Chapter 24

R upert collected Claire from the middle of the ballroom, where Higginbotham had left her standing after their waltz concluded. Which wasn’t very gallant of him, but the poor fellow looked to be in something of a state.

“Learn anything?” Rupert whispered as he looped his arm through Claire’s, whisking her away from three approaching suitors. This earned him another scowl from Percival Ponsonby, which Rupert returned with a bland smile.

“Possibly,” Claire murmured. “Mr. Higginbotham advised me that he now resides in York and has not visited his hometown of Thirsk for several years. Thirsk, of course, being the borough that voted him out in favor of Mr. Baxter.”

“Perhaps his work keeps him busy,” Rupert said, snagging them each a glass of warm negus.

Claire sipped from her glass. “Perhaps, but he advised me very firmly that he would not be stopping in Thirsk on his way back to York, as there is ‘nothing there but bad memories.’ Additionally, a scowl settled over his face when he spied Mr. Baxter in the dance.”

Rupert wasn’t sure how much to read into that. Baxter made him want to scowl, and he wasn’t the scowling sort. “I suppose there could be something there.”

“It’s not much,” Claire agreed. “But it’s better than any lead we… Wait, where is he going?”

Rupert glanced over his shoulder. As sure as death and taxes, Higginbotham was making for the ballroom’s doors.

“It’s probably nothing,” Rupert noted. “He could be on his way to use the…” He cleared his throat. “You know.”

Claire had snagged his arm and was already towing him across the ballroom. “Let’s see.”

Rupert couldn’t resist nudging her in the ribs with his elbow. “I’ll bet when you agreed to work for the Home Office that you never dreamed your job would be so glamorous. Tracking a man to the gentleman’s retiring… ho, now, what do we have here?”

Higginbotham had gone not toward the necessary but the front door. Ducking into an alcove, they watched as he quietly conferred with a footman. The footman left but returned quickly bearing a cloak and hat. Higginbotham donned them and stepped out into the snowy night.

Claire dug her fingers into his forearm. “Where could he be headed?”

“At this time of night? Not a clue. It’s dark out there, and deuced c-cold.” Rupert stumbled, both over his feet and over his words, as Claire dragged him out of the alcove. She surprised him by heading not after Higginbotham but toward the back of the castle.

A blast of cold air hit him in the face as she opened the door leading into the gardens. Up until this point, he’d been allowing Claire to lead him around because goodness knew any suggestion she had was bound to be better than what he came up with.

But going outside in their evening kit didn’t seem like the absolute best idea she’d ever had.

“Claire,” he hissed, “what are you doing?”

She looked up at him, brown eyes bright with excitement, and she looked so pretty, it scrambled what few wits he had. “We have to follow him. Why would he be heading out at this time of night if not for some nefarious purpose?”

“That, I don’t know. But I’m fairly certain that if we go out there, we’re going to freeze to death. Especially you! At least I have a jacket on.”

She pulled on his arm, undeterred. “Come on. We can’t let him get away!”

Rupert shook his head, hoping to clear it. He knew this was a bad idea, but it was difficult to deny Claire anything when she sported that eager-hopeful sort of expression. “At least let me go and fetch our cloaks.”

“No! If we do that, whatever servant we ask will know we went outside.”

“At least let me run up to my room. I’ll find something warm in my trunks we can throw on.”

“There’s no time for that. Please, Rupert! We have to hurry!”

Claire’s lip quivered, and her eyes were full of anguish. It was the sort of thing no man wanted to see, but it was a thousand times worse when it was your girl who was making that face. Not that Claire was his girl, not really. But the point was, she held that position in his heart, even if she never would in any official sense of the word.

He sighed. How could he possibly deny her? “Fine, but only if you take my coat.”

She peered up at him uncertainly as he shrugged out of the garment. “What about you?”

He waved this off. “Don’t worry about old Rupert. As I said a few days ago, I just came from Switzerland and spent the previous winter in Norway. I’m acclimated to the cold.”

