Page 41 of Snowbound Surrender

“Dorcas. You are very brave to be taking on the care of this household... seemingly with little help. I know I have been absent these last eight months since my husband’s death, and I had meant to visit much earlier?—”

“Oh no, I am glad you didn’t do that,” said the little maid, still looking frightened. “The new master—that is, Lord Lushington’s heir, what was his cousin but him who is now coming to take possession in two days—Mr. Algernon—said he would have…anyone…arrested for trespassing if he they was caught inside Lushington Hall.”

Arabella widened her eyes.Arrested? She had met Algernon on a handful of occasions, but surely Dorcas’s words did not ring true with regard toher? For the way Lushington’s cousin’s eyes had lingered on her person, the way he stood just a touch too close when speaking to her, or how his hand would brush against hers when passing her a glass of wine, suggested he’d be the kind of man to welcome her back…

And then be guilty of a myriad of small transgressions and familiarities.

Now he was saying he would deny her entry to her own home? That could not be right. As Lord Lushington’s widow, she had some stake in Lushington Hall. The Dower cottage washers, as was the rental from three of her late husband’s farms, which she’d continued to receive on a regular basis.

Arabella certainly didn’t want to be on the property at the same time as Algernon, but he was completely overstepping his authority if he thought he had the right to deny Arabella access to Lushington Hall.

She tried to put away her concern. What did it matter when all she needed to do was make her way to the cellars and locate the documents that she had hidden in haste during those desperate final weeks of her marriage?

With her brother returning to England so unexpectedly and declaring he had evidence that would exonerate him, Arabella could not afford to allow the so-called “evidence” that she had fabricated—and the other documents to which she had put her signature—to be discovered. Lies, of course, but lies to save her brother, though he had not known it at the time.

“You say he’s coming in two days?” Arabella asked. She was exhausted after her journey, and the thought of beginning her search now was too dreadful.

“Yes, Miss. Said he had urgent business to attend to and couldn’t wait for the original date.”

Well, that fitted in with her plans well enough. She only needed a couple of hours in the morning to find what she had hidden beneath the loose stone in the wine cellar wall, and then she could be gone, back to Quamby House.

It was such a short trip that Nicholas might not even have missed her yet. The thought of him sent a warm rush of memory through her—the weight of his hands on her skin, the way he had whispered her name like a prayer, the promise in his eyes when he had held her afterward. Her heart fluttered with the same wild joy she had felt in the pavilion, remembering how he had looked at her with such tender hunger, as if he could not quite believe she was real.

A slow smile curved her lips. Of course he would have missed her. After what they had shared, after the way he had held her as if he would never let her go, he would be counting the hours until her return. Perhaps he was even now planning how to propose properly, thinking of the life they would build together once all her secrets were finally laid to rest.

Tomorrow morning, she would retrieve those hateful documents and burn them to ash. Then she could return to Quamby House with a clean conscience and tell Nicholas everything—how she had been trapped by circumstances, how she had never stopped loving him, how every day of her marriage had been a sacrifice made for family honour.

With truth on her side at last, surely he would understand? Surely he would forgive her? The man who had made love to her with such passionate tenderness in the pavilion was not a man who would turn away from her once he knew the whole story.

For the first time in years, Arabella felt the stirring of genuine hope. By tomorrow evening, she would be free—free of lies, free of fear, and free to love Nicholas with nothing held back.

She could hardly wait to see the look in his eyes when she told him that their future together was finally within reach.

CHAPTER 9

“Why,Colonel Shankshaft, I could think of nothing more delightful than to listen to your military exploits all afternoon—though you must promise not to make them too thrilling, or I shall quite swoon,” Nicholas heard in the corridor outside the drawing room before his hostess dissolved into her signature tinkling laugh.

Nicholas wondered if he would ever laugh again. Arabella had played him once too many times. After whipping up his emotion once more, she had gone.

And soon he would be too. Certainly before she came back to Quamby House to pick up her maid.

He did not doubt she found him physically attractive. There could be no denying the explosive chemistry between them. But, however, plump in the pocket Nicholas might be, he clearly could not offer her enough to satiate her appetite for pretty trinkets and God knows what else it was she needed to keep enough excitement in her life.

The door opened to admit the flirtatious countess and the colonel.

“Oh, Mr. Morley! I thought you would be out enjoying this lovely weather with my sister and her husband, who said theywould take you along on their morning stroll. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.” Lady Quamby smiled as she took a seat on the settee, pulling the grinning Colonel down to sit beside her.

What a fool the old man looked. Did he not realise that pretty, vacuous—yes, and no doubt calculating—Lady Quamby was merely toying with him? He had never realised it before: the games that attractive women played seemingly for nothing more than the pleasure of seeing men sink to their knees in slavish adoration.

If he had only seen it five years before, he would have saved himself a great deal of heartache.

Once burned, twice shy went the old saying, but it seemed some fools took longer to learn that lesson. Nicholas certainly had.

“I will not be staying until tomorrow.” He knew he sounded terse and rude, but suddenly good manners were beyond him.

“Come now, Mr. Morley. Why are you in the dismals?” asked Lady Quamby. “Is it because the lovely Lady Lushington has gone away for a short visit? Well, she will be back—probably tomorrow—so you can’t possibly leave. I forbid it.”

The Colonel guffawed. “And you don’t want to get on the wrong side of our pretty little countess!” he declared, slapping her knee and adding extremely unwisely—to Nicholas’s mind anyway—“although I have long desired to do just that.” The lascivious look in his eye only confirmed what Nicholas had hoped had been a poorly phrased remark.