5

She took two bold strides out onto the ice.

Aimée started down the bank, only to be stopped by Lottie’s grip on her pelisse. “Harriet!”

Several heads turned.

Buoyed by her success in attracting the adults’ attention, Harriet skated faster, flailing her arms, headed for the smoother ice in the center of the pond. “I can skate! You can’t stop me!”

“Take your sister,” Aimée ordered, thrusting Lottie at Peter.

The five-year-old wailed as Aimée stumbled onto the ice.

Too late.

The ice cracked with a sound like a falling branch. Aimée watched in horror as Harriet flung up her hands and collapsed in a billow of blue skirts through the fractured surface of the pond.

Aimée’s heart froze in fear.

A woman screamed.

A man leaped the low bench in front of the summerhouse and rushed down the hill. A tall, blond man in a long black coat that he tore off as he ran.

Once again that sense of almost-recognition brushed through Aimée’s mind like wings. Lucien.

He launched himself onto the ice.

Her stomach jumped into her throat. “Careful!” she cried. “The ice won’t hold you.”

“The air will,” he said, she thought he said, or maybe that was the roaring in her ears.

Three longs strides and then he stretched out on the ice, reaching for the girl in the water.

Aimée scanned desperately for something to help him, a fence rail or a fallen branch, but the manicured landscape was bare.

She spotted Freddy Keasdon, running with the other guests down the slope, and shouted, “The house! Get help!”

He stared at her, mouth ajar in his white face, a boy not much older than Peter.

“Run!” she yelled.

He bolted for the steps.

She turned back to Lucien. Somehow he’d managed to grab hold of Harriet’s arm and the back of her coat. With his arms fully extended over his head, he lifted the child straight from the water—an amazing feat of strength—and hauled her onto the ice.

Susan Netherby was sobbing. “My baby! Oh, my baby!”

Lucien inched backward, dragging Harriet, dripping, slipping, and crying, with him.

Aimée held her breath, afraid to venture nearer. Surely the ice would break under their combined weights.

But it did not.

Another inch. Another yard. In a long, smooth motion, Lucien pulled Harriet level with his shoulders and then pushed her down toward his feet.

Aimée skated forward and snatched her up. Clutching the wet, shivering child to her chest, she stumbled to the bank.

Hands grabbed and supported her up the slope.

“You stupid girl! I thought you were watching her!” Susan’s face was pinched and pale. “How could you be so careless?”

George Netherby, Harriet’s father, pushed through the crowd.

“Your coat,” Aimée said through chattering teeth. “She needs . . .”

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently and peeled the little girl from Aimée. “You’ve done quite enough.”

The front of Aimée’s pelisse was soaked with icy, rank pond water. Her arms felt empty and cold. She wrapped them around her waist as a flock of servants led by Freddy Keasdon swooped from the house.

The servants enveloped the children and their parents in a cloud of blankets and concern, sweeping them up and carrying them off toward baths and fires and safety. George Netherby carried Harriet up the stone steps of balustrade. Peter trudged in his father’s wake. Lottie sniveled in her mother’s arms. Most of the house party trooped after them, leaving Aimée standing on the bank.

Forcing her weighted limbs to move, she dropped onto the bench. Fumbled with her straps.

“Let me help you.” Howard Basing crouched at her feet, brushing aside her frozen fingers.

She glanced over her shoulder, shaken and more hurt than she would admit by the Netherbys’ recriminations. “I have to go. They will need me in the nursery.”

Howard tugged on her skate buckles. “We have servants. Let them deal with the brats. It’s even possible that my sister, now that she’s been reminded of her offspring’s existence, will care for them herself.”

Aimée barely heard him. On the frozen lily pond, Lucien was getting slowly to his feet, brushing ice from the front of his waistcoat. His right hand dripped blood.

She sucked in her breath. Harriet must have kicked him with her skates when he pulled her across the ice.

She felt a touch on her ankle and then on her calf. Startled, she looked down.

Howard smirked and squeezed her knee, his hand under her skirt. “We must get you back to the house and out of these wet things.”

She froze a moment in numb disbelief.

And then hot anger flowed through her veins, flushed her cheeks, burned in her heart. She lashed out, kicking at him, his hands, shoulder, stomach.

