She was not afraid of mice. Not afraid of mice. Not afraid of anything, Lady Katherine Savege.

Very little, she had said.

Then fear the madman who must ply the shovel through thigh-high snow to drive the sensation of a woman’s skin from his hands.

On the other side of the stable Hermes let out a yowl, echoed by the donkey inside. The snow fell lightly now and Bella’s shadowy shape came into view around the corner of the building. Haunches bunched, head high, she barked.

Setting the shovel aside, Leam moved toward her. The drifts grabbed at his legs but he trudged the distance swiftly. He needed activity and Bella never alerted him lightly. She waited for him, then flanked him around the corner of the building. Her pup, already larger by a stone, leaped about a depression in the snow.

Leam slipped the knife from his sleeve.

The trough was roughly the size of a man’s prone body, half-filled and covered by several inches of new snow, with foot holes moving from it and a hoofmarks as well. He cast a glance at the scrubby trees flanking the Tern, sparse, gray with white sleeves, shifting forlornly in the wind. Nowhere to hide in there, but the tracks were lost in any case.

He slid the knife back into place. Bella nudged his arm. In thanks he ran his hand around her ears, but she bumped her long muzzle against his chin.

“What is it?”

She pawed at the edge of the depression. Leam pushed the snow aside, his breath frosting in damp clouds. Buried beneath was a brown clump of fabric. He shook it out. A man’s muffler made of fine cashmere.

Cashmere did not come cheap. If this was the man who pursued Leam he was not, it seemed, a hired sniper, unless he was exceptionally good at his trade and demanded much for his services. But the fellow had had plenty of opportunities to attack, if not in London, then on the road from Bristol and even this morning.

Beneath the muffler, tucked in the snow, were a handful of coins and a broken chain of thick gold links. The man had dropped them, apparently when he’d fallen, perhaps off his horse, or perhaps simply due to the driving wind and blinding snow. But he hadn’t come to the inn only a few yards away.

He plucked the objects out of the packed ice and pocketed them, then straightened and pushed through the snow to the stable door. Inside all was crisply cool and scented of straw and horse. Hermes went straight to the Welshman lying on his back across a bench, a bottle propped in one hand.

Passing the somnolent carriage horses and squat ass, Leam moved toward his horse’s stall.

“Knitting the ravelled sleeve of care?”

“I’ve no care. However, I do have whiskey.” Yale’s voice was heavy. “Care for a drop?”

“I am being followed.”

Yale squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “How do you know it isn’t I who is followed?”

“If one of your enemies determined to murder you, he would not be hesitating.” Leam dropped the muffler beside the bottle.

“S’truth.” Yale struggled to sit, setting the whiskey on the bench and taking up the garment. “But murder? Perhaps he is merely seeking information, like we were wont to do.” He lifted a black brow over a preternaturally clear eye. “Or p’raps it’s Lady Justice, chased us all the way from Dover Street to ferret out our purpose.”

“In a Shropshire snowstorm?”

“In a Bengalese monsoon?” He dropped the muffler. “That fellow we sought in Calcutta tracked you all the way through the jungle, if you recall.”

Leam shook his head, moving to his horse’s stall. “I’ve no idea why this one hasn’t come closer.

He’s within spitting distance yet he balks.”

Yale leaned back against the cold stable wall and swung the bottle once more to his lips. “Much as the lovely Lady Katherine?”

Leam would not oblige him with a reply. But it was a damned nuisance sometimes that the lad had the instincts of a real spy. Always watching.

“He is closer than I like given the circumstances.”

“P’raps you ought to simply wait for him behind a wall and shoot him when he appears. Works like a charm, you know.”

The big roan bumped its head into Leam’s chest. He ran his hand along its smooth face.

“Is that how it happened, Wyn? When you shot that girl?” Leam didn’t know the whole story of it; Yale had never shared it. But he knew well enough that his friend had not always drunk the way he did now. It had started after one assignment went terribly wrong.

The Welshman pushed up from the bench and hefted a saddle into his arms. On steady legs he moved to his horse’s stall. But this time Leam could see the drink in his eyes and the set of his mouth.

The soberer the lad grew, the more he laughed. For years they had gotten along famously together: Mr.

Wyn Yale, the drunk, and Lord Uilleam Blackwood, the man with a hole where his heart should be.

