He breathed her name once again.
And this time, it didn't sound like an exasperated sigh or a weary complaint, but like a raw confession. A curse. A prayer.
His strong arms came around her, lifting her up on her toes. And his mouth crushed against hers.
There was no snow. No cold. No wind. No darkness. Only a blazing, white-hot conflagration of desire that seem to light up the whole night.
When at last he lifted his head, she felt certain the earth must be scorched beneath them.
A snowflake landed on her cheek. He touched it with the tip of his thumb.
"Well?" she breathed.
"Sweet, darling Nora." He caressed her face. "I still would have left."
The rogue.
She gave a cry of outrage and kicked him in the shin. Given the thickness of his boots, the gesture did more damage to her toe than to his shin, sadly. But it helped immeasurably with her pride.
She tried to wrest out of his embrace, but he held her tight.
"Listen," he pleaded. "You should thank me."
"I'll thank you to release me and then leave, as you've declared you'd prefer to do."
"What would our lives be like, if I'd stayed? Asked for your hand, as I knew you hoped. As I knew would please your parents. As I was tempted to do myself."
He was tempted? Tempted to marry her?
He read her mind. "Of course I was tempted, Nora. Yours was the only family I'd ever known. You can't imagine how much I longed to make that a permanent connection. But that wouldn't have been fair to you. You would not want to be married for your family, nor for security."
She rolled her eyes. "So now you've done me a favor. I'm to be grateful."
"Yes. Would we have been content? I suppose so. Perhaps even happy. But we would never have pushed our boundaries, become our best and bravest selves. I would not be a cartographer. You would not be a writer."
He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back from him, letting his gaze flicker down her form. "God, look at you. You're famous. Wanted for speaking engagements all over Britain. It's remarkable. You're remarkable. You don't need me for entree into salons or exhibitions. You don't need my admiration, either."
"But I can't stop wanting it." She stamped her bare foot against the snow. Cold prickled through her toes. "That's what makes me angriest of all. Don't you see? I'm still that eighteen-year-old girl inside, wanting to be noticed. No matter how rudely you treated me once, or how many years have passed, or how much I've accomplished, I can't stop craving your good opinion. I can't stop myself from missing you, worrying over you when you're gone. Wondering what you would think about an article in the paper, or whether you'd laugh at a joke. It's not a matter of logic, or I would have solved it long ago. The problem is in my heart. I'm still . . ."
"Still what?" he prompted.
"Dash." She swallowed hard and met his eyes. "Do you really not know? I've always been in l--"
Slam.
CHAPTER SEVEN
They were plunged into total darkness.
Dash was disoriented completely. That kiss--and she'd been wrong; "magnificent" didn't begin to describe it--had muddled his wits. He felt as though he'd been swept up in an Atlantic squall, tossed around a few hundred times in the hold of a ship, and then dumped in the Sussex countryside.
Within a few moments, reason returned and the cause of the darkness dawned on him. Behind them, the cottage door had slammed shut.
Nora gasped. "Oh, no."
"Don't worry," Dash assured her. "The framing's not level. But it's only swung on its hinges. That's not a problem unless the--"
Bang.
The noise shuddered down his spine.
"Unless," he said, "the bar drops in the latch. Like that."
Blast.
Blast and damn.
Dash forced himself to be calm. Perhaps it wasn't so bad as he feared.
Releasing Nora, he strode to the door and gave the wooden panel a push.
His push met with resistance. Firm, solid, unyielding resistance.
Blast and damn and hell. Wretched luck. The bar had fallen squarely in place, and earlier that evening he'd drawn in the string meant to lift it. In doing so, he'd thought to keep them safe.
Hah.
Nora rushed to his side. She rattled the door, finding no more success than Dash had made moments earlier.
She turned and looked up at him, wide-eyed in the dark. Ice crystals clung to her lashes. Her dilated pupils seem to reflect the sense of dark, fathomless doom welling in his gut.
