‘You are completely safe,’ he assured her. ‘The snow has been packed to the road by other riders and I am a cavalryman, after all. I am more than capable of riding in the light of a full moon with you in my arms.’ To prove it, he wrapped his arms more tightly around her and brought Mercury to a full gallop with a push of his heels.
Lucy squealed in delight and leaned back against him, snuggling into his arms, and suddenly he was struck by the rightness of it. Finally, after all this time she was where she belonged and the part of him that had been missing since he’d returned to England was restored to him, making him whole again. And the horse seemed to fly down the northern road, as light as his heart.
* * *
It was nearly dawn and she was dozing against him when he decided that it was time to stop. He guided the horse into the coaching yard of an inn and hopped to the ground, steadying her as she slid after him. Then he called for a room for Major and Mrs Gascoyne.
The innkeeper lifted an eyebrow at this, for he knew well that this was the route to Gretna Green and had seen more than a few ringless ladies calling themselves Missus. But he also saw the coin that Jack tossed to the stable boy and his courtesy was more than sincere enough to satisfy them.
Jack smiled when he looked down at the woman beside him and felt no trace of the innkeeper’s doubt. She might not be his wife this morning, but she was staring at him with all the love he could have wished for from a lifetime partner.
‘A single room?’ the innkeeper enquired with a touch of sarcasm.
‘That is all we need,’ Jack said, not bothering to look at him.
‘That is good, I suppose. With the weather as dodgy as it has been, it is all we have left. And we would not have that if the Cliftons were not leaving just now.’
The romantic fog cleared in an instant and both their heads snapped to look at the man, and then to the doorway of the inn where another couple was preparing to leave.
Millicent and Fred stood together, arms linked, the lady clinging to the gentleman as if her very life depended on his touch. Jack smiled. Apparently, Fred had not been home to receive the letter of apology he had sent. They must have left before Jack had gone to Lucy’s room and had likely been doing the same things in this inn that he had done with his beloved.
He had only to look at Millicent’s face to know it was true, for at the sight of them, her expression turned from bliss to tears of mortification.
Before he could reassure her that there would be no harsh judgement, Fred announced, ‘I can explain.’
Jack folded his arms and tried to pretend sternness. ‘The only thing I want to know is how you managed to get here before us. I saw you at dinner last night and here you are, well-rested and ready to start a journey. Did you sprout wings and fly here?’
‘Then you are not here to bring us back?’ Millicent said in a timid voice.
‘We would never be so cruel,’ Lucy replied. ‘It is clear that you are very much in love and the wedding date is not even set.’
‘Mama said we should wait until spring,’ the girl said and a tear trickled down her cheek.
‘That is three months away,’ Lucy said, giving the girl a knowing look. She added a warning squeeze to Jack’s arm that hinted at the reason for their sudden haste, as if silently willing him to ask no further questions.
‘We discussed the matter yesterday afternoon,’ Fred said, giving his fiancée a fond smile. ‘And we decided that there was another perfectly good solution. Since the roads had been cleared, I had the carriage harnessed right after the meal,’ Fred admitted. ‘And we changed horses.’
‘We rode double,’ Jack admitted.
‘I left a note to be delivered to you at breakfast,’ Fred said to Lucy.
‘I was not there,’ Lucy admitted, staring at her brother and daring him to comment on her behaviour.
‘I left a note for you as well,’ Jack said. ‘I slipped it under your door.
‘That means we have left a house full of guests to fend for themselves,’ Fred said with a wince.
‘That is far more improper than a double elopement,’ Lucy agreed. ‘But there is little we can do about it now.’
‘Unless we turn back,’ Jack said, with a sigh of resignation.
The expressions that met his very sensible suggestion were horror, disbelief and irritation.
‘Now, of all times, you wish to be sensible,’ Fred said after a humph of disgust. ‘You are running off with my sister, just as I always knew you would. The only question in my mind of late has been why it was taking you so long.’
‘She very nearly married that stick in the mud, Mr Thoroughgood,’ Millicent added in a surprising show of courage.
‘But now you wish to turn back,’ Lucy concluded.
‘I do not wish to turn back,’ he said, releasing her to hold up his hands in surrender.
Her brother looked at him for a long moment, then responded. ‘I think it is too late for proper London marriages for any of us. We will send a groom back to explain to the servants, promising to make it up to them for ruining their Boxing Day,’ Fred said. ‘And to my soon-to-be mother-in-law, who will have to be hostess. Then, since we are both resolved to go to the same place, it would make more sense to share the carriage rather than travelling separately. Go in, refresh yourselves. Then let us go to Scotland and see if we can waken a blacksmith.’
The suggestion suited Jack fine. Now that he had proof that Lucy would not suffer her family’s disapproval for the elopement, a weight had been lifted from his conscience. He had known that the decision to marry was the right one. Though his mind had fought it, his heart had never doubted. But the meeting of mind and spirit had been a long time in coming.
