing, let alone his beanpole of a sister. How old was Lord Weston? The same age as Charlton?

From within the shelter of her hood she studied what she could see of him. That chin was even more determined in profile, and his nose matched it. The first traces of dark stubble were showing under the skin on his cheeks—it seemed his beard would be as dark a brown as the hair she could see under his hat. A very male face indeed, Decima decided, and then saw that his eyelashes were quite ridiculously long and thick. Longer and thicker than hers, she thought resentfully. How very unfair. They had snowflakes caught on their tips.

From the side it was difficult to see his eyes. As she was considering this, he turned his head to glance at her and she saw that they were more grey than she had recalled from that first glimpse. Perhaps it was some strange reflection from the snow, but they seemed almost to have silver lights dancing in them. She blinked away the snowflakes from her own lashes and found he was smiling at her. Without considering, she smiled back.

‘Are you all right? Not much further now.’

‘Yes, yes. I am perfectly all right. Thank you. My lord.’ Just prattling like an idiot, she told herself. For Heaven’s sake, Decima, pull yourself together. Why being carried like this should make her feel so hot and breathless she could not imagine. It surely wasn’t embarrassment, not now it seemed certain he was not going to collapse under her weight.

She drew a deep breath and realised that to the list of new sensual impressions she could add scent. He smelt of some subtle citrus cologne, of leather and, faintly, of what she could only imagine was warm man.

Something was making her feel quite strange inside: melting and flustered. And then she realised that if she could catch the scent of him, so he could of her. That was a thoroughly unsettling thought for some reason. Not that there was anything more exotic for him to inhale than good Castile soap and a suitably refined jasmine toilet water. And there was no reason to think that he would find that remotely interesting or disturbing.

‘Here we are.’ He trampled a circle of snow, then set her on her feet, a few paces away from the groom who handed him the reins of two hunters with a grunt.

‘Tied the carriage horses to that bush.’ The man jerked his head in the direction of a pair of dark greys who seemed half lost already in the swirling whiteness as they turned their hindquarters to the prevailing wind.

His master did not appear to take either the curtness, or the scowl that accompanied it, amiss. ‘Are our valises tied on, Bates?’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Then go and fetch Miss Ross’s maid. Here, you!’ he shouted at the postilions, who were sitting hunched and miserable against the snow. ‘Bring the valises from inside the coach.’ Reluctantly, one of the men dismounted and trudged back passing the groom who, being considerably shorter in the leg than the viscount, was sensibly using his footsteps to make his way to the carriage.

‘King Wenceslas,’ Decima observed with a gurgle of laughter, and was answered with a deep chuckle.

‘I cannot see Bates as anyone’s attentive page, and I fear we are not going to be lit by the brightly shining moon tonight. No! I would not touch Fox—’

But Decima was already stroking the soft muzzle that was thrusting hopefully into her gloved palm. ‘What a handsome fellow you are to be sure, and so good, standing here patiently in this horrid snow. What is the matter, my lord?’ The viscount let out his breath in a hiss.

‘Fox is reputed to eat stable boys.’

‘I am not a stable boy.’

‘No, and that horse is an arrant flirt. I’d never have thought it of him.’ Lashes even longer than his master’s were being batted at Decima as she continued to rub just the right spot on the chestnut’s nose.

‘Yes, you are beautiful,’ she cooed, looking at the strongly arched neck and broad chest. ‘Is he a stallion?’ Without thinking, she bobbed down to look. He was, very obviously. ‘So he is. He is very well made.’

Oh, no! As soon as the words were out of her mouth she realised what she had said, and to whom she had said it. That was not the sort of observation a lady was supposed to make, however much she knew about horses. Now, what did one say to a complete stranger after one had commented on his horse’s…er…masculine attributes? The viscount had assumed an expression one could only describe as stuffed.

She was saved from floundering any further by an outraged shriek from the direction of the carriage. ‘Put me down, you cork-brained jackanapes!’ Pru’s tirade was cut short on a gasp and Bates appeared through the swirling snow, the maid thrown over his shoulder. The effect as she wriggled was not unlike a man carrying a sack full of outraged piglets.

Their progress was slow. Decima watched with bated breath, not daring to look at Lord Weston. Bates was a slight man, if wiry. Pru, who stood a mere five foot two inches in her stockinged feet, more than made up for lack of vertical inches with a quite magnificent bosom and a rounded figure to match. At any minute the groom was going to sink into a snowdrift, of that she was sure.

The postilion with the valises overtook them with ease, depositing his burden at the viscount’s feet. ‘We’ll be heading back to the Cock, sir. Where would you be wishful for us to call for the lady when the snow clears?’

‘Um?’ Lord Weston tore his gaze from the floundering figure of his groom and dug a card out of his pocket. ‘Here. Anyone in Whissendine will give you directions. Mind you keep that baggage safe.’ As this instruction was accompanied by the clink of coin, the man tugged his forelock respectfully and waded back, making some comment as he passed the labouring groom that provoked an even more violent wriggle from Pru.

‘Stubble it, do, woman.’ Bates arrived in front of them and set Pru on her feet with more haste than care. Red-faced and furious, she opened her mouth to berate him and succumbed to a paroxysm of coughing.

‘Pru, are you all right?’ Decima crunched through the snow to her side.

‘Just a cold, that’s all,’ the maid assured her hoarsely, shooting a venomous glare in Bates’s direction. ‘Not helped by being hauled around like a sack of potatoes by that weasel-gutted looby.’

‘If you are ready, I think we had better be getting on.’ The viscount was dealing with this minor spat by the simple expedient of ignoring it. Decima envied him such a lofty disregard of his environment, or perhaps he was simply better at disciplining his subordinates than she was and did not look forward to an evening of being grumbled at.

‘Bates, if those bags are secure, mount up and I’ll lift your passenger up to you.’

Decima derived some amusement at the groom’s face on being expected to ride with the fulminating Miss Staples and the coy expression that the prospect of being lifted up by his lordship produced on Pru’s flushed countenance. It was certainly a welcome distraction from her own faux pas concerning Fox.

With Bates and Pru settled, the viscount turned and offered his cupped hands for Decima’s foot. ‘If I boost you up and then mount behind you, will you be all right?’

‘Certainly.’ Decima gathered the reins confidently and lifted her foot. As soon as she was in the saddle she began to have doubts. Riding sideways on a man’s saddle would be manageable, for the pommel gave her enough purchase for her right knee, and the stirrup could be adjusted for her foot. But where would his lordship sit?

He swung up behind her, keeping his weight in the stirrups so he was virtually standing. Decima found herself lifted as he slid into the saddle beneath her and set her down again. Only this time she was sitting in his lap, her weight on his thighs.

‘My lord!’

‘Yes, Miss Ross?’ He leaned over, took the reins of one of the greys from Bates, then turned Fox’s head towards the right-hand arm of the crossroads. Under her she could feel the movement of muscles in his thighs, his arms were tight on either side of her and all she could do to avoid the painful pressure of the pommel on her own thigh was to lean into his body. It felt like leaning into a tree trunk.

‘This is most…most…’

‘Uncomfortable? I’m afraid it is, at least for you, but in those skirts I really do not think you could sit astride, and perching on Fox’s rump is not going to be secure, not over this uneven surface.’ As though to prove his point the big horse plunged into a depression, surging out of it again with a scramble. ‘That must be the ditch.’ He twisted in the saddle, giving Decima more unusual sensations to come to terms with as she balanced on moving muscle. ‘Bates, keep to the right, I got too close to the edge just now.’

There was silence for a few moments, then the viscount commented, ‘I imagine you ride very well, Miss Ross.’

‘It is my chief enjoyment,’ she confessed, pleased by the compliment. ‘My father knew a great deal about horses and encouraged me to take an interest, too.’

‘Did he breed his own?’ Decima risked a glance at Lord Weston’s face, but he was looking ahead, his eyes fixed on the road.

‘Yes, and I helped him choose the bloodlines for the mare I have now.’

‘Ah, I thought you knew your stuff.’ There was the barest hint of amusement and Decima felt herself colouring. No, he hadn’t forgotten her unmaidenly remark about the stallion.

‘What makes you think I ride well?’ Anything to move the conversation on to safer ground.

‘You are riding me now, just as you would a horse, shifting your weight to respond to my movements.’ He said it in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone, but to Decima’s ears it sounded suggestively improper. It felt improper. She had never had more than a hand touched by a man who was not a close relative.

‘I am sorry. Only I don’t have anything to hold on to and I cannot keep my balance unless I shift my weight.’ His thighs must be numb by now, she thought, new embarrassment seizing her.

‘I see the problem.’ His breathing seemed to be coming rather short—she could see the puffs of warm breath on the cold air. ‘Look, if you undo my greatcoat and put your arms around me inside it, then my arms holding the reins will trap it around you. Just hang on and try and sit—still.’ The final word came out as a gasp as Decima twisted to get at the big mother-of-pearl buttons. After a tussle she managed to open the coat and wriggle enough to wrap her arms around the viscount’s body. The flaps of the coat closed with the pressure of his arms and she found herself in warm, man-scented semidarkness.

It was very odd. Sounds from outside were muffled, but her ear, pressed against his chest, could hear the sound of his heartbeat, out of rhythm with hers. Her palms curled against his sides with her fingers curving into his back—goodness, but he was large.

Certainly she didn’t need to shift to keep her balance any longer, but things felt somehow different than before when she’d sat further forward. Decima settled more comfortably, then her mind caught up with what her body was feeling. Oh, my heavens! She suddenly became very still. No wonder he hadn’t wanted her moving about. It seemed the cold had done nothing whatsoever to diminish his lordship’s male reflexes.

Adam relaxed a little. Thank God she’d stopped wriggling. Now all he had to do was to breathe this blessedly freezing air deeply and think of completely unerotic things such as dying of exposure in a snowdrift or Fox breaking a leg in a concealed pothole and possibly, in about a week, his painful state of arousal might subside.

Why a befreckled beanpole of a young lady—not so very young, now he came to think about it—should have this effect upon him he had no idea. Possibly it was a reflex reaction to his sister’s matchmaking; he felt immediately attracted to the first woman he saw who wasn’t thrust into his path by a relative. And she was hardly a conventional lady at that. He recalled her knowledgeable assessment of Fox’s attributes with a grin—Sal would faint dead away if she heard such a comment. Well, if one were to be marooned in a blizzard with a lady, then better an eccentric one than an hysterical young miss.

He snuggled his arms tighter to hold the greatcoat close around her and tucked his chin down on the top of her head. It was much easier to guide Fox with her in this position. And warmer, and altogether more…erotic, damn it. Her hands were clasped tightly around him and he could feel her heart beating, the swell of her breasts, even through the thickness of his coat. Despite her obvious embarrassment about her height, she wasn’t particularly heavy as she rested on his thighs. He just hoped she hadn’t noticed—or did not understand—what else she was resting on.

They rode in silence for what seemed like an hour. Adam twisted in the saddle as best he could and saw his groom was keeping up well. ‘Are you all right, Bates?’

‘Aye. I’d be doing better if I didn’t have to manage this here fubsy bloss.’ This observation was greeted by a hoot of outrage and the sound of a fist thumping against what Adam hoped was Bates’s chest and not some vital part of his anatomy. It was followed by a flurry of sneezes and the groom’s voice adding plaintively, ‘And I’ll have caught a streaming cold by the end of it, too.’

‘What did he call her?’ The voice was muffled under the greatcoat. Adam smiled.

‘A fubsy bloss. I think he was implying that your maid is a well-endowed…I mean, plump young woman.’

There was a giggle. Really a very nice giggle. Adam was not normally taken by gigglers, but then usually they were batting their eyelashes at him on the dance floor and behaving as though his most banal remark was the acme of wit and intelligence. ‘Pru’s figure is usually much admired.’

‘I imagine it is—but possibly her admirers have not had to get their arms around it while balanced on a horse in a snowstorm. I can see a fingerpost, thank heavens.’ Provided it didn’t prove he’d been riding round in circles all this time. He and Bates were fit and the horses were strong, but he wasn’t sure how much more of this they could safely take. The snow was showing no signs of abating.

Bates forged ahead to read the signpost. ‘We’re on the right road,’ he called back. ‘This is Honeypot Hill—a mile down there and we take the lane on the right, then it’s less than half a mile.’

Along a deep lane with high hedges. Either it was going to be protected and clear or it would be impassably deep in drifts. Adam kept his thoughts to himself and led the way down the hill, his hands automatically guiding and checking the horse as it slid and pecked, his mind working on ways round.

‘It is getting worse, isn’t it?’ The voice from the region of his upper coat button jerked him back to the here and now. He could sense the edge of fear under Miss Ross’s calm question, but she wasn’t going to give way to it.

‘Yes.’ There was no point in lying to her, she only had to look for herself.

‘You will manage.’

‘You sound very confident.’

‘I would not have come with you if I hadn’t been,’ Miss Ross said prosaically. ‘I mean, I have had a lot of experience of men who are idiots, so it is quite easy to spot one who isn’t.’

That was frank speaking indeed. ‘I hope that was a compliment, Miss Ross.’

‘Of course it was. Now my brother—or any of my numerous male cousins—would say that I should have stayed in the coach, so by now Pru and I would be well on our way to expiring of cold, my virtue indubitably protected. He would have prosed on for hours about the consequences of my having set forth on this journey at all without a male escort, so by now I would have strangled him and have ended up in the hands of the justices.’

‘Why would you have strangled your brother?’ They had reached the bottom of the hill now and the lane opened up, mercifully free of drifts. ‘The lane looks clearer.’

‘Good. Charlton? Oh, because he is patronising, authoritarian and insensitive, and he bullies my sister-in-law. He used to bully me, but not any more.’ She sounded smugly satisfied.

Adam found himself grinning through cold-stiffened lips. ‘As a magistrate myself, I can tell you that sounds like perfectly justifiable homicide. But why no more?’

‘It’s my New Year’s resolution. One of them.’

Adam was conscious of a deep fellow-feeling for the unfortunate Charlton. Miss Ross sounded very resolved indeed. ‘We’re here.’ He let out his breath with a whoosh, unaware until then just how tense he had become. It was one thing taking himself and Bates into danger, but risking two women was another matter altogether.

Miss Ross wriggled distractingly, and peered out from the shelter of his greatcoat. ‘Are we? Where is it?’

‘Up ahead. There are no lights showing; they must have given us up for the day and all be in the kitchen.’

The horses plodded up the driveway and round to the yard that served both stables and service areas. There was no light there, either. An unpleasant sinking feeling gripped Adam’s insides. What the hell? It could only be just past four o’clock at the latest; anyways, no one with any sense would be out in this.

He edged Fox close to the porch that sheltered the kitchen door. ‘Can you slide down?’ He gripped Miss Ross round the waist, shifted her so that she was facing away from the horse, then let her slip. Under his hands layers of fabric shifted, slithered over each other and over skin. He felt a slender waist, the firmness of a ribcage confined in stays, the sudden, voluptuous, curve of the side of her breasts and then she was down. He had forgotten how tall she was.

Behind them there was the sound of a much-less easy transfer taking place, but all Adam was conscious of was a pair of very cool grey eyes regarding him.

‘There does not appear to be anyone at home.’ Decima stated it calmly, horribly aware that she seemed to have landed herself in exactly the sort of predicament that her female relations always warned her about. Men were beasts, that went without saying, they informed her, and they used every wile and pretext to lure innocent damsels to their ruin.

‘And you think that this is the equivalent of me offering you a lift in my curricle and the traces breaking conveniently close to my love nest?’ the viscount enquired with equal calm, swinging down out of the saddle and trapping her neatly between his bulk and the door.

Chapter Three

‘I am just deciding what I think,’ Decima replied honestly. If this was a snare and a lure and his lordship was intent upon ravishment, then he was both extremely opportunistic and pretty desperate to drag two women miles in the teeth of a blizzard. ‘And I think I am prepared to believe that you are surprised as we to find the house apparently unoccupied.’

‘Thank you, ma’am, for your good opinion.’ He bowed.

‘I must believe it. After all, my lord, if you prove to be a wicked seducer, then think how cast down I must be that my own initial judgement of your character was so at fault.’

That provoked a snort of laughter. ‘Your own good opinion of your judgement must indeed be preserved at all costs, Miss Ross. Now, let me see if the door is unlocked.’

‘Sir.’ It was Bates. Decima turned to find him supporting the sagging figure of Pru, doubled up in a fit of coughing. ‘The wench is in a fair poor state.’

‘Pru, what is it?’ Decima put an arm round the maid and touched her forehead. What had she done, dragging the poor girl out on this journey in the teeth of the threatening snow? ‘She’s burning up with fever. My lord, please, open up as quickly as possible, we must get her inside.’

She bundled Pru into an unlit, cold room, blinking impatiently at the gloom while Bates groped around for lights. At last one, then several lamps flickered into life, showing that they were in a kitchen. The range was dead, an apron neatly draped across the chair by its side.

‘Mrs Chitty! Emily Jane?’ Lord Weston threw open the inner door and shouted. ‘No one. Bates, take the horses over to the stables, get them bedded down and check to see whether the gig is there—they must have gone into town shopping and been caught by the weather.’ The groom stomped off and Decima lowered a shivering Pru into a chair.

‘I must get her to bed at once. Which room shall I use, my lord?’

‘On the first floor. They should all have fires laid and the beds made. The one at the end is mine, use any of the others. Here…’ he lifted one of the spermaceti lamps ‘…I’ll come with you.’

‘I would rather you lit the range, my lord,’ Decima said frankly, taking the lamp from him. Now was no time to stand on ceremony. The housekeeper would have known exactly what was needed—now she had no compunction about making the viscount as useful as he could be. ‘I need hot bricks, hot drinks and hot food for her. Come along, Pru.’

‘I’m sorry, Miss Dessy, don’t know what’s the matter with me,’ Pru mumbled as Decima hoisted her to her feet and guided her out of the room.

‘A fever, that’s what. Lady Carmichael’s maid had it over Christmas, don’t you remember? I expect you caught it from her. Come along, we’ll soon have you tucked up.’ In a cold bed, in a cold house with two strange men for company and probably no chance of a doctor for days. Decima bit her lip and hoped that the absent Mrs Chitty was a prudent housekeeper and kept a well-stocked stillroom.

They made their unsteady way up the stairs and along a corridor, Decima peering into each room in turn. What she wanted was a pair of bedchambers with an interconnecting door, She found them almost at the end of the passage: a spacious bedroom with an adjoining dressing room that had its own fireplace and small bed.

‘Here we are, Pru. Here’s a nice little room that will soon warm up.’ Pru sank down in the chair without any persuasion and Decima set a taper to the fire and checked the bed. Cold, but not damp. ‘Just you stop there a moment, I’ll fetch our bags and we’ll have you undressed and into bed in a trice.’ Somehow she kept the anxiety out of her voice.

Decima ran downstairs to find their valises on the kitchen floor and his lordship, hands on hips, regarding the range—the still-cold range—with a scowl.

‘You haven’t lit it!’ she accused.

‘I’m trying to work it out,’ he retorted. ‘It’s new. There are dampers and compartments and a bit with water in it and things to open and close. It’ll probably blow up if I shut the wrong thing.’

‘Oh for goodness’ sake! Let me.’ Five frustrating minutes later Decima admitted defeat, and retreated to glower at the viscount. ‘Do something. You are a man.’

‘Although undoubtedly true, that does not give me an affinity with…’ he peered at the raised lettering on the cast-iron front plate ‘…Bodley’s Patent Range. I’ll open all the dampers, light it, stand well back and do not blame me if we find ourselves in the midst of smoking rubble.’

Decima looked up from her excavations in the valises. ‘I thought a gentleman should be master of everything in his household,’ she observed more mildly.

‘The last person to try and master Mrs Chitty and her kingdom was the late—and note that, late—Mr Chitty. There. Let me carry those up for you, Dessy.’

‘I can manage…What did you call me?’

‘Dessy. That’s what your maid called you, didn’t she? Miss Dessy?’

‘My name is Decima, my lord.’

‘And what does Charlton call you?’

‘Dessy.’

‘And do you like it?’

‘No.’ She hated it, she realised. It made her sound five years old, or completely totty-headed. Or both.

‘In that case I will call you Decima.’

Decima glared at him, but receiving no satisfaction beyond the undoubtedly admirable view of broad shoulders as he bent to light the range, she stalked out.

When she came back the viscount was hefting a large kettle onto the range. He gave the dampers a shove with the poker and rested one arm on the high mantelshelf, watching the fire. She stood silently in the doorway, studying her rescuer, glad of the opportunity while he was unaware of her scrutiny.

Tall, built to match, athletic-looking with an edge that made her think of racehorses in the peak of condition; everything about him seemed perfectly in proportion. Long legs: the recollection of those well-muscled thighs caused a distinct internal fluttering. Big hands with long fingers and one plain gold signet ring.

She raised her gaze to study his face in profile, lit by the flicker of the new fire. And a very good face it was, too, Decima decided. The strong jaw and nose gave him character, although he was no Adonis. His face was too characterful for any fatuous comparisons with Greek gods, however fashionable that type of look might be. Dark hair, ruffled so she could not tell whether its usual look was modish disorder or simple carelessness, those grey eyes now definitely more greenish in the lamp light. And the most sensual mouth she had ever seen.

Decima shut her own mouth with a snap and looked hastily away. Whatever had come over her? She had never in her life looked at a man’s mouth and thought about how sensual it was, let alone felt the urge to ponder over the curve of the lips or the flexibility of the smile, the way it might feel on hers. She looked back and as she did she felt a frisson of fear run down her spine.

Not fear of the viscount. For some reason Decima didn’t feel the slightest bit uncomfortable with this man. Why not? She should be feeling distinctly uneasy—after all, she was effectively trapped with a powerful, virile stranger in a house without any chaperonage.

No, the fear was of herself and the way she was reacting to him.

The strange, determined Decima who had rebelled that morning, decided to make up her own mind, think positively, live life—this Decima was experiencing the most wanton fancies. She wanted Lord Weston to kiss her, she wanted to feel the breadth of his shoulders under her palms again, not when she was shivering with cold, but now, when they were warm and safe inside. She wanted to touch his hair, run her fingers down the line of that determined jaw, know what it was like to have that expressive mouth covering hers.

This was dangerous folly, she knew it. However honourable a gentleman, it was asking too much of him to have an available female positively quivering with desire under his very nose.

Still, she thought, struggling to get her fantasies under control again, when he did look at her properly in good light at least there was the comfort that he knew the worst already and she would not have to see surprise be succeeded by pity or contempt in those grey eyes.

He was aware of her height, had carried her weight, and he had probably even noticed the freckles, the disastrous final straw as far as her looks were concerned, so he couldn’t be too surprised. He’d had enough warning to manage to keep the reaction off his face at any rate.

There were two basic ways men looked at Decima. Depressed resignation if they were male relatives, or alarm if they were potential suitors lured into meeting her and finding themselves confronted with a befreckled, awkward beanpole. In return, she judged them simply on whether they were polite enough to cover their dismay for however long it took them to tactfully disengage themselves from the encounter.

Except for Sir Henry Freshford, of course. Henry came up to her eye level and quite cheerfully agreed with her that the last thing they wanted to do was get married to each other, not while they were perfectly good friends and could sympathise with each other over the matchmaking wiles of their respective relations. With the exception of Henry, she had felt hideously self-conscious with all unrelated men. Until now.

She came round from her reverie to find herself the subject of an equally thorough, silent, survey.

‘Well, Decima? Do I pass muster?’

How long had she been silently studying him, and how long had he been aware of her doing just that? Decima smiled brightly. Keep it light. Apparently the words wanton virgin seeks kisses were not emblazoned across her forehead, or if they were he was well able to ignore them.

‘You do. Provided you can keep that range in.’

‘I’ve put bricks in the oven to heat and the kettle on the hob.’