She was an intelligent woman, and she knew as well as he that their situation was dire.
They were locked out of their only shelter. In the cold. Dressed in little more than their skins.
And there would be no one coming to their aid. Not until morning, at least, and by that time, they'd be frozen through.
Blast and damn and hell--those words were insufficient now.
Dash had spent much of the past four years on a ship. He could blaspheme in a dozen different languages, and in that moment he mentally rattled through curses in each and every one.
But for Nora's sake, he refrained from speaking them any of them aloud.
"Fuck," she said.
The word hung in the air, sharp and clear as an icicle.
Dash laughed, and suddenly the despair felt a little less. "A lady shouldn't know that word."
"A lady shouldn't use that word," she corrected. "And I'll admit, I never have used it before. But what have I been saving it for, if not this moment?"
Fair enough.
He nodded in grim agreement. "Fuck."
She gave him a smile full of chattering teeth and wrapped her arms around her torso. "At least the next time you find yourself lashed to a mast during a gale off the coast of the Cape of Good Hope, you'll be able to say, 'It c-could be worse." Her dry laugh made a worrisome cloud.
He longed to clutch her to him, skin to skin. Warm her with his body as best he could. But that wouldn't last long.
The best he could do, rationally, was to find a way inside. Get her near a proper fire.
"Stand aside," he said.
"What for?"
He didn't bother to answer. He needed to conserve his energy for action, not talk.
He fell back one, two, three paces. Then he dug in his heel, gritted his teeth--and made a fierce charge toward the door, using his lowered shoulder as a battering ram. When he collided with the wooden panel, pain reverberated across his shoulders and down his arm.
The door rattled, but the latch didn't give.
He backed up and tried again.
When he collided with the door a second time, Nora gave a choked cry of something that sounded like distress.
"Dash, don't. You'll be injured, and that won't help anything."
"If I don't get us inside," he said, retreating for another attempt, "we'll both be dead."
He rammed the door a third time, this time aiming for the hinges. Perhaps they would be more persuadable than the latch. Again, the oaken slab rattled but refused to yield. And again, the pain exploded like buckshot through his arm and down his back.
He growled with frustration.
"George, please."
George.
She only called him that when she was afraid.
"As entertaining as this is to watch," Nora suggested, "perhaps we should look for another way in. There was a window."
He shook his head, even as he walked around to the side. "It's so small. More of a vent."
"I think I could squeeze through, if you were to boost me."
"It's latched, too," he said, raising both hands to the shutter and rattling it. "From the inside."
Dash kicked at a drift of snow. It didn't help, but it felt good.
He needed to make a plan.
"We'll go back to the coach. At least it's some shelter from the snow and wind, and your trunk is there. Perhaps there's a rug or two for warmth."
"It's
too far," she said. "And it's dark now. The snow has covered our path. We could stumble around for hours."
"Not for hours. We'd freeze long before that." He passed a hand over his face. "Jesus Christ."
He slid her a look. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and there was just enough glimmer of firelight leaking through the cabin's cracks that he could make her out.
She was so pale. Perhaps it was merely a trick of the dark and the moonlight--he hoped to God that was the case--but her lips looked a deathly shade of blue.
And good Lord, she was still barefoot.
He pulled her to him, roughly, enfolding her in his arms and setting her feet atop his boots. He moved his arms briskly up and down, trying to soothe her shivering.
"I'm so sorry," she said, burying her face in his chest. "This is all my fault."
Now that was an uncharacteristic statement. He was really and truly concerned about her. She was going demented in this cold.
"You're wrong," he told her. "The fault is mine."
All mine.
In more ways than she could possibly know.
"No, no. This was my notion. My silly game. Go out and kiss in the snow? With scarcely any clothes on? What a stupid idea." She lifted her head. "Why didn't you tell me it was a stupid idea?"