As they climbed up into the carriage, he turned to offer his love to Lucy. But instead of words, a yawn escaped him, making her smile. There was a bone-deep tiredness creeping over him, from the long ride and the relief at being home at last, in Lucy’s arms. He meant to tell her so. But as she snuggled against him under a carriage blanket, he closed his eyes and fell into a deep, contented and blissfully dreamless sleep.
* * *
Snowed in with the Rake
Louise Allen
Dear Reader,
I hope, if you are reading this, that you love Christmas as much as I do! This story is set in the area where I was born and where my ancestors can be traced back for generations. If there was any snow around, we were high on the hill so we always got plenty of it, and it was wonderful for tobogganing—although my parents would grumble if the roads got cut off and had to drag provisions home on a sled.
Christmas for me was long walks through the beech woods, tobogganing, building snowmen, helping dig cars out of the lane and roaring log fires in the local village pubs. Now I live on the coast, so snow rarely settles for long, but when it does it takes me straight back to those long-ago Christmases.
Louise Allen
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter One
December 23rd, 1819—the Chiltern Hills,
Hertfordshire
‘Ouch!’ Julia Chancellor sucked her thumb and frowned at the additional bead of red now decorating the holly wreath. ‘That carriage door slamming out there made me jump, Fred. Who could be foolish enough to try driving anywhere in this weather, let alone up here? The Falconer ladies must have a very determined guest and one who has overshot their house, at that.’
Fred—fat, fluffy and ginger—merely glowered from his post on the bottom step of the stairs. He did not approve of snow, even a light dusting, and snow a foot or more deep he considered a personal affront. He thumped down on to the hall floor a
nd stalked off towards the kitchen, tail erect except for a right-angled kink at the end. ‘Mrreow.’
‘It is snowing out at the back as well, you know, you daft cat. Oh, bother this wreath.’ Julia fiddled a length of twine through the back at the cost of two more punctures and held up the result in triumph. ‘There, just this to fix and I’ll make tea. Not that anyone is going to be passing to see it in this weather.’
She reached for the door handle at the same moment as the knocker rattled out a sharp staccato and she juggled the prickly wreath and a pair of scissors as she opened the door, expecting to find a lost and shivering coach driver needing directions.
Standing on the top step was a tall, handsome, dark-haired man. His hat was a thing of beauty, his boots gleamed. In between the two was nothing except naked man. Rather a lot of naked man. He flung his arms wide, presumably just in case she missed any of what was on display. ‘Surprise!’
A gasp filled her lungs with freezing air, her eyes streamed, but not before she dragged her appalled gaze up from muscular, hairy, goose-bumped male skin to the man’s face. ‘You.’
Her straight-armed shove caught him squarely on the chest with the holly wreath, and Giles Darrowby, Viscount Missenden, fell backwards into the snow with a yelp of pain.
Julia slammed the door and leaned against it defensively. That man. She had not seen him for almost two years. She had never seen him before without his clothing—thank heavens—but that was unmistakably the man who had abandoned her in the middle of a scandal that had ruined her, wrecked her come-out and sent her into exile in deepest rural Hertfordshire. That deceptively innocent, charming smile was burned into her memory. Let him try to smile through frostbite.
He was audible through the thickness of a door designed to stand up to the worst the weather could throw at it, although fortunately she could not make out exactly what he was saying.
Surprise? I’ll give him surprise, she thought grimly, her fingers fastening around the key that jutted from the lock.
Then the sharp, thin draught through the lock gave her pause. If the Viscount stayed out there he would die, clothes or no clothes, and, loathe him as she might, she was not going to have a man’s death on her conscience.
Julia went into the front parlour, pulled the knitted throw from the back of the sofa and opened the front door again. She had not been hallucinating and the small glass of sherry she had sipped while she was stirring cake mixture had not gone to her head. Even in the evening gloom she could see that the considerable length of Viscount Missenden was sprawled in the snow, already receiving a light dusting of flakes that lay decoratively on his hairy chest and muscular thighs and...everywhere.
He had tossed aside the wreath and, when the light from the hall flooded across him, he moved his hat rapidly to groin level.
Somewhat too late, Julia thought grimly. I am never going to get that image out of my mind now.
‘Get out of the snow, put this round you and come in before you die in my front garden and ruin the view.’ She turned, adding over her shoulder as she hooked the blanket over the handle, ‘And hang the wreath on the front door as you come, my lord.’
* * *
Giles hauled himself to his feet, slapped his hat back on his head, furled the blanket around himself like a toga and picked up the confounded wreath. This is the last time I listen to one of Woodley’s schemes, he thought, as he found the string loop with numbed fingers and managed to fix it over the hook above the knocker.
‘We can’t abandon Felix, poor devil, not to that ghastly woman,’ Woodley had said. ‘The man is too amiable, he’ll never have the resolution to extricate himself. We need shock tactics and I’ve got just the plan.’
And they had all agreed and cut for it and Giles had drawn the two of diamonds. Not that he’d protested, it had seemed sensible enough at the time, with the benefit of a good dinner and several bottles of palatable claret inside them. What could possibly go wrong?