‘Oh, good. Nothing has exploded, then?’ She sank down in one of the Windsor chairs and untied the strings of her cloak. ‘Pru’s gone to sleep. I’ve lit fires in all the rooms, including yours. I drew the curtains as well.’

One dark eyebrow rose, very slightly. ‘You lit the fire in my bedchamber? Thank you, Decima.’

Decima felt herself flush at the fancied criticism. ‘I do not see why you should go to a cold bed simply to save me from the shocking sight of a gentleman’s chamber, my lord.’

‘Indeed not, and with any luck Mrs Chitty had cleared away the scandalous prints, the empty brandy bottles and the more outrageous items of underwear. And my given name is Adam. Will you not use it?’

As he had no doubt hoped, the ridiculous nonsense provoked a smile from her before she could decide to be stuffy about first names. ‘Very well, as I imagine we are going to be housekeeping together for several days. Adam.’

It was a good name, and it suited him. Decima let herself relax a little.

‘Can you cook?’

‘Oh…more or less,’ she replied cheerfully, suppressing the truthful answer that she couldn’t boil water and they would almost certainly starve if it was up to her. Perhaps Bates could cook. ‘Shall I have a look and see what food there is?’ After all, how hard could cookery be?

She had just put her head around the door of the larder when the crash and the yell came. Adam was across the room, the back door banging, before she could wrap her cloak around her and snatch up the largest lamp. In its light she saw the sprawled figure of Bates in the middle of the patch of treacherous, glittering ice that spilt out from the base of the horse trough.

Even from that distance there was no mistaking the implication of the way Bates’s lower right leg was twisted at an angle that was totally unnatural. The snow had ceased and everything sparkled with a hard cold.

Ducking back inside, Decima snatched up Pru’s cloak and made her way gingerly across the glassy surface. ‘Here.’ She tucked it around the groom’s shoulders. ‘Have you hurt anything besides your leg?’

‘No, and that’s enough of a bl…No, miss, thank you.’ He was white to the lips and, as Adam touched his leg, he recoiled convulsively. ‘Hell and the devil! Leave it be, damn it!’

‘Oh, yes,’ Adam said sympathetically. ‘I’ll just leave you here, nice and comfy, to freeze to death, shall I? And watch your language while Miss Ross is within earshot.’

‘Let him swear,’ Decima urged, ‘I’m sure it will help. We really ought to splint it before you move him,’ she added.

‘No time. It will hurt, but that’s better than frostbite. Up you come, Bates.’

The resulting language as Adam hoisted the man up and carried him across the yard made Decima clap her hands to her ears, then cautiously remove them out of sheer curiosity. The groom did not seem to repeat himself once. She shut the door behind them and regarded Adam. ‘Here on the kitchen table? It is warm and the light’s good.’

‘No, I’ll take him upstairs. I don’t want to have to move him once it’s set. Which room did you light the fire in for him?’

‘First on the right.’ Decima ran on ahead up the stairs and cast a rapid glance around the room. The bed would have to move. She dragged it out from the wall, her muscles protesting, and shoved it back at right angles so there was access to it on either side. As Adam came in she pulled off the top bedclothes, then lit all the candles. ‘There. Now, what do we need?’

‘Go downstairs, please, Miss Ross.’ Adam was bent over the bed, his gaze rueful as he met the groom’s eyes. ‘I do not think we are in for a very enjoyable quarter of an hour.’

Decima sighed. Men. Even this one, whom she had put down as sensible and non-patronising. She began to think out loud, counting off items on her fingers. ‘A sharp knife to cut off the boot and his breeches. A nightshirt so we can get him into that first to save moving him later.’ Bates sent her a look compounded of shock and outrage. ‘Splints, bandages and laudanum. I’ll go and see what I can find.’

When she returned Adam had got the groom out of his upper clothes and into his nightshirt, draped modestly to preserve everyone’s blushes. She handed him the knife and began to pour laudanum into a glass. ‘Miss Chitty has an admirable stillroom, thank goodness. Here, Bates, drink this, it will help. Do you think some brandy as well, my lord? I’ve brought a bottle.’

The groom swigged back the drug and Adam shrugged. ‘Give him a stiff tot, it can’t do any harm; he has a head like teak.’

‘I’ve got the best straight kindling wood I could find for splints and I’ve torn up a sheet that was in the mending basket.’

‘Thank you, Miss Ross, you are most resourceful.’ Adam pulled off the boot from the uninjured leg, then fell to studying the other thoughtfully. ‘Now go away, please.’

Decima turned to the door. She did not want to stay and see Bates suffering. She certainly did not want to see whatever removing that boot revealed and what would happen next. But it felt like cowardice to go meekly off downstairs like a good little woman when she could be helping.

She got as far as the landing before the sobbing intake of breath drove her back into the room and onto her knees next to the bed. ‘Shove off, miss,’ Bates snapped.

‘You swear as much as you like,’ she said encouragingly, hoping she wasn’t as green in the face as he was. ‘Just hold on to my hands and it will soon be over. And, no, my lord,’ she said as Adam began to speak. ‘I am not going to shove off downstairs, whatever either of you says.’

‘Have you ever met a woman who wasn’t as stubborn as a mule, Bates?’ Adam remarked conversationally.

‘Can’t say as I have, my lord.’

‘I have to say I am shocked at your language, Miss Ross: you must be mixing with the most uncouth men. Right, Bates, that’s the boot. Now for the breeches. Are the horses all right, or am I going to have to drag over there after I’ve patched you up and sort them out?’

Decima half-turned indignantly, recalled Bates’s state of undress and turned back in time to see him produce a twisted grin. ‘They’re all right and tight and rugged up, my lord.’ Adam was talking to him to keep his mind off what was happening, she realised.

‘Gig gone? Bates? Pay attention.’ The groom, whose eyes had begun to roll up in his head, snapped back to consciousness.

‘Yes. Gig’s gone and the riding horse. Looks as though the lot of them went off for marketing and couldn’t get—bloody hell!’

‘Sorry. I needed to check if there’s just the one break. Hmm. Skin isn’t pierced at any rate. I’ll set it now, there’s no point in hanging around and letting the swelling get worse. You may faint any time you see fit, Bates.’

‘Thank you. My lord.’ Bates sounded anything but grateful. Decima shifted her position so that she blocked off as much of his line of vision as she could and smiled encouragingly. There was a minute of major unpleasantness while Bates went even whiter and she thought her fingers were going to be crushed in his calloused grip. Adam swore softly and continuously under his breath. Then Bates gasped and fell back, unconscious.

‘He’s fainted.’ She was not going to be sick.

‘Good. Look, I need another pair of hands. Can you grip his leg just above the knee and hang on while I pull to get the bones aligned?’

Don’t think about it. Just do it. If it was a horse you’d do it. She fixed her eyes on the top of Adam’s bent head, held on and prayed that Bates would stay oblivious.

‘All right. You can let go now. Decima? Let go.’

‘Oh. Of course.’ She forced her fingers open and sat back on her heels. ‘The splints and the bandages are…’ Decima swallowed and got up. ‘I’ll go and get the hot bricks.’

She managed to get to the kitchen simply by talking to herself all the way down the stairs. ‘Hot bricks for Bates and Pru. Might as well do all the beds while I’m at it. I must find something to wrap them in. Check the kettle, see the fire is all right in the range. We’ll need something to keep the bedclothes off that leg.’

The admirable Mrs Chitty kept a stack of neatly hemmed flannel squares in the stillroom. Decima wrapped four bricks and made her way unsteadily upstairs to meet Adam on the landing, a bolster under each arm. ‘I can’t find a stool the right size, but these should do to keep the weight off. You’ve got the bricks? Admirable woman. Here, give me one and you go and see to your maid.’

Pru was sleeping soundly and even Decima’s touch on her hot forehead and the insertion of the brick at the foot of the bed did not rouse her. Decima hoped she would stay asleep until morning, but rather feared she would not. This could be a long night, and she only wished she did not feel quite so queasy.

She put a brick in her own bed, then opened Adam’s door to tuck the remaining one between his sheets. From Bates’s room came a gasp of anguish, cut off by the sound of Adam’s voice. It was too much; to hear someone in so much pain clutched sickeningly at the pit of her stomach. Decima doubled up, retching feebly and unproductively over the lovely porcelain basin on the washstand.

‘Decima? Where are you? Oh, my poor girl. Here, come and sit down and I’ll fetch you something to drink.’

She clutched at the glass blindly and gulped, then choked as the fiery spirit burned down her throat. ‘That’s brandy!’

Chapter Four

‘Brandy will do you good. Drink it all down.’ It would probably make her drunk as a lord, given that none of them had eaten since breakfast, but anything was better than that pinched look around her mouth and those wide, shocked eyes. Adam took the glass from Decima’s shaking hand and set it on the bedside stand. ‘You were a heroine. I could not have managed without you.’

‘It was just when I could feel the bone move—’ She broke off and passed a hand over her face. ‘I am better now. How is he?’

‘He will be fine. I got another shot of laudanum down him and he went out like a snuffed candle. If I can keep him unconscious all night, it won’t be so bad in the morning.’

‘How do you know?’ She looked at him with curiosity as she asked and he saw with concern the greenish tint of her skin. Otherwise it was very nice skin: smooth and pale and covered with those delicious freckles as though someone had dusted fine bran over her nose and cheeks. How long would it take to kiss each one? It would be like kissing the Milky Way. He found himself wondering if they appeared anywhere else on her body.

‘I had the same bone break when I fell out of a tree when I was fifteen. I watched the doctor, while I wasn’t yelling my head off, that is.’

Decima started to get up, then sat down again on the bed with a thump, eyes closed. ‘My, I am dizzy. It must be the shock of it, I suppose.’

Adam smiled. She had had enough spirits on an empty stomach to knock her out for an hour or two. ‘That’ll be it. Now if you just lie back and close your eyes, you will feel better in a moment.’ He eased her back onto the pillows, murmuring soothingly. With a sleepy mutter Decima curled up in the folds of the soft coverlet. ‘There you are, just rest.’ She was asleep.

Adam stood looking down at her, visited by a strange feeling of tenderness. She was hardly a fragile little bloom, but there was something very vulnerable about her, despite her height and age. Something vulnerable, yet she had plenty of courage to fight, too. He imagined any other single lady of his acquaintance undergoing what Decima Ross had that day without succumbing to hysterics, and failed. What she was doing unmarried he couldn’t imagine. Her height was against her, of course, but with those unusual looks and lively mind, there must be scores of tall gentlemen who would have snapped her up.

Possibly there was a large and anxious fiancé somewhere who might be expected to call out Viscount Weston when he learned what had transpired. Not that anything would, of course, but just being alone with him was scandal enough. He was going to have to give some thought to that.

Meanwhile, what to do with a sleeping Miss Ross who was wiffling, gently, as she slumbered? She was not going to be very comfortable when she awoke to find she had slept in her shoes, let alone with her stays laced. The thought brought with it the recollection of her body as it had slipped through his hands to the ground in the yard.

With a grimace for his own over-active imagination, Adam flipped the other side of the coverlet over her and walked away.

He checked upstairs twice more as the evening wore on. The fires needed keeping in; he set water by the bedsides of the maid and Bates, both thankfully still unconscious, and made himself stay away from Decima. She did not need to wake up to find herself in a man’s bed with the man himself in the room: that would be conducive of hysterics.

At one point he cut a wedge of cheese from a wheel of Stilton in the larder and fished some of Mrs Chitty’s pickles out of the jar to go with it, but by seven o’clock Adam was thinking that he was going to have to forage for food or starve.

Then the kitchen door creaked and Decima was standing on the threshold, her face flushed with sleep, a shawl round her shoulders and her hair in tousled disarray. It just made him want to tousle it some more. Adam got hastily to his feet, then came to the conclusion that staying sitting with his legs carefully crossed would have been a better decision.

‘I’ve been asleep,’ she said accusingly. ‘In your bed. Charlton would be outraged.’

‘I imagine Charlton would be even more outraged if I had carried you off and put you in your bed. Do you think he will call me out?’

That provoked a deep chuckle as she came in, pulling her shawl snugly around her shoulders. ‘What a wonderful image that conjures up. Charlton does not have the figure for duelling, let alone the temperament. Bates and Pru are still asleep and I am starving.’

‘So am I. Now, you said you could cook, more or less.’

‘I exaggerated…no, I lied.’ Decima flushed and regarded her toes. ‘I might as well be truthful about it. I haven’t the first clue. Shall we look in the larder and see what there is?’

The meal they spread on the kitchen table—Decima having put her head around the dining-room door and pronounced it fit only to act as an icehouse—owed nothing to any culinary skill whatsoever.

Cold mutton, cheese, the heel of a loaf, butter and plum cake were washed down with ale, or, in Decima’s case, with water. Adam could not recall enjoying a meal more.

For a start it was a pleasure to eat with a woman who showed a hearty appetite and didn’t starve herself and pick at her food in an effort to appear ladylike. Then, Decima did not stand on ceremony either: she forgot to take her elbows off the table when they were in the middle of an argument about the Prince Regent’s taste in architecture, she waved her knife in the air to make her point when she lectured him on horse breeding, and she completely forgot herself and doubled up laughing when he recounted a particularly wicked story about two of the Patronesses of Almack’s and the Duke of Wellington.

‘No! They didn’t? Not both of them,’ she gasped, emerging from her fit of the giggles, pink and glowing.

‘I should not have told you that,’ Adam confessed ruefully. The trouble was, she seemed so at ease with him, and had such an individual character, that it was like talking to one of the dashing young matrons he was used to in London society. Only Decima had a delicious innocence that none of those sophisticated ladies had shown for many a year.

‘No, I don’t expect you should,’ she agreed with a twinkle. ‘But I am glad you did. They were so beastly to me when I came out, it is wonderful to be able to imagine them in such an embarrassing fix.’

‘Why were they beastly?’ It was hard to imagine anyone being unkind to Decima. ‘Did you break one of those tedious rules and waltz before you’d been approved or something equally heinous?’

‘Waltz?’ She stared at him as if he was mad. ‘Who on earth would ask a girl five foot ten inches tall to waltz with them?’

‘I would,’ he replied simply. ‘Do you mean you cannot waltz?’

‘I can, I just never have for real. Charlton insisted I learn. Poor Signor Mazzetti. He did his best, but he came up to…’ she coloured and waved a hand vaguely in the direction of her bosom ‘…up to there and I don’t think he knew quite where to look. And I trod on his feet a lot because I was embarrassed. So it was a good thing I was never asked.’

‘Well, I come to considerably higher up, I know exactly where to look and my feet are large enough for you to tread all over with impunity.’ Adam found himself pushing back his plate and getting to his feet. I must be mad. ‘Shall we?’

‘What? Here?’ She thought he was mad, too. ‘There is no music and, besides, who’s going to do the washing up?’

‘Yes, here. I’ll hum and I expect we will both do the washing up, eventually. Now then, this side of the table, I think, we don’t want your skirts flying into the fire.’

Those wonderful grey eyes were wide and she was staring at him with a mixture of horror and mischief. Adam liked the mischief. ‘Flying?’

‘I am a very vigorous waltzer, Miss Ross. May I have this dance?’

There was that rich chuckle again. Decima got to her feet and made a neat curtsy. ‘Thank you, my lord, although I fear I have not been approved by the Patronesses.’

Adam took her in his arms. Oh, yes. ‘To hell with the Patronesses. Now. One, two, three…’

He was right: it was nothing like dancing with Signor Mazzetti at all And she could waltz, despite her sensible winter shoes and her heavy skirts, whirling between kitchen table and butter churn, dresser and flour bin, laughing, lending her voice to Adam’s tuneful, humming dance rhythm, breathless, exhilarated, round and round in the circle of his arms until she stumbled and found herself caught and held safely, close against his chest.

‘Oh, dear.’ Her breath was coming in pants; part effort, part laughter, part a strange, fizzing excitement. ‘That brandy—I must be tipsy.’

‘You are dizzy. Rest a little.’ Adam’s eyes were on her, their colour that strange, unsettling silver grey that became green as they caught the candle flare. ‘Just stand a moment.’ He did not release her, one hand quite still at her waist, the other one lowering her own hand until it was at waist height.

Adam’s breath was coming short, too—they must have been dancing more vigorously than she had thought. Decima felt herself leaning into him, towards that intent gaze, towards that sensuous mouth that so fascinated her.

Her lips parted instinctively. Why…what was she feeling? So breathless, so hot, so sensitised as though someone was drawing velvet over her bare skin. She should never have drunk that brandy; it was no wonder unmarried girls were forbidden spirits. ‘I think…’

‘Don’t think.’ His mouth was so close now, all she had to do was stand on tiptoe, just a little, lean just a little, raise her face. Her eyes closed. This was going to happen. Decima could not think any further forward than the next ten seconds. There was nothing beyond that. Nothing.

Warm breath feathering her lips. The scent of him, remembered from that cold ride: citrus, leather and now rather more of the exciting, disturbing muskiness of warm man. ‘Decima.’ The word was spoken so close to her lips that she felt, rather than heard, it.

‘Mmm?’

The sound of a door banging upstairs. A faint voice. ‘Miss Dessy?’ Decima blinked, staggered backwards and caught a chair back in both groping hands.

‘Pru. She must have woken up. I will just—I’ll just go and see…’ She fled.

Pru was standing unsteadily in the open doorway, blinking in the candlelight of the torchère that Adam had left on a table at the head of the stairs. Decima snatched it up and urged the maid back into the bedchamber. ‘Get back into bed, Pru, you’ll get chilled out here.’

‘I need the privy, Miss Decima, and I can’t find a chamberpot.’

That at least was one eminently practical problem to which she had an answer. ‘There is a real indoor water closet, just along here at the end of this side corridor.’

The pair of them, both unsteady on their feet for very different reasons, gazed at this modern luxury, then Pru tottered inside and closed the door, leaving Decima with no excuse to think of anything but her behaviour in the kitchen. The exhilaration of the dance still fizzed in her veins but under it was a deep ache of unsatisfied longing. Adam had almost kissed her. She had wanted him to kiss her and her body was punishing her now for being left unsatisfied.

No one had ever kissed Decima other than family members. How does my body know what it is missing? she thought distractedly, passing her hands up and down her arms to try and rub away that strange shivery feeling. Her breasts felt heavier, too, her stays tighter, and lower down there was a hot, molten sensation that was very disturbing indeed.

How on earth am I going to face him again? He must think me some love-starved old maid desperate for caresses. A nagging little voice, the voice that she had thought she had left behind with Charlton and would form no part of her new, resolute self, hissed, And so you are. A desperate virgin, throwing yourself at a handsome man.

The rattle of the metal mechanism and the gush of water provided a fitting counterpoint to this unpleasant truth. Decima forced herself to concentrate on the matter at hand; at least Pru could not be feeling too poorly if she could work out how to flush the unfamiliar closet.

The maid emerged and blinked confusedly up at Decima. ‘Where are we, Miss Dessy? This isn’t the Sun, is it?’

Oh, Lord! Decima made her voice as matter of fact as possible. ‘No, Pru. This is Lord Weston’s house. Don’t you recall he rescued us from the snow?’ She urged the unsteady figure back to her room.

‘Snow? I don’t remember any snow, Miss Dessy. Or any lord. Oh, my head…’

Decima smoothed the rumpled sheets, plumped up the pillows and tucked the maid back into bed. ‘We are snowbound, Pru, and you are not at all well, but we’re quite safe here.’ She flinched inwardly at the lie. Pru might be safe, but her mistress was within an ame’s ace of serious danger, mostly from herself. ‘Now try and drink some water.’ She really needed one of the drinks Decima could remember Cook producing during childhood illnesses. Barley water? Could that be one? ‘Are you hungry?’ That produced a grimace of rejection. ‘How about a hot drink?’

‘No, Miss Decima, I just want to sleep.’

The bed seemed warm enough now and the room was snug with the fire flickering behind its screen. There was probably something she should be doing, but goodness knew what. Biting her lip, Decima left the door ajar and went to look at Bates. He was sleeping soundly, snoring his head off, no doubt happily unconscious on laudanum and brandy. She made up his fire, then checked the fires in her room and Adam’s before accepting that she was putting off the evil moment when she must go back downstairs.

Outside the kitchen door Decima stood breathing deeply, fighting to compose her face. She realised that her shoulders were hunching into the all-too-familiar defensive slouch that she used to use in a vain attempt to hide her height. It seemed that living life to the full meant taking responsibility for your own mistakes as well. Come on, Decima. She pulled back her shoulders and swept into the kitchen.

There was no sign of Adam but then she heard sounds from the scullery and peeped round the door, her embarrassment disappearing in a gurgle of laughter. His lordship was swathed in a vast white apron and had his hands in a bowl of hot water in which he was vigorously scrubbing a plate. ‘What are you doing?’

‘The washing up. The range had heated the water up very efficiently so I thought I would get it out of the way.’

‘I am most impressed,’ Decima admitted.

Adam regarded her seriously. ‘This soda is vicious stuff. The maids’ hands must get raw.’

‘There should be some lanolin somewhere. That’s what our cook uses.’ Decima began to hunt. ‘Look, here by the jar of soda crystals. Rinse your hands in clean water, dry them and rub some in.’

Adam fished out the last plate and did as she suggested, wrinkling his nose at the lanolin. ‘It smells of sheep.’

‘Now why haven’t the apothecaries thought of that?’ Decima mused, finding a cloth and beginning to dry the plates. ‘Scented hand cream for the gentleman who does his own dishes. They could sell it with your crest on the jars—“Lord Weston’s Special Washing-Up Hand Balm: By appointment. Every kitchen maid can have hands as soft as a viscount’s.”’

‘Minx,’ he observed appreciatively. She could feel his gaze on her as she stacked away the plates, then began to hunt along the shelves, but there was nothing of that sensual heat in his gaze now and she felt quite comfortable. She must have imagined that they had stood so close, imagined that his lips had almost been on hers. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘Something to feed Pru when she wakes up again. I must tempt her appetite, she is feeling very poorly. And we’ll need to feed Bates up; I am sure that helps knit bones. And then we will need breakfast, and meals tomorrow. Oh, yes, and I need barley water for Pru as well.’

‘Try the stillroom,’ he suggested. ‘That’s where I found the laudanum.’

Half an hour later there was a pile of notebooks at one end of the kitchen table and a row of small bottles at the other. Decima regarded them gratefully. ‘Thank goodness for Mrs Chitty. There is cough syrup there, and a headache powder and lavender water and that red notebook is full of cures and recipes for medicines.’

Adam was thumbing through it. ‘Here is the receipt for barley water. You’ll need to put the barley into water to steep overnight.’ He continued to read while Decima rummaged in the storage bins, emerging triumphant with a scoop full of barley and a bowl to soak it in. ‘Warm water. Then in the morning, add lemon juice and sugar.’

‘No lemons, but there is apple juice.’ She came and leaned on the table next to him, reading over his shoulder. ‘Stewed Quaker—what’s that?’

‘A sovereign remedy for colds, apparently. Burnt rum and butter. I must try it.’

‘I think we will have to try baking before anything else,’ Decima said ruefully, reaching over to pick up one of the cookery notebooks. ‘There is one loaf left. And we cannot survive on cold meat for much longer, either.’

Adam twisted half-round in his chair to grin at her. ‘I don’t think we are going to be bored, Miss Ross.’ Her heart gave a little flip at his nearness, but he looked away and began to turn the cookery book pages. ‘To boil a turkey with oyster sauce—all we need is a score of oysters, a loaf and a lemon for this recipe. We have the loaf.’

‘But no turkey or oysters,’ Decima pointed out practically, squashing this flight of fancy. ‘I just hope that Mrs Chitty does not think making bread too basic to put in her notebooks. Oh, my!’ She broke off as a jaw-cracking yawn seized her. ‘I must go to bed.’

