“I suppose if one is going to choose a foolish location to flee to, a garden folly is rather apt,” Drew said aloud.
He shivered. The folly was dark, the winter air frigid, and of course he hadn’t thought to grab an overcoat before tearing from the house. After so long away, the cold and damp of an English winter had become a strange, foreign thing.
Drew flicked on his pocket torch. He’d only had the brilliant new device for about six months, but now he carried it everywhere. Already it was revolutionizing his work. He adjusted the beam to a wide setting, the steady, potion-fueled light illuminating familiar walls.
The small stone building, made to look like a half-burnt ruin, had been a favorite hideaway for himself and Mabel during their childhood. Which was both what had drawn him here and another reason it was a poor choice. Why run away from someone to a place that will only make you think of her? God, he was an idiot.
Drew lifted a finger to brush the spine of a crumbling, old tome set into a niche in the wall. “A priceless text,” Belle had dubbed it. They had named the folly The Great Library, and stuffed it full of discarded books and papers. They’d spent hours upon hours here, creating their own pretend artifacts and decrypting secret codes and ancient writing. It was here his career had truly begun.
The crunch of footsteps on gravel made him swing around and shine his torch at the folly’s entrance. The footsteps came to a sudden halt.
“Who’s there?” a woman’s voice demanded.
Drew moved toward the doorway. “Belle?” Damn, he shouldn’t call her that. He always thought of her by the long-ago nickname, but it was too intimate. She was Lady Mabel to him now. He had to accept that.
“Drew?” She stepped into the entrance, her green dress shimmering in the soft light. This close, she was even more beautiful than she’d appeared in the ballroom. Her silver-gray eyes sparkled like moonlight, and wisps of raven hair tumbled about her face. A rosy tint stained her cheeks, and her ample bosom rose and fell in heavy breaths. Had she been running? “Is it really you?”
Drew set the pocket torch into one of the wall niches, casting light throughout the room and allowing her to see him. “Yes, it’s me. Merry Christmas.” He beckoned to her. “Come in out of the wind. It’s freezing out there.”
Mabel clutched at her shawl, pulling it tighter around her shoulders. The thin fabric must have been next to useless against the winter air. “You won’t… do anything crazy, will you?”
Crazy? What could be crazier than running into the garden without proper outerwear?
“I, uh, wasn’t planning to.”
She took one step closer. “No wild raving about my beauty? No marriage proposals?”
Ouch. He rubbed his chest, but it did nothing to relieve the stabbing pain of her invisible knife.
“What are you doing here, Lady Mabel?” he asked, unable to answer her questions and keep his composure. “Shouldn’t you be inside celebrating?”
She took another step forward. “I could say the same for you. Why aren’t you inside celebrating?”
“I have nothing to celebrate,” he growled. Dammit, he actually growled the words. He never did that. He had a reputation for a cool head and cheerful disposition.
Mabel stepped all the way into the folly at last, her rosy lips pinching in a tight frown. “Christmas?” she suggested. “Your homecoming?” Her whole body trembled, and she tugged on the shawl again.
“Dammit, Belle, you shouldn’t be out here in the cold.” And now he was cursing in front of her. God, but he was an emotional wreck. It was why he’d come here in the first place: to have time alone to recover from the blow of losing her.
He shrugged out of his jacket. He might not be talking like a gentleman just now, but he could still behave like one. He closed the distance between himself and Mabel and draped the garment around her shoulders.
“You don’t need—”
“Take it,” he insisted. “You’re freezing.” And now he was, but he probably deserved it for behaving like such a dolt.
She pulled the coat around herself, hiding her dress and the lovely body it displayed. “Thank you.” She turned a slow circle, taking in their old playplace, much the way he had. Her fingers traced the faded spine of the book exactly where his had been minutes before. “It hasn’t changed at all, has it?”
“Not really, no.”
A small smile touched her lips as she turned back to him. Her gaze roved up and down his body and he felt his skin heat in response. Perhaps he wouldn’t freeze after all. “But you have.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Have I?”
“Yes. You’re so…”
His shoulders tensed, anticipating more painful observations. Sullen? Melancholy? Heartbroken?
“Tan.”
“Oh.” He wasn’t sure that was what she had initially intended to say, but it was better than anything he’d been expecting. “I spend a great deal of time outdoors. It happens.”
“It suits you. And the sun brings out the blond highlights in your hair.”
He had blond highlights? He had blond highlights and she had noticed them? The intensity in her stare made his blood boil.
Two steps. Two steps and he could press her up against the wall of the folly and kiss those ruby lips and bring their bodies together in a way that would leave no doubt how wild she made him.