With a grunt, he slipped and tumbled backward.

“Connard! Cochon! Pig!” Rage, kindled by fear and fueled by disgust, thickened her voice. “Don’t you touch me! Don’t ever touch me again!”

Howard scrambled up, an ugly look in his eyes. “You little bitch, I’ll—”

“You heard her.” Lucien stood at the bottom of the bank, tall and solid as a church, his eyes hard and cold. “Back off.”

Howard glanced over his shoulder. Growled. “This is none of your concern.”

Aimée jumped to her feet, prepared to throw herself between them.

Lucien narrowed his eyes. “I have bloodied my knuckles once already rescuing your niece. It would cost me nothing to bloody them again.”

Howard sneered. “Except my family’s goodwill.”

“Miss Blanchard is also family, is she not?” Lucien asked in a deadly soft voice. “You are cousins.”

Howard’s face reddened. “Once removed.”

“And now removed again.” Lucien shook out the coat draped over his arm and dropped it around Aimée’s shoulders, overlapping its edges in front. The collar reached up around her ears.

His coat was wonderfully warm and smelled like him, like man and sandalwood. She clutched its heavy folds gratefully, shielding herself from the cold and Howard’s eyes.

A dizzying memory swept over her, an impression of hard, strong arms and wheeling stars and a road far below unspooling like a silver ribbon in the dark. She almost staggered.

Lucien offered her his arm. “Permit me to escort you to the house.”

She blinked at him, disoriented, trying to force her mind to function.

If she went with him, Howard would be furious.

But if she refused his escort, she would be leaving the two men behind to fight.

Slipping a hand from the shelter of his coat, she gripped Lucien’s arm.

He did not speak as they climbed the hill. She was aware of Howard staring after them, his face an ugly red, as she squelched and slipped up the icy slope. She shuddered with cold and reaction, hard, deep tremors that shook her chest and radiated outward through all her limbs.

“Thank you,” she said as they reached the shallow stone steps of the walk. “I don’t know what I would have done if you had not come along when you did.”

“You must tell me if he bothers you again.”

He thought she was talking about Howard, Aimée realized with a jolt. “I refer to Harriet. It was very brave, the way you ran out on the ice. You saved her.”

He looked at her sideways, his face inscrutable. “She is not the only one I have saved.”

Another spark, another contact, another flutter in her heart or memory. She swallowed. “Naturally, I am grateful. But I can look out for myself.”

“You were quite fierce. Formidable, in fact.” He lifted her hand where it rested on his arm and unexpectedly kissed her knuckles. Shock held her still. The pressure of his lips, the warmth of his breath, seared through the wet fabric of her glove. “But you are a woman.”

Aimée reclaimed her hand, conscious of the staring windows of the house. Of Howard, somewhere behind them. “And because I am a woman, I must be weak.”

“Not weak. But smaller than a man. In any physical encounter, you are outmatched.”

She licked her upper lip, made suddenly aware of his size, his strength, his overwhelming masculinity. In any physical encounter . . .

She slid her gaze from his. “I hope your interference will not spoil your chances with Julia.”

Lucien frowned. “Your cousin cannot excuse her brother’s behavior.”

“Oh no,” Aimée assured him. “But if Howard were to complain to Lady Basing . . .”

“She would defend his abuse?”

“It is not as bad as you are thinking,” Aimée said, leading him around the side of the house, out of Howard’s sight. “It is only that she does not wish to think poorly of her son.”

“You give them too much credit.”

“They are my family.”

“They do not deserve your loyalty.”

His concern was seductive, more seductive even than his austerely handsome face or the warmth of his hand or the strength of his arm. She had never had a champion before. Or a confidant. There was no one at Moulton who understood, no one she could talk to.

“It was better when I first came here,” she said. “Howard was away at school then. Even now, he spends most of his time in Town.”

“He is Sir Walter’s heir. He must visit.”

“Not as often as his parents would wish. There is little here to hold his attention.”

Another assessing, sideways look. “Except you.”

She shrugged, uncomfortable with his admiration. If that’s what it was. “I can keep out of the way. Until he leaves again.”

“Or you could leave,” Lucien suggested.

Ah. He did not truly understand. He was a man, after all.

“And go where?” she asked. “I have no money, no family, no other acquaintance in England.”