Adam filled hot water cans and carried them up while Decima lit the way. ‘I could make a reasonable hand at being a footman, don’t you think?’ He grounded one can on her washstand and paused by the door as she came in. ‘Good night, Decima.’ The kiss he dropped on her forehead was so swift that she was still blinking in shock as the bedchamber door closed behind him.

‘Goodnight, Adam,’ she said blankly to the expressionless panels of the door. That was not quite the kiss she had been fantasising about. With a little smile at her own foolishness, Decima turned back her bedcovers and began to undress.

Chapter Five

Decima managed two hours of sleep before sounds from the adjoining bedroom dragged her back to consciousness. She had expected it, leaving the interconnecting door wide open so she could hear Pru, but even so it seemed a bottomless pit that she had to haul herself out of before her eyes opened.

‘I’m coming!’ But Pru was not calling to her, simply talking loudly in her fever. Her forehead was burning hot as she tossed and turned, moaning and coughing. Decima worried that the fact she did not wake herself up meant her fever was very serious, but she had nothing to judge it against.

All she could do was sit by the bed, sponging Pru’s burning face with cold water and talking soothingly to her. She vaguely recalled hearing that it was serious if the patient was not sweating, but as the memory contained nothing about how one could induce this, it left her anxious but no further forward.

Trying to support Pru’s head in an attempt to get her to drink was fruitless, but eventually Decima hit on the idea of dipping a clean handkerchief in the water, then trickling it between the maid’s parched lips. That seemed to help; Pru even sucked feebly at the moisture and, after several redippings, became quieter and calmer.

Out on the landing Decima could hear the sound of soft footsteps and the murmur of voices. His lordship was up and occupied with Bates. She hoped that did not mean the poor man was in too much pain, but it was reassuring to know that others were awake in the cold, still house.

She sat gazing into the fire, suddenly struck by how very lucky she was that Adam Grantham was the sort of man he was. An out-and-out rake, bent on seduction or worse, was one danger, of course, but she had never been in any real fear of that since the first moment she’d met those steady grey eyes with their intelligence and humour.

But she could never have hoped for a gentleman—a nobleman—who coped with unclouded good humour with housekeeping and sick nursing, or who could so cheerfully disregard his own comfort and convenience. Charlton might, if absolutely desperate, light a fire or scavenge in the larder for a snack for himself, but as for him happily consuming a makeshift meal or washing up afterwards, that was beyond her powers of imagination.

When the clock struck three the water was almost gone and the fire burned very low. Outside the door, all seemed quiet again. Decima stretched stiffly, went to make up the fire, then picked up the water jug. Best to refill it now while Pru was relatively quiet.

Opposite, Bates’s door was open, the branch of candles within throwing strong bars of light across the shadowy passageway. She peeped in, but the groom was lying quietly, flat on his back, eyes closed. Of Adam there was no sign. Decima tiptoed to the landing and froze at the sound of approaching footsteps, then Adam appeared from what she was beginning to think of as the Privy Corridor, carrying an object discreetly shrouded in a towel.

He smiled at the sight of her, his teeth white in the half-light. ‘Good morning, Decima.’ She averted her gaze from the disguised chamberpot, instead taking in the full glory of the quite splendid brocade dressing gown Adam was wearing. It must be Oriental silk, she realised; dramatic black dragons writhed across a background of scarlet, jets of gold issuing from their mouths. It was luxurious, exotic and masculine in the extreme.

‘How magnificent!’

‘Why, thank you, Miss Ross.’ Adam’s smile was quite blatantly flirtatious.

‘I meant your dressing gown,’ Decima retorted repressively, managing not to stare at his bare feet. Why the sight of a man’s bare feet should be quite so disturbing she could not imagine. And in any case, they’d be very cold and in bed that would be—She caught herself in this utterly improper thought and dropped her eyes, only to realise with horror that she had not stopped to put on her dressing gown and the only thing between her and the viscount’s interested gaze was a thin nightgown.

‘How magnificent,’ he echoed, his voice an appreciative purr. ‘You know, under normal circumstances the bedroom corridors of a country house at night would be busy with the guests swapping rooms on some amorous errand or another and here we are, each laden with an article of domestic chinaware, with nothing on our minds but sickroom nursing.’

From the glint in his eyes his mind was on almost anything but the sickroom. Decima felt her colour rising and realised in horror that her nipples were peaking under the thin cotton. It must be the cold, nothing else would make them react like that, but she was sure Adam had noticed.

‘I must get some more water,’ she squeaked, scuttling downstairs with more haste than dignity.

‘Could you put the kettle on?’ he called as she reached the hall. ‘I’ll come down for it in a minute.’

‘All right,’ she called back.

She filled her jug, dealt with the kettle, and stood for a moment, bathing in the heat from the range. Her nipples were still showing no sign of calming down, however warm she got. It was baffling.

Upstairs there was, thankfully, no sign of Adam. She pulled on her dressing gown, although it felt poor protection, for it was a thin cotton garment she had selected specifically to take up as little room as possible in her valise.

Pru sucked thirstily at the freshly wetted handkerchief and this time cooperated when Decima pressed a cup to her lips. Encouraged, she stirred a little of the headache powder into the water, then, when Pru would take no more, settled down to soothe her brow with lavender water.

Behind her the door opened and, before she could turn, the soft, heavy mass of a silk brocade dressing gown settled gently around her shoulders.

‘What…?’

‘Shh.’ It was Adam, leaning over to set a cup of tea on the bedside table. ‘I have two, use this one. Look, if you just slip your arms into the sleeves, I am sure we can roll them up.’

He showed every sign of helping her do it, so Decima got to her feet and shrugged on the garment, its heavy amber silk decorated in a dizzying pattern of orchids and lilies in ivory, gold and browns. ‘It is lovely,’ she breathed. The robe pooled around her feet and her hands vanished into the deep sleeves.

‘Let me.’ Adam’s hands were reassuringly brisk as he folded back the sleeves until her hands appeared again. ‘There. Now, if we just do up the sash…Where has that vanished to?’ And then things were not so reassuring after all. His hands went round her waist, searching for the dangling sash ends, and Decima was suddenly close against his chest, silk-covered breasts brushing against him in a manner that sent quivers of awareness through her body. And this time she was left in no doubt at all what was making her nipples hard.

‘I’ll do it!’ She snatched the ends from his hands and fumbled them into a bow. ‘Thank you!’ Beside her Pru stirred uneasily and Decima turned to her, thankful for the excuse. Adam was suddenly too close, too big, too warm and far too male, and she wanted to be left alone to come to terms with all the disturbing new reactions her body was producing in response to him.

She soothed the invalid’s forehead with lavender water, glancing back over her shoulder with an uneasy smile that she hoped combined gratitude with dismissal. ‘I should not have been talking,’ she whispered, ‘I think it disturbs her.’

Adam merely smiled, a glint in his grey eyes that told her he knew that it was not Pru who was disturbed by his presence. Decima looked away and after a moment the door shut softly behind him.

‘Oh dear, Pru,’ she murmured, settling down again by the bedside. ‘This experiencing life is all very well, but I wish I knew what I was going to feel next. And what to do about it.’ She snuggled into the soft warmth of the dressing gown, took Pru’s hot, dry hand in hers and closed her eyes.

As the clock struck six Adam blinked and straightened up in the chair, wincing as his cramped muscles protested. Bates had finally succumbed to exhaustion and a quantity of brandy guaranteed to give him a headache that would take his mind off his broken leg in the morning. Now he was fast asleep, the air resounding with his snores.

Adam groped for the candle and made his way to the still-glowing fire to rekindle it, then reached for the cup of tea that had gone cold and gulped it down with a baleful glare at the clock. Was it worth going back to his own bed and snatching another hour’s sleep?

There were four horses to tend to, logs and coal to bring in, fires to make up and food to be found on top of whatever assistance Bates was going to need. He wrestled with unfamiliar priorities and decided on fuel first, then stables. And at some point during the morning, he promised himself, a hot bath. A deep hot bath. With fine milled soap. And the back brush. And a pile of Turkey towels that had been warming in front of the fire.

And who, he asked himself, through a jaw-cracking yawn, is going to lug up the cans of water, find the towels, empty the bathwater…? How much was he paying his staff? Not enough, obviously, if his experiences of domestic duties so far were anything to go by. And Mrs Chitty deserved a salary at least equivalent to that of a circuit-court judge.

He stretched, warming himself up with the thought of that imagined bath and Decima scrubbing his back, rasping the bristles across his shoulders in a mass of foam, running her—Stop it. He was certainly awake now. What was the matter with him? Adam grinned ruefully. It was no mystery what ailed him, only why, when it was but a few days since he had left the bed of his delightful and highly skilled mistress, that he should be lusting after a leggy spinster.

He padded across the landing and applied an ear to the door panels. Silence. He eased the door open and found Decima sleeping uncomfortably in the chair, her upper body slumped onto the bed beside Pru. He edged round and laid the back of his hand on the maid’s forehead. It was warm but damp, and she was sleeping heavily with none of the restlessness of the night. The fever had broken.

He stood for a long moment, staring down at Decima, surprised by the sudden wave of protectiveness that swept over him in place of the erotic thoughts that had been occupying his mind. She should have looked ridiculous, cramped and hunched, her face pressed against the counterpane, one tendril of hair straggling across her face where it blew slightly with every breath, her face shiny with sleep. Instead she looked adorable.

Cautiously, he bent and straightened her up, then scooped her into his arms and walked through to her bedchamber. The bedclothes were turned back from when she had got up to Pru and he laid Decima down into the dent her body had left. He straightened the dressing gown over her legs, eased off her kid slippers and drew the bedclothes back over her body. She did not stir.

Adam found that he was breathing as though he had carried her for a mile uphill and that he was uncomfortably hard. Damn it! One did not trifle with virgins, one did not take advantage of gentlewomen seeking sanctuary under your roof and one certainly did not stand there in a lady’s bedchamber, recalling with intense erotic detail the sensation of her long, strong legs flexing and balancing on your thighs as you rode with her through the snow. Not if one hoped for any relief at all from mental and physical torment.

It wasn’t even as though she had the slightest idea about flirtation, he thought. She had been taken utterly unaware when their impromptu waltz almost ended in a kiss and on the landing during the night she had been adorably, and very innocently, flustered by his teasing.

What on earth was wrong with the men she had met? Why wasn’t she married? It was obvious that she had this ridiculous self-consciousness about her height, but why? He had never come across a woman as tall as she, but society was full of tall gentlemen who would be as entranced as he was by her grace and beauty and original charm.

Brooding, Adam pulled himself away from her bedside and went to make up the fire, placing pieces of wood as delicately as though he were playing spillikins. No money, perhaps? A complete lack of dowry would be an impediment to the most handsome woman, but her style of dress, the quality of her hired coach and the presence of two postilions rebutted that theory.

With a lingering glance at the figure in the bed, Adam went to make up the other fires, then washed with haste in the cold water in his bedroom, dressed and went downstairs to face the waiting chores.

Decima woke slowly, more than a little inclined to snuggle back down into the warmth of the soft bed, into the caress of the wonderful silk sheets. Silk sheets? Her eyes opened with a snap. No, not silk sheets, her feet were tangled in the weighty luxury of an Oriental dressing gown.

‘How on earth did I get back to bed?’ Decima sat up and regarded the room in the clear, chilly morning light. The blankets were tucked in, which she could never have managed for herself, her slippers were neatly together in front of the fire and the fire itself was crackling cheerfully behind the screen. ‘Oh, heavens. He put me to bed.’

Decima gulped and threw back the covers. She was still decently tied up in the dressing gown, its skirts and those of her night rail gathered modestly around her calves. But that was not reassuring; Decima’s imagination produced a vivid mental picture of Adam’s tall figure bending over the bed, smoothing the clothing down, his fingers brushing against her ankles.

That strange, hot, molten feeling inside her came back. She felt restless. Tense. Surely she couldn’t be coming down with Pru’s fever?

Lord! Pru. She should not be idling in bed, wrestling with an utterly inappropriate and unmaidenly attraction to Adam Grantham, she should be nursing her poor maid. Decima scrambled out of bed and hurried to check on her.

‘Pru? Are you awake?’

‘Mmm? Miss Dessy? Ooh, my head.’ Anxiously Decima touched her forehead, deeply relieved to find it hot but damp. The confused expression of the night before had gone.

‘Lie still, Pru, you’ve got a nasty fever. Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Yes, please, Miss Dessy.’ She struggled to sit and Decima helped her up against the pillows. ‘But you shouldn’t be waiting on me, where’s the maid?’

‘There are no staff here, Pru. Here, let me put this shawl around your shoulders. We’re snowed in with Lord Weston and his groom, who has broken his leg.’ Pru blinked in surprise, but seemed to be understanding what she was being told. ‘I’ll find you some breakfast and then you can have a nice wash and a fresh nightgown.’

Downstairs there was no sign of Adam, but a glance across the yard showed the stable door open and a wheelbarrow full of soiled straw steamed in the cold air. Inside, the range was glowing and beside the door was a stack of damp logs.

Twenty minutes later she climbed the stairs with a tray, pleased with her efforts. She had found milk, still fresh-tasting thanks to the cold, and had warmed it on the fire, adding torn-up bread, sugar and a little cinnamon. Surely Pru’s poor throat could manage that?

Pru spooned it down eagerly and drank the tea, as well. Decima began to feel quite encouraged, but, after a slow trip along the landing to the water closet, the maid suddenly seemed to fail again, and Decima had to virtually lift her into bed. She was asleep before she could finish tucking her in.

It was only to be expected, she told herself, and the more sleep she got the better; a wash could wait. Bates was still snoring away, so she went back to her room, pulled on her heavy shoes, wrapped a thick shawl around her shoulders and ran downstairs. Time to face his lordship again.

Adam dragged a shirtsleeve over his sweating brow and started grooming the second carriage horse. He had mucked out the four stalls, fed and watered the animals and was now working his way along the line, grooming and checking for any injury sustained in the journey through the snow. Bates would have checked yesterday evening, but a strain might have made itself felt overnight.

His greatcoat hung on a bridle peg with the coat he’d discarded after five minutes and the waistcoat he’d stripped off after that. The hard physical work felt good. In the crisp air the heat and the honest smell of the horses were invigorating and the practical tasks kept his mind off concerns about what to do with an unchaperoned lady he wanted to take to his bed, and the singular lack of anyone to cook for them.

The door creaked behind him and a welcome pungent smell wreathed around his nostrils. ‘Coffee?’ Decima enquired, coming in to set a sturdy earthenware mug on the edge of the manger. ‘I have left it black, with sugar, but I can bring some more if that is not right.’

Adam ducked under the horse’s neck to reach the mug, realising as he did so that he was avoiding looking at Decima or getting too close to her. ‘Just right, thank you. Good morning. Did you sleep well?’

‘Yes, I did. Thank you for putting me to bed.’ No beating about the bush then! She sounded quite composed, if a trifle cool.

‘You looked uncomfortable. I thought you would sleep better and your maid seemed quiet.’

‘She managed some bread and milk this morning, although she is as weak as a kitten.’ Decima’s voice seemed to be coming from further away. Adam ducked back under the grey’s neck and found her gone. ‘Good morning, beautiful! Yes, you are a handsome fellow now I can see you properly. And how did you know I’ve got sugar in my pocket, might I ask?’

She was in Fox’s stall. With a muffled oath Adam followed her, expecting to find her cornered by the stallion’s snapping teeth. Instead she was feeding him titbits with one hand and scratching him gently behind one ear with the other. The great horse had an expression of sleepy contentment, although at Adam’s arrival he rolled an eye in his direction.

‘You might well look bashful, you old fraud,’ Adam scolded. ‘He has the most shocking reputation for biting, but just look at him,’ he added to Decima.

‘That’s enough,’ she said firmly, dusting off her palms. ‘You’ll get fat. He is a pussy cat really, it just needs confidence. He does not bite you, I imagine.’

‘No.’ Adam regarded her warily. She was wearing a plain brown dress with a large wool shawl wrapped over her shoulders, then crossed to tie behind her waist. Her hair was pulled back by a ribbon into a long tail down her back and her hands were ungloved. Her nose was pink with the cold, tendrils of hair were escaping to curl around her cheeks and Adam thought she looked utterly enchanting. Why? Her dress was utilitarian, her coiffure non-existent, she wasn’t jewelled or powdered or perfumed. In fact, with smudges of tiredness under her eyes and Fox’s affectionate slobber on her sleeve, she looked completely unladylike. And original. And beddable.

‘What is wrong?’ She was regarding him with anxious eyes. ‘You are frowning so.’

‘I am sorry. Fox has slobbered all over your sleeve.’ Adam gulped hot coffee. ‘Don’t stay out here, you will get cold.’

‘Not if I do some work.’ She reached up, took the dandy brush and curry comb off the beam above the manger and slapped Fox on the shoulder. ‘Get over now.’

‘You cannot groom my horses!’

‘Why ever not? Papa always insisted I groomed mine at least once a week, otherwise you do not know all about them, however good your grooms are. I still do it.’ She was passing the brush over Fox’s neck in long, hard sweeps, dragging it across the teeth of the curry comb after each stroke. Adam watched, mesmerised. She was strong; those were no mere pats with the brush, but good firm strokes, massaging the skin and muscles beneath it. With her height she had all the reach she needed, except to brush Fox’s poll, and there she simply grabbed his forelock and pulled until the big horse obediently lowered his head for her.

Strong, confident, tall—she should have seemed unfeminine, but instead Adam thought her like some goddess, or an Amazon, magnificently female with her long limbs and her mane of hair.

‘His legs are cool.’ She looked up from her bent position, running her hands down Fox’s legs. ‘He doesn’t seem to have strained anything yesterday.’

‘Good.’ Adam did not seem to be able to find anything else to say. All the words that occurred to him were either banal or would get his face slapped. Instead, he leaned on the half-door and watched.

‘Have you finished the others? Only I want my breakfast.’ It was not a complaint, he realised, just a cheerful observation. Decima would quite obviously work away until the horses were looked after, however hungry she was.

‘No, a horse and a half left to go.’ He strode back to finish the grey and found the hoof pick, praying that by some miracle Mrs Chitty would appear out of the snowdrifts before he found something else about Decima to attract him.

‘I will race you,’ she called. ‘What is your other hunter called?’

‘Ajax.’

‘First one to Ajax’s tail gets the egg, then.’

‘Which egg?’

‘The one and only hen’s egg left in the larder!’

Laughing, Adam pressed on. They met at the door into Ajax’s stall, Decima diving in first to seize the brushes so he was forced to rummage for those in the stall next door.

‘Cheat,’ he grumbled. ‘Look, you’ve left me with all of his mane.’

‘I will do his face.’ She sounded breathless now, half with effort, half with laughter at this ridiculous race. ‘Loser gets the tail.’

‘Where’s the leather?’

‘What leather?’ For a moment he was deceived, but only for a moment. He was getting to know Decima.

‘The one you are hiding.’ He ducked right under the hunter’s belly, surprising her so that she jumped back with a squeak, but not before he saw the yellow chamois leather flick behind her. ‘Come on, you’ve finished with it.’

‘Find your own.’ She was laughing at him, her generous mouth wide to show even white teeth.

‘No, you’ve got what I want,’ and he lunged for it.

Decima found herself pressed against Ajax’s shoulder, the solid bulk of the horse unyielding at her back. Adam was right in front of her, a laughing challenge in his eyes. ‘Come on, hand it over.’

His shirt was open at the neck, showing a tantalising glimpse of dark hair, the sleeves were rolled up, exposing strong forearms with elegantly long muscles, his hands were raised in mock menace and he was smiling with absolute confidence that she would yield. His body heat seemed to wash over her, bringing the startlingly arousing scent of fresh sweat, hot man and leather.

Decima thought wildly that she had never seen anything more male in her life, and that included the stallion in the next stall. Suddenly she knew she could not deal with this; she was out of her depth, playing with forces she did not understand, and whatever happened next she was about to make an utter fool of herself.

‘Here.’ She thrust the leather into his hands and slid down, under the horse and up the other side where, thank God, it seemed possible to breathe. ‘You win. I’ll go and cook breakfast.’ Her exit from the stables was, she was certain, anything but dignified.

Chapter Six

Any fool could cook bacon and eggs, surely? Even a fool who let herself be entranced by a virile man who had nothing else on his mind other than passing a few days’ isolation by flirting with an old maid. Decima peered miserably into the mirror that hung in the scullery above the small basin where she was scrubbing her hands.

‘Look at you,’ she muttered angrily. Her nose was pink, her cheeks flushed. The beastly freckles stood out as though each one had been individually touched in with sepia ink. Her hair was all over the place and she looked positively haggard from lack of sleep. In fact, she looked every one of her twenty-seven years, if not more. She pulled a face at herself, then winced at the way it widened her mouth. Her wide mouth was not the worst of her faults, she had been given to understand, just one of many, but it did not help. Fishy lips, her unkind young cousins had called her when they were children.

She realised that she was having to stoop in order to look in the mirror that the housekeeper and the maid used every day. Doubtless they were normal-sized women, not fairground oddities.

Fool, fool, fool. How did she think she could turn herself from the passive, quiet freak of an unmarried sister into an independent, assured woman who experienced life on her own terms? Possibly it was achievable, but not in the space of a day and a night, not in the company of an experienced man of the world who was just too much of a gentleman to laugh at her.

He laughs with me, the pathetic little inner voice mumbled, he finds me amusing. The old, cynical destructive voice snapped back, Just like you’d find a child aping its elders amusing, no doubt. It hadn’t needed that brandy last night to turn her head, she had been drunk on freedom and excitement and the edge of danger and she had behaved like…like a fool. Why search for another word when that one summed it up so neatly?

Decima scrubbed her hands viciously on a towel, threw off her shawl and found an apron. Bacon, bread, the one egg. Enough for three, for Bates must surely be awake and hungry by now.

Knife, bread board, toasting fork. What do you cook bacon in? A frying pan, presumably. Fat.

She moved around the larder, gathering things up, forcing herself to work out timings to keep the apprehension at bay. He would be back in a minute, wondering why she had fled in that idiotic way.

In the event there was a pile of only slightly charred toast on the table and the bacon was sizzling nicely—provided one had a fancy for it crispy—by the time the back door opened.

Decima kept her back to the door, busying herself pouring hot water over the coffee grounds.

‘All done,’ Adam said cheerfully, as though she had not just fled in disarray from a game she had initiated. ‘That bacon smells good.’

Hastily, Decima flipped it onto a platter before it went any blacker. How did one fry eggs? Tentatively, she cracked it on the edge of the frying pan, then leapt backwards as the contents landed on the fat in an explosion of spitting droplets.

‘Too hot.’ Adam leaned across her and lifted the pan off the heat while the egg spluttered and went white with an uneven frill of brown around the edges.

‘It’s spoilt,’ Decima said, alarmed to find that her voice trembled.

‘No, it’s not.’ Adam slid it out onto the platter where it sat, the yolk looking decidedly underdone in its hard brown-and-white ruff. ‘I’ll wash and then take Bates’s food up. I will not be a minute.’

Decima buttered toast and put it with bacon, a pot of jam and a mug of coffee onto a tray, pushing it across the table to Adam as he emerged from the scullery. ‘I hope he feels better this morning and his leg is not paining him too much.’

‘More likely his head.’ Adam grinned and lifted the tray. ‘I’ll check on Pru while I’m up there.’

Automatically Decima set the table, buttered the rest of the toast, put out the jam and the platter of bacon. It looked decidedly overcooked, but somehow, against all the odds, the kitchen table seemed homely and charming with the fragrant bacon and the chairs close to the warmth of the range. Why that should so overset her she had no idea, but her eyes filled with tears, a sob caught in her throat and before she knew what she was doing she was sitting down, her face in the apron, weeping.

