Snowbound Surrender Page 10

  It was icy outside, but the lean-to shielding the back door provided some protection and the fuel was stacked under cover to one side. Giles risked sticking his head outside. The woods behind, and the hedges that must mark the boundary of the properties, had made a sheltered space like a corridor running in either direction with snow only eighteen inches deep by the house, rising deeper the further away he looked. There was a light flickering to the right that marked the nearest cottage, or perhaps a star, but in the other direction he could see nothing but swirling snow.

  Giles filled the log baskets in each room, lugged in coal, laid fires in the bedchambers and finally came back into the kitchen, ears burning with cold, eyes streaming from the contrast between inside and out.

  He pumped water into the stone sink and washed the sawdust and coal smudges off his hands with water that only turned his fingers bluer. ‘Your well has not frozen, fortunately.’

  ‘Spring water,’ Miss Chancellor explained, glancing up from rolling out pastry to drape over a filled pie dish. ‘It will be larder pie for supper. I reviewed the pantry and this has all the odds and ends—leeks, cheese, bacon and almost the last of the milk.’ She trimmed the edge, cut a cross in the centre so the beak of a stoneware blackbird poked out to vent the steam and brushed beaten egg across the top.

  ‘How does a lady learn to cook?’ Giles asked, watching as she opened the top oven door, slid in the pie and shifted a metal plate. The smell of baking apples drifted out, making his mouth water.

  ‘I enjoy it. Dorothy, my maid, showed me and I buy cookery books as well.’ She gestured to the shelves above the dresser. ‘And compared to London the food is so good here—the milk has not been watered, the flour has not been mixed with chalk and there are fresh vegetables and eggs in plenty.’

  ‘You seem happy.’ Giles pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table.

  ‘And you sound surprised that I should be.’ She paused, her lower lip caught between her teeth, gaze unfocused in thought. ‘No cream, not enough milk... I know, I’ll make a brandy sauce to go with the apples.’

  ‘You left London in the middle of the Season, you have spent two years in apparent exile—why wouldn’t you want to go back?’

  ‘I was not happy, I did not enjoy it. I... It was hard to find my feet. The people I thought were my friends were no such thing. Here I have real friends, a community, things I can do—useful things. What is there to go back for?’

  ‘The theatre, the shops, the balls—’

  ‘There are shops in the market towns. I do not miss balls. I buy books by post from London.’

  He thought perhaps she protested rather too much, but he said nothing, enjoying watching her slim fingers moving skilfully amongst the tools and ingredients, imagining them exploring his body...

  He crossed his legs and told his errant imagination to behave as Miss Chancellor lifted a bottle from a shelf, sniffed it and poured a good measure into a pan, then pushed a sugarloaf and some snips towards Giles. ‘Can you break some off, please?’

  ‘What about a husband?’ He began to hack pieces of sugar off and dropped them into the mortar that Miss Chancellor had brought from the dresser.

  ‘Why would I want one of those?’ She found the pestle and began to grind up the sugar lumps, peered in, clearly decided there was enough, tipped the results into the saucepan and began to stir.

  ‘Er... All the usual reasons?’

  ‘A desire to give up my independence? A wish to put my fate into the hands of a man?’

  ‘Children? Protection? Romance?’

  ‘Children? The parish is full of little ones who need help and education. Protection? I have my pistols. Romance... I wonder what you mean by that, Lord Missenden? And, no, do not attempt an explanation because I assume it is a euphemism.’

  ‘You are a cynic,’ Giles observed as the smell of hot brandy wafted across the kitchen.

  ‘A realist. Women—or ladies, at least—are expected to ignore reality. I prefer to face it. I value honesty.’ She hesitated. ‘I do not find parties and crowds agreeable. Perhaps I am shy, but I prefer to find real friends, slowly.’

  She said it lightly, with a smile, but there was a shadow that seemed to cross her face like a summer cloud darkening a sunlit meadow for a few seconds.