Ah, so now it was a little bit his fault after all. Despite the cold, he felt the corners of his lips pull into a smile. This was the Nora he recognized.
"I suppose," he said, "because I rather fancied the idea of kissing you in the snow. With scarcely any clothes on."
"We've always had a connection. Haven't we?"
He nodded.
"We could have been good together. Tell me you felt that, too."
He nodded. "Yes."
"I knew it couldn't have been just my imagination. At least I'll go to my grave knowing I was right on that score."
A violent shudder went through her, and then the shivering ceased. That couldn't be good.
The tips of his ears had gone numb, and frost stung at his nose and lips. He pulled her head tight to his chest and buried his face in her hair.
"Be calm," he whispered.
"I can't be calm. We have to do something." She perked with a sudden surge of energy. "I'm not going to go easily."
No, my darling. You never would.
"We were always best at solving problems as a team." She turned to investigate the window and its frame. "Of course the hinges would be inside. We can't remove it altogether."
"And it's too high for me to try battering it in. If I had an axe, I could break through." He pushed at the seam of the two wooden panels, testing the latch. "If we could manage a slender lever of some sort, perhaps we could ease it through the gap and lift the hook."
She tugged at his sleeve. "My c-corset. There's a whalebone busk down the center, just here."
She drew a line from the midpoint of her sternum to her navel, tracing the shape of a narrow bar.
He framed her rib cage in his hands, running a thumb down the inch-wide spur of whalebone. "That just might do the trick. We only have to get it out."
He curled his fingers under the two cups of her corset and pulled them in opposite directions.
"You mean to rip it in half?"
"I'll have it in a moment." He braced his feet, took a stronger grip, and tried again. "This stitching . . . is remarkably . . . strong." He let go and stood back, breathing hard. "How do pirates manage their plundering?"
She giggled. "I don't know about pirates, but I know seamstresses sew these with a little p-pocket." She guided his fingers to the valley between her breasts. "Just here. To slide the busk in and out."
His fingers took hold of the pale, thin divider, and out it slid. "Ah. I see. That does make more sense."
"I would have thought you'd know your way around a lady's undergarments."
Dash shook his head. There wasn't time to discuss this now. Nor was there time to contemplate the exquisite softness of her breasts.
"I'll boost you." Lunging one boot forward, he made his knee into a stepstool. "Like so. You'll have to wedge the shutters apart with your shoulder and sneak the busk through."
"I know." Her teeth chattered.
"Are your hands warm? Because if you bobble that thing and drop it inside before the shutter's unlatched, we're finished."
"I know. But I'm not getting any warmer."
Dash wasn't convinced. He took the busk from her shaking grip and caught it in his teeth. Then he yanked up the hem of his shirt and pulled her chilled hands flat against his abdomen before drawing their two bodies close.
God above. It was a good thing he had something to bite down on. The shock of her icy hands against his torso was torture.
But soon, they began to warm. To soften. She rubbed up and down, tracing the ridges of his tensed abdominal muscles with her fingertips.
Those wicked fingertips, each filled with a woman's worth of passion.
This was torture of a different kind.
"I'm ready," she said. "I think that's enough."
No, no. That wasn't nearly enough. He wanted those hands on him everywhere.
But first, he wanted to get inside.
"Just keep steady," she said, bracing one hand on his shoulder in preparation. "If I'm halfway through this little operation and you falter, the shutter will smash my fingers right off."
"And you'd never hold a quill again. That would be a shame."
She gave him a horrified look.
"I'm only joking. Nora. Nora." He reached for her in the dark. "I swear to you. I'll never hurt you again."
He touched her cheek, and was appalled by its icy pallor.
"Let's continue this conversation inside. On three, now. One, two--"
She stepped on his knee, and he pushed her plump little backside up onto his shoulder. Then he did his best impression of a stone gargoyle whilst she wiggled the sliver of whalebone through the shutters' gap.
"Any progress?" he grated out. The muscles in his shoulders were knotting.