‘Hey! What’s this? Decima?’ Adam was on his knees by her side, gently prising the apron from her face. ‘Have you burnt yourself?’

‘No, I am sorry, this is ridiculous, I’m not crying, I never cry.’ She tried to hide her face again and was firmly prevented. Adam pressed a large white handkerchief into her hands.

‘Never?’

‘Never.’ Her voice wavered. This was dreadful. Her nose would be red, her eyes red, her face blotchy.

‘Oh well, then, if you aren’t crying,’ Adam said briskly, ‘you are sick of the mulligrubs. That is easily cured.’

‘The what?’ Decima emerged cautiously from the shelter of the white linen.

‘Mulligrubs. Look, come and eat something, that’s the best thing to cure them. It ought to be cake, or sweets—the stickier the better—but bacon will do.’ He heaped a plate and pushed it towards her. ‘Go on.’ This had to be some kind of dream. A viscount, sitting in his breeches and shirtsleeves at a kitchen table, eating her burnt offerings and discussing mulligrubs.

‘But what are mulligrubs?’ The bacon smelled delicious. Decima took a forkful, chewed, followed it with a bite of toast and the wobbly feeling inside subsided.

‘I am not sure exactly.’ Adam was gingerly cutting into the egg. ‘It’s what my old nurse used to call it when I was a little boy and was cast down or in the dumps for no good reason. But food always works.’

‘Do you…do you get the mulligrubs often now?’ she enquired. He ate the egg without any expression of revulsion; perhaps her cooking was not that bad.

‘I haven’t had them for years. I suspect they go away if there isn’t anyone around to cure them with a dose of toffee. Bates is awake and appreciating your bacon, too. He says that his blanking leg is hurting like blank, if his lordship will excuse him saying so, and he’d have done a better job himself on a dog, but he is sure his lordship did his best considering he hasn’t had much practice. Pru fortunately slept through that expression of gratitude for our efforts.’

‘Is he always that outspoken?’ Decima blew her nose and stuffed the handkerchief away.

‘Usually he just grunts. It was one of the longest speeches I have ever heard him make, other than that tirade when I carried him in last night. I inherited him from my father, another man of very few words, who took him on as a half-starved brat. I think they suited each other. He’s tough, loyal, damn good at his job—all qualities I would put before obsequiousness or a tendency to chatter.’

‘Indeed, yes.’ Decima pushed away her greasy plate and reached for the preserve jar. The memory of breakfast the day before and her sudden resolution came back to her. ‘Do you know, it is New Year’s Day tomorrow?’

‘So it is. We must do something to celebrate.’ Adam took the jar and began to heap gooseberry jam lavishly onto his toast. ‘We could bake a cake.’

‘No eggs. Even I know you need eggs for a cake.’

‘True. Then we will play in the snow.’

‘In the snow? But what can we do?’

‘I will think of something. Now, you are going back to bed.’ Adam poured another cup of coffee and pressed it into her hands. ‘Off you go.’

‘But I have only just got up! It is nine o’clock and there is goodness knows what to do.’

‘Such as?’ He began to push her gently towards the door. ‘Bates will be scandalised if you try and nurse him, Pru’s asleep, the horses are fine until this evening. If Pru needs you, I will wake you.’

‘But…’ Decima dug her toes in on the threshold and waved a hand at the kitchen table.

‘A few plates and some knives and forks are not going to exhaust me. They may ruin my lily-white hands, of course, if the lanolin runs out. Now go on. You are tired out.’

‘But—’

‘If you say that once more I will carry you. Do you want me to put you to bed?’ That was not said with the slightest edge of flirtation. That was a threat. Decima turned tail and did as she was told.

She woke when the clock struck one, although she had slept through the twelve-o’clock chimes like someone drugged. There were sounds from the adjoining room, interrupted by a fit of coughing.

Decima scrambled out of bed, dragged her stay laces to and buttoned her gown. ‘Pru? Are you awake?’

She was, bleary-eyed and very pale, but propped up in bed with a tray by her side bearing a jug of cloudy white liquid, a spoon, a bottle of Mrs Chitty’s cough linctus and the remains of what looked like a bowl of soup.

‘Hello, Miss Dessy. Did I wake you?’

‘No, not at all. Pru, I’m so sorry to have been asleep when you woke up.’ Decima perched on the edge of the bed, disturbing a pile of journals. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Weak as a baby.’ Pru grimaced. ‘But the fever seems to have burned itself out; there’s just this pesky cough left. That medicine’s good, though. His lordship brought it up, and the barley water, and some soup at luncheon time.’

‘Where on earth did he get soup?’

Pru shrugged, then coloured. ‘Don’t know, but honestly, Miss Dessy, I didn’t know where to look. I was dying for the you-know-what, but I wasn’t sure if I could walk there all by myself and he said, bold as brass, “Would you be wishing to visit the other end of the corridor, Miss Prudence?” Well, I didn’t know where to look, but do you know, he carried me, set me down outside and strolled off, all tactful like, until I opened the door again. He’s a real gentleman, even if he is a viscount.’

Perplexed, Decima tried to work that one out. ‘But, Pru, if he is a viscount, you would expect him to be a gentleman.’

‘Doesn’t follow,’ the maid said darkly. ‘Most of them are out-and-out rakes from all one hears. No woman is safe with the likes of them.’

This conjured up an image of Adam, grinning lecherously and chasing Pru’s buxom figure and Decima’s lanky one round and round the kitchen table. Decima bit her lip and said merely, ‘I think we are safe with this particular viscount.’ She was not entirely sure whether she was glad about that. Or even whether it was entirely true. ‘Now, don’t you think you should lie down and rest again?’

‘I keep nodding off. Miss Dessy—you aren’t going downstairs looking like that, are you?’

‘Like what?’

‘Your hair is a mess, and that gown’s all crumpled and I don’t reckon you’ve laced your stays up tight, either.’ She levelled a disapproving look at Decima’s bust line.

‘I will do my hair, but I am not going to try and lace myself up tightly. I’d need to be a contortionist to do that!’

‘Let me,’ Pru nagged. ‘You want to look your best.’ Decima merely gave her speaking look over her shoulder as she went to find her hairbrush. ‘You never know,’ Pru retorted mysteriously. ‘I’ll fret if you don’t come here and let me do it.’ She managed a pathetic cough to underscore her point. ‘Men notice these things.’

Brushed, laced and uncrumpled, Decima made her way downstairs. There was silence from the kitchen, but an appetising aroma wreathed through the air.

‘Miss Ross.’ Adam emerged from one of the front rooms and sketched a bow. ‘If you would care to go into the dining room, I will bring you your luncheon.’

Decima swallowed. She had been expecting an afternoon spent in the kitchen and running up and down the stairs looking after Pru and Bates. That was safe, practical and distanced her completely from being Miss Ross, who had to make polite social conversation with a gentleman.

This particular gentleman had transformed himself from a good imitation of a groom into the perfect image of the Englishman at home in his country retreat—elegant without trying too hard just about summed it up. And heart-thumpingly attractive without trying at all. Decima remembered Pru’s approving words. No, he might not be a rake, but that did not make him any safer.

Adam observed the flicker of surprise, swiftly followed by a flash of some other emotion. Was it mischief? Laughter? Then Decima had her face perfectly under control. Now, what had provoked that?

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but you should let me help.’

‘Not at all.’ Adam opened the dining room door for her and smiled at her exclamation of surprise. The fire was lit, the room warm, candles flickered and he had laid the table. ‘I decided that we had had enough of playing at Below Stairs, so I have lit fires here and in the small salon and, although we might have to slip back into our roles of groom, cook, housemaid and sick nurse at regular intervals, at least we can come here afterwards. Now, if you will excuse me, Miss Ross, I will become the butler for one moment.’

She meekly took the chair he pulled out for her and shook out her napkin. Adam retreated to the kitchen, admitting to himself that he was a trifle apprehensive about her reaction to his morning efforts in the kitchen. It was an interesting novelty to be attempting to please a woman in an area where one was a complete beginner. He grinned to himself; the last time he’d been in that position he had been—what? Just seventeen? And the field of expertise to be acquired was somewhat different. Learning to cook seemed unlikely to be as fascinating, but was probably much safer.

‘Soup, ma’am.’ He set the tureen in front of her.

‘My goodness.’ Decima lifted the lid and sniffed. ‘It smells wonderful. And what is that?’

‘Ah.’ She was eyeing with cautious interest the dark brown lump he was attempting to slice. ‘Bread. I do not think it is supposed to be quite like this.’

‘I am sure it will be delicious,’ she said politely as a slice thumped onto her plate. ‘A local recipe, no doubt.’ She was teasing him, he was convinced of it. Yes, there was that wicked sparkle again. ‘Possibly it requires lemons?’

‘That’s the Leicestershire version,’ he retorted. ‘The Rutland receipt should really have walnuts. Tell me, Decima, what made you look so amused when you came downstairs just now?’

She paused in ladling out the soup and coloured slightly. Adam discovered that he enjoyed the fact that he could make her blush like that. The colour ebbed and flowed rapidly under her fine skin—the skin that was becoming an obsession with him. It was those damned freckles.

‘I could not possibly say.’ She passed him his soup and began to ladle out hers. Now, most women would have enquired archly what he meant, would have fluttered their eyelashes and would probably have giggled at him.

‘Why not?’ He pushed the butter towards her. The so-called bread would need all the help it could get.

She shook her head. ‘No, I couldn’t possibly. It is most improper. My goodness, this is excellent soup. What is it?’

Improper? Adam realised that he had not the slightest objection to provoking improper thoughts in Miss Ross. Quite the contrary. Although he had not expected her to admit to them quite so frankly.

‘There is probably a word for it in French, but I call it The Complete Larder soup—in other words, I threw in a bit of anything I could find. Now, Decima, you are going to have to tell me about your improper thoughts or I will be imagining the most lurid things.’

Not that he would be able to act upon any of them if he ate any more of this bread. God, it was like chewing tree bark.

‘Well…’ She stirred her soup and gazed thoughtfully into the bowl, then shot him an assessing glance from under her lashes. ‘I was thinking how much the gentleman you looked, and Pru had just observed that, despite you being a viscount, you obviously were a gentleman.’ She laughed at his expression. ‘I know, it puzzled me, too, but she maintains that you cannot trust the aristocracy, and all noblemen are rakes.’

‘Except me?’

‘Apparently.’ Decima chuckled. ‘You look as though you do not know whether you have been complimented or insulted.’

This was exactly what he was thinking. ‘Do you believe me to be a rake?’

‘Certainly not, otherwise I would not have dreamt of coming with you. You are too large, in any case.’ She chewed gamely on her bread.

‘Large?’

‘I have always pictured rakes as being thin and sinuous somehow. Insinuating, possibly. Not that I really have any idea what constitutes a rake, other than presumably they go about seducing innocent damsels as a matter of routine.’

‘That certainly. I believe it to be a prerequisite,’ Adam agreed gravely. ‘Along with a ruinously bad gaming habit, a tendency to stay up all night carousing, and frequenting the haunts of low company and loose women. Patronising actresses and opera dancers and, of course, maintaining a string of expensive mistresses are also essentials.’

‘Oh.’ He was coming to love the way she listened, thought about what he said and then came out with the most outrageously unexpected responses. What was she going to say to that?

‘Do you have a string of mistresses?’

Adam choked on a piece of carrot. ‘Certainly not! Just the one.’ Oh Lord, now what have I said?

‘Is she nice?’ Decima enquired.

‘Obviously, or I wouldn’t keep her,’ he retorted.

‘Well, you might if she was exceptionally beautiful, or…er…talented,’ Decima observed thoughtfully. ‘Are mistresses very expensive?’

‘Yes,’ he replied with feeling. ‘The er…talented ones are, if you keep them in style and look after them decently once the affair is over.’ Now why was he thinking about ending the affair? This time yesterday he had not the slightest intention of parting with Julia.

‘I do hope Charlton hasn’t got one. I am very fond of my sister-in-law and, although I am sure he could afford one, Hermione would not like it at all.’

‘I doubt if he has,’ Adam said encouragingly. ‘Charlton sounds far too respectable and somewhat stodgy. I am sure your sister-in-law enjoys his complete devotion.’

‘So, only stodgy husbands are devoted? Hmm.’ Decima regarded him quizzically. ‘It follows, then, that if one is to marry one must choose between stodgy devotion and interesting infidelity.’

‘Is that why you never married?’ he asked impetuously, and was punished by the instant extinguishing of the mischief in her grey eyes.

‘No,’ she said baldly.

Damnation. Adam found himself lost for a response: an unusual sensation.

She smiled and took pity on him. ‘This bread is really very good for a first attempt. What do you think we should have for dinner? If either of us has room for dinner, that is.’ She regarded the leaden lump on her side plate dubiously.

‘Pigeon, if I can shoot any.’

‘Then I will clear up and look after Pru and Bates. Could you carry me up some hot water? I promised her a bath.’

Half an hour later Adam let himself out of the back door, his shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm, his shot belt looped over his shoulder. He paused at the sound of running feet in the hall and Decima looked round the kitchen door. ‘You will wrap up, won’t you?’ She took in his greatcoat and muffler, nodded approvingly and vanished as quickly as she had appeared.

From one of his sisters that would have produced a growl of irritation. From Decima the solicitude left a small glow of warmth that she was concerned about him. Adam was halfway across the yard before the novelty of that response dawned on him. He frowned fiercely; he was going to have to get their relationship back onto a firm basis of stranded gentlewoman and accidental host before she got under his skin any further.

In twenty-four hours this Long Meg of a spinster had made him want to throw all tenets of gentlemanly behaviour to the winds and ravish her; had made him enjoy—most of the time—acting as his own footman, cook and groom; had created doubts in his mind about the desirability of keeping a mistress and now had reduced him to a state where he enjoyed being fussed over. With a scowl that boded ill for any passing pigeons, Adam crunched through the snow towards the copse.

Chapter Seven

Decima yawned, stretched and lay in bed watching the cold, clear light on her bedroom ceiling with a feeling of deep contentment. There had been no thaw in the night. Today was the first of January and she was still snowed in. With Adam.

With Pru as well, of course, and with Bates, but there was no need to feel guilty about them being out of reach of a doctor, for they were both doing well. Pru had even spent two hours sitting by the bedroom fire yesterday afternoon after her bath.

Decima sat up, reached for her shawl and listened to the regular sound of Pru’s breathing.

Yet there was a creeping unease as she thought about Adam. Last night, when all the chores were done and they had sat either side of the fire in the drawing room, he had seemed strangely distant, almost formal, as though she was a chance acquaintance he was having to entertain.

They had spoken of commonplace matters, quite easily and pleasantly. At the time, tired and warm, nothing had struck her as different. Now, thinking back, it seemed that the spark of intimacy between them had gone. She had lost the feeling that she could tell him anything, and he no longer gave back to her the warm feeling that her company amused and stimulated him.

Shaking her head at herself for being fanciful, Decima got out of bed and lifted the can of water she had left in the hearth. It was still warm and she washed and dressed quietly. But not quietly enough.

‘Miss Dessy! Let me lace your stays properly—like any respectable lady should be laced!’

Pru insisted on getting up to sit in the armchair once she had had her wash and Decima had helped her braid her long mousy brown plait. ‘Are there any more journals, Miss Dessy?’ she asked. ‘Some general ones, not just the ladies’ fashion journals?’

‘I’ll see what I can find,’ Decima promised. ‘His lordship obviously keeps a good supply of reading matter for his guests.’

When she opened the door she could hear Adam arguing with Bates from across the landing. ‘Wait a minute and let me shave you or else grow a beard, man! You’ll cut your own throat at this rate.’ There was a grumble from the groom.

‘Happy New Year,’ she called through the crack where the door stood ajar and jumped as it swung open to reveal Adam in his shirt-sleeves, an open razor in one hand and a towel in the other. He was half shaven, one side of his chin still a mass of soapy foam. Behind him she could see Bates, looking mulish, sitting up in bed with blood-flecked foam on his face.

‘And to you,’ Adam rejoined. ‘If I succeed in getting the pair of us clean shaven to greet the new year, I will join you in the kitchen shortly.’

Decima found she was blushing, yet her feet did not want to move. She had never seen a man shaving before. It was curiously intimate and Adam was dressed only in breeches and his shirt, his stockinged feet shoeless.

‘Yes, of course,’ she mumbled. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

Oh, this really will not do, she chided herself as she began to assemble breakfast, bustling around with unnecessary briskness. Adam had made it quite clear last night that he wanted to maintain a decent distance and formality. Then why open the bedroom door half dressed? Whatever he felt and whatever his motives, she had to remember that he was an experienced man of the world and she, despite her age, was a singularly sheltered virgin.

But she was certainly garnering a wide variety of experiences and sensations with which to begin her new, independent life. Perhaps she might even have the confidence to venture up to London for a week or two this Season. That would scandalise Charlton.

‘A penny for them.’ Adam had come into the kitchen and was regarding her quizzically. ‘You are standing in the middle of the room, a platter of bacon in your hands and a decided smirk on your lips.’

‘What a horrible word. I never smirk.’ Decima put down the bacon and went to find the frying pan. ‘I have just thought of something I would like to do, which will scandalise Charlton.’

‘What, more than the discovery that you have spent several nights unchaperoned with a man? Poor Charlton, I am beginning to have considerable fellow feeling for him.’

Decima stared at him. ‘I have not the slightest intention of telling Charlton about this. Good Heavens, the fuss he would make! He would be on your doorstep demanding you marry me or some such dreadful nonsense.’

‘Very right and proper,’ Adam observed coolly. ‘That is exactly what an outraged brother should do. It is what I would do if it happened to one of my sisters when they were unmarried.’

‘But nothing has happened.’ Decima shook her head in bafflement at his obtuseness. ‘And Charlton won’t know about it. When I get home I will write and say I had a difficult journey because of the snow, which will make him feel superior because he warned me not to start out in the first place, and Augusta does not know when to expect me so she won’t be worrying, either.’

Adam took the platter from her and began to lay rashers in the frying pan. ‘Should you be telling me this? Perhaps the only reason you are safe with me is that I am expecting your brother to come in search of you at any moment.’

‘Now I have shocked you and so you are trying to frighten me for my own good,’ Decima said with a sigh. ‘You notice I did not say anything when we first met about who was expecting me and when—I am not completely naïve. Now I know I can trust you, so it does not matter.’

‘And if my sense of honour demands I go and confess all?’ Adam shook the pan over the heat and set it down again.

‘You wouldn’t.’ Surely he was teasing her? But the grey-green eyes were serious and steady. ‘That would be dreadful.’ To have avoided all those reluctant, horrified suitors only to find the one man she had ever found who she liked forced to offer for her—that was the stuff of nightmares. ‘I don’t want to marry you, and you certainly do not want to marry me. Promise me you will not tell Charlton.’ He shrugged and Decima came round the table hastily to grasp his wrist. ‘Please, promise, Adam.’

His other hand closed over hers. Under her fingers she could feel the beat of his pulse, hard and steady like his eyes. Then he smiled. ‘I was teasing you, Decima. I promise.’

Furious with him, she shook off his hand and whisked round the table, banging plates down to emphasise her irritation. But it was not all anger; part of it was the humiliating awareness that she had lied and would like nothing more than to be married to Adam Grantham. But only if that was what he wanted, too.

She tried to maintain a lofty silence, marching off to take the invalids their breakfast, then settling down in an affronted flounce of skirts to eat her own. After a minute she realised that Adam was watching her with a decidedly satirical twinkle in his eyes.

‘What?’ she demanded inelegantly. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘You are a very bad sulker, Decima; I can only conclude you do it rarely. My sisters are all champions at it, so I am a good judge.’

‘No, I suppose I don’t. Truth be told, I always used to spinelessly do what was required of me or just pretend horrid things were not happening. I never did anything as positive as sulking. Is it effective?’

‘It’s a game,’ Adam admitted with a grin. ‘Emily and Sally would sulk and pout and wheedle and I would pretend to be hard and uncaring and then, nine times out of ten, I would give them what they wanted. They were only practising the tricks they now play on their husbands.’

Decima chewed thoughtfully. ‘Without wanting to criticise your sisters, that seems rather…unsatisfactory. I don’t think I would want a relationship where I had to pout and wheedle to get things. I would rather discuss it and argue my case.’

‘As you do with Charlton?’ he enquired.

Decima felt herself flush. ‘As I intend to do in future, yes.’

‘Leave the dishes,’ Adam said as she began to gather them up. ‘No housework on New Year’s Day. Wrap up, and we’ll go and look at the horses.’

It was all right for men, Decima thought wryly as she went to put on her thick shawl and check on Pru. They just issued orders and the women and servants did as they were told. For a moment she was tempted to announce that she intended to sit by the fire with Pru reading all day, then she remembered what Adam had said about playing in the snow.

‘Pru, I’ll be outside if you need me,’ she called, seizing her gloves and running downstairs in her heaviest boots.

Adam was already in the stables as she made her away across the yard. She began to skirt the treacherous slick of ice where Bates had fallen, then looked at it with new eyes. Every year she and Augusta skated on the frozen mere half a mile from the house; how was this any different?

She took a run up and slid a full twelve feet, arms waving until she caught her balance. Laughing, she went into the stables to join Adam.

The clear ripple of amusement brought him to look over the door of the stall where he was forking fresh straw. It was even more charming than her giggle. Damn it. Why couldn’t the woman do something to give him a disgust of her? Last evening, respectable and staid as it had been, had done nothing to put his unruly feelings back on track.

At first it had seemed to work just as he had hoped: formality, social chitchat and unexceptional subject matter had reduced Decima to a shadow of her vibrant self.

She had agreed politely with everything he’d said, followed all his conversational leads, never ventured a single opinion of her own and had sat, hands folded, feet together by the hearth. If it were possible for a tall, attractive woman to become invisible, she had almost managed it. It should have made him feel safe. Instead, he hated it. It was as though someone had snuffed a candle, leaving him alone in the darkness.

He pushed away the enormity of what that implied. ‘What is so amusing?’

Decima twinkled at him as she went towards Fox’s stall. ‘I’ll show you when we go outside. Hello, handsome!’

Fox put his head over the half-door, pushing expectantly at her caressing hand. ‘Yes, I have sugar. This is outrageous cupboard love, you wretch.’ She turned to Adam, still rubbing the one spot on the big stallion’s nose that seemed to reduce him to a blissful trance. He found himself watching her hands. ‘I have been thinking of breeding from my mare, Spindrift. You wouldn’t consider putting Fox to her?’

She said it so practically, without the trace of a blush. Adam swallowed. ‘He is a big horse—seventeen hands.’ Now how, exactly, did one put this without becoming coarse?

‘You think the foal would be too large for her?’ Decima regarded Fox, head on one side. ‘She is sixteen hands, I am sure that would not be a problem. Of course, we would have to draw up a proper agreement and I would naturally pay the correct fee for a successful foal.’

‘She’s a large mare.’ It was all he could think of saying.

‘She needs to be,’ Decima countered with a grimace. ‘What do you think? Obviously you want to be careful about bloodlines, but I can let you see Spindrift’s. She’s one-quarter Arab.’

‘Yes. I don’t see why not. We’ll discuss it.’ It was a feeble answer, but Adam turned back abruptly to his task. The thought of putting his stallion to her mare produced such a flood of primitive emotions in him that he didn’t think he could face her. Decima appeared to have not the slightest idea of her own effect on him, of the earthy sensuality she exuded when she was not being the prim and proper spinster miss. Even when she was being prim and proper, come to that. Surely men had made overtures to her before, surely she was aware of the effect she had?

They finished in the stables and went outside. ‘Now, tell me, what made you laugh?’ Anything to stop thinking about her, tall, slender, lithe and naked in his arms.

‘This.’ Decima took a few running steps, then slid elegantly across the ice slick, arms out for seemingly effortless balance. He froze, terrified that she would fall. She turned and slid back, laughing at his expression. ‘Can’t you skate?’