  Giles suppressed the instinctive wince. He was one of the people who had sent her into exile, even though it had been through carelessness, not malice. If he had stopped to check, to wonder, then he might have protected her from the uproar. Women she thought were her friends had used her, he had neglected to protect her, her relatives had pushed her off to the country to prevent embarrassment. Their embarrassment.

  Was she as shy as she said? Julia Chancellor seemed straightforward—assertive, even. But then they were hardly in a crowd and she’d had her anger with him to carry her past any initial awkwardness.

  He had scraped through enough scandalous incidents to know that the memory of the ton was short. Along came another ‘outrage’ and society’s short-lived attention swooped off to feast on that. Provided one did not upset a leader of fashion then it was possible to recover from almost anything.

  It was harder for young ladies, of course. Any suggestion of sexual impropriety, of a loss of virtue, and they were marked for life—or until parental influence or money could buy them a husband. But there had never been any suggestion of that kind of thing in this case and he would wager a guinea to a groat that if Julia Chancellor had left London for a week or so, then returned and kept her head down, it would all have blown over.

  While he brooded she took the pan from the heat and went into the scullery, returning with a bowl of carrots.

  ‘Your parents,’ Giles began.

  ‘They died when I was seventeen, of influenza.’ From the very lack of expression in her voice as she began to scrape the carrots at the sink, he guessed that had caused her a great deal of pain. ‘I went to live with my only close relative, Aunt Hermione, but with a year of mourning I did not come out until I was almost nineteen and I knew virtually no one.’ She tossed a carrot into a bowl. ‘I was your typical wallflower, I must confess.’

  ‘A wallflower?’ She was well bred, intelligent and, to his eyes at least, an attractive woman. Had all the men failed to notice her?

  He must have sounded sceptical because she chuckled. ‘You find that hard to believe? I was both shy and inclined to say what I thought when I did speak. Not the most desirable combination, as was made very clear to me whenever I made an error.’

  Another carrot followed the first and bounced off the rim of the pot into the air. Giles caught it and got up to drop it into the water. ‘Your aunt seems to have reacted very strongly,’ he remarked, puzzled. He leaned one hip against the dresser and stood by to catch more flying vegetables.

  ‘I suspect it was a relief to get rid of me, to have an excuse to say that she had done her duty, but that I was not fit for society. I was an expense, I was awkward and she had two daughters of her own to bring out.’

  Giles tried to imagine his own mother behaving like that towards an orphaned female relative and failed. But it did explain the prolonged exile: How could she go back with no respectable lady to sponsor her? ‘How did you come by this charming cottage?’ he asked.

  ‘The late Lord Carnhurst, who has a house about five miles away, found himself with a superabundance of female dependents about thirty years ago and built this row of cottages to house them. According to local gossip he felt five miles was an adequate distance to be safe from female nagging. It became known as Spinsters’ Row as a result, but as the ladies passed away his son sold them and they all went to either widows or spinsters of moderate means. My second cousin Prunella owns this one, but she is living with her invalid younger sister in Bath, so she let me have it.’

  A carrot splashed into the pot, splattering Giles with water. The force with which
that had landed said rather more about Miss Chancellor’s feelings than her bright tone did, he thought. ‘Shall I chop these?’ he offered. It seemed the safest thing to say.

  Chapter Three

  Really, for a heedless rakehell Lord Missenden was proving to be an exemplary house guest, Julia decided when he took himself off to his bedchamber with the sheets she had been airing in front of the range. He had maintained a flow of unexceptional light conversation throughout supper, he had dealt with the fires, brought in more wood and wiped the dishes she washed, although she would have been amazed if he had ever been called on to do such a thing before.

  Should she have offered to make up his bed? No, she concluded, that was too intimate a service and they appeared to have established a very pleasant, safe-feeling neutral manner between them.

