The Viscount's Betrothal

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.’