Nothing, it seemed, he brooded as he pushed at the door and stumbled into the warmth of a neat little hallway. Nothing except a blizzard and incompetent map-reading and the inescapable fact that he had just exposed himself like some pervert to an innocent female who had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. The fact that it was freezing cold was a slight mercy, but even so, she must have had a far better view of his accoutrements than any decent woman would want.
With an effort he got his boots off—no point in aggravating matters by treading melting snow down the hallway.
‘Ouch!’ He hopped on one stockinged foot, clutching at the blanket.
‘Mind the holly, Lord Missenden,’ the decent woman called from somewhere at the end of the hall. ‘There may be leaves on the floor.’
‘Thank you so much,’ he muttered darkly, hobbling forward, hitching the blanket, which seemed more inadequate by the minute, closer around him. Then, as he opened the door on to a kitchen, it struck him. ‘How do you know who I am?’
The woman—lady, she was clearly a lady from her speech and the plain but elegant gown she was wearing—looked round from dragging a screen about a tub set in front of the range. She banged it into position and glared at him. Brown hair, just on the blond side of mouse, straight nose with freckles, determined chin, grey eyes and a mouth that, just at that moment, resembled a rat trap.
‘Because I have a very clear recollection of the man who ruined me, my lord. Even when he is blue with cold and covered with goose bumps. There is hot water in the copper through there along with buckets and a scoop. Soap and towels are there.’ She pointed at a chair next to the tub. ‘Where are your clothes?’
‘In a carriage disappearing down the hill,’ he said grimly.
‘I will find you something to wear.’
Giles stared at the kitchen door as it shut behind her. Ruined? Her? Me? He had never seen the woman in his life, he’d swear to it. Besides, he did not go about ruining ladies, or any females come to that. Perhaps he had wandered into the clutches of the local eccentric, some spinster who was convinced that every man she came across was making dubious advances to her. But she knows my name.
He shivered—and not entirely because of the cold. Either he was snowed in with a madwoman or he had done something appalling he had absolutely no recollection of.
From one corner of the kitchen came a low, menacing rumble of a growl and a vast ginger cat prowled out.
‘Nice pussy,’ Giles ventured, edging towards the scullery. He had a healthy respect for a cat’s armoury of claws and this one appeared to be in a particularly bad mood.
It sat down and sneered at him as he scooped water into the pair of buckets and carried them through, not deigning to move, so he had to manoeuvre around it.
When he had the tub half-filled and the temperature adjusted to just short of boiling with cold water from a brass jug, it turned around and watched while he lowered himself in cautiously, moaning with mingled pleasure and pain as his extremities defrosted.
‘Does everyone in this house loathe me?’ he enquired after the narrow amber gaze became uncomfortable. Or was there no one else here? Now he thought about it, he would have expected to be handed over to a footman or the cook, not to have the mistress of the house lugging screens and bathtubs about.
The man who ruined me...
Even a gentlewoman in disgrace would have a servant, surely?
The kitchen door opened behind him and the cat made an ambiguous noise as it went to investigate. ‘Sir Thomas Kilver has just equipped his entire household with new livery and he gave me the old garments to see what can be salvaged for the poor. My name, should you not recall it, is Julia Chancellor,’ she said.
Giles kept a wary eye on the reflections in the brass jug but, mercifully, Miss Chancellor was staying behind the screen and not advancing to flagellate him with more holly or whatever her delusions were suggesting to her.
&nb
sp; ‘I have taken the braid off most of the coats and there are some of the shirts the sewing circle have been making as well. I brought them home to finish the hemming. I imagine something in all of this will fit you. I will put the clothes on the table.’
‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure,’ she said, her tone unmistakably sarcastic.
‘Do you not have a footman, Miss Chancellor?’
‘I have a maid and she is at the cottage to the east of this one helping the Misses Jepson, whose own maidservant is about to give birth at any moment. Come along, Fred, I am sure we can trust His Lordship not to run off with the spoons.’ The door shut again with a sharp click.
That is a very angry woman.
Giles got out of the tub, towelled himself dry, then padded over to investigate the clothes she had piled up. It was easy enough to find a shirt to fit him: the sewing circle was obviously intending to outfit sturdy labourers and most of the coarse linen garments would have been big enough. He pulled on his own stockings, then went through the pile of livery suits. Sir Thomas, whoever he was, had half-a-dozen well-built footmen by the look of it and after some experiment he found some breeches that were not too loose at the waist and a coat that did not pinch on the shoulders.
As Miss Chancellor had said, the elaborate braid work had been removed from the coats and the buttons, which must once have been crested silver, had been replaced with horn. Giles dug through the pile in the hope of a neckcloth, but could only find some spotted Belcher handkerchiefs. The resulting ensemble was bizarre enough—Hoby’s boots, a coachman’s neckcloth and formal dark blue tailcoat and knee breeches—but at least he was warm and, more importantly, decent.
It was much easier to think with his clothes on, he realised. Especially with an ill-disposed female in the next room. Giles frowned at his reflection in the battered mirror propped up on the dresser and raked his fingers through his hair, which had, of course, become a tangled mass. Abject apologies and explanations were in order and after that she might have calmed down enough to realise that they had never met before in their lives. Which still did not explain how she knew his name.
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