‘No, I’ve never tried. Stop it, you’ll fall and break something.’

Decima came to a controlled halt a few feet away. ‘I will not! I am an excellent skater, watch.’ And to his horror she took a gliding step and spun round, full circle. ‘See?’

‘Come off the ice. Now.’ Adam felt his voice catch in his throat. He did not know what it was: the sudden vision of her lying injured on the treacherous surface or the reality of her, her hair flying out behind her, her cheeks pink, her bosom rising and falling with her breathing.

Something must have shown in his face because she stopped and slid carefully towards him. ‘Very well, if you insist.’ Her voice was meek, but rebellion flared in her eyes and Adam realised he didn’t trust her an inch not to pirouette away at the last moment. As she came within reach he seized her arm and spun her off the ice onto the trodden snow. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he stated harshly.

Decima gasped as she was jerked against Adam, her arm held in a grip that left her in no doubt that it could close like a vice around her wrist if he so chose. ‘Let me go.’ There was heat in those grey-green eyes, a spark as though flint had struck iron. ‘Don’t be so dictatorial, Adam—you are as bad as Charlton.’

But that was not true; being reproved by her half-brother felt nothing like this. That provoked resentment and embarrassment, but not a flare of temper to match his, not a pounding of her heart as though she had been running. And she would not be racked with the shameful desire that he would drag her closer, fix those hard arms round her until she could not struggle and could only yield to him.

Adam’s anger—if that was what it was—flickered and was gone, replaced by rueful amusement. ‘To be compared to Charlton is an insult indeed. Just promise me you will not slide on the ice again. I don’t want to have to set your broken leg.’

‘I promise.’ She looked up at him, struck yet again by the novelty of a man she could look in the face without having to stoop. ‘I am a very good skater, though.’

‘I am sure you are, and if you had proper skates and a doctor within five miles I would not turn a hair. And don’t pout at me.’ He let her go abruptly and walked away towards a wide stretch of virgin snow.

‘I wasn’t,’ Decima protested, stamping after him through the crunching whiteness. ‘And if I was, why shouldn’t I?’

Adam turned, his eyes on her mouth. ‘Because it makes me want to nibble your lower lip, if you must know.’ He carried on walking.

‘Oh!’ Decima stared at his retreating back. Nibble? He did not sound very pleased at the prospect, more like someone warning a child that if they did not stop doing something naughty they would have to be spanked. There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that, or anything to do, other than to retreat inside, all injured dignity, or pretend she had not heard him. Nibble? Would that be pleasant? Was it even normal? Now what was he doing? Adam had stopped and, crouching, began to roll a snowball in the snow. It got bigger and bigger, leaving a clear track of muddy green where it had passed. At last, apparently satisfied, he stopped and began the whole process over again.

‘What are you doing?’ Decima approached cautiously.

‘Building a snowman. You do a smaller ball for his head.’

‘But I haven’t built a snowman since I was—’ She broke off, racking her brains. ‘Eight. I must have been eight.’

‘I don’t think I have, either.’ Adam lifted the snowman’s torso up with a grunt and settled it on the base. ‘But as we do not have any eight-year-olds to hand, and all this good snow is going to waste, it seems a pity not to take advantage.’

Decima looked from the half-built snow figure to Adam and then hastily back again. The sudden dark mood by the ice patch had vanished; he was quite obviously intending to play. His eyes sparkled, his grin was infectious—but there was nothing in the least childlike about the breadth of his shoulders or the length of leg where the muscles rippled as he bent and lifted.

Decima had always considered that she and Augusta had enjoyed themselves quite light-heartedly whenever the mood took them. Skating in the winter, picnics in the summer, riding and shopping and socialising with neighbours all the year round. But it had never occurred to her to do something so spontaneous, so undignified, so unladylike, as to play in the snow.

She bent and gathered up a handful of snow, shaped it into a ball and began to push it along, patting and shaping as it grew. When it seemed big enough she lifted it and set it in place, only to find Adam had vanished. The snowman appeared well built, but somewhat lacking in features. Decima went and picked up broken branches from under a tree and set them in as arms, then had another idea and ran to the coal shed, returning with enough small pieces for eyes, buttons and a row of black teeth.

She was just standing back to view the effect when Adam reappeared from the stables, his arms full.

‘There.’ He set a battered tricorne on the figure’s head, fashioned a scarf out of sacking and added one of the bruised carrots that were used in the horses’ feed for a nose.

They backed off to admire their work. Decima found she was taking the most ridiculous amount of pleasure from the crude figure and turned, laughing, to look at Adam. He was regarding it with an expression of smug satisfaction that struck her as so typically male that she gathered up a handful of snow and threw it, hitting him neatly in mid chest.

‘Why, you little…’

Decima took to her heels, but not before a snowball broke against her backside with a resounding thump. She whirled round, convinced that was no random shot, and saw from the wicked grin that he had struck her exactly where he had intended.

Grabbing snow, she retaliated with a throw that hit Adam in the top vee of his coat. ‘This is cheating,’ he said, frantically shaking snow out before it melted. ‘Girls are not supposed to be able to throw, let alone hit anything.’

Laughing, Decima began shaping another missile, only to back away hastily as Adam scooped up a double handful of loose snow and began to run towards her. ‘No! You wouldn’t! You beast…’

Breathless and gasping with laughter, she found herself backed up against the stables wall with no escape. ‘No, Adam, you wouldn’t…please…’

With a teasing grin he lifted his hands, then opened them, letting the snow shower harmlessly down between their bodies. Suddenly they were very close indeed, their breath mingling as steam on the cold air.

Decima’s heart was tight in her chest, her breathing jerking as though she had raced the length of the stable yard. Adam’s eyes were on her mouth and she remembered his words. She wasn’t pouting, was she? Her lips parted, the tip of her tongue running nervously between them. He was going to kiss her. Oh, please…please…

Chapter Eight

Right overhead the stable-yard clock struck one like a blow from her conscience. Decima blinked and slipped sideways away from Adam. ‘Goodness, look at the time. Poor Pru and Bates will be wanting their luncheon.’

Without looking back, she walked briskly to the kitchen door, untying her shawl as she went. She could hear his footsteps following her. ‘There is some soup left, and cheese and pickles,’ she called from the scullery where she was washing her hands.

Adam was making up the fire. He turned at the sound of her coming out again, his face betraying nothing but agreement with what she was saying. She must have misunderstood his intentions, or more likely it was her own overheated imagination and longings that were behind her discomfort. Probably he had had some secreted snow still in his hand to drop on her head and had not the slightest intention of kissing her. She must have misheard, or misunderstood, that remark about her lips.

They climbed the stairs together with loaded trays, only to stop on the landing at the sound of voices. Adam raised an eyebrow and edged forward to look round the door of Bates’s room.

The groom was sitting up in bed, his leg still protected by the tented bedclothes. Beside him in an armchair Pru was curled up, a pile of journals by her side and one clasped in her hands.

‘That’s just plain foolishness,’ Bates was saying. ‘Why did they go to the castle in the middle of the night when everyone had warned them about it? Young idiots.’

‘But don’t you recall, in the last episode they discovered that their wicked guardian had secreted the papers proving Adelbert’s inheritance in the vaults of Castle Grim,’ Pru explained earnestly. ‘How else could they retrieve them and prove he was the rightful heir?’

‘Well, he’s a mutton-headed brat is all I can say,’ the groom grumbled. ‘Fancy dragging that Mirabelle along with him; a pretty little thing like that should be at home safe.’

‘She’s his sister, and ready to undergo any trials for his sake and that of the family’s honour. I think it’s lovely.’ Pru’s voice shook with emotion. ‘Oh, my lord, Miss Dessy, I didn’t see you there.’

Bates had gone a deep and unlovely crimson, not helped by the expression of unholy glee on Adam’s face as he took in the mass of reading matter strewn across the floor.

‘A change from your usual sporting news, Bates,’ Adam observed with every appearance of interest. ‘How kind of Miss Prudence to keep you entertained. You must explain the plot to me later, possibly I would enjoy it, too.’

‘It’s the most chuckle-headed load of whipped syllabub I’ve heard in my whole life,’ Bates muttered defensively.

‘And you are on episode eight.’ Decima picked up the discarded journal. ‘How patient of you to listen to all that, Bates, just for Pru’s amusement.’

Adam finally took pity on the fulminating groom. ‘I think you ladies had better excuse us.’ Decima helped Pru to her feet and tactfully removed her from the room with a hissed word in her ear.

‘Well, why wouldn’t he say so?’ Pru hissed back on the landing. ‘It isn’t as though I haven’t taken gentlemen their chamber pots, time out of mind.’

‘I doubt Bates is used to receiving such attention, though. Come along, I have brought your luncheon and then you should have a lie down.’

Decima went out to retrieve the tray, unashamedly pausing for a moment to listen to what the men were saying.

‘…butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,’ Adam said. ‘You old fool—what are you carrying on so for?’

‘Aye, and cheese wouldn’t choke her, either!’ Bates retorted. ‘Didn’t know where to look when she marched in with her journals, me in my nightshirt and stuck in bed…’

‘She obviously feels quite safe with you,’ Adam said consolingly. ‘A mature, respectable man like yourself.’ Could Bates hear that betraying thread of laughter? No, he was still indignantly trying to cover up being caught listening, enthralled, to a Gothic novel.

They were both still chuckling when they went downstairs to prepare their own meal. ‘It seems Pru has forgiven Bates for manhandling her,’ Adam remarked, cutting wedges out of the Stilton.

‘More likely they are both so bored they have arrived at a truce,’ Decima countered. ‘Pru is normally of the opinion that all males are a lesser life form and barely to be tolerated beyond normal politeness to her employers.’

‘Of course, you have told me her thinking on noblemen. What is your opinion of men, Decima?’

She pushed the jar of pickles across the table while she thought. ‘I think it would be easier to accept the male sex’s valuation of itself as lords of creation if so many of them were not arrogant, ineffectual, blustering bullies.’

There was a pause. ‘I was waiting for you to say, “Present company excluded, of course,”’ he remarked.

Decima smiled. Adam wasn’t looking exactly offended, but he had put on the expression she thought of as gentleman on his dignity. It appeared to be a universal male expression. ‘I acquit you of all of those, although I must tell you that you do a very good impression of being a lord of creation on occasion.’

‘Mmm.’ Very sensibly he was not going to pursue that. ‘And is your poor opinion of men the reason you are still unmarried?’ Decima stared at him. Was he serious? Didn’t one good look at her tell him why she was unwed? For some strange reason he seemed inclined to flirt with her, so he obviously did not find her entirely repulsive, but on the other hand flirting was probably an almost automatic reaction to being alone with a female, especially if one was an active male cooped up with little diversion.

She thought of giving him an honest answer, but then common sense took over. If she listed her faults, a man with his good manners would feel bound to disagree with her and she couldn’t face getting into an argument over such a sensitive topic.

‘Of course. I am afraid life with Charlton has not given me a high opinion of the male sex or of the married state.’ She delved in the jar of water biscuits and pulled one out. ‘And I have a perfectly satisfactory—and very independent—life, which I am certain I could not live if I had a husband to comply with.’

‘Is there nothing about marriage you might be missing?’

‘Children, you mean? Well, of course. But…’

He was regarding her with a wicked twinkle. ‘But what if they turned out like their father? Is that what you were going to say? Poor little things.’

‘Yes, but I wouldn’t marry the sort of man whose children might be like that—’ She broke off, chuckling. ‘Now you have got me in a muddle. I am a tolerably good aunt, I believe, and the benefit of that is that one can hand them back the moment they become tiresome.’ She felt her lips curve reminiscently at the thought of her cousin’s three youngest. ‘Some of them, I must admit, are enchanting, if a complete handful. What is it?’

Adam was gazing into the pickle jar, his forehead creased slightly in thought. ‘I am just trying to recall where I left something. Talking of children reminded me.’ His brow cleared. ‘Of course. Come on, leave the dishes, let’s go back outside while the sunshine lasts.’

‘I will just check upstairs.’ She ran up, halting at the landing at the sound of Pru’s voice from Bates’s room again. Well, the two of them were obviously determined to finish their Gothic tale; she did not want to embarrass the groom by catching him intent upon it for a second time.

When she reached the yard Adam was emerging triumphantly from a cobwebby wood shed, towing something behind him. ‘A sledge!’

‘The local carpenter built it two winters ago for my nephews. If it will seat four boys, it ought to carry us.’ He looked a boy himself, hat discarded, hair rumpled, his eyes alight with fun.

‘Us?’ It was tempting, but while ice skating was a perfectly ladylike thing to do, hurtling down hillsides on a sledge was quite another matter. ‘Charlton would be scandalised.’

‘We must definitely do it then. I thought your New Year’s resolution was to scandalise Charlton.’

‘That was not quite how I put it,’ she objected. The prospect was wickedly enticing, though. ‘Where will we find a hill?’

‘Just the other side of this copse.’ Adam set off, dragging the sledge, and Decima ran after him, through the narrow copse and out into the open field, which sloped up, temptingly white and crisp. Tracks criss-crossed it: birds’ feet, the marks where a hare had run, and after it the paw prints of a fox, and now Adam’s booted feet with the runner tracks following.

He halted halfway up, straddled the seat, sat down and pushed off. The sledge sailed down the hill, coming to a halt in a flurry of snow almost at Decima’s feet. ‘Dare you try?’

‘Yes!’ She felt utterly reckless. If he had suggested they try to fly, she would have agreed. This time she followed him up the hill to the same spot and climbed onto the sledge, putting her feet on the front bar and tucking her skirts tight around her legs. Adam got on behind her, his arms either side on the ropes feeling as they had on the horse when he had rescued her: secure, protective, hard.

With a double kick of his feet they were off, swooping down the slope, the cold air rushing past her face, the heat of Adam’s body secure at her back. All too soon they were at the bottom. ‘Can we go higher this time?’ she demanded, panting as they climbed back up.

‘All right.’ Still they were not at the summit, but Decima had to be content; Adam seemed unwilling to risk her on a very long run.

They slid down, trudged back, and slid down again so many times that Decima lost count. All she was aware of was the hot blood pounding in her veins, the sharpness of the cold air as she breathed, of Adam’s open delight at the sport, her own tingling awareness of his closeness.

‘This must be the last run.’ Adam tightened his grip on the ropes and began to climb again. ‘Look how the shadows are lengthening.’

‘Right from the very top this time,’ she pleaded, tugging at his arm. ‘Please.’

‘Very well, right from the very top.’

Decima was breathless by the time they reached the crest, staring round her with eyes watering from the keen breeze on the unprotected hilltop. ‘Brrr. We must cook something especially hot and filling tonight.’

She settled herself on the sledge, suddenly apprehensive at the sight of the long slope in front of her—it was more than twice the distance they had covered before. ‘Too high?’ Adam was watching her face.

‘No—just scary enough to be exciting.’ And once he settled behind her, his arms tight at her sides, the fear vanished into an exhilaration that only built and built as the sledge gathered speed, swooping down the long hillside. Decima heard herself shrieking with excitement as they went and Adam’s chuckle of amusement almost in her ear.

What went wrong she had no idea. Suddenly the sledge bucked, jumped, then Adam’s feet were out at the sides, digging in to turn it back on course, but it tipped and she was in the snow, rolling over and over down the hill.

After one startled scream Decima realised she was quite safe. The deep snow was cushioning her from anything hard on the ground below. Over and over she went until she reached the bottom and lay still, gasping for breath and more than half inclined to burst out laughing from sheer shock and excitement.

Then she was hit by a solid weight and threw out her arms, only to find them clasped hard around as much of Adam’s body as they would reach. ‘Ooof!’

‘Decima? Are you all right?’ He was lying on top of her, his elbows jammed into the snow on either side in an effort to keep from crushing her.

‘Yes…get off…oh…’ She realised why he was covering her when the sledge finally caught up with them, hit Adam solidly on the shoulder and juddered to a halt.

He swore under his breath, shoved it away, then pushed her tumbled hair out of her face. ‘Decima?’

‘I am quite all right, honestly…’ Her voice trailed off as she saw how he was looking at her. Looking at her mouth. Then she could not see his expression any more and his mouth was covering hers, angling to capture her lips with his.

His lips were cold, then startlingly his tongue touched her, hot, insinuating, and she gasped, parting her own mouth for him. He tasted delicious: slightly of mint, slightly of ale. Then she lost the ability to think analytically of taste and smell and touch as individual things. It all became a blur of sensation. His weight on her should have been frightening, but all she felt was a primitive thrill at his strength, at the easy way he was mastering her body.

His tongue, his lips were plundering her mouth and all she could do—all she wanted to do—was to let him. She heard a little moan, deep in her own throat and he shifted at the sound, his hands grasping and tangling in her hair on either side of her face, holding her still while he explored her at his leisure.

When he lifted his head for a moment she stirred, distressed by the loss of his touch, then she froze as he began to nip gently at the fullness of her swollen lower lip. The tiny, nibbling bites sent shudders through her. Instinctively she arched towards him, her breasts under their thick covering straining against his chest, but the relief she was seeking eluded her. Inside everything was turning hot, heavy, aching. Her legs shifted restlessly under him and were trapped by the pressure of his thighs.

Adam released her mouth, his own trailing hot kisses down her cold cheek, down to where her neck rose from the folds of her shawl. Decima whimpered as his tongue licked, tasted, then found the tight whorls of her ear, flickering against the sensitive flesh until she was gasping.

Her hands clenched hard on his back, urging him closer to her and she felt, rather than heard, him groan, deep in his throat. ‘I want you, Decima.’ She shuddered and he went still. For a long moment he stayed there, his long body tight against hers from breast bone to thigh, then he straightened his arms, levering himself off her.

‘Adam?’ She was cold now that his heat had left her, cold and dizzy and full of the new, surging emotions and feelings that were rioting through her.

‘Decima, I am sorry, you must be frozen.’ He lifted her, despite her half-hearted struggles, and began to carry her back to the house. ‘You are soaked. Poor sweetheart, I did not mean this to happen.’ His breath was coming hard and she recognised it for what it was, despite her innocence. He was struggling with arousal and desire and holding himself in check with an effort that shook his body.

‘I will be fine, just let me walk,’ she protested, her face buried against the front of his greatcoat, too shy to raise it and look at him. Was it the realisation of where they were that had stopped him, or had she done something wrong, something that revealed her complete lack of experience?

He ignored her protests, shouldering open the kitchen door and setting her on her feet by the range. She stood there, head down, shivering with embarrassment and cold as he tugged off her shawl, unbuttoned her pelisse and freed her of her soaking outer clothing. ‘Sit down.’ She found herself pressed back into the big Windsor chair and he knelt, unlacing her boots, drawing her cold feet free. ‘Poor darling.’ He lifted both her feet and began to rub them between his broad palms. ‘You need a hot bath.’

‘Yes, yes, that is all. I will be fine then.’ Decima felt herself gripping the arms of the chair in an effort not to reach out and catch his damp, dark head in both hands and pull him to her. ‘I’ll just take some water…’

Adam stood up, pulling her to her feet and she saw his face properly for the first time since he had kissed her. His mouth was set hard, a muscle throbbed in one cheek. Oh God, he was angry with himself for kissing her, with her for being such a gauche, awkward old maid. Then she saw his eyes and the breath caught in her throat. They were silver, intense, and as they met hers they held such a look of tenderness and desire her hands flew to her mouth, holding back the plea to kiss her again, to take her, here and now, on the old rag rug in front of the range.

‘I will bring you water. Go into my dressing room, there is a big tub permanently in there.’ She hesitated and he snapped, ‘Go,’ his eyes turning fierce.

Decima fled upstairs, whisking past Bates’s half-open door on soft feet. The murmur of voices reached her, then was gone as she entered Adam’s bedroom. She should not be doing this, should not be in this masculine room that smelt of his cologne and of leather and of him. Her hands trembling, she opened the door in the corner and found herself in a spacious dressing room. As might be expected, it had a washstand and shaving mirror, a screen across one corner of the room, a rack of thick towels, but it also had, in pride of place, a handsome tub. The sides were painted in imitation of green marble, it stood on ball-and-claw feet and a spigot hung over the side against the wall. Decima tried it cautiously: cold running water. Such luxury.

She heard footsteps in the bedchamber and stepped behind the screen.

‘Decima?’ She tried to reply, but only managed a squeak of acknowledgment. Quantities of water were poured into the tub. ‘This will take a few more journeys. Get out of those wet clothes as quickly as possible.’

Decima took a deep breath and tried to pull herself together. He had kissed her, that was all. It was nothing to get into such a state about. She had wanted it, for goodness’ sake. It had been wonderful. She wanted him to do it again—and she was terrified that he would.

She untied her garters and rolled down her stockings, then reached behind her and unhooked her gown, even managing the final tricky button that needed her to reach back over her own shoulder. Her petticoats came off easily, clinging to her calves with chill dampness around the hem as they fell away. That left only her stays over her chemise.

Decima stilled, her fingers on the stay laces as another torrent of water poured into the bath. ‘One more journey,’ Adam said. His voice sounded perfectly normal. Decima wondered if she could ever open her mouth and say a coherent word again.

The door closed behind him and she began to tug at the laces. They were wet where the melted snow had soaked through the back of her clothes and cut unpleasantly into her fingers as she fought with them. They would not untie, she realised. They had swollen with the wet and now were set into hard knots. Decima winced as a fingernail broke, but she struggled on. No, it was hopeless.

The door opened again. ‘There you are, full now.’ Adam’s voice rose over the splashing water. ‘Use the spigot on the wall if you need to cool it down a little. I’ll go and start dinner.’

Decima hesitated, racked with indecision. She should wait until he was gone, then creep out and call Pru. But if she did that she would have to explain how she came to be soaked through, so wet that her hair was sodden.

‘Adam!’

‘Yes?’ She could hear him come back into the room.

‘May I have some scissors, please?’

‘Of course, but for heaven’s sake, don’t hang around getting chilled cutting your fingernails, have your bath first.’

‘I can’t…I cannot untie my stay laces.’

Silence. Did he think that was amusing? Or perhaps she had embarrassed him. No, of course not. This was an experienced man of the world; he had probably untied more sets of stay laces in his time than she had.

The screen moved. ‘No! Just give them to me.’

‘And have you stab yourself in the back? Let me see, Decima, I might be able to untie them.’

Crimson with embarrassment, she turned her back and mumbled, ‘All right.’

The screen panel shifted and she could feel the heat of his body right behind her. There was the brush of linen against her shoulder. He must have shed his coat before carrying the water. Decima shut her eyes as the image of Adam standing there in shirtsleeves and breeches filled her mind.

His fingers caught in the laces, pulling and twisting. ‘You had better cut them,’ she muttered.

‘No, almost…almost got it. There.’ The knot gave with an immediate lessening of the pressure, but not content with that he began to loosen each of the criss-crossing strands. Then he stopped, his hands resting either side of her ribs. ‘They do go all the way down,’ he murmured.

‘What?’ Decima gasped. If he didn’t take his hands away in one second, she was going to turn round and…

‘Your freckles. I wondered if they went all the way down and they do. Here.’ His fingertip touched lightly across her shoulders, across the nape of her neck, trailed lightly down the dip of her spine.

Decima shuddered at the touch, her mind reeling at his words. Her freckles? He found those disfiguring brown marks attractive?

Then his lips replaced his hands and she was pulled back against him, his hard thighs supporting her, his mouth trailing tiny kisses across the soft skin of her shoulders. His aroused body was branding her buttocks with heat through her flimsy chemise and she gasped at the feel of him and the primitive urge that coursed through her to press herself back, rub herself like a cat against the evidence of his arousal.

His hands lifted to cup her breasts gently, his palms cradling the soft weight, while his thumbs touched the hard peaks of her nipples, which were thrusting shamelessly through the fine fabric.

