“If you will just stand on the step, Miss Ross, I will carry you across to the horses,” Lord Weston instructed.

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.”

“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.”

There was a muffled choke of laughter from her maid behind her and Decima realized 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.

He swept her up. “Can you put your arm around my neck?” he asked.

Decima did as she was bid. The viscount turned and began to wade back through the snowdrifts. The movement of his torso against her body was…disturbing. Something was making her feel quite strange inside: melting and flustered.

For heaven’s sake, Decima, pull yourself together!

The Viscount’s Betrothal

Harlequin® Historical

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

The Viscount’s Betrothal
Louise Allen

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

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.

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