Claire bit her lip as he draped it around her shoulders. At least it was a sturdy, winter-weight wool. “You’re quite certain you’ll be warm enough?”

No . But he said, “’Course I will.” He could see it was time to lay down his trump card, so he gestured across the back gardens. “We’d better hurry, or he’s going to get away!”

That distracted her, just like he knew it would. She grabbed his arm, and then he was hurrying through the garden in nothing but his shirtsleeves and gold silk waistcoat. The cold penetrated his thin garments immediately, leeching away whatever body heat he’d had.

Well, at least he’d forced Claire to take his jacket.

Rupert frowned as a cloud passed in front of the moon, casting them into darkness. Unlike the garden path, the snow around the side of the castle hadn’t been cleared and was shin-deep. Rupert’s dancing pumps and silk stockings were already soaked through. He frowned, because Claire was also wearing flimsy dancing slippers. “I have a bad feeling about this,” he muttered.

The cloud moved on, giving them a little moonlight. “Well, I have a good feeling about this,” Claire countered, pointing up ahead. “There he is.”

Sure enough, he could just make out Higginbotham’s lonely figure, illuminated by a lantern as he plodded down the snowy road. What the devil could the man be up to? It was deuced peculiar…

“Where do you think he could be going?” Claire asked, her voice full of excitement.

“N-no idea,” Rupert said through a clenched jaw, trying to hide the fact that his teeth were starting to chatter.

They walked on for around fifteen minutes, managing to make their way by moonlight. At a bend in the road, Claire ducked behind a tree, then peered around its edge. She seized Rupert’s forearm. “Look!”

Higginbotham had reached the little stone chapel standing in a grove of trees. He opened the door and disappeared, taking the light of his lantern with him.

“Come on,” Claire said, pulling him forward. “Let’s see who he’s meeting.”

Reminding himself that feeling in his hands and feet was more of a luxury than anything else, Rupert stumbled through the snow after her.

The inside of the chapel was illuminated with the soft light of Higginbotham’s torch, which was convenient, as another cloud had passed in front of the moon. They crept up to a window, pressing their backs against the cold stones of the chapel’s wall. Squatting down, Claire crept along until she was directly beneath one of the big arched windows. Rupert tried to follow suit but lost his balance and wound up on his hands and knees in the snow.

She shot him a concerned look. He could just see her mouth form the words, “Are you all right?” in the faint flicker of light from the window. He nodded in spite of the fact that his breeches were now wet and his fingers felt like icicles.

Gripping the window’s lip, Claire slowly raised her head just high enough to peer inside the chapel. Whatever she saw made her recoil.

“What is it?” Rupert whispered.

She lowered her head. “He’s praying .”

“ Praying ?” Rupert hissed. “In a chapel ?” Although… come to think of it, that did make a certain amount of sense.

He peeked over the lip of the window to see for himself. Surely enough, there was Higginbotham in the front pew, kneeling quietly with head bowed and hands clasped.

Rupert ducked down again, glanced at Claire, and shrugged. She still had that mulish look about her. “Let’s wait a little while. See if anybody else shows up.”

They waited for around a half-hour, peeking through the window every few minutes to see if anything had changed. Invariably the answer was, it had not . Higginbotham remained in the front pew, going about his devotions, and no mysterious miscreants appeared for a midnight rendezvous.

Right around the time when Rupert was wondering if it was possible to develop frostbite to your “stern end,” the lamplight shifted behind the window. Perking up, Claire peered through the glass. “He’s on the move,” she whispered. “Come on!”

They crept toward the front of the chapel. The area briefly brightened as Higginbotham opened the door and strode out onto the front steps with his lantern. They watched from around the corner as he shut the door behind him, descended the steps, and started back toward the castle.

Claire leaned in. “We’d best wait here a few minutes so he won’t realize he was followed.”

Rupert could see her logic. The problem was, he wasn’t sure his joints were going to be capable of bending if he stayed out here much longer. But protesting would have involved forming words, which he was fairly certain he couldn’t do, so he stood there shivering agreeably until Claire deemed the coast clear.

