She shuddered, but kept moving forward, every step taking her further and further from the safety of the snowy bank. A few paces more and she’d be close enough to take Charlotte’s arm and guide her back, and she clung to that promise as the ice slid under her boots and tempted her to fall.
‘Charlotte?’
With her heart still beating like a drum Honora watched the girl turn, slowly as though in a dream and a hazy smile spreading across her face.
‘Honora, what are you doing here? Were you too hot as well?’
She stepped closer and Honora immediately slid an arm around Charlotte’s back, not wasting a single moment in guiding her towards solid ground. They could talk properly once off the ice, although the relief that wended its way through Honora as Charlotte allowed herself to be shepherded away was so strong she could have sighed out loud. Her heart still leapt, but she had firm hold of Charlotte, her arm tightly clamped against the sodden blanket, and as the bank grew nearer she felt some of the tension leave her frame. Isaac would be beside himself that his ward had been found unharmed and as she herded Charlotte gently up on to the snow-covered grass Honora was barely any less delighted herself. The girl was safe. Sweet, kind-hearted Charlotte was alive and, if she was strong enough to walk so far, she must be recovering at last from the ordeal of her labour, although the vague look in her eye and strange tone of her voice still suggested delirium that made Honora pause as Charlotte murmured something in her ear.
‘What was that? I couldn’t quite catch...’
‘Slipper. My slipper. It came off.’
Honora followed the shaking finger pointing back at the lake and her stomach fell into her boots as she saw Charlotte was right. Sitting proudly out on the ice was one bedraggled slipper, and a glance down showed only a stocking covering Charlotte’s left foot.
Honora closed her eyes for a moment, summoning all her exhausted strength not to groan.
She can hardly struggle back to the Manor with one shoe. I’ll have to go and fetch it—back on to the death trap that could crack at any moment.
‘So it did. How rude of it.’ Honora found a smile from somewhere and carefully helped Charlotte down on to a felled tree near the water’s edge. She arranged the filthy blanket around her more warmly and nodded with a confidence she didn’t feel. ‘Stay just here and wait for me. I won’t be a moment.’
Leaving Charlotte sitting obediently on her perch, Honora took a steadying breath and ventured once more on to the still waters. The wind attacked her as soon as she inched away from the bank, but she lowered her head and continued her slow, precise progress towards the slipper lying some distance away. If it had possessed a face she might have suspected it was taunting her, Honora thought sourly, still listening hard for any alarming sounds. The wind tugging at her bonnet made it difficult to hear clearly and she could only hope her luck—and the ice—would hold.
She closed in on her prey and bent to retrieve it, victory bringing a curve to cold lips. At last. At last she could take Charlotte and get out of this damned freezing weather, to sit beside a roaring fire and defrost her poor aching bones. Mrs Strimpel would make sure tea was sent up, probably with a pile of hot toast to accompany it to celebrate their triumphant return. Honora could almost taste the butter and her mouth began to water as her fingers closed around tattered satin and she straightened up again, turning to retreat back to the safety of the bank with her quarry held firmly in one hand...
But then from beneath her boots came the most almighty snap and Honora was in the water before she even had time to scream.
It hit her with agonising force, shock pushing the air from her lungs. The water was just so cold. It surrounded her, above and below and on every side, in her eyes and her ears and her mouth that opened to cry out but the words mercilessly drowning beneath the ice. She kicked and fought, struggling towards the daylight that filtered in fragments through the gloom, scrabbling at the glassy roof above her with numb hands that caught and tore—but her cloak tangled around her legs with every abortive stroke and instead of swimming she was sinking, still fighting, but trapped by her skirts and weighed down by the saturated material that conspired to drag her under. Blind panic gripped her and she shook from side to side like a terrier would a dying rat. Was that what she was now? A terrified creature facing its end, thrashing and helpless and clawing with every ounce of its strength to escape? Her bonnet had come loose and her hair swirled into her face, clamping against her nose and mouth as if trying to end her suffering, but when she tried to fling it away her scratched and bleeding hands were just too weak to do anything but drift through the water like weeds.