‘Decima.’ His face was buried in the curve of her shoulder, his voice harsh and muffled against her neck. ‘One of us is going to have to step away from this. Now.’

‘I know,’ she murmured, her voice shaking. ‘I know, and I do not think I know how to.’

Chapter Nine

Adam drew in a deep breath. He had never had a problem with self-control before. It seemed he had never found himself in a position where his conscience was in direct conflict with his deepest desires. And just at that moment his desire was to carry Decima through into the bedchamber and bury himself in her soft, strong, innocent body.

With an effort that was painful he brought his hands away from the tantalising weight of her breasts, stepped back until her clothing no longer brushed against his body, and back again until he could put a shaking hand on the screen and draw it closed on the image of her standing there, almost naked, quivering for him.

He shut the door into the dressing room and stood looking round at his bedchamber, at the wide bed with its dark green velvet throw. What would she look like stretched on that velvet, her hair loose, her eyes wide with innocent longing? With an oath he flung open the door and strode out onto the landing.

‘My lord?’ It was Bates. Damn. Adam looked down at himself. The soaked buckskins did nothing to hide the state of agonising arousal he was in. He yanked his shirt out, ran a hand through his hair and walked into the room.

‘How are you feeling, Bates?’ Hell, Pru was there, too, still curled up in the chair, her eyes wide as she took in his appearance. Her gaze flickered to the groom’s and they both looked studiously away.

‘Very well, thank you, my lord. The leg aches, but Pru—Miss Staples, that is—fetched me something from the stillroom that helped. I was just wondering if you’d help me shift position a bit. I’ve slid down.’

‘Where’s Miss Dessy, my lord?’ Pru asked.

‘Having a bath.’ He bent to help Bates, grateful that his back was turned to the maid’s scrutiny. ‘She is using the tub in my dressing room because it is deeper and she got rather chilled outside.’

He shook out the pillows quite unnecessarily, controlling the urge to talk on, justifying himself.

‘Of course, that’s why you can’t go and get changed,’ Pru said in a tone that suggested she accepted his explanation—just. ‘I had better go and give her a hand.’

Adam froze. Had Decima had enough time to compose herself? Had he left stubble burns on the soft skin of her throat? ‘I think she has everything she needs,’ he said finally, straightening up. Either Decima was going to confide in her maid or she was not, but he was not going to say anything to provoke the girl to hurry off in search of her mistress any sooner than necessary.

‘I’ll go and set her clothes out then, my lord.’ Pru got to her feet a little unsteadily. Adam thought of telling her she should still be resting, then decided he would be chancing his luck; Miss Staples would no doubt enquire if he thought he should be helping her mistress to find her change of underwear.

Both men watched her make her way out. Adam could feel Bates’s eyes boring into him. ‘Well?’ he demanded irritably. It seemed to be his day for justifying himself to the staff.

Bates shrugged. ‘Not my place to say, my lord, but, as you’re asking, I’d say that trifling with virgins isn’t your usual kick. Bit risky, that.’

‘I am not trifling—’ Adam broke off. It was exactly what he was doing. It was not his intention, but it was certainly the effect. ‘Damn you, Bates.’

‘As you say, my lord.’ Bates was never so compliant unless he was deeply disapproving—and he was usually acute enough to be right, which was why Adam tolerated the not infrequent censorious comment. This was different.

‘Miss Ross is a gentlewoman. One does not trifle with gentlewomen.’ Or virgins of any description come to that, but he was not discussing Decima’s state of innocence. Bates received this lofty statement in silence, leaving Adam nothing to do with himself other than to stalk out with all the dignity he could muster.

Which was not much, he decided, catching a glimpse of himself in the landing mirror on his way downstairs. His clothing was dishevelled, his groin was in a state of acute discomfort that seemed unlikely ever to subside, his heart beat like a drum, and his conscience was positively screaming at him for his unrepentant desire to drag Decima out of the hot water and make love to her until they both dropped from exhaustion.

Snarling at himself, he threw open the larder door and began to lift out platters and jars, banging food down on the table as though to knock out an opponent. He had made her cold, wet, shocked and embarrassed. And all he could do to make up for it was to try to give her a decent meal.

Decima eased herself into the hot water, letting the physical shock of it on her chilled skin drive away the other shocks her body had experienced for a fleeting moment. The respite did not last. She slid under the water until it lapped her chin and her hair was soaking. Her arms lay by her sides. She felt too self-conscious even to risk touching herself; everything throbbed or tingled in an overwhelming manner.

She had wanted a kiss, just a kiss. She could admit that to herself. In her innocence she had expected it to be pleasantly intimate, full of the scent and warmth she had experienced when Adam had carried her. She had not expected it to devour every sense, to overturn her mind until she was almost screaming with desire for him to touch her, stroke her, everywhere. To do things she could not begin to understand, let alone find words for.

Of course she knew the basic facts of life. But somehow she had expected all of that to be confined to the actual marriage bed. Surely kissing was simply a mildly amorous gesture? It seemed not. How was she ever going to face him again?

The water was beginning to cool. Cautiously Decima lifted the tablet of soap and began to wash. Face, arms, hands. All safe. She swallowed and slicked foam rapidly over the swell of her breasts, gasping as they seemed to turn heavy and full under her palms. Feet, those were safer—except for the memory of Adam’s big hands rubbing them back to life. Calves, thighs…her hands trembled and stilled above the soft tangle of curls. He hadn’t touched her intimately, so where had that hot, heavy yearning feeling come from? From the feel of his hard weight pressed against her, that was where. Pull yourself together, Decima, you cannot go through life not washing properly!

A few hasty, soapy swipes later she scrambled out of the bath, snatching up towels from the pile and swathing herself in them as though Adam was still in the room. No dressing gown. Now what should she do?

There was complete silence in the adjoining room. Decima peeped round the door, then scuttled for her own room, bursting in to find Pru with her hands full of petticoats and a disapproving expression on her pale face.

‘Pru, you should be resting.’

‘I’m well enough if I sit down now and again. I’ve put clean clothes out for you, Miss Dessy.’

‘Thank you. Now, please, sit down. How did you know I needed them?’ Oh Lord, Adam hadn’t said anything to Pru, had he?

Pru perched on the edge of a chair and regarded her. ‘His lordship said you’d got wet.’

‘Well, so I did. There is no need to look so starched up, Pru.’

‘I saw his lordship. I’d say you got more than wet, Miss Dessy.’

‘Pru! What do you mean?’ Decima began to pull on her clothes, suddenly shy in front of the other woman as she had never been before.

‘His shirt was all pulled out—covers a multitude of sins, that does—his colour was up, breathing like he’d run round the house ten times and not very happy at meeting my eye. And look at you, Miss Dessy. All of a fluster, mouth that looks as though you’ve been rouging it—and see your neck.’

Decima looked reluctantly into the mirror her handmaid thrust at her. A new Decima stared back. A wanton-looking creature with wide eyes, swollen mouth and, up the column of her neck, reddened patches. She lifted her hand to them, horrified to find her tentative touch produced not so much a feeling of pain as one of acute sensitivity.

‘That’s a man who needs to shave twice a day if he’s going to do that sort of thing,’ Pru pronounced. ‘Honestly, Miss Dessy, I thought he was a gentleman. Just goes to show you can’t trust any of them,’ she added darkly.

‘Pru, it’s not like that.’ Decima turned her back while her stay laces were jerked punishingly tight. ‘I am just as much to blame, and it was only a kiss.’ She saw Pru’s disbelieving face. ‘Goodness, you don’t think he…that we…Certainly not!’

‘If you say so, Miss Dessy.’ Pru handed her the petticoat.

‘I do say so, Pru. And it was certainly improper, I admit, but I am glad he did kiss me because at least I know what it is like and I will not be seeing him again once we leave here anyways.’ Decima dragged her gown over her head and emerged flushed and breathless. I will not be seeing him again. Ever.

‘Hmm. Well, I’d better get changed and come downstairs, Miss Dessy. This gown’s all crumpled.’

Decima stared at her. The thought of Pru sitting there, a silent, disapproving chaperon all evening, filled her with horror. It was going to be hard enough facing Adam again, but to do it with a witness was impossible.

‘No, Pru. I would be too embarrassed. He and I need to…to agree some things between us. You stay here and rest and I will bring you your dinner up.’

She went downstairs half an hour later, immaculate and quivering with nerves, to be greeted by a wave of succulent odours as she pushed open the kitchen door. Adam was uncorking a bottle of red wine; as she watched, he tipped it into a deep pan which was simmering on the range.

At the sound of the door closing he looked up at her, then went slowly to put the empty bottle on the table. The silence crackled between them, filled with unformed words, unspoken thoughts. ‘You are cooking dinner,’ Decima managed at last, wincing at the banality of the obvious.

‘I thought the least I could do, having soaked you through with icy water and frightened you half to death, was to feed you something hot. There was some pigeon left, and a rabbit.’ He ran his hand abruptly through his hair and moved away a few steps as though to give her space. ‘Where is Pru?’

‘Upstairs. I don’t need her here. You didn’t frighten me, and you don’t now. I frightened myself.’

‘Decima. I am sorry.’ She had not heard him going back to his room, but Adam had changed his clothing for the dark elegance of evening dress, as though to reassure her with its formality. ‘I cannot pretend I didn’t want to kiss you, but I never meant for it to go so far.’

‘I…I liked it. It would be unfair of me to say I did not. But it was too much, all at once, so I didn’t know how to stop.’ She made herself keep her eyes on his face. He was being honest, so should she. ‘But you did, so that’s all right.’

Adam turned away sharply. ‘You really are a quite remarkable woman.’

Decima flushed. ‘A wanton one, you mean. Perhaps I led you on, I am sorry—’

‘Don’t apologise!’ He swung back to face her, his face full of an anger that she knew was not directed at her. ‘I said extraordinary—I mean just that. Why aren’t you having the vapours, threatening me with your brother?’

‘I told you,’ she said patiently, going over to dip a spoon in the fragrant, bubbling stew. ‘It was at least as much my fault as yours, it was extremely…interesting and there is nothing to have the vapours about. This is very good stew. Shall I peel some potatoes?’

Suddenly it was all right again. Adam was obviously unconvinced, but she felt quite calm and almost at ease. True, her knees were knocking and her skin felt as though someone was caressing it with thousands of tiny feathers and, if they touched again, she thought she would probably swoon, but other than that she was all right. Of course she was. I am an independent grown-up woman, she told herself, and I can learn to cope with new situations.

Adam hefted another pan onto the stove and reached for the salt box. ‘I’ve done them. Pru seems better.’

‘Yes, she does.’ Decima gathered up cutlery. ‘I will lay the table in the dining room. How is Bates?’

They were having a perfectly ordinary domestic conversation while underneath her mind was whirling and her body behaving in ways she had never believed possible. Did Adam feel like this? Presumably all sorts of people went through life feeling like this on occasion; it was amazing what went on under the bland face of everyday life.

The evening passed pleasantly enough. Any invisible onlooker would have observed the unusual sight of a lady and gentleman waiting on their own servants, and then on themselves at dinner. But they would have been hard put to detect either the slightest impropriety or even undue familiarity in the rest of the evening, which was passed by the lady and her companion in desultory conversation, the reading of somewhat out-of-date journals and the exchange of opinion from time to time upon clues in the acrostic the lady was attempting to complete.

Or perhaps the unseen watcher would have noticed the way the lady’s eyes would rest on the gentleman’s bent head, or the manner in which her lashes would sweep down to disguise her interest the moment he moved. And they might also have noticed the way in which he shifted restlessly in his chair and the tight line of his mouth when he caught himself doing so.

As the hall clock struck ten Decima looked up from the Ladies’ Journal with an arrested expression. ‘What is that noise?’

Adam got to his feet and moved to the window, flicking aside the heavy drapes. ‘Rain. The thaw has come.’ He turned and looked at her and Decima struggled to read the message in eyes suddenly the colour of dark flint. ‘The outside world may well reach us tomorrow.’

‘The end of our sojourn out of time and away from reality,’ she said, trying to make the remark light—and realising almost too late that she wanted to cry.

Decima got to her feet, holding on to the arm of the chair as though she, and not Pru, was weak from a fever. She had the strangest feeling that if she held out her arms now he would come to her and to hell with the consequences. Last time he had had the strength to step away. Now it was her turn to be strong.

‘I think I am probably keeping Pru up,’ she said with a firm smile. ‘And if there is travelling to do tomorrow, we must both get some rest. Goodnight, Adam.’

He took two long strides across the room to her side and did something he had never done before, lifting her hand in his and lightly kissing her fingertips. ‘Goodbye, Decima.’

She was halfway up the stairs before she had got her reaction to the fleeting touch of his lips under control and thought about what he had just said. Goodbye?

Decima went to bed, expecting a night filled with restless dreams and tormenting longings. Instead she woke to the sound of the landing clock striking seven and the relentless sound of heavy rain against the window. She should be glad, she knew. But was it so very wicked to want this strange holiday from reality to continue for ever?

When she padded into her maid’s room in bare feet, wrapped in the gorgeous Oriental dressing gown, she discovered that Pru was already up. Up, dressed and in full flow, arguing with Bates in his bedchamber by the sound of it.

‘His lordship’s downstairs cooking breakfast, which is where I should be if I didn’t have my lady to get dressed, so why you can’t have the sense you were born with and let me fetch you your hot water I don’t know.’

A low grumble was all Decima could hear of Bates’s views on the matter. ‘I’m not offering to wash you, you stubborn man.’ Decima stepped back as the door swung open and Pru marched out. ‘Honestly, Miss Dessy—men.’ She looked her up and down sharply. ‘I’ll go and get your water then. The snow’s almost gone, you know.’

Decima went back into her room and looked out of the window and the slush that yesterday had been the white yard. She could just see the remnants of their snowman, hat drooping, body already half-eaten away by the rain: nothing lasted, it seemed.

Adam flipped the bacon over, wondering how long it would be before they could get fresh supplies of food. Not much longer, if this rain continued. And then Decima would be gone. After a restless night spent tossing and turning, in between dreams that were either guilt-racked or wildly erotic, he almost welcomed the thought of their separation.

They both needed time, distance and a remedial dose of ordinary life. Perhaps then he could work out what he truly felt for her. He filled the kettle and put it on the hob, caught himself doing it without a second thought, and smiled at how rapidly the basic routines of kitchen life had become second nature.

Decima. He desired her. Oh, how he desired her. But she was a gentlewoman—he could not make her his mistress. What did that leave? A chaste friendship? He grimaced. Marriage?

The bacon was burning. He pulled the pan off the heat and stood there looking at it. He didn’t need to get married, not with his fifteen-year-old cousin Peregrine all a man could hope for in an heir, and more. He had his freedom now; that would be lost with marriage. The thought of losing that freedom, of finding himself leg-shackled to just one woman for the rest of his life had always seemed intolerable.

On the other hand, he had spent several days cooped up in a snowbound house with just one particular female companion and there had not been a boring moment. Long hours of aching physical frustration, yes, but no boredom.

He was contemplating exactly what that might mean when the back door banged open and his missing domestic staff bundled in, dripping wet and laden with parcels.

‘My lord!’ Mrs Chitty stopped dead in her tracks and stared at him. ‘What in the world are you doing in my kitchen?’

‘Cooking breakfast,’ Adam admitted, feeling as though he had been caught stealing cake from the pantry.

‘Never tell me your guests have arrived!’ The housekeeper took in the four plates on the table. ‘The only thing that kept my mind at rest these past few days was the thought that none of you would be able to get here.’ She cast off her vast bonnet and cloak and shook out her apron with a snap. ‘Who has been wearing this, might I ask, my lord?’

‘I have, and Miss Ross.’ That did it.

‘Miss Ross?’

‘Yes, Mrs Chitty. I need to have a word with you about that.’

‘Indeed, my lord? Emily Jane, get outside and fetch the rest of the provisions and look sharp, girl.’ The silent kitchen maid scuttled back out into the rain.

‘Mrs Chitty, I almost did not manage to get here through the snow. On the way Bates and I helped a lady and her maid who were trapped in their carriage and brought them here. No one else has reached us.’

‘Well, at least she had her maid,’ the housekeeper observed, burrowing in her basket and producing a loaf. ‘And Bates—not that he’d be much use for keeping propriety.’

There was no point in trying to put a fine gloss on the situation. ‘Miss Ross’s maid has been bedridden with a fever the whole time and Bates broke his leg the night we arrived here.’

‘Ah.’ Mrs Chitty regarded him with a trace of amusement tweaking at the corner of her mouth. ‘I’d say you were in a bit of a pickle, my lord, especially as I’ve no doubt your houseguests will be here shortly. The roads are mostly passable now, that we could see.’

Oh, hell. Adam realised he had not thought about that. The arrival of four eminently respectable members of London society, two of whom he did not know well enough to confide in, was quite sufficient to ensure Decima was ruined.

Even as he thought it, Emily Jane hurried in, hung about with more shopping. ‘There’s two carriages coming up the drive, my lord.’

Chapter Ten

‘Then it’s a good thing I’ve been here all the time and only Emily Jane and William went into town, isn’t it, my lord?’ Mrs Chitty finished tying her apron strings round her plump middle and took the frying pan firmly from Adam’s hand.

‘Emily Jane, take off those wet things and go and open the front door. And no gossiping, mind.’ She turned back to Adam. ‘You’d better hurry and put your coat and neckcloth on, my lord, and warn the young lady what’s happening. And don’t you worry about Emily Jane and William, they won’t be saying anything out of turn, I’ll see to that.’

‘Mrs Chitty, you are a paragon. Whatever I pay you, you are going to get a raise.’ He bent and planted a kiss on her red cheek. ‘And what makes you think it’s a young lady?’

The housekeeper merely looked at him; a long, slow stare that produced the first blush Adam was conscious of in over ten years. With a rueful grin he strode out of the room and up the stairs, just in time as the knocker thudded on the front door.

Decima sat at the dressing table, guiltily enjoying having her hair properly dressed for the first time since she had left Charlton’s house. She had protested, but Pru refused to sit down and rest, so she gave in and allowed herself to be fussed over.

The knock at the door startled them both. ‘Decima? Are you decent?’ Adam slipped inside before Decima had a chance to check whether she was or not.

‘My lord!’ Pru managed to sound like the most outraged chaperon, only to bridle indignantly as she was completely ignored.

‘Mrs Chitty, the kitchen maid and the footman are back—and my guests are at the front door now. Pru, are you well enough to come downstairs? Good. Mrs Chitty has, of course, been here the entire time. We have not been cooking, we have not been looking after ourselves and, Pru, you have not left Miss Ross’s side.

‘Mrs Chitty is cooking breakfast, and whatever the others need—I don’t know where they’ve come from this morning. I will go and warn Bates. Perhaps you and Pru can come down in about twenty minutes.’

He vanished before they had the chance to reply. ‘Well, Pru…’ Decima took a deep breath and regarded her reflection carefully. Her mouth felt dry and her stomach contracted painfully. Strangers—that was enough under normal circumstances to send her into an agony of self-conscious shyness. But these strangers could ruin her. ‘Fetch my jewellery case, please, Pru, I can see that this is an occasion for the utmost respectability. Can you act like a dresser? I want you to pretend to be the sort of upper servant who could chaperon me.’

‘What, like Lady Ambridge’s dresser?’ Pru’s eyes widened at the recollection of the stately dame in the employ of one of Decima’s cousins. ‘All starched up and top lofty?’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘I can do that, I reckon. Ooh, yes.’

When Decima descended the staircase she was followed by a haughty little person who looked down her nose at the footman and completely ignored the nervous kitchen maid who was carrying plates into the dining room.

Decima hesitated outside the door. Strangers. The familiar panic and shyness swept through her and she could feel her shoulders rounding into the defensive stoop that falsely promised invisibility.

No. She could not skulk out here and she could not appear in the dining room behaving as though she had something to hide. At least, after one look at her, Adam’s guests would never suspect for a moment that anything untoward had been going on. If a gentleman was going to indulge in dalliance, he was not going to chose a gawky spinster who was almost thirty years of age. For once her failings would stand her in good stead.

She stood up straight and walked in. By the fireplace two couples dressed in the height of fashion were talking animatedly to Adam, who turned at her entrance. His jaw dropped, just slightly, and she smiled, realising that with her hair up, her pearls glistening with expensive restraint and her one remaining respectable morning dress on she looked every inch a lady and not like the hoyden who had been rolling in the snow or grooming horses.

She turned to Pru. ‘You may take your breakfast with Mrs Chitty this morning, Staples.’

‘Very good, Miss Ross.’ Pru dropped a starchy curtsy and followed it with an inclination of her head towards Adam. ‘Good morning, your lordship.’

Her exit seemed to bring Adam to his senses. ‘Miss Ross, please allow me to introduce you to my friends. My cousin, Lady Wendover, and her husband, Lord Wendover.’ A lively-looking lady of about five and twenty with an older husband with a grave expression and amused eyes. ‘Mr and Mrs Highton.’ A slightly older couple, beautifully dressed and she with languorous blue eyes. ‘This is Miss Ross, who has been snowed up here and must be delighted to see some new faces after three days of boredom.’

‘Not at all, my lord. I am delighted to meet your friends, of course, but I have been far from bored.’ Decima smiled her thanks to Mr Highton, who pulled out a chair for her. ‘You and Mrs Chitty have looked after us admirably.’ She looked round at the others as they took their places. ‘My only refuge until Lord Weston came to my aid was a most disreputable alehouse. You may imagine my relief at finding shelter here. Were you snowed up, too?’

Conversation flowed easily. It seemed Adam’s guests had reached Grantham before they wisely decided to go no further than a comfortable inn and had set out early that morning. ‘We were looking forward to Mrs Chitty’s cooking,’ Lord Wendover remarked, helping himself lavishly from the platter of ham, eggs and sliced sausage the footman presented.

‘Indeed, yes,’ Decima agreed. ‘It is excellent, is it not?’ This was all right, she could manage. They were too polite to stare at her height, in such a small group they could not whisper about her gawky plainness, and best of all, none of them were trying to marry her off.

After the meal she got to her feet. ‘If you will excuse me, I think I should go and oversee my packing. I imagine my carriage should be here shortly.’

Pru was already upstairs, but, although the portmanteaux were out and open and several drawers had already been emptied onto the bed, there was no sign of her, only the sound of all-too-familiar bickering from the room across the landing.

‘Pru!’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Pru positively flounced out of Bates’s room and into her own. ‘That man!’

‘I see you have started the packing.’

‘Yes, Miss Dessy.’

‘Then shall we finish before the postilions arrive?’ she suggested briskly.

At last, leaving Pru to organise William the footman into carrying down the bags, she went to rejoin the guests. It would seem odd to avoid doing so any longer. Voices led her towards the drawing room and she slipped in unnoticed, taking a chair by the door. The others were all grouped facing towards the fireplace with its cheerful blaze, and seemed to be engaged in ragging Adam.

‘So, was Sally as intent on finding you a bride as you feared, Adam?’ Lady Wendover asked with teasing laughter in her voice.

‘She was indeed, although I was completely lulled at first,’ Adam answered ruefully. ‘I was in the house for two days and there was not the hint of danger. No ingenuous young houseguest, no visiting bluestocking, no intimate parties threatened. I had let down my guard and then, out of the blue, the casual announcement that we were to expect a visit from some neighbours.’

‘Who proved to be accompanied by whom? An unmarried daughter? A plain niece?’ Mrs Highton enquired, much amused.

‘No, worse.’ Adam shuddered. ‘An unmarried, middle-aged sister. A lady, I was assured, of fortune and possessed of intelligence and amiability. I took to my heels before they arrived and ended up in a snowdrift for my pains.’

‘Oh, Lord!’ Mrs Highton produced a trill of knowing laughter. ‘A plain Jane, in other words. What was Sally thinking of? She must know what a high stickler you are.’