He staggered back. Was he out of his mind? He was misinterpreting things. Again. She couldn’t possibly be thinking the sorts of things he was thinking. She had just been proposed to. By someone a good sight richer and more polished than he was.
So what was she doing here? With him?
“Drew, are you all right? You have a peculiar expression on your face, and you still haven’t explained why you’re out here.”
“Nor have you.”
“I had to get away from the party,” she said, giving the tiny shrug of her shoulders he remembered from years ago. All her body language was like that. Small. Subtle.
“As did I.” He fought a rising shiver. Bloody hell it was cold out here. His toes were beginning to go numb inside his dancing shoes, and without his jacket the rest of his heat was rapidly leaving his body. “You should go back inside.”
I should go back inside.
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can. I know parties haven’t always been easy for you, but doesn’t everyone want to celebrate with you tonight?” His teeth chattered a bit on the last few words.
“You’re cold.” She stepped toward him, pulling the jacket from around her shoulders.
“I’m perfectly well.”
“You’re freezing.” She reached to wrap the garment around him. The moment her hand met his body, all the breath rushed from his lungs.
“Belle.” He grasped her arm, not sure if he meant to push her away or tug her closer. “Belle, we shouldn’t be here, alone like this. What… what would your fiancé think?”
She went still, her hands still touching him, the jacket slung halfway around his back. “My what?”
Mabel reeled. Was he drunk? Crazy? It was strange enough that the potion didn’t seem to be affecting him the way it had every other man. He’d made no amorous advances, no comments about her appearance, and now he was talking nonsense.
He trembled beneath her hands. Good heavens, the poor man was freezing to death and she was standing here gaping like a fool. If his body temperature had dropped too low it could be affecting his mind. She had to warm him. She pressed the full length of her body into him, sharing her heat, wrapping his jacket around shoulders that had grown broad and muscular since she’d last seen him.
Drew gasped and stiffened at the contact. “Mabel,” he moaned.
His voice sent an entirely different sort of shiver down her spine. He had changed so much from the skinny, bookish boy she remembered. He was bigger. Stronger. Rugged. Tanned and muscled like a laborer. Things that ought not to have appealed to her. But here, with no space between them, her body was begging to differ.
“I’ll warm you,” she promised. “Let’s get you inside.”
“I’m fine.” He jerked away from her, knocking the jacket from her grip. It fell to the floor, and he scooped it up and draped it around her once again. It smelled like him. An understated scent that mixed a touch of sweet with a more earthy base. Sandalwood? Some soap or lotion he’d picked up in a foreign land. She wanted to wrap herself in it, in the hopes she might absorb all of his travels and adventures and make them her own.
Mabel dragged herself back to reality. First she had to get the stubborn man out of the cold and then hopefully ascertain why he was behaving so strangely. She seized his hand and dragged him toward the exit.
He flinched, but he didn’t pull away again. He grabbed his odd little lantern from the niche and pointed it at the ground to light their path.
“Let’s get you inside and warm, and then we can talk,” he said.
Fine. Let him think he was the one helping her. As long as he followed her into the house.
“We can’t go through the front door,” Mabel thought aloud. “But if we enter through the kitchens—”
“Why not?”
“Pardon?”
“Why can’t we go through the front door?”
“Um. I’d rather no one sees me.” Mabel hefted a sigh. “The party was, er, more rowdy than I expected and I drew quite a bit of undesired attention.”
His fingers clenched around hers. “Did someone try to hurt you?” His voice was tight with anger. “I swear, Mabel, if anyone did anything to hurt you…” He trailed off.
“No, no. There was simply some confusion over who was to dance with me, and I didn’t want to be the center of an argument.”
“Shouldn’t your fiancé have priority?”
“Why do you keep saying that? I don’t have a fiancé. Where would you get such a ridiculous idea?”
Except now that she’d said the words, she knew. He’d overheard one of the five different marriage proposals she’d received during those mad minutes after she’d drunk the potion. Which was better, she supposed, than his having heard one of nearly a dozen indecent proposals she’d also received. He may have turned into some sort of virile outdoorsman, but he was still the Drew she had exchanged letters with. The Drew who insisted she wear his jacket while his teeth chattered. He was a gentleman through and through, and she didn’t doubt he would jump to defend her honor.
“I heard a man propose to you shortly before I left the party,” he confirmed. He slowed, and she had to yank on his hand to keep him walking toward the house. “Are you saying you refused him?”
“Of course I refused him!”
His feet stopped moving. He flicked off the lantern and stuffed it into a pocket. “Thank God. Then I won’t feel so guilty when I do this.”
“Do—” She gasped when he wrapped both arms around her, crushing her against his solid chest. “What?”
“Kiss you.”