The Winter Bride (A Chance Sisters Romance) (24 page)

She thrust the image of his naked chest out of her mind and concentrated on getting the fire going. She found the tinderbox, struck a spark and blew gently on the tinder until she coaxed from it first a wisp of smoke, then a small flame. Soon the kindling had caught and the fire was crackling brightly.

“You can look now,” he said.

At his words she turned and caught her breath. He was practically naked. The red flannel nightgown lay untouched on the bed. He’d wrapped the strip of towel around his hips, tucking the ends in in a way that looked worryingly insecure. One movement and he’d . . . unwrap.

She swallowed. The cottage suddenly felt a great deal smaller. And warmer.

“Red is not my color,” he said, gesturing to the nightgown on the bed. “But I’m perfectly comfortable like this—it won’t take long for my shirt and breeches to dry.” He tossed the patchwork quilt loosely around his shoulders, but even so, there was still too much naked Freddy visible for her peace of mind—between the folds of the quilt there were glimpses of bare chest, bare stomach and long, muscular legs, naked from midthigh down.

Like living marble, lean and hard and masculine. More beautiful than any statue she’d seen. And wearing a worn strip of toweling instead of a fig leaf.

He might be comfortable with his near-nakedness; she certainly wasn’t.

She tried not to notice the fine dusting of dark gold hair sprinkled across his chest. It ran in a line down past his belly button . . . and disappeared under the towel.

That towel didn’t even have a pin to secure it. What would happen when he moved?

He gave her a grin, seemingly not at all discomposed by his bareness or her struggle not to stare. “Worried about my towel falling off?”

Her face flushed with heat. “Not at all.” With an effort she managed to drag her gaze off his body and fix it firmly to his face, refusing to let it drop below the chin. No matter how much it wanted to.

Why was it that men always seemed so comfortable in their skin, and women were so self-conscious? Well, she wasn’t going to spend the rest of the day wondering when that wretchedly inadequate towel was going to slide off those narrow male hips.

She stalked to the chest and searched until she found what she wanted. “I thought this would be too inconvenient before, but I’ve changed my mind.” She thrust a folded cotton sheet at him. “Wear that.”

“You don’t like my current attire?”

“It’s insufficient,” she said crisply. “You’ll catch a chill.”

He smiled, as if he knew very well why her color was so heightened, but took the sheet. “Turn your back, then, Miss Innocence.”

Miss Innocence.
If only he knew. She swallowed. It was a timely reminder.

Before she realized what he was about, he’d turned away and dropped the towel, giving her a glimpse of firm, well-shaped buttocks. She hurriedly busied herself with the fire, using the poker to stir it up, and swung the black cast-iron kettle across on its hook to heat some water. She was dying for a cup of tea.

“Better?”

She looked around. He’d wrapped the sheet around himself several times and tied it at the shoulder, toga style. “Much.”

“It was getting a bit chilly,” he admitted, picking up the quilt. “Now, your turn.”

She blinked. “What?”

He jerked his head toward the bed. “Your turn to strip.”

“I—I’m all right, just a bit damp.” She ran her hands over her damp dress. “It’ll dry soon, now that the fire’s going.”

“Nonsense, you’re wet enough to catch a chill, so strip, or I’ll do it for you.” He pointed to the bed in the corner. “Now. Don’t worry about modesty; I’ll do my very best to be a gentleman.”

Operating on the assumption that if she kept her back turned, decorum—of sorts—would be maintained, she began to struggle out of her damp clothes. With limited success. Why, oh, why, did ladies’ dresses fasten at the back?

“Would you like me to undo you at the back there?” he asked a moment later.

She whirled around, her arms crossed over her fully clothed front. “You said you wouldn’t look.”

“I said I’d try to be a gentleman. It’s not quite the same thing.”

“A gentleman wouldn’t look.”

“A saint wouldn’t look. You seem to have an odd understanding of gentlemen. The delightful thing about us is that we come in many different varieties.”

He strolled over, twirled her around and started undoing the back of her dress. “Some of us wear red flannel nightgowns; some of us don’t. Some gentlemen are mortified if a lady glimpses their bare legs. I’m not that sort, either.”