"Almost have it," she said, her voice dreamy. "It's moving."
Dash gritted his teeth against the pain and dug his heels into the snow. "Take your time."
With a creak, the shutter gave way, spilling a square of yellow light onto the snow.
"Brilliant," he said, gathering one arm around her knees and putting his hand under her backside. "Now I'll boost you up and through."
She glanced down at him. "Promise you won't look up my shift."
"It's freezing. We're in danger of dying of hypothermia. Stealing a glance up your shift is the last thing on my mind."
She made a sound that communicated doubt.
Well-founded doubt, Dash had to admit. Even though it was true that the two of them were in danger of freezing to death, stealing a glance up her shift was not the last thing on his mind.
It wasn't even near the last.
It might even be among the top three or four things on his mind, were they ranked.
After all, it sounded like a nice way to die. A little glimpse of heaven before the lights dimmed.
Nevertheless, he marshaled what remained of his gentlemanly reserve to rebuff the temptation.
One more growl and flex from him, and she was halfway through.
"Slowly now," he warned as she eased her knee over the window's edge. But the wind and cold stole his words. He didn't hear her respond.
In fact, he didn't hear anything . . .
Until a dull, heart-stopping thud.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Griff pulled his gelding to a halt at a crossroads. Colin, Bram, and Thorne did the same, clustering around him for direction.
It had to be well past midnight, or so Griff assumed. He wasn't sufficiently curious to unfreeze his fingers from their clutch around the reins and go fishing his pockets for a timepiece.
It didn't matter how late it was. It was dark and cold, and the horses were trudging more and more slowly through the snow. And despite a tho
rough survey of the past twenty miles, they yet hadn't found any sign of the stagecoach or Miss Browning.
"The coach would be coming from that way." He nodded in the direction of the east fork. "We'll continue to follow the route in reverse, stopping in at each turnpike, inn, and tavern to inquire after them. Either their progress is slow, or they stopped somewhere to wait out the rain."
"Snow," Thorne corrected, brushing a fresh dust of flakes from his sleeve.
"To wait out the snow, then. Right."
Griff jammed the brim of his hat down over his eyes, trying to shield himself from worry. Neither rain nor snow was foreign to Sussex roads. The drivers and teams managed to keep their schedules in inclement weather all the time. If everyone in England stayed home for a spot of rain or snow, no one would ever go anywhere.
"Let's be on our way, then."
"Wait," Colin said. "I think we need a name."
"A name?"
"A name. You know, for our group. We might as well be a cricket team or a crime gang, so long as we're wearing these." He indicated the poorly knitted, violet-and-green-striped muffler about his neck.
The mufflers were a gift of Griff's mother, the Dowager Duchess of Halford. The woman was a menace to yarn.
"We don't need a name," Bram said.
"No, we don't need one," Colin said. "But it would make this little outing immeasurably more entertaining."
Griff nudged his horse into motion.
Colin was, as ever, undeterred. "How about the Sons of Debauchery?" he suggested, his voice carrying over the wind. "Or the Lost Lords. The Fallen Fellows? The Hellraisers. Oh, I know. The Duke and His Dissolutes."
Griff shook his head. The Duke and His Dissolutes? That last was a bit too close to describing his old life. Before Pauline, he'd surrounded himself with the worst sorts of reprobates. Colin Sandhurst among them.
Was it any wonder she'd doubted him when he'd refused to name his mysterious friend?
"We don't need a name," he repeated.
"A musical theme, at least?"
"No."
This answer came from Griff, Bram, and Thorne in unison.
Colin harrumphed. "I'm telling you, you lot have no sense of adventure."
They stopped and dismounted to let the horses drink. The layer of ice glazing this creek was the thickest they'd encountered yet.
"Don't worry," Bram said. "If she stopped this far east, that means they stopped before the worst of the weather hit. She's likely snug in an inn somewhere near Rye."