But as they stood there, the other problem became clear. Higginbotham withdrawing with the lantern threw into sharp relief the fact that the moon was now completely obscured by clouds, and it was pitch black on the road.

They were going to have a deuced time making it back to the castle.

“All right,” Claire said. “Let’s go.”

Rupert started forward and promptly tripped over his frozen foot. Claire grabbed his wrist to steady him. He couldn’t really see her on account of the darkness, but he could hear the disapproval in her voice. “Rupert! Your hand is freezing!”

“S-s-sorry.”

He heard her huff. “Don’t be sorry. But I wish you had said something!”

“D-didn’t want to b-be a b-b-bother.”

She was already wrapping his coat around his shoulders, and he was too cold to even throw a fit about it. Grabbing his hand, she surprised him by pulling him away from the road. “Let’s get you back to the castle. We’ll cut through the woods. It’s a more direct route.”

Claire was correct in that going as the crow flies would cut the distance by half.

Unfortunately, it was even darker in the woods than it was on the road. Unlike the road, no attempt had been made to clear the snow.

And there were trees. So many trees.

Claire grunted as she tripped over yet another root. “In retrospect, perhaps we should’ve kept to the road.”

Rupert was too cold to even attempt to answer. For the third time, he walked straight into a low-hanging limb and had to grab Claire’s arm for balance.

They trudged on for a few minutes more. Claire slipped on a patch of ice and almost fell. Rupert did her one better by tripping over a fallen log and going face-first into a snowbank.

“Oh, Rupert!” Claire cried, pulling him back to his feet and dusting him off. “This is all my fault.”

Rupert’s tongue wasn’t working so well, but he couldn’t let her go thinking something like that. “S-s-s-all-r-r-right,” he managed.

“It’s not all right! You’re freezing. I feel even worse because you’ve always been so considerate of me and…” Her grip on his arm tightened. “Wait, I… I think I see something!”

“’S good that o-one of us d-does,” Rupert said, trying to look on the bright side of things.

Claire tugged him forward with new vigor. “Just a little bit farther. How I hope I’m not mistaken… but I’m not! We’ve reached the hunting cabin!”

By gum, she was right. It was a deuced welcome sight, even if the cabin was dark and cold. At least there wasn’t any snow inside or any more roots to trip over.

The door proved to be locked. Fortunately, Rupert managed to overcome this obstacle by losing his balance, stumbling into the front window, and cracking a pane.

Claire brightened. “Well, since it’s already broken,” she said, jabbing a proper hole with her gloved fist. She reached inside and had the lock undone in a trice.

They staggered inside. “F-fireplace should be… over here,” he said, tugging Claire toward the back left corner.

They promptly bumped into the sofa. “Here,” Claire said, guiding him around. “You sit down. I’ll take care of it.”

Rupert was too cold to argue. Besides, he couldn’t imagine he’d be anything but in the way, considering he couldn’t move his fingers.

A metallic crash rang out from the far side of the cabin. It took a few seconds for the cacophony to die down. “Everything’s fine!” Claire called from across the room. “That was nothing, nothing at all.”

Rupert grunted. He found a wool blanket draped over the back of the sofa. He managed to wrap it around himself with numb fingers.

He heard a great deal of thumping and a few muttered curses as Claire banged around, searching for the tinderbox. His first indication that success was nigh was a pleased sound in the darkness. A few seconds later, she managed to light a brief spark, which looked startlingly bright after being in total darkness for so long.

On her next attempt, Claire managed to light a rush. From there, she got a couple of candles going, including the candelabra she had knocked to the floor in the dark.

Five minutes later, she sat back on her heels as the beginnings of a fire took hold in the hearth. Once she satisfied herself that it was spreading nicely and wouldn’t go out, she hurried over to Rupert.

“Your shoes are soaked,” she noted, pulling them off and tossing them on the floor. “As are your stockings, your breeches, your shirt…”

Rupert laid back and enjoyed the fact that she was undressing him. It reminded him of one of those bawdy novels where a couple is forced to take shelter from a storm in a deserted cottage and has no choice but to take off all their clothes and huddle together for warmth.