Yale unfixed the latch on a stall door and heaved the saddle and blanket to his black’s back. It was an elegant creature, beauty and strength in its Thoroughbred lines.

“Going for a ride, Wyn?” Leam spoke mildly. “It is unwise in this weather, of course.”

“When you call me by my Christian name, Leam, you intend to lecture me. I will save you the trouble. Ta-ta.” He tightened his mount’s girth and reached for the bridle.

“I could knock you down. You would sleep this one off.”

“You couldn’t, old man.”

“I haven’t bothered to in years, it is true. But I am tempted now.”

Yale slid the bit into the black’s mouth and dropped the reins over its neck. He drew the horse from the stall, its hooves clomping across straw-strewn wood.

“Are you trying to kill yourself, or the horse?”

The Welshman pushed the stable door open and mounted amid lazy swirls of snow blowing off the roof.

Leam followed. “Don’t be a fool, lad.”

“Save your lectures for your son, Blackwood. He’s still young enough to find some use in them.”

He spurred the horse into the snow. It stepped high, wary of the drifts, but the Welshman pushed it forward.

His son.

“You will ruin that animal’s legs, you idiot!” The wind grabbed Leam’s voice. Heedless, the black-clad man and black-coated horse disappeared around the corner of the stable.

He cursed and headed for the inn. He shook his coat and pushed through the entrance. Bella and Hermes came in behind and he shut the door—too forcefully. He tugged off his gloves and threw his coat onto a hook, bending to swipe his boots with a cloth, his head a wretched mash of anger.

Anger, he could feel in spades. Only anger, still after so long. His tenure with the Falcon Club had done nothing for that, nothing at all, although that had been the reason he’d joined five years earlier.

To cast off grief and guilt, and most of all fury, with purpose. To release his anger by keeping himself occupied.

All idiocy. He’d run away, accomplishing nothing but alienating himself for far too long from his home, the house in which his son lived.

His son.

He went into the parlor.

Lady Katherine stood by a window. The pane was open and the cold air blowing in rippled the delicate fabric of her skirt. But she did not seem to note it. Her wide gaze rested on him, strangely questioning once more.

His anger slid away, heat of an entirely different kind replacing it, low and insistent again. By God, those thundercloud eyes could bewitch a man.

“An ye wish, lass, A’ll saddle ma horse an search the road behind,” he heard himself say.

“For our servants?”

“Aye.”

“You would do that when you have just told Mr. Yale he oughtn’t to ride?”

“Aye.” That, and quite a bit more he began to fear with a sick twist in his stomach. He wanted to please her and see those thunderclouds glimmer with desire as they had in her bedchamber. “An ye wish.”

She remained silent a moment, slender and poised like a portrait, but shimmering with muted life in the gown that caressed her curves as his hands might. There was every newness about her, yet every familiarity, as there had been for the briefest moment that night three years ago. His heart beat a frantic pace.

A tiny crease appeared between her brows. “I would not have you put yourself at risk.”

He nodded. “Nae tae worry, lass. Thay’ll hae found shelter.”

“I hope so.”

“A ken ye dae.”

Her frown deepened. “Do you know?” Then the corner of her lips twitched, her winged brows quirking. “That is what you said, isn’t it?”

She was ice and fire at once, diamonds and feather down, soft heat bubbling forth through a cool veneer.

“Aye.” Leam backed toward the door. Distance was safest. Imagining she would shy from his blatant barbarity, he had redoubled his incivility earlier, boorishly commenting on her gown. The ploy had rewarded him only with the sensation of her skin marked upon his hand and the sweet, humid heat of her breath upon his lips.

But this honest conversation was going no better.

Distance. Sanity. Alvamoor, where his son awaited him to celebrate Christmas. His son. Nearly six now, his appearance no doubt altered since the previous year, as always with the swiftly growing young. But Leam knew the boy’s face well. Better than his own.

Without bidding the lady adieu, he grabbed his coat and gloves and retreated once more into the wild out-of-doors. The cold without could not touch a man with a soul of bleak barbarism like his.

Chapter 5

Kitty folded linens. She had not performed such a domestic task in an age. Permanently residing with her mother in her brother’s town house, she left the housekeeping to Alex’s capable London staff.