The faces of her mother and father flitted through Honora’s mind as she flailed helplessly, her chest bursting and lungs screaming for breath. They would never be reconciled now. Isaac wouldn’t even know where to address a letter to let them know she’d died, she thought, somewhere vague and seemingly distant from the crisis racking her poor body. She’d never see Isaac again, either, never run her hands over that lovely jaw and tell him how her heart leapt when he was near, that he was a hundred times the man Frank had ever been and that living with him at Marlow Manor had felt like coming home at last. She would die there beneath the ice, cold and frozen and alone—but at least she’d saved Charlotte. When they dragged her body from the water she might have a smile on her face because of that and, with her mind circling on that final thought, Honora felt her eyes flutter closed and darkness overcome everything else.
* * *
At first when Isaac hauled Honora on to the lake’s bank she lay quite still, eyes closed and wet hair fanned out around her like an ebony halo. The snowy ground was cold beneath him as he knelt at her side, a different kind of cold than the biting water he had plunged both arms into and locked around her waist, and for one brutal moment he wondered if he’d been too late. She didn’t stir as much as a fingertip—until without warning Honora lurched upright, expelling a great gout of water and coughing and coughing as though she might bring up a lung.
Isaac felt his heart turn over, a giddy somersault that snatched away his own breath. He wanted to shout or laugh out loud, but instead he could do nothing but crouch there in his sopping shirt, staring down at Honora with the same two words resounding in his mind.
She’s alive. She’s alive!
Fierce relief roared up within him like a burning flood as he reached for his hastily discarded coat lying on the snow. With numb fingers he draped it over Honora’s spasming shoulders, her eyes still closed, but his never leaving her face for even a half-second. If he looked away she might disappear back beneath the ice or somewhere else he couldn’t follow, the jaws of death doubtless enraged to have been cheated of such a prize. If he lost sight of her, he could wake from this dream and find he hadn’t been fast enough, and that in some other nightmarish reality he would never see Honora again.
So close. I came so close to losing her for ever. When I saw her fall through into the water...
A ghostly hand wrapped freezing fingers around Isaac’s throat and tightened its fist. He could hardly bear to think of it. If he hadn’t emerged from the trees at that precise moment, seen her wild look of alarm as the ice gave way...
He pulled the coat around her and gathered her into his arms, lifting her from the snowy ground. The soft weight of Honora against his chest made it swell with emotion so strong it almost choked him, fear and stark gratitude assailing his flagging composure. With his wife cradled in his arms, shivering but reassuringly real, he still hardly dared believe the danger was over. Might she still be stolen away by cold or shock, the light of his life extinguished by her selfless sacrifice?
Isaac turned for the house, Honora settled against the front of his shirt and grasped so tightly not even a whisper could have slipped between them. Nothing would be allowed to take her. He would fight anyone or anything that tried to snatch her from him. The prospect of a lif
e without her in it was no life at all. As he strode back towards the Manor, with Taylor carrying Charlotte close behind, he knew the time had come for her to know it.
He glanced down at her, all coughing subsided now and her face serene and quiet. With her eyes closed she might have been sleeping, so it was with only a murmur Isaac spoke into her ear.
‘Stay with me, Honora. I couldn’t bear to live without you now.’
* * *
‘Thank you, Clara.’
Honora wrapped herself in the linen drying sheet the maid held out to her and stood before the fire, luxuriating in the feeling of heat on her skin. It tingled from the scalding bath she’d stepped from, but still she couldn’t completely escape the chill in her bones, coldness that sat inside her like a block of solid ice.
Perhaps I never will. Perhaps coming so close to death will stay with me for ever.