“You have skills. You speak French. You play the piano—even if you will not play in company,” he added with a glint of humor. “You could seek employment.”

“As a governess.”

He nodded.

“I have no references.”

“You have experience.”

“Not enough to impress an employer.” She winced. “Particularly after today. You heard the Netherbys.”

“The Netherbys are fools.”

His support warmed her. But she said, “Susan was upset. Any mother would be.”

“Any other mother would not blame you for her own neglect. I know a woman in London who could find you a position if you wish it.”

Aimée snorted inelegantly. She could not let his interest blind her to reality. “I have heard of such women. They meet the stagecoaches, looking for poor dumb girls from the country. Me, I am not so stupid.”

“Not stupid at all. But Miss Grinton is completely legitimate, I assure you.”

“Maybe.” He meant well, she told herself. “Even if your Miss Grinton could help me—and I do not believe it is as easy as you think to find a position without references—I would only be exchanging one situation for another. I might find it harder to escape the attentions of an employer.”

She led him to a small side entrance. “You do not know what it is like to be without resources or defenses. At least here I have a family.” She turned her head to look up at him. “If I left, I would have nothing.”

Lucien regarded her upturned face in the shadow of the doorway. Conviction lent passion to her voice, passion and the faintest hint of accent, like the scent of wine or sun-warmed grapes. Her eyes were as blue as the vault of Heaven.

Her words stabbed him. You do not know what it is like to be without resources or defenses.

Lucien opened the door for her to get her out of the cold. To give himself time to think.

He had quarreled with Amherst about his lack of freedom and independence.

But Aimée had even fewer options.

“You could marry,” he said when they were both inside. The hallway was dark and cramped. A servants’ entrance, he thought with another stab.

Her look was pure French, pragmatic and a little amused between long dark lashes. It stirred his blood. “I have no dowry.”

He took a deep breath of stale air, imposing control on his unruly thoughts. “There must be some gentleman in the neighborhood who would value your other qualities.”

“But of course,” she responded promptly. “There is Mr. Willford, one of Sir Walter’s tenant farmers, who needs a wife to help raise his seven children. And old Mr. Cutherford, who requires a nurse. Perhaps one day I will choose to exchange one form of servitude for another. But not yet.”

“Not every marriage is based on convenience.”

She gave him another direct look from those blue, blue eyes. Despite the cold, her lips were pink and ripe. “Indeed. Why are you courting Julia, Mr. Hartfell?”

He was beginning to wonder that himself. But he said stiffly, “My situation is different. I need a wealthy wife.”

“Because the earl’s estate is entailed?”

“Because he’s bloody threatened to cut me off.”

“Ah.” She regarded him thoughtfully. “Then you should understand my fear of being cast out.”

His mouth tightened. Aimée’s defense of her own wretched family made him realize that Amherst deserved, if not Lucien’s loyalty, then at least his honesty.

“Amherst would take me back if I asked,” Lucien admitted. The acknowledgment tasted bitter in his mouth. “If I dance to his tune.”

She tilted her head. “And you would rather dance attendance on Julia.”

They were almost the exact words he had used with Amherst. If I must woo for favors, I would rather court a woman. But coming from her, they made him sound like a sulky schoolboy.

He glared at her, annoyed. “I have responsibilities,” he said curtly. “People who depend on me.”

“We must both be grateful, then,” she said in a polite tone, “that I am not one of them. Good-bye, Mr. Hartfell.”

She slipped out of his coat. Her wet pelisse molded to her small breasts.

“Keep it,” he rasped. “You are half soaked and shivering. I’ll send a maid up to your room to get it.”

“The servants will all be busy in the nursery.”

“I will send a maid,” he repeated stubbornly, fixing his gaze on her face. “You need one, anyway, to help you out of those wet things and into a bath.”

A short, charged pause while he thought she might argue with him. He was torn between amusement and exasperation. Damn the wench, must she question everything?

And then she smiled, a wide, genuine smile that curled warmly around his heart and dazzled his eyes. “Then . . . Thank you. For everything.”

Turning, she ran up the steps, the sodden hem of his coat dragging behind her.

He watched her slender figure retreat up the dim passageway and out of sight, feeling as if all the light and warmth of the day went with her.