Vincent stood at the ice-etched window, looking out over the terrace to the garden that lay beyond a low stone wall that was now buried under a foot-deep blanket of snow. The garden was a wonderland, each bare branch of the rose bushes clothed in an individual jacket of glistening ice, the evergreens bowing gracefully beneath heavy mantles of blue-white snow.
Yet the heavy flakes still drifted down from a sky white with the stuff, even as the chiming of the mantel clock announced that it was long past the hour of dusk. It had been snowing for three days and nights, and drifts as high as a man’s head leaned against the walls of Hawk’s Roost and altered the landscape all over the estate.
England was suffering under the longest, hardest winter to hit the island in anyone’s memory. Vincent had read in the few newspapers that had gotten through to him that in London the Thames had been frozen from bank to bank between London Bridge and Blackfriars for well over a fortnight in January, making it safe for pedestrians to cross the ice for the first time since the rule of Elizabeth I.
Londoners had made the best of this phenomenon while it had lasted, mounting a Frost Fair on the ice, completed with booths, swings, bookstalls, skittle alleys, toyshops, and even drinking and gambling halls. Vincent had read the accounts with a tinge of sorrow, imagining himself as one of the fair goers, laughing and drinking and gambling, watching his friends as they made rare cakes of themselves chasing the gingerbread girls and trying out skates that had lain idle and rusting since the end of their childhood.
But London was not for him, even if he could have traveled through the frostbound countryside to reach the city. And now, just as the frost had begun to release its crippling grip on the countryside, there had been this snowstorm—this great cold carpet of white that showed no signs of stopping.
He did not mind being locked in at Hawk’s Roost. After all, where else would he go? This was his home, his hiding place, his sanctuary, his prison. He would not leave even if he could snap his fingers and have the snow disappear overnight. There was nothing left for him beyond the boundaries of Hawkhurst, not anymore, not ever again.
“Your lordship?”
“Lazarus,” Vincent answered, without turning about. “I’m confident you believe you have an excellent reason for disturbing me.”
“It’s the young miss, your lordship,” the servant informed him, moving about the darkening room to light a single small brace of candles.
Vincent stiffened. “She’s no better?”
Lazarus shook his head. “Oh, no, your lordship. She’s wide awake, and eating everything Cook can think of to send up to her. Such a nice young lady; very polite and grateful for everything we do for her.”
Shutting his eyes, Vincent’s agile brain immediately conjured up a picture of Christine Denham as he had seen her that first night, small, vulnerable, and so deathly still as she lay against the sheets. But the picture swirled and changed, so that when it was clear again he saw only her sky-blue eyes opened wide with horror and repulsion as she stared up into his face.
“So, she’s awake,” he bit out sharply, willing the damning image to leave him. “How very wonderful for Miss Nellis Denham. You must convey to her my congratulations on her devoted nursing of her niece. Perhaps now she will agree to retire to the bedchamber you have prepared for her, taking her great pistol with her, of course. You have removed the ball, I trust?”
“Oh, yes, your lordship! Um, your lordship?”
Vincent turned away from the window so that his right profile was visible to the servant. “Now what? Am I to have no peace?”
“The young lady wants a bath, your lordship,” Lazarus informed the earl in an awed voice, just as if Christine had asked the servant for the moon and he had no idea of how to fulfill her request.
Vincent smiled, or at least it appeared to be a smile, the servant wasn’t quite sure, for Lazarus could see only half of the earl’s mouth. Besides, he couldn’t recall ever seeing the man smile in the four years he had served him.
“So fearful, Lazarus?” Vincent quizzed. “Has she also requested that you scrub her back?”
“No, sir!” the servant exclaimed, horrified by the suggestion. “It’s just that we’ve been a male household for so long—these past four years with you, sir, and a dozen more before them with your uncle, the late earl, may he rest in peace. We’ve only the one tub about anymore except for those in the attics, your lordship, and it’s in your chambers. I don’t know if it will even fit through the door. Please, sir, what do I do?”
Vincent’s smile faded and he turned his back to the servant, hiding even his profile from the man. Lazarus’s words had immediately brought to mind the vision of Christine Denham’s petite body, rosy from the hot, fragrant water, reclining gracefully in the huge tub in front of his fireplace, her heavy mane of curling black hair tied atop her head with a pink ribbon.
She would raise one bare leg to lazily soap it, a huge sea sponge stroking, gliding, from knee to shapely ankle. She would then stand, rising to her feet as a goddess rises from the sea foam, laughing at him as he knelt on the floor beside the tub, tearfully begging her to allow him nothing more than the honor of rinsing the clinging soap bubbles from her glistening body.
The vision splintered into a million pieces as Vincent’s fist slammed down on the windowsill. This was impossible. This was insane. He had been alone too long. He had to get Christine Denham out of his house, out of his life, before he turned into a woman-starved beast that would sneak into her chamber at midnight and ravish her.
“Tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. No later, no earlier,” he said at last.
“Your lordship?” Lazarus questioned, wondering if he had heard aright.
“My chamber, tomorrow morning at ten o’clock,” Vincent repeated evenly, each word costing him more than he dared admit. “Inform Miss Denham that she may have her bath at that time with my compliments.”
“Very good, sir. Will you be wanting your brandy now, your lordship?”
“Do I not have brandy every night at just this precise time, Lazarus?” Hawkhurst asked, idly massaging his left shoulder.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I doubt there is any reason why I should deviate from that custom just because Miss Denham has managed to regain consciousness.”
But Vincent did deviate from that custom, for later that night, long after the rest of the household—save the loyal Lazarus—was asleep, he called for a second decanter of the mind-dulling liquor.