  He appeared to have forgotten the shocking nature of his arrival and she managed not to think about it for quite a few minutes at a time. With one last check on the fires Julia filled an ewer with hot water from the copper and followed him upstairs, snuffing candles as she went.

  The staircase rose from the back of the hall to the rear of the wide first-floor landing which divided the house in two. At the front the landing ended in a window with a view out over the Vale and on either side at the front were the two main bedchambers with the maid’s room, a linen store and box room at the back.

  Light shone from under the left-hand door and she could hear the flap of sheets and the pad of feet as Lord Missenden wrestled with bed-making. A muffled curse made her smile as she opened her own door. With the door closed the only sound was the soft sough of the wind in the chimney and the crackle of the settling fire.

  Julia set the ewer on the washstand, drew the curtains on the snowy darkness and banked up the fire before she glanced at the door again. Should she lock it? She was alone in the house with a stranger, so that was the prudent thing to do. She began to turn the key, then stopped. If she locked herself in, then she was thinking that Giles Darrowby was a danger and she had absolutely no proof that he was anything but a gentleman.

  ‘I am not some nervous peahen,’ she said aloud. ‘And if he does try anything then I shall shoot him.’ She had not been exaggerating about the loaded pistol in the bedside drawer. Burglars were a real threat—chance-met noblemen who did the washing up and chopped carrots seemed far less of one. She left the door unlocked.

  * * *

  Rational decisions did not necessarily make for peaceful slumbers, she found after half an hour of pummelling her pillow. An attractive young man in the house, let alone one who had displayed his impressive anatomy in its entirety, did not make for tranquil thoughts.

  What would all that hairy skin feel like? How hard were those muscles beneath it? She had seen nude male statues in museums and in engravings, of course, but they had all been smooth white marble and equipped with modestly placed fig leaves. It was difficult to imagine a fig leaf that would have ensured Lord Missenden’s modesty, she thought with an inward flutter that was more than mere curiosity.

  Julia hauled the quilt up over her ears and admitted to herself that what she was feeling was a quite disgraceful desire to put her hands on the man and have him put his on her.

  Which is what you get for living the life of an old maid when you are not yet twenty-three, she scolded herself. It is a natural feeling. You just have to keep it under control. And go to sleep.

  * * *

  It was the stillness that roused her, she realised after a moment lying blinking into the darkness. She was completely awake. The wind had dropped and the lack of sound was almost a physical sensation. Julia sat up and saw that the fire had burned down to a red glow, casting just enough light for her to get out of bed and light her candle on its hot embers. She banked it up with fresh coals, then parted the curtains. Outside it was dark, her view blocked by the old holly tree that grew outside, but she could see a sprinkling of stars above its jagged crown. It had stopped snowing.

  Her toes were cold on the bare boards, but her slippers were by the fire and were warm when she put them on. With her unglamorous quilted robe belted firmly around her waist, she opened the door and padded out on to the landing. What time was it?

  The comforting heartbeat of the ancient longcase clock in the hall sounded loud in the stillness.

  Tick, tock...tick. Pause. Tick, tock...tick.

  She would creep down and make a cup of tea, well sugared to make up for the lack of milk, she decided. Then some instinct made her glance at the long window at the front of the landing and she caught her breath. Outside the snow was dazzling white and bright under the starlight and she could see, far away in the Vale, the twinkle of lights from the scattered farms and hamlets.

  There was a battered old ottoman that she used for storing smaller linens standing in front of the window to form a seat and she went to it, all thoughts of tea forgotten as she sat down and gazed out on to a white wonderland.

  Giles Darrowby moved so silently that the first warning Julia had that someone was behind her was the feeling of warmth from another body close at her back.

  ‘Magic,’ he breathed.

  ‘You can see better here.’ Julia moved to make room for him beside her and he moved around the ottoman, furling the counterpane from the bed around him as he sat.

  She glanced down, saw he was in stockinged feet and caught a glimpse of the livery breeches. ‘Did I wake you?’ she asked, almost in a whisper.