She shuddered. If Isaac hadn’t dragged her out, wouldn’t she be lying on the murky lakebed now instead of drying after a hot bath, the water freezing her blood rather than warming it again? The sensation of drowning, of suffocating and her lungs filling with burning cold returned to remind her how near she’d come to the ultimate disaster and she felt herself sway sickeningly despite the safe comfort of her familiar bedchamber. Isaac had saved her life. A few moments more and she would have been lost, drifting away to join Frank in whatever afterlife awaited those who passed before their time.
A quiet tap at the door interrupted her horror, giving way to a different emotion entirely when it opened and Isaac slipped inside. His face was drawn and pale, wearing a look of concern that carved new lines into his already weathered brow—until he realised she wore nothing but the drying sheet, and his gaze dropped with impeccable good manners to the carpet. Clara cast one swift, knowing glance at him and with a hastily dipped curtsy left the room, closing the door behind her and leaving Honora alone with the man who had snatched her from a watery grave.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your bath.’
Honora shook her head, holding the sheet in place and supremely aware its scant cover was all that stood between Isaac and her bare skin. Her damp shoulders gleamed in the firelight and she saw him snatch a glimpse of them before averting his eyes once again, his fingers fidgeting at one cuff.
‘I was already finished. Somehow I feel I’ve spent quite long enough submerged in water for one day.’
‘Yes. I imagine you would.’
He frowned down at his hands and Honora couldn’t help a reflexive swallow. They were the very hands that had pulled her from certain death and she owed them her endless gratitude—as well as the man they belonged to, whose rigid face made her want to smooth away his troubles with gentle fingertips. Not for the first time that strange day her heart began to skip, but this time not with fear. Love and wonder caused it to jump now, along with the vaguest recollection of his murmur as he’d carried her back to the house.
What was it he said? He never wanted to be without me?
‘You might have died today.’
His voice was low and Honora blinked at the tortured edge she heard below its surface. It was the voice of a man pushed to the brink by pain and worry and she could only find a nod in reply.
‘You almost sacrificed yourself to make sure Charlotte did not. That ice could have broken at any time and yet you ventured out anyway—’ He bit off the end of his sentence as if he could hardly bear to speak it, one hand tunnelling through his hair. Isaac turned, pacing away from her in a manner frankly alarming until he stopped again just as abruptly and shook his head.
‘By heaven, woman—do you know if I wasn’t already under your spell I could have fallen in love with you all over again for that bravery alone?’
Honora’s lips parted and she stared, her concern of moments before evaporating like frost in sunshine. Isaac gazed back, with such absolute conviction in his face she could have watched him for ever to see the different tides of his expressions shift across it, each as perfect to her as the last, but none of them helping her to summon the words to respond.
‘Even aside from your mind, your beauty, that quick tongue—against what you did today my heart has no defence.’ Taking advantage of her uncharacteristic silence, Isaac pressed on, still pinning her to the spot with the fierce adoration in his eyes. ‘If you had slipped through my fingers, my soul would have followed you. Tell me now without any pretence. Can I hope my feelings might one day be returned?’
The drying sheet had become unpleasantly damp tucked around Honora’s body and her hair steamed as it dried in the fire’s heat, but she was unaware of either sensation as she gazed at her husband and drank in his declaration with breathless surprise.
He took the words right out of my mouth. What I’d intended to tell him in the churchyard he’s just said himself—he beat me to the finishing post!
Isaac’s eyes never left hers as she moved slowly towards him, hardly able to move her feet. Every limb felt weak beneath the rush coursing in each vein and Honora could scarcely believe she wasn’t in some wonderful dream, the man she’d admired now the husband she loved and his confession mirroring the one that had clamoured to flee from her own lips.
‘You can do more than hope, Isaac, and a good deal sooner than one day.’
She rose up on to her toes and, before anything else could happen to stop her, laced her fingers together at the back of his neck, the sheet now precarious without a hand to anchor it in place. That seemed such a silly thing to waste time thinking about, however, when she had so many other things to consider—and so with every sinew cheering her on Honora pulled Isaac’s face downwards and covered his mouth with hers.