The shocked anger burned through Decima’s veins. How could he? How could Adam joke with them about it? Oh, no names had been said, of course, he was too much the gentleman for that. Somewhere there was another woman, just like her, breathing a sigh of relief because her unwanted ‘suitor’ had fled. And no doubt she was having to endure her relatives’ endless lamentations that another ‘opportunity’ had been missed.

She heard the sound of her own voice sounding coolly amused. ‘I should imagine she was thinking—like so many matchmakers think when they meddle in their single friends’ lives—that she was doing it for the sake of the people concerned, when in fact it is something that neither party would want.’

The five people around the fire turned as one to gaze at her in surprise. As well they might, she realised in horror. As soon as the words were out of her mouth she knew how rude she was being about Adam’s sister.

Adam’s face went blank, but Lady Wendover recovered herself with a laugh. ‘You are too severe, Miss Ross. Surely a sister must be concerned for her brother’s welfare?’

‘And this can be achieved by trying to fob an unwilling lady off on him? I am sure Lord Weston is more than capable of finding himself an entirely eligible bride, when he wishes to do so.’ She had already unforgivably accused his sister of meddling, she might as well face this out and say what she thought for once.

‘Well, I agree Adam might be unwilling to be party to such a thing, but surely not the lady? Presumably she is at her last prayers,’ Lord Wendover observed.

‘Is the married state so desirable that the humiliation of being paraded around by one’s relatives is a price worth paying to achieve it? It is nothing but a mortification for the lady concerned and a source of discomfort to any man of sensibility. And, in fact, I am sure many men who remain bachelors for perfectly sound reasons of their own also suffer this sort of interference.’ She was in full flow now, her new, strong inner voice carrying her along in the face of their surprise.

‘You do not approve of matchmakers, then, Miss Ross?’ Mr Highton enquired.

‘I despise matchmakers,’ she said roundly, then caught sight of Adam’s frozen expression. She had gone too far. ‘I beg your pardon, Lord Weston, if I have spoken disrespectfully of your sister. I am sure her motives are purely those of family affection.’ The lady probably could not help herself, any more than Hermione could; it seemed that, once married, any female was immediately seized with the urge to see her entire acquaintance paired off.

Adam grimaced, apparently unoffended. ‘Sally is certainly motivated by a strong concern for my interests. Unfortunately she does not take my views of what those are into account one jot. As for the lady in this case, probably Sally can imagine no greater felicity than being married to me and would be incredulous to learn she might not wish for such a meeting.’

‘Dear Lady Jardine.’ Mrs Highton smiled affectionately. ‘I do miss her now she has moved to Nottinghamshire.’

‘Lord Weston’s sister Lady Jardine lives in Nottinghamshire?’ Decima repeated blankly. She could feel the sickening certainty taking hold of her stomach. Suddenly she wished she had not eaten breakfast. It could not be a coincidence. There could not be two Lady Jardines in Nottinghamshire who had both tried to introduce an eligible brother to someone’s spinster sister in the week before New Year. She was the lady ‘at her last prayers’ from whom Adam had run.

‘Yes, they have recently moved there,’ Adam said. ‘Have you met them? I have just realised I never asked you where you had come from, the day we met in the snow. Had you come from Nottinghamshire?’

‘No.’ Her friend Henry always said that if one was going to tell a lie, it might as well be a wholehearted one. ‘No, Leicestershire. I regret I have not had the pleasure of Lady Jardine’s acquaintance.’

She was saved by the footman entering. ‘Miss Ross’s carriage has arrived, my lord. I have brought in your baggage that was left with it. Everything appears to be in order.’

Decima rose to her feet. ‘Then I must be on my way. Thank you so much, Lord Weston, for rescuing me from a most uncomfortable predicament. If you will excuse me, I must just go and thank Mrs Chitty.’ She exchanged farewells with Adam’s guests and escaped into the kitchen where Pru was organising the footman.

‘All those bags inside the carriage, I don’t want my lady’s things getting cold and damp…Miss Dessy, I’ll just run up and get our cloaks.’

Her head was still buzzing with shock and emotion, but Decima made herself speak pleasantly to the housekeeper. ‘You must be Mrs Chitty. I have to thank you for your discretion, and also for your wonderfully well-stocked stillroom. I do trust we have not wreaked too much havoc with your domestic arrangements.’

‘I’m only too glad it was of help, ma’am.’ Mrs Chitty’s eyes were regarding Decima with sharp intelligence, but her voice was entirely respectful as she added, ‘I’m sure his lordship took great care of you.’

‘Will you allow me to escort you to the front door, Miss Ross?’ It was Adam, entering soundlessly behind her.

Somehow Decima managed to turn round and look at him. This man—the man she had laughed with, worried with, almost lost her virtue to—this man was the one who had fled his sister’s house rather than meet her and exchange a few stilted pleasantries. And who, all unknowing, mocked her to his friends.

‘I do not stand on ceremony, Lord Weston,’ she replied coolly. ‘The back door will do very well.’ Where had that girl got to? ‘Mrs Chitty, would you be so very kind as to find what has delayed my dresser?’

As the housekeeper bustled off, Decima held out her hand. ‘My thanks once more, Lord Weston. I shudder to think what several days cooped up in the Red Cock would have been like, or the effect upon Pru’s health. I was most fortunate indeed to have been rescued by you. Please give Bates my best wishes for a speedy recovery.’

He ignored her careful formality. ‘You are angry with me; I should not have spoken so lightly of my sister’s schemes and my reaction to them.’

‘Not at all, and I must apologise for my intemperate response. You simply chanced upon one of my prejudices, my lord. I feel for the lady in the case; those of us who do not regard the married state as the be-all and end-all of existence must support each other, do you not agree? Ah, Pru, there you are.’ The maid was pink-faced, clutching the cloaks bundled together.

‘Goodbye, Decima.’ Adam caught her hand in his, the warmth of his grasp penetrating her winter gloves with ease. ‘I wish we had been able to talk together longer—there are things I would have wished to say.’

It was difficult to hold his gaze. Decima felt her own eyes waver and then fall before his. ‘Nothing of any import, I trust. Now, I really must go. Goodbye.’

For a second she thought he was going to bend and kiss her, but Mrs Chitty came in, and Pru was holding out her cloak, and the moment was gone.

In the yard the snow had turned to muddy slush and to one side all that remained of their snowman was a pile of snow with an incongruous carrot sticking out of it and a battered tricorne perched on the top.

Decima let the postilion assist them into the carriage, only turning to look at Adam when they were settled with the rugs over their knees. He was standing in the snow, his expression unfathomable as it rested on her. Did he feel as wretched as she that their days of intimacy and informality had ended in this chilly, formal farewell?

She raised her hand as the carriage began to move and Adam lifted his in acknowledgement. Did he stand looking after her, or did he turn at once on his heel and go back to the safe familiarity of his friends, putting this whole bizarre episode out of his mind?

Blankly she stared out of the window onto sodden fields and melting drifts as the carriage made its way through the lanes, onto the turnpike road and headed east. Would they reach Swaffham, and home, today? It would be a long journey, and all would depend on how bad the roads were and how good the horses they obtained at the changes. There were excellent inns along the way—that was not a problem—but Decima ached now for this journey to be over and for the safety of her own room, her own bed, her old life. Her old innocence.

Their luck held, with the roads in a reasonable state and horses that held a good pace. Decima was just thinking that at this rate they could count on taking a late luncheon at Wisbech, when something made her glance across at Pru.

The maid looked woebegone, huddled in her corner, her nose pink and one large tear running down her plump cheek.

‘Oh, Pru! Are you feeling poorly? I should never have dragged you out today,’ she exclaimed remorsefully. ‘I will pull the check string and tell the men to stop at the next respectable inn we come to.’

Pru gulped and shook her head. ‘It’s not that, Miss Dessy, I feel fine, honestly I do. I’m nice and warm and the carriage is ever so comfortable.’

‘Then whatever is it?’ Decima changed seats so she could sit beside Pru and feel her forehead. Quite normal. ‘Tell me, Pru, we will sort it out, whatever it is.’ She took the maid’s hand and patted it.

‘There’s nothing you can do, Miss Dessy.’ Pru scrabbled for her handkerchief and blew her nose miserably. ‘It’s just foolishness.’

‘Of course there is something to be done, Pru. I refuse to believe there is not, whatever the problem. Now tell me.’

‘It’s Jethro,’ Pru quavered.

‘Jethro?’ Who on earth was Jethro?

‘Bates, Miss Dessy. His name’s Jethro.’

‘Has he said something to upset you?’ Decima felt quite at sea. The two of them had spent hours together, apparently in a state of constant bickering, but what was there in that to produce tears now?

‘Oh, no, Miss Dessy.’ Pru’s face crumpled. ‘I think I’m in love with him.’

‘You are in love with Bates?’ Decima stared at her. ‘But I didn’t think you liked him much. You seemed to argue a lot and be exasperated with him…’ Her voice trailed off. ‘He is rather older than you,’ she suggested cautiously after a pause.

‘A bit,’ Pru admitted. ‘Doesn’t matter, though.’

‘No, of course not,’ Decima agreed hastily. ‘But does he feel the same way?’

‘I don’t know.’ Pru’s lip trembled in a way that made Decima’s quiver in sympathy. ‘I think so. He’s not what you’d call chatty.’

‘That is certainly true. Did you agree to correspond?’

Pru shook her head. ‘It was all a bit sudden, leaving, and I didn’t think.’ She sniffed again, her cheeks flushed, and an uneasy thought crept into Decima’s mind.

‘Pru, you didn’t…you haven’t done anything…unwise? Have you?’ Then she remembered. ‘No, of course not, how silly of me, you couldn’t have, even if you had been so imprudent, not with his broken leg.’ There was a silence, then Pru slid a sideways look at Decima. ‘Pru! Truly? How? No…do not tell me, I do not want to know.’

What if Pru becomes pregnant? With that thought came the treacherous memory of Adam’s body hard against hers, her own newly sensitised flesh quivering towards surrender. She could so easily have been worrying about exactly the same thing for herself. At least she would never have to face him again, never find herself laid open to either the temptation or the rejection that encounter would bring.

The tears were rolling fatly down the maid’s cheeks now. Oh, Lord! Now what am I to do? Charlton would say she should instantly dismiss Pru, but then Charlton could be the most unblushing hypocrite. ‘Pru, if you still feel the same way about him in a month or two, then I promise we will go and find some way to be close to Lord Weston so you can see Bates again.’ And what if Pru was with child and Bates was not prepared to do the right thing? That was a bridge to be crossed if they came to it.

Pru gripped her hands convulsively, too upset to speak her thanks. Decima smiled at her, as comfortingly as she could. But inside she quaked; there was no way she could bring Bates and Pru together again without Adam’s help. And that meant seeing him again.

Chapter Eleven

Augusta was, predictably, delighted to see her back, completely incurious about her journey and hardly interested to learn how Hermione and Charlton were. But she did blink vaguely at Decima as they stood in her new glasshouse and observe, ‘You are looking different, dear. Have you changed your hair?’

That was typical of Augusta and Decima took no notice. But she was shaken by her dear friend Henry. Sir Henry Freshford rode over from his neighbouring estate the next day, alerted by the infallible country grapevine that she was back.

‘Henry!’ Decima stooped to receive his brotherly kiss on her cheek, so much more welcome than any salutation of Charlton’s. ‘Did you have a good Christmas?’

‘Yes, fine,’ he replied, looking at her oddly. ‘Dessy, what have you been up to?’

‘Me? Why, nothing. Do come and see Augusta’s latest extravagance.’ She tugged his arm until he followed her through to the glasshouse, built out at an angle from the house so that it formed a conservatory extension to one of the sitting rooms. ‘Isn’t it wonderful? She is planning to put ferns and palms and even orchids in here.’

She expected Henry to be immediately interested, to look at the heating pipes and ask about the water supply. Instead he stood regarding her, his head on one side and a smile quirking the corner of his mouth.

Henry Freshford, baronet, was the best-looking man Decima had ever met. Although his height was below the average, his features were classically perfect, his colouring blonde, his eyes a periwinkle blue and his figure elegant. His looks in themselves were enough to draw many female admirers, but his breeding and wealth attracted the young ladies’ mamas even more.

The short man who had to fight off lures and the tall woman who no one would consider marrying had formed an unlikely, but deep, friendship. For Decima he was the brother she would have chosen; for him, she seemed to be the perfect feminine confidante.

‘Why are you staring?’ she demanded, sinking down onto one of the new sofas that had been bought for the glasshouse. ‘I thought you would be interested in what Augusta has been doing.’

‘I’m much more interested in what you’ve been doing, Dessy.’ He sat opposite her and crossed his legs, leaning back to study her face.

‘What do you mean? And, please, do not call me Dessy. I’ve just realised how much I hate it.’

‘Of course, Decima.’ Normally he would have been distracted enough by this to demand to know all about her sudden decision. Not today. ‘Now, stop changing the subject and tell me who he is.’

‘Who?’ It came out as a startled squeak and she knew she had blushed. ‘What can you mean, Henry?’

Now Henry seemed embarrassed. ‘I’m not sure how to put this delicately. I mean you have a sort of…glow about you. A new sort of awareness of yourself. As you know—’ colour touched his cheekbones too ‘—I regard you with absolutely brotherly feelings, but even I am aware of a certain…frisson about you.’ He coughed and tugged at his cuffs. ‘I assumed there was a man who had, um, stirred up some inner, er, emotions.’ He ground to a halt.

‘It shows?’ Decima was horrified. ‘I mean, I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. Anyone would think I had taken a lover.’

‘And you have not?’ Henry seemed to have recovered from his embarrassment.

‘No!’ Decima looked at his sceptical, trustworthy face and gave up. ‘No, I haven’t, but I nearly did. If you promise not to tell anyone, it would be so good to confide.’

When she had poured out the tale of everything that had happened since that last breakfast with Charlton and Hermione—shorn of a considerable amount of completely unmentionable detail—Henry was positively rubbing his hands together with delight.

‘You see? I have been telling you that there is absolutely nothing wrong with your appearance as far as anyone but your idiotic relatives and a handful of equally idiotic snobs are concerned. And this man proves it.’

‘But nobody else has ever seemed to find me remotely attractive,’ Decima wailed, wanting to be convinced and fearing it was only Henry’s partisanship speaking.

‘I expect this time you had too much else to think about to be working yourself up into being an unattractive spinster,’ he retorted brutally. ‘He saw you as you really are, not round-shouldered and self-effacing and with all your charm and character hidden.’

‘He is very tall. He doesn’t realise what a gawky beanpole I am.’

‘Society is full of men at least as tall as you, and taller. That won’t wash.’

‘And he is very odd—he likes my freckles. And he doesn’t seem to think my mouth is too big. In fact, he said I should not pout because he wanted to—’ She stopped, blushing furiously.

‘What?’ Henry enquired, interested. ‘Bite it?’

‘Yes! Now you cannot tell me that’s normal.’

‘It’s perfectly normal. This is an extremely improper conversation, Dess…Decima, but as we’ve gone so far, it is a entirely predictable thing for him to want to do. And liking your freckles does not make him odd. I like your freckles. He sounds a completely typical man with his due measure of healthy masculine desires, to me.’

‘Goodness.’ How did that make her feel? Decima tried to sort out her emotions. Adam wasn’t some oddity who found her attractive for weird reasons of his own or because he was stranded with her and anything was better than nothing. He had kissed her because, according to Henry—who was the most reassuringly down-to-earth male of her acquaintance—any normal man would want to. Her friend was speaking again. ‘I beg your pardon. I missed what you said.’

‘I asked you what is going to happen next.’

‘Why, nothing. Obviously I do not think it would be a good idea to see him again.’ Henry didn’t have to say anything, one raised eyebrow was enough. ‘I told you, he was perfectly horrible about me when he was talking to his friends. He admits he ran away rather than meet me.’

‘But he hadn’t met you then, before he ran, so in what way was he being horrible?’ Henry enquired. ‘You were just as horrible—you ran away rather than meet him and I’ll wager that if you had got here without misadventure you would have indignantly told me all about how your family tried to match you up with some ghastly man you would be sure to take an instant dislike to.’

‘That is not fair!’ Decima stopped, thought, regarded Henry’s face. ‘Oh dear, it is fair, isn’t it? I would never have thought of it like that.’

‘Are you in love with him?’

‘I don’t know.’ Decima stared at him, a frown wrinkling her brow. Something inside her became hollow. ‘How do I tell?’

‘Damned if I know either,’ Henry retorted cheerfully. ‘It hasn’t happened to me, more’s the pity. I imagine when it does, you just think “I’m in love”. Or you go off your food, or dream about the other person all day. Anyways, what are you going to do about him?’

‘I wasn’t going to do anything,’ Decima admitted. ‘I can hardly go chasing after him, now can I? Even if I wanted to,’ she added doubtfully. ‘But the complicating factor is that Pru seems to have fallen for his groom—in fact, quite literally fallen, and I may find myself having to do something about that before very long.’

‘Hmm.’ Henry did not seem to have anything much to contribute to that problem. ‘You need something to take your mind off this, Des…sorry, Decima. Mama’s going to open up the London house for the Season to fire off Caroline into society. I will be going up as well—why don’t you come too and stay with us? Mama would appreciate your company. We are going up at the end of February to get all Caro’s gowns and fallals sorted out early. What do you say?’

It was very tempting. She had already thought about going up for the Season, if only to horrify Charlton, who would be scandalised at the thought of her under any chaperonage other than that provided by one of their aunts or cousins. Decima gave herself a little shake. If she was going to do things only in reaction to her half-brother, then she was just as much in his thrall as she had ever been. She must do what she wanted, for herself. And she wanted to go to London, and find out if what Henry said was true. Could it be that if she was not shy and did not think about being odd, then other people wouldn’t think it either?

And then there was a very good chance that Adam would be in town for the Season as well. Not that she wanted to see him for herself, of course, but if Pru needed help with her improbable romance, then she had to do her best to assist her.

‘Yes, Henry, thank you very much. I would love to come to London and stay with your mama.’

‘What the hell do you mean, you can’t find them?’ Adam Grantham glowered at his agent who stood the other side of the broad desk, a sheaf of papers clutched in his hands. ‘How hard can it be to trace one English gentleman and his family? You have been looking for three weeks, damn it.’

The man went red, but kept his composure. Adam reined in his temper. He had never found Franklin negligent in his duties and had no reason to suspect he was not applying himself now. ‘Sit down, man, show me what you have done so far.’

The agent took the proffered chair and spread out his papers. ‘You told me the gentleman was called Charlton Ross, my lord, but you did not know whether he has a title. His wife’s name is Hermione and he has a sister Decima. He has a house somewhere near enough to Whissendine for his sister’s carriage to have reached the point where you met in one morning in poor travelling conditions. Miss Ross said it was in Leicestershire.

‘So I searched the Peerage, the Landed Gentry and even Crockford’s Clerical Directory just in case he was a clergyman. Nothing. Then I tried the various county directories—including Nottinghamshire to be on the safe side. There is not a sign of a Charlton Ross. There are plenty of entries for Ross, and I checked second names where they were given. Nothing that matches. The carriage appears to have been owned by the family as there is no record of it being hired at any livery stable I can find.

‘Then I tried the Norfolk end of things, but I couldn’t find any single ladies or widows by the name of Ross who might match—and, of course, the lady’s cousin might easily be a widow, or a maiden lady of a different surname. The only trace I have is of a party that matched your description taking luncheon at the Rising Sun just outside Wisbech. After that, they vanish. The number of carriages on the post roads that day was considerable, what with people getting themselves back home after being held up by the bad weather. We tried the turnpikes in all directions, but no one recalled them. I am sorry, my lord.’

‘Thank you, Franklin. I’m sure you have been extremely thorough.’ The man bowed himself out, leaving Adam brooding at the desk he had borrowed in his host’s study. He poured himself a large brandy and thought.

Longminster House, the rural seat of the Earl of Minster, Adam’s uncle by marriage, was en fête for the christening of the first of the Minster grandchildren and Adam had resigned himself to a week of baby-worshipping, dancing attendance on numerous relatives and avoiding lectures on his unwed state.

One of the few avenues of escape he had found was in trying to cheer up a distant relative of his Aunt Minster’s, Olivia Channing. He remembered her from her schoolroom days as tiny and shy. Now she was a little beauty—still tiny, but with all the blonde loveliness of a fairy. Add to that the best of good breeding and exquisite manners and one had the perfect eligible, albeit desperately shy, young lady. But Olivia’s problem was that her family was extremely hard up. Adam suspected that if her dowry amounted to a few hundred, that was all it was.

And she was being dragged about, pushed into society by her desperate mama, when she believed all she could expect was to be snubbed, despite her looks and her sweetness. A month ago he would have shrugged and taken no notice of her. Now, with Decima’s bitter words about matchmakers still ringing in his ears, he regarded her with sympathy and tried to make up to her for the fact that she found herself constantly on the outside of things.

She was a funny little thing, he thought. Even now she was used to him and had begun to chat to him with less constraint, he always had the feeling that she was glancing over his shoulder, checking for something.

He refilled his glass, dismissing Olivia as an insoluble problem. The presence of Peregrine Grantham, the son of his father’s late younger brother, was another matter altogether—both the silver lining to the visit and a heartening reminder that lectures on his duty to produce an heir could be met by pointing out young Perry’s numerous admirable qualities. Not that Perry, or his mother, were holding their breath at the thought of him stepping into his cousin’s shoes.

‘I do wish you’d get married, Adam,’ Perry had complained the day before as they trudged across a muddy field, retrievers at their heels and a dozen pigeons hanging from their shot belts. ‘Here I am, wanting to join up, and all I get from my guardians is lectures on how the heir to a viscounty doesn’t go risking his neck in the army.’

Adam had grinned at him and informed him that he had no intention of getting leg-shackled for his sake and he would just have to wait another couple of years until he could do as he chose.

‘The war’ll be over by then,’ Perry had retorted with good humour. ‘No, the answer is to get you married off, Adam.’

That evening, stretching long legs in front of a blazing fire and sipping Minster’s best liqueur brandy, Adam found himself contemplating matrimony seriously for perhaps the first time.

He was not staying single for Perry’s sake; the lad had too much intelligence and ambition to wait around for dead men’s shoes. No, Adam was unwed simply because no lady had ever piqued his interest enough to give up his independence and privacy. Except one.

He had set Franklin on Decima’s trail as soon as he had realised he could not find any mention of her brother in any of his reference books and that the polite note of thanks he had received three days after her departure gave no address. At the time he had not asked himself why he wanted to find her, only that he needed to make sure she was all right. The fact that her note left him in no doubt of that was beside the point.

Now Adam reluctantly faced the fact that he missed her. It was not just that his body ached for her, although it certainly did. He wanted to get to know her better, to hear that rich, wicked chuckle again, to dance a waltz with her and tease her about her cookery. He wanted to make her blush and cajole her out of her sudden fits of shyness. And he wanted to find out whether this unfamiliar ache around his heart was love.

And now, with the paperwork spread out before him detailing false trail after false trail, it seemed she had vanished. The only thing he could think was that she had not given him her true surname and, if that was the case, even setting the Bow Street Runners on her was not likely to be productive. It seemed that she was not as interested in resuming their strange friendship as he was himself.

He roused himself at the sound of the changing gong and made his way upstairs, only to remember that tonight was the occasion of the dance Aunt Minster was throwing to celebrate not only the arrival of her first grandchild, but also the betrothal of her last and youngest daughter, Sylvia.

There would be a family dinner first, then the arrival of guests and the prospect of a long night of dancing and making conversation in an overheated ballroom.

‘What are you about, Greaves?’ His valet was stropping a razor and regarding with some satisfaction his master’s newest and most elegant evening clothes laid out on the bed.

‘I had made sure your lordship would require to shave before dinner.’ He shook out a towel and waited patiently beside the chair, managing to ignore the singular lack of enthusiasm on his employer’s face.