  ‘I heard a board creak and thought I had better check in case it was not you or that heavy-footed cat.’ His voice was as low as hers, both of them, it seemed, instinctively unwilling to break the silence. ‘It looks as though we are suspended in space with stars above and below. Why so many lights? It is past two.’

  ‘In weather like this most cottagers will keep a lantern burning. You never know who might be out there lost in the snow and needing a guiding light, or one of the family might have to go out to tend to animals.’ She snuggled down further into her robe, stilling suddenly as her elbow brushed his.

  ‘Here, keep still or you’ll let the warmth out.’ He shrugged out of the quilt, then wrapped it around both of them.

  ‘Lord Missenden—’

  ‘Giles, I think, under the circumstances.’ There was amusement in the low murmur.

  ‘What circumstances?’ she asked warily.

  ‘The fact that we are huddled under a quilt at two in the morning watching the stars, Julia. First names are appropriate—the etiquette books are quite clear on the subject.’

  ‘And you would know?’

  She felt, rather than heard, his amusement at her sarcasm.

  ‘Of course I do. I am a viscount, after all, a pattern book of correctness. I am not going to bite or anything else undesirable. Lean on me and we can both stay warm.’ But when she stayed where she was he made no move to touch her.

  ‘There’s the moon,’ she said. The merest sickle of silver hung amid the stars. It was the final touch of otherworldly beauty and her resistance melted at the sight. Julia lifted her feet so she was curled up on top of the ottoman, propped against Giles’s side, snug under the cocooning quilt.

  She felt him shift to accommodate her, tug the cover closer around them both. His arm came around her shoulders, but then he was still again, a warm, strong presence. Her head tipped, came to rest on his upper arm and they sat in silence.

  A barn owl drifted past, a great, lethal snowflake on soundless wings, and Julia felt her eyelids drooping.

  ‘We are out of time, suspended like angels over the sleeping vale beneath us,’ Giles murmured. ‘Have you read the poem by James Montgomery? He’s a Scot, I think. Someone should set it to music. “Angels from the realms of glory, Wing your flight o’er all the earth; Ye who sang creation’s story, Now proclaim Messiah’s birth...”’

  ‘Lovely. You can almost see them, all silver and gold feathers, descending t
hrough glory to earth. Imagine being able to fly.’ She lost the words in a yawn.

  ‘You can imagine it in your sleep,’ Giles said. ‘And with warm toes. We have gazed down like the angels too long, you are getting chilled. Up with you, Julia, go to your bed.’

  She shrugged off the quilt, put her feet on the floor and, somehow, pushed away from the warmth of his body. ‘Goodnight, Giles.’

  ‘Goodnight, Julia. Sweet dreams,’ he said as her slippers tangled in the hem of the cover and she toppled back into his arms.

  ‘Oof!’

  He half-stood, caught her as she flailed, and their noses bumped, then their lips, an accidental, sliding, hot fragment of a kiss as fleeting as a shooting star.

  It was over in a second as Giles set her on her feet and she fled for the bedchamber.

  * * *

  How awkward is this going to be, I wonder? Giles kept his back to the kitchen door, kept working on riddling the spent ash from the range and building up the fire again as the brisk click of feminine heels came down the stairs, across the hall and hesitated for a heartbeat on the threshold.

  He did not have much experience with awkward mornings-after. None, in fact. If a lady invited him to her bed, he made sure to be out of it well before dawn. Not that he had been anywhere near Julia’s bed, but she had been under his quilt and in his arms and then there had been that kiss. No, not a kiss, an accidental touch, that was all it was, he reassured himself.

  An accident that left him with the tantalising memory of her taste, of the scent of warm female and the prim, sweet fragrance of lavender from her nightgown. An accident, so why was he feeling awkward about it this morning? It wasn’t as though he had taken advantage of it, had hauled her back into his arms and kissed her until she was too dizzy to think what she was doing—which was what his body had been suggesting with some emphasis.