The young woman blinked prettily. “I’ve never met a duchess with a healthy sense of humor. Do you forfeit it when you marry, or are you born and bred that way?”

Mr. Stone suddenly appeared and gave a little bow. “I beg your pardon, your Grace, for interrupting, but Lord Meltenbourne has offered to sleep in the common room tonight so that your Grace may have his quarters. Madam, would that be agreeable to you?”

Sophia glanced across the room toward the earl. He tilted his head and smiled. “It would be my pleasure, Duchess.”

The two footmen who acted as his guards chuckled in amusement.

A sudden presence blocked the light from the hearth, casting them in shadows.

“Those arrangements are most certainly not agreeable,” said Claxton, his voice low and dangerous. “Not to me. The duchess will accompany me to Camellia House.”

“Yes, your Grace,” rasped Mr. Stone, giving a little bow and backing away from them as quickly as his legs could take him.

The heat in Claxton’s stare left Sophia breathless but also angry that he should intercede in the conversation so brutishly.

“I am not your chattel to be claimed and ordered about,” she hissed.

He bent low so that his breath touched her cheek. “Until the papers are drawn up and signed, I am still your husband in every sense of the word. You will not humiliate me by taking a room in this inn.”

“If it’s humiliation you were hoping to avoid,” she choked out, “I’m afraid it’s far too late for that.”

Moments later, nearer to the door, the innkeeper’s wife pressed a basket containing bread, cheese, and two roasted guinea fowls into Sophia’s hands. Once Claxton returned from speaking with Mr. Stone about the continued room and board of his male servants, they would be on their way. Sophia felt like crying, what with the inn being so warm and she’d only just begun to feel her legs and feet again.

Only then did she see that Charlotte no longer sat beneath the mistletoe. Instead the girl occupied the chair Sophia had vacated just moments before. Lady Meltenbourne stood behind her, a little comb in her hand.

“So you see, dear Miss Charlotte, I will dress your hair in pins and curls, and once you understand how it is done, you can dress mine. Every young lady deserves to have pretty hair for the holiday, and we two are no exception.”

Charlotte’s face reflected a degree of emotion somewhere between terror and delight. “Thank you, my lady. I’m certainly willing to try my best.”

Annabelle combed out a section of her hair. “When I was young, my father refused to hire a lady’s maid for me and my three sisters, proclaiming it to be a frivolous expense, so we all learned how to dress each other’s hair. Now I’m such a spoiled woman I have not only one lady’s maid, but two, one to attend to my hair and daily toilette, and the other, my clothes and my dogs. My dogs! I can’t think about Diamond and Pearl now, or I will start to cry.” She dabbed at her eyes. After a moment in which she appeared to calm herself, she said, “Hair is very easy—really it is—once you learn how to section everything properly. I only hope I have enough pins.”

Claxton joined Sophia and Mrs. Stone.

“A moment please,” said Sophia, handing off the basket to Claxton. She bent over her valise. A moment later she approached the countess and Charlotte.

“Lady Meltenbourne, I overheard you say you might not have enough.” She extended the little case toward Annabelle, who paused in her combing and sectioning to stare at her, wide-eyed and mouth agape. “I have plenty to spare.”

Charlotte gave a happy little gasp and her face lit up like a Christmas candle.

“Thank you, your Grace,” she gushed. “You and the countess have been more than kind.”

Annabelle reached for the case, her gaze fixed on Sophia. Her eyes welled with tears.

“Yes,” she smiled tremulously. “More than kind.”

Sophia rejoined Claxton, and he led her toward the door, his hand at the small of her back, for all outward appearances an attentive husband. Yet one glance confirmed the taut line of his jaw, evidence his anger remained over her request for a room at the inn.

Haden followed, twisting a scarf round his neck.

“Where are you going?” Claxton retrieved her valise.

“With you,” Haden said, “to Camellia House. There’s more room there, and no one who wants to shoot me unless you’re angrier than I thought. I promise not to be a bother.”

“You already are a bother. You’ll stay here and deal with the consequences of your own mess.”

Haden sputtered, but Claxton pulled the door firmly closed on any argument before it began.

Outdoors, he released her, his hand coming away from her arm as if he’d only just realized she were a piece of rotten fruit.