With a sigh Adam cast himself down on the chair and did his best to suppress his bad humour. Greaves did not deserve having his employer’s disappointment and frustration taken out on him, nor was it his fault that Adam was in the worst possible state of mind to appreciate the elegance of the new satin knee breeches or the gloss the valet had achieved on the dancing pumps.

‘I’m not in the mood for a party, Greaves,’ he observed mildly as the man whipped up a lather and began to apply it to his face.

‘No, my lord. I have observed, if I might be so bold, that dances at which most of the partners are in some way related to a gentleman rarely offer him as much entertainment, however select the company.’

Despite himself Adam grinned. No, this was not likely to be the sort of party at which one could entertain oneself with dashing matrons or semi-respectable widows.

He went down to dinner only to realise that more guests had arrived, necessitating the butler to order all the extra leaves to be put in the dining table.

Perry wandered up to him, looking disgruntled. ‘I say, Adam, all the card tables are set out for whist for the old tabbies; we’re going to have to dance all evening.’

‘Well, find yourself some pretty girls to flirt with,’ Adam retorted unsympathetically. Perry was still at an age when girls were at best incomprehensible and at worst frightening. ‘What about Olivia over there? I’m sure she is your type. We’ll go over and you can practise on her.’

Perry, suspecting teasing, shot a hunted look in the direction of Adam’s gaze and relaxed. ‘Oh, Olivia Channing. I’m sure she’ll take no interest in me with you around.’

Adam put this down to adolescent insecurity and ignored it. The chit looked suitable for helping overcome Perry’s awkwardness—there was a sweet expression on her face and an air of modest shyness about her that was appealing. She would gaze at Perry as though he were wonderful and not make him feel threatened.

Adam took his cousin firmly by the elbow and began to make his way through the dinner guests, only for them to be hailed imperiously by his Aunt Minster.

‘There you are, Peregrine. Stop gossiping to Adam about shooting or horses or whatever you are doing and come and talk to the admiral.’ She detached Perry from his grip, hooked her own hand through his arm and carried on in the direction she had been heading.

Deprived of his companion, Adam carried on to Olivia’s side. She bobbed a curtsy. ‘My lord.’ Her voice was soft and slightly breathless and she regarded him with wide eyes.

Too young, too spiritless and far too short, Adam thought, his mind suddenly full of a tall, unconventional lady a good eight or nine years older than this child. And her mama should never have dressed Olivia in that daring style with such low-set sleeves. It was more suited to a married woman. Then his natural kindness took over and he set himself to charm her out of the worst of her nerves.

She certainly opened up a little in the interval before dinner was announced, although Adam once again had the uneasy feeling that she was constantly looking behind him at someone or something. As he took her arm to take her to find her dinner partner, he glanced back and recognised her parents. They seemed to be keeping a very close eye on her, although, with her seeming so nervous, perhaps that was only to be expected.

Dinner was as boring as he expected, trapped between an aunt who twittered and a matron who showed a disconcerting inclination to flirt with him. Adam was aware of drinking steadily and of an overwhelming desire to escape as soon as the covers were drawn. What he wanted was an unconventional lady to talk to, to tease, to—

‘Grantham!’

He looked up, startled out of his reverie.

‘You are chased,’ his uncle said sternly and he found that, indeed, the decanters were at his elbow. With a careless hand he filled his glass and pushed them on down the table.

When the gentlemen made their way through to the ballroom he looked around for escape. Good, the conservatory looked like a shaded haven of palms, comfortable seating and solitude. It was too early in the evening for daring couples to seek it out for a little dalliance or for desperate wallflowers to retreat there to hide.

Snagging a glass of champagne off a tray as the footman passed, Adam slid in through the nearest door and retreated as far into the leafy sanctuary as he could.

Now, at last, he could sit and think in peace about what he was going to do about Decima. A swish of skirts made him stiffen and draw back. He could glimpse a blonde head through the foliage and the sound of a bravely suppressed sob.

Damn it. It was Olivia. Adam eased round until he could see her, head bent, applying a fragile scrap of lace to her eyes. With a sigh he reached into his pocket and found a clean handkerchief.

‘Olivia?’ She started dramatically and stared at him.

‘Oh, thank you, my lord.’ As he pressed the linen into her hand her fingers gripped his and he found himself on the seat beside her.

‘Olivia? What is wrong?’ Hell, what did one say to weeping girls? ‘There, there.’ He patted her shoulder, wishing he hadn’t had quite so much to drink and could think about what to do for the best. Fetch her mama? She gave a gasping sob and the next thing he knew he had an armful of quivering young lady.

Instinct took over and Adam gathered her into a comforting embrace, only to find that her gown appeared to have a life of its own and was sliding off her shoulders. Under his palms he could feel soft, bare, heated skin.

‘Olivia? You must try and…’ Her face tipped up to his, piquant with some trembling emotion he did not understand. Her lashes were spiked with tears, her soft pink lips parted. So he kissed her, a gentle, chaste kiss intended purely to comfort.

‘My lord!’

‘Adam!’

Startled, he twisted round, instinctively sheltering Olivia in his arm. Facing him were both her parents and his Aunt Minster. And even as he stared at them he realised that Olivia was tugging at the neckline of a bodice which had fallen quite scandalously low over her pretty breasts.

‘Well, my lord,’ Mr Channing uttered in outraged tones, ‘just what do you think you are about?’ Beside him his wife could not quite keep the look of triumph off her face.

Under the circumstances, what was there to say? Or even to do? He was caught by the oldest trick in the book. ‘Mr Channing.’ Adam got to his feet, keeping his body between himself and Olivia, who was frantically trying to rearrange her bodice. ‘I will do myself the honour of speaking to you tomorrow morning.’

Chapter Twelve

Adam refixed the interested and attentive expression on his face and made himself concentrate on what Lady Brotherton was saying. Four weeks as an engaged man was already trying his patience to the utmost, and finding himself kicking his heels waiting for Olivia to return from a shopping expedition with her cousin Sophie Brotherton was definitely not to his taste.

‘They are naughty girls,’ Lady Brotherton clucked indulgently. ‘But I am sure you will forgive Olivia her excitement…it is not every day a girl is shopping for her trousseau.’

In Adam’s experience so far it seemed to be occupying Olivia’s every waking moment, which suited him very well, except when he was having to wait for her.

‘But you know what girls are,’ his hostess continued indulgently.

‘Well, I do have two sisters,’ Adam admitted.

‘Only the two?’ Lady Brotherton looked pitying. ‘Dear Sophie is the youngest of six.’

‘And all as lovely as she, I dare say,’ Adam responded, knowing what was expected of him.

‘To be sure, although it is boastful of me to say so. And all well married, too—I have high hopes for little Sophie.’ Lady Brotherton got to her feet. ‘Would you care to see their portrait?’

What Adam wanted to be doing was exercising his horses in his new curricle. He smiled with every appearance of delight and followed her to the other end of the room where a group portrait hung. The breath caught in his throat and time stopped.

Six charming versions of Sophie at various ages sat and stood, arms around each other, and at the back was a seventh girl. Head and shoulders taller than the others, a brunette with her hair scraped back into an unflattering plain style, her shoulders hunched and rounded and an expression quite lacking in any emotion. Her lids were hooded, hiding her eyes, but Adam was left with the impression of an animal, cornered and baited, retreating into its own blank misery.

‘Who is the seventh girl?’ he asked indifferently when he had control of his voice, knowing as he spoke what the answer would be.

‘Oh, that is Dessy Ross. Her mother’s first husband was some sort of connection of Lord Brotherton’s—I really cannot recall now what it was. But her brother Charlton was quite in despair about what to do with her, so we brought her out with our girls—one after the other. One tried one’s best to find her a match. Quite hopeless, of course—you might not be able to tell from the portrait, but she is impossibly tall and dreadfully freckled. And, of course, that unfortunate mouth. Sweet girl, although very quiet.’

Lady Brotherton went back to her chair, leaving Adam staring at the portrait. No wonder Decima was so self-conscious about her height, her looks. She had been brought up thinking she was not just plain, but irredeemably ineligible as a result. Her remarks about matchmakers hit Adam like a flick from a whip; her own experience of snubs and humiliations must be deep indeed—scars on her soul.

‘Charlton Ross,’ Adam said cautiously as he walked back to his seat. It would not do to let slip he knew Decima. ‘That sounds familiar. I wonder if I know him.’ He raised an interrogative eyebrow and Lady Brotherton shook her head.

‘No, my lord, it cannot be the man you know. Charlton is Dessy’s half-brother—Lord Carmichael. He lives in Nottinghamshire. Poor dear Dessy,’ she added with a pitying expression on her face. ‘I believe the Carmichaels have still not given up hope of finding her a husband. So optimistic of them, for what can one do about such handicaps? It is hardly as though it were spots—anyone might grow out of those.’ She regarded Adam with concern. ‘Are you quite well, my lord? You seem a little pale.’

As well I might, Adam thought bitterly. Decima Ross was the woman I joked about escaping from—and she knows it. And then he realised just what he had learned and what it meant.

He knew now why Decima had been so cold to him that last day, he knew how to find her—and that there was no honourable way he could seek her out. For he was betrothed to Olivia and he saw, with painful clarity, that what he wanted from Decima Ross was, quite simply, her hand in marriage.

Decima perched on the edge of the bed, sorting silk stockings from cotton ones while Pru carried her unpacked clothes from trunk to clothes presses.

‘Well, here we are, Pru. London again after so long. It must be four years since I managed to escape being dragged round by poor Lady Brotherton, doing the Season. Goodness, I had forgotten how noisy it is—and Lady Freshford was so pleased to tell me this was a nice quiet room!’

She scooped up the rolled stockings and went to drop them in a drawer, then turned to watch the maid. Four weeks ago Pru had confided stiffly that there was no unplanned consequence from her unwise dalliance with Bates, but since then had said nothing more about him.

Decima could tell she was not happy though, and sighed inwardly. ‘Pru, now we are in London, do you wish me to discover whether Lord Weston is in town, too?’

Pru hesitated, biting her lip, then sat down on the bed. ‘Yes, please, Miss Des…Miss Decima. But you won’t say anything to Bates, will you?’

‘I doubt I would see him,’ Decima soothed her. ‘If I can talk to Lord Weston, I will tell him that there appears to be some affection between the two of you and ask him to let drop, quite casually, where we are living. Then Bates can make up his own mind and will never know you are concerned.’

Pru nodded. ‘Yes, that would do it. I wouldn’t want him to think I was chasing him. But how will you find out about his lordship?’

‘I’ll ask Sir Henry,’ Decima said. ‘He will be sure to know.’ And before she went calling upon anyone she was going to send for a coiffeur and do some very serious shopping. She might be a spinster, but Decima was firmly decided that from now on she was going to be a very stylish spinster indeed. After all, she had told herself in the long days and nights of January and February as she brooded on her New Year’s resolution, I have no one to please but myself now. If she was no longer in the marriage mart, then she had nothing to prove, no one to compete with. There was no one whose opinion she had to pander to, and she had all the money she needed to indulge herself. And indulge herself she would.

Wanting to look her absolute best for a certain tall gentleman with grey eyes had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Adam retreated into his study in his London town house to recover from the latest descent of his future mother-in-law, Olivia in tow, to discuss wedding plans. The wedding, it appeared, would take place in June; it did not seem she considered it necessary to consult his wishes in the matter. The announcement of the betrothal would go into the papers the next day—a suitable length of time from the compromising incident at the ball to ensure there was no talk.

On any other subject, with any other person, Adam would have no more stood for such Turkish treatment than he would have stood still to have his foot driven over. With Mrs Channing he had no wish to start her on one of her lectures on his libertine and rakish behaviour and how he should indulge Olivia in every way possible to make up for his outrageous attempt at seduction.

Considering that he knew all too well that he had been stalked and entrapped, and that she must know he knew, Adam wondered at her hypocrisy. All that stopped him retaliating was a chivalrous concern for Olivia, whom he knew had been merely a browbeaten pawn in her parents’ machinations. She would never dare to stand out against them, just as he knew, with a sinking heart, that, once married, his word would be law and she would never, ever, argue with him.

What he wanted was a bride who would argue, with her elbows on the table, waving her cutlery for emphasis if need be. He wanted a wife who would tease him, would join in foolish whims with a twinkle in her eye and would come into his arms with—

‘A lady has called my lord.’ It was Dalrymple, his butler.

‘What?’ Adam stared, aware that he had not even heard him come in.

‘A lady, my lord. She declined to give me her name.’

Adam felt both his eyebrows rise. It was not like Dalrymple to make such an elementary error of judgement. ‘Are you sure you mean a lady?’

‘Certainly, my lord. A most well-bred lady, if I might venture an opinion. With her maid in attendance.’

So, not an ex-mistress hoping to presume on past favours, then. ‘Show her in, Dalrymple.’

‘In here, my lord? Into your study?’ The man looked scandalised.

‘Certainly in here.’ It would be just like Mrs Channing to discover she had forgotten her parasol and return unexpectedly, and he had no intention of being found entertaining strange ladies in his drawing room. The butler bowed stiffly and went out.

‘Madam,’ he announced frigidly, holding the door for her to enter, then left, shutting it behind him with a decided click. The lady was alone.

Adam stared at his visitor for several seconds, half-convinced he was hallucinating. If it were not for her height, he would have thought he was looking at a complete stranger, an exquisitely dressed, elegantly coiffed young matron.

Then she smiled, curving her wide, generous mouth. Freckles danced across her cheeks as they rounded with the smile and the cool grey eyes sparkled. ‘My lord.’

‘Decima.’ Adam was across the room and had caught her in his arms before he could think. She gave a little gasp, but did not resist him, and her face tipped trustingly up to his. ‘Oh, God. I thought I’d never find you again.’

Her mouth was soft under his hard kiss, opening to him with an innocence that his previous embraces had still not taught to be knowing. It was that very innocence, the sweet scent of her, the way her palm fluttered against his cheek, that brought him to himself.

‘Decima,’ he said again, stepping back. ‘Forgive me, I was taken by surprise at seeing you. Please, will you not sit down.’ He gestured towards a chair, feeling hideously gauche, as formal now he had just been unforgivably free with her.

‘Thank you.’ She sank down gracefully and sat poised, watching him. She smiled suddenly, her nose wrinkling endearingly, and the elegant lady vanished to be replaced by the hoyden who groomed her own horses. ‘I was pleased to see you, too.’

Adam tugged at the bell pull before sitting opposite her. His heart was beating like a drum. Nothing mattered except that she was there.

‘Refreshments,’ he said impatiently as the butler appeared. He wanted to be alone with her, talk to her, put her at her ease—put himself at his ease, if it came to that.

‘You look…’ He struggled for the right word. ‘You look incredible. I hardly recognised you.’ Oh, no, that was hardly the most tactful thing to have said!

Decima produced the gurgle of laughter that never failed to make his heart stutter. ‘Better than when I was grooming horses, perhaps? Or perhaps better than my kitchen-maid look?’

‘Not better, just different.’ What was the matter with him? Normally he had the smooth tongue and the flattering touch of the accomplished rake. Decima reduced him to a gibbering idiot in seconds. ‘Have you forgiven me?’ Better get it over with. ‘I now know your brother’s name and who it was I fled from rather than meet before New Year.’

‘Oh.’ She looked at him, her head slightly tipped to one side like a curious robin. ‘How?’

‘I saw your portrait at Lady Brotherton’s.’

‘Oh,’ she said again, dropping her gaze to her clasped hands. ‘Hideous, is it not?’

‘I thought it was sad that no one seemed capable of seeing your true beauty,’ he said gently, and was rewarded by a glowing look from her grey eyes.

‘Thank you. You seem to see something that other people do not, which is kind of you.’

‘I am not kind,’ he retorted roughly. ‘Why have you come?’ Damn it, Adam, why not show a complete lack of finesse while you’re about it?

‘Ah. Now that is difficult.’ Her gaze dropped again and the colour mounted in her cheeks. ‘It was hard to come and speak to you like this, I don’t deny it. Especially after all the things I said about marriage and matchmakers.’

Her colour was positively hectic now. With a visible effort she raised her eyes to his face and said, ‘You might not be…happy about what I have to say, but I think one should be…honest about…about love.’

Love? She was telling him she loved him? ‘Decima.’ He reached out and took her hands in his. ‘Decima, I think you had better say what you mean.’

‘This is very difficult. Has Bates said anything to you?’

‘Bates? Go away,’ he snapped at Dalrymple, who opened the door, a tray of refreshments neatly balanced on one gloved hand.

‘Very good, my lord.’ The butler executed a smart turn and removed himself.

‘What the hell has Bates got to do with anything?’ She was going to tell him she had fallen passionately for Bates, that was it. His life could hardly be in more of a mess.

‘It is Pru. I think she is in love with him. But you know what he’s like—so taciturn. I thought if you could drop a hint, let him know where she was to be found—then, if he was interested in her, he might make contact.’

‘I see,’ Adam said flatly, sitting back in his chair. ‘So this is all about Bates and Pru. You would not have come to find me if it had not been for that. Just how serious is it?’

He seemed to have flustered her. Good, Adam thought viciously, then hated himself.

‘Things apparently became quite…that is…I did worry at one point that she might be with child,’ Decima admitted, her high colour returning. ‘But fortunately not. But I have no idea if his affections are engaged, or simply his, er, physical reactions.’

Well, good for Bates, Adam thought bitterly. To manage a seduction with a broken leg argued a determination and aplomb he had been unaware of. In fact, he doubted he could have accomplished it himself. And the old devil had the nerve to lecture me about propriety!

‘By all means let us put ourselves about to secure the happiness of others,’ he said, hating the sarcastic edge to his voice. Decima looked bemused at his tone. Of course, he thought, she has no idea what I feel for her. How could she? She thinks she has had a salutary experience with a rake, that is all. ‘Are you sure it would not be—let me be sure I have the words right—a piece of meddling?’

‘Yes, I am sure,’ Decima snapped back, her understandable anger at his tone finally overcoming her good manners. ‘Pru wants to find out what he feels for her, that is all. He can choose to ignore the information if he so wishes—she has far too much pride to pursue him.’

She got to her feet in a swirl of skirts, so suddenly that he had to scramble to stand, too. ‘If you wish to have nothing to do with it, then I will go down to the mews and see him on the pretext of asking about Fox. You have absolutely no need to trouble yourself about the emotional well-being of your servants or mine, my lord. Good day to you.’

‘Decima.’ Adam managed to get between her and the door before she could swing it open and stalk out. ‘I beg your pardon. I was so taken aback at seeing you.’ Her eyebrows rose haughtily. ‘Yes, I know, that is no excuse. I feel guilty about how I behaved at my sister’s. I feel worse about what I said in your hearing. And I wanted to find you and could not and that hurt.’

‘So you were sulking?’ she suggested sweetly.

‘I do not—’ He met her eyes, saw the wicked glint in them and smiled ruefully. ‘Probably,’ he admitted. Now they were so close, the urge to take her in his arms again was a tangible force, as though someone was pushing him towards her. He knew how her skin would taste, how her mouth would feel under his, how her long, lovely body would fit and slide against his. He wanted to make love to her until she screamed his name and begged him never to stop. He wanted all the things he could not have.

‘Shall we go down to the mews, or would you like some refreshments first?’

‘Oh, the mews, please. Have you brought Fox up to town with you?’ She shot him a slanting, sideways look as he opened the door for her. ‘Will you still agree to put him to my mare, now we have made up our quarrel?’

‘Have we been quarrelling?’

‘Just a little bit, I think. Margery, come along, we are going down to the mews with his lordship.’ The maid, a quiet girl who had been sitting on a hard chair in the hall, stood and helped Decima into her pelisse, then curtsied to Adam. ‘I thought it better not to bring Pru,’ she confided quietly. ‘Now, if you wait until we are close to Bates before you ask me my direction, that should do it.’

Decima slipped her hand into the crook of Adam’s arm and let him guide her down the steps and along the pavement of Portman Square. Margery, borrowed from Lady Freshford, followed behind at a discreet distance like the well-trained attendant she was.

The luxury of being close to Adam, of touching him, made her pulse race. She tried not think about his kiss, but all the strange new feelings she had been suppressing flooded back to swamp her body. Her breathing was short, heat seemed to run up and down her body and an intimate pulse of arousal beat distractingly.

With him she felt different, strangely confident, able to show her real feelings whether they were shyness or anger. It was an intoxicating sensation, to be herself. And then she realised why he made her feel like this. With a dawning sense of wonder Decima turned her head to look at the strong profile of the man beside her. I love him.

Bates had Fox tied up outside and was grooming him as they walked into the mews yard. He straightened up and stared for a long moment, then put down his brushes and limped towards her, tugging off his hat. ‘Good day to you, Miss Decima, ma’am.’

‘Good day to you, Bates! And how is your leg? Still troubling you, I see.’ It made things easier, having to focus on someone else, to think about managing this carefully for Pru’s sake. Anything rather than think about the implications of what she had just discovered about herself.

‘Getting better, I thank you, ma’am. I expect I’ll be a bit of a Hopping Giles all my days, but it could be worse.’

‘His lordship and I did not make too bad a job of it, then?’

‘No, ma’am, and I’m powerful sorry my language wasn’t all it might have been either.’ He glanced behind her as he spoke and Decima watched his expression stiffen as he saw who was accompanying her. He had been expecting to see Pru and was disconcerted that she was not there. Good.

‘It was very educational, Bates,’ she said lightly, stepping past him to stroke Fox. ‘How’s my favourite boy, then?’ The stallion rewarded her with a gentle butt with his nose. Decima turned back to Adam. ‘We really must make arrangements for putting him to my mare, my lord. I will be staying in town for the Season and I will be in touch before I go back to Norfolk.’

She delved in her reticule and then produced a realistic smile of realisation. ‘Of course, I have no card with my London address. I am staying with Lady Freshford in Green Street. Number Eleven. Green Street.’

Adam turned as though to escort her out of the mews. ‘And is Miss Prudence with you? I trust she recovered from her illness.’

‘Oh, yes. She is with me. She seemed a little cast down—the after-effects of the fever, I expect—so I thought the change of scene would do her good. Goodbye, Bates. I do hope your leg continues to improve.’

Adam took her arm and began to guide her back out of the yard. ‘Let me take you back to the house and Dalrymple will call you a hackney.’

Decima said little on their way back other than to whisper, ‘That should have done the trick. If he does nothing now, at least Pru knows where she stands.’ But what of her? Would Adam make the slightest push to see her again?

As they neared the front steps Decima saw that a barouche had drawn up and the footman was just helping down an exquisite blonde lady. She started slightly when she saw them, and stood waiting, a look of somewhat nervous anticipation on her face.

‘What a beautiful young woman,’ Decima murmured. ‘She is like a little fairy.’

‘Exquisite,’ Adam rejoined. Curious, Decima glanced at him; he had sounded almost sardonic.

Then she saw the lady more clearly. ‘But I know her, surely!’ She let go of Adam’s arm and hurried forward. ‘Olivia? Miss Channing, I should say. I am sure you do not remember me, but I stayed for several Seasons with your cousins, the Brothertons.’

The blue eyes widened with recognition and the apprehensive half smile was replaced by a genuine look of pleasure. ‘But of course I remember you—Dessy Ross, isn’t it? You were so kind to me, even though I was still in the schoolroom. You used to help me with my French recitation when I found it so hard.’

‘You are most certainly out of the schoolroom now,’ Decima observed admiringly. ‘I almost did not recognise you.’ Olivia blushed and demurred and Decima remembered her manners. ‘Forgive me, I should perhaps introduce you to Viscount Weston. My lord…’

‘That is quite all right.’ Adam stepped forward and took Olivia’s little kid-gloved hand in his. ‘I already know Miss Channing. We are betrothed.’