As if you would be so lucky , he chastised himself.

Still, like most men, Rupert only wore drawers when he was planning on spending the day outdoors in the cold, so once Claire had stripped him of his damp things, he had only the blanket to preserve not so much his modesty as his pride. His cock was as cold as a well digger’s arse, as they said in Denmark, which meant that it probably wasn’t what you would call an impressive sight.

Once she finished hanging his unmentionables before the fire, Claire hurried back over to him. “Can you stand? I’d like to scoot the sofa closer to the fire so we can get you warmed up.”

That sounded like a capital suggestion, so Rupert wrapped up in the blanket and struggled to his feet. He even managed to lean against the sofa and help her scoot it across the plain wooden floor.

Once it was in place, he flopped back down, none too gracefully, mind you, but this wasn’t the time to be prideful about such things. The fire felt so hot on his skin that he thought it might burn him, yet he still felt chilled to the bone, a peculiar sensation.

He wondered if a cup of tea would help, but he didn’t want to put Claire to any trouble fetching water and whatnot. He glanced at her to see if perhaps the same idea had occurred to her…

… only to find that she was unbuttoning her dress .

Rupert’s four non-frozen brain cells ceased functioning. Claire caught his eye, and he shut his mouth, because, of course, his mouth was gaping open.

“My dress is wet around the hem,” she explained. “My stockings and petticoats as well. I’d best get out of my wet things.”

Far be it for Rupert to stop her. Turning his face toward the back of the sofa would have been the gentlemanly thing to do, but he didn’t have the fortitude at the moment, and Claire didn’t so much as ask him to avert his gaze.

Once she was down to a whisper-thin linen shift, she walked over to the bed in the far corner. Rupert figured she would climb beneath the blankets, but she surprised him by pulling off the quilt, then surprised him even more by bringing it back to the sofa and spreading it over him.

She crawled in with him, taking him in her arms, and he thought his frozen heart might burst with delight. “Is this all right?” she asked.

“This is wonderful,” Rupert replied, burying his cold nose in her warm shoulder.

She stroked soft fingertips across his bare back. “It should help you warm more quickly if we share our body heat.”

Rupert made a garbled sound that was the closest he could come to a laugh. Weariness had descended upon him, and it was suddenly difficult to keep his eyes open. “Here I thought that was my line.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he muttered, pulling her closer. Claire had crawled not only beneath the quilt but inside the woolen blanket with him, meaning that a whisper of linen was the only thing separating his body from hers. It was a testament to how well and truly frozen Rupert was that he wasn’t sporting a cockstand right now, with all of Claire’s warm, soft curves pressed against him.

It was probably for the best. He didn’t want to go ruining the moment. He would always cherish this memory of the time he got to fall asleep with her in his arms…

“Rupert?” He’d never heard Claire’s voice sound so small and hesitant before.

He yawned, trying to fight off the sleep rapidly overcoming him. “Yes?”

She was silent for so long he was starting to drift off when she finally spoke. “I know now that it was my fault that you called off our betrothal two years ago.”

He shook his head. “You mustn’t… blame yourself. Just wasn’t meant to be, I suppose.”

“But what if things had happened differently?” she said in a rush. “I know I can’t go back and unsay those words. That I can never fix things. But is there any chance… I mean, would you ever consider…”

Rupert felt a tingly sensation at the base of his skull. He had a feeling this was one of those important conversations, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “What is it, Claire?”

Her voice was little more than a whisper. “Do you think you could be happy being married to someone like me?”

Rupert sighed.

Of course, he would be happy being married to Claire. She was everything he had ever wanted.

That had never been the problem. The problem was that she didn’t want the likes of him.

“I would be happier than I could possibly say, being married to you,” he answered honestly. “You’re”—he paused as a yawn escaped—“perfect.”

Claire squeezed him tight. She was saying something, but sleep was pulling him under.

He drifted off to the soft voice of the woman he loved, snug and happy in her arms.