“Much obliged to you,” Lucius said dryly.

He took the shovel and set to work with it.

In the gathering light he could see that the inn was at some remove from a village, which he had suspected must be there, but that the road connecting them was so completely submerged beneath the snowfall that it was impossible to know exactly where it was. There were unlikely to be visitors today even if would-be imbibers of ale knew that the landlord was due home. It was even more unlikely that the Parkers would be able to return.

He rather suspected that he might prefer Miss Allard’s cooking anyway, unless beef pie was her pièce de résistance and she was incapable of preparing anything else. She could make it again, though, as far as he was concerned.

After an hour he had shoveled a path from the door to the stables and another from the door to what he estimated to be the road. He felt breathless and warm and invigorated. While he had been working, the sun had come up. At least, he presumed it had—the sky was still cloudy and a few snowflakes still sifted down from the heavens now and then. But at least the world was light.

He leaned on the shovel and drew in a deep breath of fresh air. He still had more energy than he was going to be able to use up stranded inside a small country inn for a whole day.

He shoveled along beside the inn, past what he realized was the kitchen window. He straightened up and glanced inside.

Frances Allard was up already and busily employed close to the fire. Whether she had built it and lit it herself he did not know, but it looked as if it had been going for some time.

She was wearing a similar dress to yesterday’s except that this one was cream in color and suited her better. Her hair was neatly, sleekly dressed. She was wrapped again in a large apron. He could see steam curling from the spout of the kettle. There was something cooking on the range top. On the table was a bowl of what looked like whipped eggs.

He was, he realized suddenly, ravenously hungry.

He was also curiously charmed by the domesticity of the scene—and more than a little aroused by it. There was something almost erotic about the sight of a woman bending and turning and absorbed in the task of cooking a meal.

It was a thought that he must definitely not pursue any further. She was a schoolteacher and doubtless virtuous to a fault.

She was, in other words, strictly off-limits.

She turned from the fire as if she felt his eyes on her and saw him looking in on her. And then—damnation!—she actually smiled and looked dazzling even this early in the morning. That smile of hers was a lethal weapon, and under present circumstances he would be just as happy if she did not use it on him.

She beckoned him and pointed at the cooking food.

When he entered the kitchen a few minutes later after shaking out his greatcoat and changing his boots, he could see that she had laid two places at the long kitchen table.

“I trust you do not mind eating in here,” she said, turning her head to acknowledge his presence before returning her attention to the eggs, which she was now scrambling over the heat. “I roused Wally a while ago and sent him for water. Then he felt he had earned breakfast with Thomas and Peters. Only now has he been assigned the lighting of the fire in the taproom. The kitchen will be a cozier place for us to eat.”

“The men have already eaten?” he asked, rubbing his hands together and breathing in the mingled smells of smoked bacon and fried potatoes and coffee.

“I could have called you in too,” she said. “But you looked as if you were enjoying yourself.”

“I was,” he said.

She set a generous plateful of food before him and a more modest one at her place. She removed the apron and took her seat.

“I suppose,” he said, getting up again to pour the coffee, “you made the fire in here yourself.”

“I did,” she said. “Is this not a strange adventure?”

He laughed, and she looked sharply at him before dipping her head to look down at her plate again.

“Have you ever been in charge of an inn kitchen before?” he asked her. “And the appetites of four grown men?”

“Never,” she said. “Have you ever shoveled snow away from a country inn?”

“Good Lord! Never.”

This time they both laughed.

“A strange adventure indeed,” he agreed. “You told me yesterday that all over Christmas you longed for snow. What would you have done with it if it had come?”

“I would have gazed out on it in wonder and awe,” she said. “Snow for Christmas is so very rare. And I pictured myself wading about the neighborhood through it with the village carolers—but there were no carolers this year. And wading through it to the Assembly Rooms for a Christmas ball. But there was none.”

“A poor-spirited village if ever I heard of one,” he said. “Everyone stayed at home and stuffed themselves with goose and pudding, I suppose?”

“I suppose so,” she said. “And my great-aunts refused the invitations they received in favor of remaining home in order to enjoy the company of their great-niece.”

“Who would have far preferred to be kicking up her heels at a village dance,” he said. “A grim Christmas you had of it, ma’am. You have my heartfelt sympathies.”

“Poor me,” she agreed, though her eyes were now dancing with merriment.

“Those are the only uses you would have put the snow to?” he asked her. “It was hardly worth longing for, was it?”

“Well, you see,” she said, setting one elbow on the table and resting her chin in her hand, against all the rules of etiquette, “my great-aunts would not have enjoyed engaging in a snowball fight and one can hardly fight with oneself. I probably would have built a snowman. When it snowed two winters ago, Miss Martin canceled afternoon classes and we took the girls out into the meadows beyond the school and had a snowman-building contest. It was great fun.”

“Did you win?” he asked.

“I ought to have,” she said, picking up her knife and fork again. “My snowman was far and away the best. But the teachers were declared ineligible for prizes. It was grossly unfair. I almost resigned on the spot. But when I threatened to do so, I was rolled in the snow by a dozen or more girls, and Miss Martin studiously looked the other way and made no attempt to exert her authority and come to my rescue.”

It sounded, he thought, like a happy school. He could not somehow imagine rolling any of his own former teachers in the snow, especially with the headmaster looking on.

Miss Frances Allard was certainly not the bad-tempered, prunish woman he had taken her for yesterday. And he must admit that if their positions had been reversed, he would have been in an even more cantankerous mood than he had been anyway and would have been entertaining gruesome dreams of boiling someone in oil too. Not that either he or Peters would tolerate someone’s overtaking them on any road under any circumstances, of course.

“Teachers are not ineligible for this morning’s prizes,” he said.

“Oh?” She looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“Out beside the inn,” he said, pointing in the direction of the side facing away from the village. “As soon as I have helped you do the dishes. One problem, though. Do you have proper boots?”

“Yes, of course I do,” she said. “Would I have longed for snow for Christmas if I did not? Am I being challenged to a snowman-building contest? You will lose.”

“We will see,” he said. “What did you put in these potatoes to make them so delicious?”

“My own secret combination of herbs,” she said.

He finished his meal and gathered the dishes together to wash while she set about mixing a fresh batch of bread—it could rise while she was outside winning the competition, she told him.

Fresh bread! His mouth watered even though his stomach was full.

He even—horror of horrors!—dried the dishes.

If it had not snowed, he would now be on the final leg of his journey. He could have been home by this afternoon—to the quiet, familiar peace of Cleve Abbey and the prospect of an early return to London and its myriad pleasures—though only until the Season began, by Jove. But here he was instead, planning to alleviate the boredom of a useless day by building a snowman.

Except that he was no longer bored—had not been since he rose from his bed actually.

He tried to remember the last time he had built a snowman or otherwise frolicked in the snow, and failed.

He was making the mistake, Frances noticed with a furtive glance in his direction, of building his snowman too tall and thin—an error often made by novices. It looked much larger than hers, but he was going to have problems with the head. Even if he could lift a suitable one that high, it would not remain in place but would roll off and ruin all his efforts. She would be the undisputed winner.