A snowball hit her own bonnet then, interrupting her chastisement. She blinked and coughed as a snow cloud enveloped her face. Christabella’s tinkling laughter mocked her. She turned back to Lord Ashley and the duke, all the outrage inside her withering when she caught sight of the boyish grin on Lord Ashley’s lips.
“Did you dare to throw a snowball at me, Lord Ashley?” she demanded.
“Yes, I did,” he admitted without a hint of shame. If anything, his tone—like his expression—was smug. “Your sister announced this is war, after all. We must defend ourselves.”
Oh, it was war indeed.
She bent low, and packed her own ball of snow, which she hurtled in his direction. It landed at his feet, breaking on his boots.
“Drat,” she muttered.
“Put more force into it,” Christabella counseled as snowballs began raining around them.
“Is that the best you can do, ladies?” taunted Lord Ashley.
“Let’s get them,” Pru told her sister grimly, forgetting all about being ladylike.
She and Christabella launched into battle, scooping up heaps of snow, molding it into balls, and hurling them at their opponents as they laughingly dodged the ammunition being thrown at them in return. A snowball hit her on the shoulder, sending a cloud of snow into her face. Another hit the hem of her gown. Christabella was hit in the arm.
Pru could not recall when she had laughed so hard. She giggled until her lungs and sides ached. And though her fingers were icy beneath her gloves, she could not seem to stop. There was something undeniably thrilling about engaging in such childish silliness.
Suddenly, Coventry and Lord Ashley took off running, disappearing around the bend in the maze.
“Get them!” Christabella cried, much like a general leading an infantry charge.
Pru gathered her gown in her snow-covered fists and chased after her sister in the wake of the lords they had sent running. She could not stop laughing, but as they rounded the bend, she realized the maze grew more intricate, branching off in two separate directions.
Neither Coventry nor Lord Ashley were anywhere to be found, though there were footprints tracked through the snow on both paths. Breathless, about to turn into an icicle herself and yet not giving a care, she turned to her sister.
“Which way do you think they went?”
“You go to the right,” Christabella ordered. “I will go to the left.”
Pru’s feet were carrying her before her mind could argue she would be better off to remain put. Or to go back inside and thaw by a roaring fire. Some of Christabella’s wildness must have wormed its way into Pru, for she was giggling, racing through the snow as if she had not a care in all the world.
Until she turned a corner and smacked directly into a wall.
She lost her balance and would have fallen backward, landing on her rump, were it not for the strong hands that shot out to catch her waist, hauling her back into the wall. Which, as it turned out, was not a wall at all. But rather, a chest.
A broad, muscled, delicious chest.
Her head tipped back, and she was even more breathless than she had been before as bright-blue eyes burned into hers.
“Lord Ashley,” she managed to say.
“Caught you,” he growled, and there was such satisfaction in his voice, she could not help but to feel it.
Everywhere.
Her hands went to his shoulders. It was all so effortless. So natural.
So right.
Neither the duke nor Christabella were in sight. Lord Ashley was all she saw. His smiling lips, his gleaming eyes, the snow on his hat from one of the snowballs she had landed, his handsome face. A new ache pulsed to life within her, and she could not squelch the desire to feel his lips on hers.
“You may release me now,” she said, irritated with herself at how winded she sounded.
As if she had run a lap around the sprawling Abingdon House instead of a mere few feet in the gardens. He had such a devastating effect upon her. But then, she reminded herself, surely she was not the only one so afflicted by Lord Ashley Rawdon.