There wasn’t even time for her heart to take one more shuddering beat before Isaac’s arms were around her, anchoring her against him with ardent strength. She felt the tendons in his neck strain beneath her fingertips and the silk sweep of hair at his nape, hard and soft combining to thrill her with their contrast. His own hands were busy on a mission of their own, sliding to capture the back of her head and cradle it, leaving her nowhere to hide from his merciless kiss.
But Honora didn’t want to hide.
She didn’t want to escape from the prison of Isaac’s muscled arms—not now, not ever, she vowed as his fingers tangled in her damp curls and held her still, her breath coming harsh and ragged and Isaac’s just as short. Like two fighters in a ring neither one wanted to give way. Honora’s sigh was tinged with victory as she triumphed and Isaac’s mouth opened wider under hers, with one movement deepening the kiss and breaking down the dam holding back any glimmer of restraint Honora might still have felt. She was falling now, tumbling into an abyss of sensation so instinctive and pure, and when Isaac’s hand strayed from the back of her head to trace the path of her spine she shivered with helpless delight.
His fingers skimmed lower across the sheet caught between them, the only thing preserving Honora’s last shred of modesty. It was fighting a losing battle and with every movement it slipped a little more, beginning to pool at Honora’s feet, and for the first time she felt the smooth slide of Isaac’s shirt across her bared skin. The adventurous hand crept lower still, following the curve of her waist and then flattening against the small of her back, to sketch tiny circles on the sensitive flesh still covered by the sheet until she murmured against Isaac’s lips.
‘What did you say?’ he mumbled into the vulnerable crook of her neck, dipping down to explore the soft skin with his mouth and send spikes of longing lancing through her insides. Every breath, every tiny sweep of his lips, made her tremble and when he gently traced the delicate shell of her ear with the very tip of his tongue she thought she might fall apart completely. He was skilled and dangerous and hers now, against all the odds, and she couldn’t help the need in her voice when she opened her eyes and saw how his contained the same longing, carefully kept in check until she gave the final word.
‘I said, you need to take this off.’
Isaac gave a shuddering breath and released her, his face flushed and chest heaving just as hard as Honora’s. He took the smallest step back, unsteady hands working the buttons of his shirt free to reveal the scattering of hair she already knew lay beneath. She’d long since wanted to touch it, to feel his heart pounding beneath heated skin, and now that there was nothing to stop her she was in his arms again the moment he dropped the shirt on to the floor.
‘Lady Lovell. You appear to have lost your sheet.’
His mouth was on her neck again, the feel of his questing lips making every hair at the nape stand on end. Slowly, so slowly Honora thought she might run mad, he nipped lower and lower, bending to chase the shivers that raced across her skin until he reached the secret hills and valleys uncovered by the sheet—and grazed them with his tongue to make Honora gasp.
He pulled back then, sinking to his knees and looking up at her with eyes clouded by desire. Honora could barely stand, let alone manage to mind as Isaac’s gaze raked across her, as reverently as if her body was a priceless work of art. She stood before him and was not ashamed. For the first time she had a husband who loved her, truly loved her, without the selfish deceit of Frank’s false regard. With her hair curling around her shoulders and the sheet abandoned at her feet Isaac saw her for what she was, who she was. Her body wasn’t perfect, but it was hers, every single inch hers, with no artifice or pretence, and by the wonder she saw in his face she could tell he understood.
‘Beautiful.’
Isaac knelt a little closer and Honora felt her breath claw at her throat as he smoothed his palms over the line of her hips, tracing the strong length of her legs and back again as though trying to commit the shape of her to memory. Her knees weakened at his touch and she placed a hand on his shoulder to steady herself, biting down on her lower lip to stop herself from gasping aloud when his fingers drifted higher along her thigh. She wanted to pull him closer and feel the length of his body pressed against hers once more, but she couldn’t seem to move and could only snatch one short breath when gently, exquisitely softly, he dipped the tip of his tongue into her navel and laughed darkly at her answering jolt.
A Mistletoe Vow to Lord Lovell Page 19