His fingers brushed her skin as he worked. “I’m a helpful kind of gentleman who will gallantly offer to help a damp lady with her laces.”

How did he always manage to make ordinary things sound so wicked? She felt a draft on her skin as her dress opened.

“It’s not as easy as it looks, getting ladies out of their dresses,” he murmured in her ear as he unfastened the laces of her corset.

He, of course, would know.

“There you go.” He ran a slow finger down the length of her spine, sending ripples through her. She jumped and gave a small squeak.

She whirled to face him accusingly, clutching her sagging clothing to her.

“What’s the matter?” he purred.

“Your finger,” she said with as much composure as she could manage. “It’s cold.”

“Odd.” He gave her a slow smile. “It must be the only part of me that is.”

She was rather warm herself, but she’d rather die than admit it. Or admit that this situation was exciting her senses. That way lay danger, and, unlike the flood, once released, she knew it wouldn’t recede. And this time it would destroy her.

“Turn your back,” she told him sternly. “And keep it turned. Tend the fire or something.”

“I like the sound of ‘or something.’”

Impossible man. She decided to ignore him. Modesty being the better part of valor, and trust not being part of the equation at all, she pulled the voluminous red flannel nightgown over her head and, safely covered, she then struggled out of her clothes. It took rather longer than she expected but she was finally free of her wet things and respectably covered from neck to midcalf—it was too short to reach to her ankles, alas. Then, dressed in the nightgown and with a thick, homespun woolen shawl draped around her shoulders and knotted securely over her breasts, she turned.

And found him sprawled on a chair, convulsed with silent laughter.

“Beast!” She picked up a pair of lumpy socks and threw them at his head, wishing they were a rock instead. He caught them one-handed, still laughing.

“That,” he said, “was better than a play.”

“You,” she told him severely, “are no gentleman.”

“I think we already established that I’m a particular
kind
of gentleman.” His eyes ran over her and darkened. “Red is most definitely your color,” he said softly. Then, in quite a different tone, he added, “Thanks for these. This stone floor is quite chilly,” and bent to pull the socks on.

Nettled, she pulled on a pair of socks herself. The stone floor was very cold.

By the time they’d arranged their wet things around the fireplace, the kettle was singing. Damaris searched in the kitchen for tea but found only various jars of dried herbs. Luckily she knew her herbs.

“It will have to be herbal tea, I’m afraid.”

He pulled a face, but anything hot was better than nothing, and when she poured the tea into two cups, he produced a flask from the pocket of his coat and poured a nip of brandy into each cup. “I never travel without it.”

They sat by the fire, sipping their hot drinks. “You realize we’ll be spending the night here,” he said.

She’d realized. She just didn’t want to think about it. “I was hoping someone might come to rescue us before then. Maybe the woman who lives here.”

He shook his head. “Her hens were already locked in the henhouse when we got here. I’d say she expected to be gone for the day. She’ll be on the other side of that flood.”

“I feel a little uncomfortable, making so free with all her possessions.”

He shrugged. “We have no choice. I’ll leave her some money to make up for it. The question that’s worrying me is what we’ll have for dinner. I’ll kill one of those hens if I have to, but—”

“No, you mustn’t! You wouldn’t know which one to kill. What if you killed her favorite hen or her best layer?”

His brows rose. “You seem to have given it some thought. You kept hens in China, I gather, as well as swimming pigs.”

She nodded. “You won’t need to kill anything. There are plenty of eggs and some bread in the larder. And vegetables. I could make soup, and scrambled eggs on toast.”

He gave her an exaggerated look of admiration. “Does this mean you can cook as well? Good heavens. There is no end to your talents, Miss Chance. You breed hens and experimental swimming pigs, you paint, you make dried weeds into a drink that’s almost palatable—”

She laughed. “Wait until you’ve tasted my cooking before you judge, Mr. Monkton-Coombes. I may yet disappoint you.”

“Never,” he said quietly. But she was already searching the larder and didn’t see the expression on his face.

 • • • 

A
s night fell, the cottage seemed to grow smaller and the bed bigger—although, to Damaris’s mind, it was not big enough. Since dinner, she’d been putting the moment off, first with conversation, but she had soon run out of things to chat about. It was difficult to think of interesting conversational topics when a man in a toga—naked under that toga—was watching you rather in the manner of a cat watching a mouse, only with a lurking half smile.