“I don’t believe my eyes,” he bit out. “Now you are on happy terms with Lady Meltenbourne? Truly, Sophia? Are the two of you in collusion to humiliate me? And taking a room at the inn?”

“Taking a room seemed the reasonable thing to do, given our present circumstances.”

“Our ‘present circumstances’ indeed. We wouldn’t want those to improve, would we?” He returned his hat to his head and with an air of disdain descended the snow-encrusted steps. “Whatever it is that you fear will happen again when we are alone, don’t worry, it won’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” he muttered fiercely, boots sinking into the snow with each step away from her.

And she did know. He would not kiss her again.

“Suits me perfectly,” she called after him. “All for the best. I didn’t enjoy it anyway.” But her turncoat heart shouted out apologies for having betrayed him.

He barked out a laugh but did not slow in pace.

Snow fell at a slant across the lane, carried on a sturdy wind. With a deep sigh, she set off to follow in the plowed-out rut Claxton’s boots had created, dreading the night to come, for certainly the coming hours would be spent in frozen silence, sequestered in her room.

Only when Claxton reached the end of the lane did he pause to wait for her, impatience twitching his jaw.

Just then, a man driving an old-fashioned sledge drawn by an enormous black draft horse came into view from the direction of Camellia House. Bells jangled musically with each step the animal took. With a “Ho!” to Claxton, the man tugged the reins and circled round. After exchanging words, Claxton came for Sophia.

“This is Mr. Kettle. He informs me that after learning of our arrival in Lacenfleet, he and Mrs. Kettle went to the house. He came looking for us and has kindly offered to convey you up the hill.”

Drawing nearer, Sophia saw that the sledge had only room for one.

“What about you?” She looked at Claxton.

“Go, please,” he answered, stone-faced. “I’d rather prefer the time alone.”

Stung, she instantly regretted her concern.

A moment later, with Sophia tucked warmly under a blanket, Mr. Kettle tapped his cane and the sledge lurched forward to glide through the snow. Vapor streamed from the horse’s nostrils. Under any other circumstances, she would have found the experience charming, but she had never felt more dejected and alone.

At the bend in the road, Sophia leaned out to search behind for Claxton but saw only a dark shadow amid a veil of falling snow. She hated this confusion! If she truly didn’t want to be near him, then why did leaving him behind make her feel so miserable?

Chapter Eight

Vane had not long with his thoughts because Mr. Kettle returned in the sledge immediately after safely delivering her ladyship. Not that he had accepted the ride. To do so would require a person of his stature to sit awkwardly with his knees knocking his ears for the sole purpose of sparing himself a quarter-hour walk. So instead of fuming over his wife’s humiliating request for a room at the inn—and after she’d bloody well kissed his Hessians off, no less—Mr. Kettle provided welcome distraction, traveling along beside Claxton to discuss matters related to the property.

After that brief passage of time, Vane entered the vestibule.

Over the previous twenty years, there had been moments when he had faced the worst mankind had to offer, in life and on the battlefront, with barely an increase in pulse. Yet now, as he stamped the snow from his boots on the threshold of the old house, he struggled to calm the low thrum of trepidation in his blood, one that urged him to immediately turn and run.

Just as he knew she would, a small woman rushed toward him out of the shadows and out from his past, her hands clasped to her plump cheeks.

Eyes full of tears, she exclaimed, “Your Grace. It is you.” Her bright gaze took him in admiringly, head to toe. “A man full grown.”

A thousand memories crushed in on him with such force he immediately drew up his defenses lest he be overwhelmed.

It was, of course, Mrs. Kettle, a woman who, like so many pieces of his shattered childhood, he had left behind. Only he hadn’t ever forgotten her.

Since he had last seen her, her hair had grayed and she had almost certainly shrunk by a foot. For a terrifying moment, he feared she might actually embrace him, and if she did, he would most certainly fall to pieces and cry like a child.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, her face going instantly serious. “Sir, I do forget myself.”

With the utmost gravity, she curtsied, then winced and wobbled, her discomfort at executing the gesture all too apparent.

His mother’s household had never been one for strict formalities. Vane suspected the woman who had acted as the Duchess of Claxton’s housekeeper, and indeed, her maid of all work, had not only been a loyal servant, but also in the end her closest friend. Though he required the utmost in decorum from his retainers in town, he considered Mrs. Kettle and her husband exempt from such strictures.