Next she’d tried playing a word game. He turned out to be quite good at that, which was disconcerting. Finally in desperation, she’d tried “I spy” but whenever it was his turn he picked
B
and it always turned out to be
B
for
bed
.

Finally Freddy gave an extravagant yawn and stretched. “Time to turn in—that is, unless you’ve thought of yet another reason to put off going to bed.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“No, of course you don’t. And I suppose you expect me to be the kind of gentleman who will give you the bed, while I sleep on that freezing slab of stone that passes for a floor here, but I’m not such a fool.”

“I never said—”

“You didn’t need to. But here is what we’re going to do: I shall remain in this toga-shroud affair and I’ll wrap this quilt around me in a cocoon of blast—er, perfect chastity. You shall remain in that fetching red flannel tent, and we shall share the bed and the blankets. That way we shall both be warm and comf—well, warm, at any rate.”

She hesitated.

“What is it now?” he asked. “Do you want me to promise not to seduce you? I won’t. Come along, Miss Innocence, I won’t bite.” He gave a slow grin. “Not unless you ask me to.” He held out his hand to Damaris.

She didn’t take it. She was perfectly well able to rise from a chair on her own and she didn’t trust herself to touch him. “I will make my ablutions first,” she told him and removed herself to the back of the cottage, where she borrowed a pair of wooden clogs to make use of the outdoor privy. The rain had stopped but the wind was bitter and when she came back in she was freezing. She’d needed cooling down, she told herself.

She washed her face and hands and dried them slowly.

It was just a bed, she told herself. They had to sleep. And though he might be the kind of gentleman who was far too adept at helping a lady out of her clothes, he wasn’t the sort of man who would force her. She was sure of that.

As long as she didn’t let him see that she desired him, she was safe.

He was already in bed. He patted the bed invitingly. “I’m warming it for you.”

She slipped into her side of the bed, blew out the homemade rush candle that sat beside it and pulled the covers up to her ears. “Good night, Freddy.”

“Good night, Damaris.” If his voice were a novel, the title would be
Invitation to Sin
.

The bed was a lot smaller than it had looked. She didn’t want to bump up against him, so she arranged herself as close to the edge as was practical. She closed her eyes.

He wriggled around a bit, and she stiffened. “Just getting comfortable,” he murmured. He was very close.

Something bumped the back of her legs. “Sorry, I need to curl up a bit. The bed’s a bit shorter than me.” A brawny arm slid around her waist and pulled her against him.

“What are y—?”

“It’s a small bed, and you don’t want to fall out. Now stop worrying. This way we’ll keep warm—ouch! Who put icicles in the bed?”

“If you’re referring to my feet—”

“Is that what they are? Good God, they’re frozen solid.” He hooked a foot around her and drew her freezing feet against his legs. “Think of me as your personal hot brick.”

She ought to have resisted, but her feet were cold and he was so wonderfully warm. He snuggled against her, holding her by the middle. “There, isn’t that toasty? Now you’ll sleep.”

“Thank you. Good night,” she said. How could she possibly sleep with his long, hard body wrapped around her, pressed against her from shoulder to thigh, his knees touching the backs of her thighs, his groin curved around her backside, his arm holding her close? Thank God for the toga and the quilt. What had he called it? A cocoon of perfect chastity.

It had better be.

She lay there, listening to the wind in the trees and gentle hiss and crackle of the fire. And the quiet breathing of the man in the bed with her. It was her definition of heaven.

Sometimes a woman just needs to be held.
She understood now what Mama meant.

There was such comfort in it. But such bittersweetness, knowing it would be her only night with this man. She should savor it as long as she could.

She slept.

Freddy knew the moment Damaris fell asleep. Her breathing deepened and she relaxed back against him. He was as far from sleep as ever he’d been. He was as hard as a rock from the scent of her hair, the feel of her body against him. Patience, he told his eager little soldier. Good things come to those who wait.

But the good thing—the only woman he’d ever truly wanted—was here in his arms. Trustfully asleep, blast it. And he’d promised to be a gentleman. It was the hardship of the long game.