He did not wait for a response. He turned and left, closing the door firmly behind him, and stood for a moment in the dim corridor while the storm hurled itself against the windows.
Thank you, Mr Hale. For saving my life.
She had thanked him. As though pulling a stranger from wreckage were an act of heroism rather than common decency. As though she had expected him to leave her there.
Perhaps she would have—once she knew who he was. What he was.
Christian Hale walked alone to his chambers, divested himself of his sodden coat, and poured a measure of brandy with hands that were not, he assured himself firmly, unsteady.
He did not dwell upon dark curls spilling over his arm.
He did not dwell upon grey eyes that had held more defiance than fear.
He considered, instead, impassable roads and collapsed bridges—and how very, very long it might be before Miss Fiona Hart could be safely conveyed to Whitby and removed from his life entirely.
The storm answered with a peal of thunder that seemed to shake the castle to its foundations.
Christian drained his glass and reached again for the bottle.
It was, he reflected grimly, destined to be a very long night.
Chapter Two
“She is stirring, Your Grace.”
The voice seemed to come from somewhere far away—or perhaps from directly beside her; Fiona could not quite determine which. Her head felt packed with wool, her thoughts wading through treacle, and a dull, insistent throb in her left ankle forced the unwelcome acknowledgement that the accident had not been a dream.
The carriage. The cliff. The storm.
The man.
Fiona’s eyes flew open.
She was not, as she had half-expected, lying in a ditch upon the Yorkshire moors. She was in a bed—an enormous, canopied bed draped in faded blue velvet, heaped with pillows that carried the faint scent of lavender and old linen. Weak grey light filtered through heavy curtains, and somewhere nearby a fire crackled steadily in the grate.
And at her bedside sat the largest man she had ever beheld.
He was even more formidable in daylight than he had been in the storm. Though seated, he appeared to command half the chamber, his shoulders stretching the seams of a dark coat plainly cut by an excellent tailor and worn by a man utterly indifferent to fashion. His hair—that untamed dark mane sherecalled—had been drawn back into a queue, though several defiant strands had already escaped to frame his face.
That face. Stark, angular, uncompromising—hard lines and a harder jaw, softened only by the unexpected fullness of his lower lip. He regarded her with studied composure, yet his hands—large, long-fingered hands presently encircling her wrist—betrayed a tension that suggested he awaited some verdict.
Fiona screamed.
It was not, she would later concede, her most dignified moment. She was not a woman prone to hysterics; she valued composure, practicality, the ability to remain calm in circumstances that sent others into vapours. But there was something about waking in a strange chamber to find an enormous stranger clasping one’s wrist that bypassed reason altogether and went straight to instinct.
The man released her at once.
He rose so abruptly that his chair scraped sharply across the floor, and for one fleeting, absurd instant, Fiona thought he looked almost—wounded. Then his expression closed, composure settling over him like stone.
“This,” he said evenly, “is precisely why I avoid people.”
And he left.
The door shut behind him with quiet finality, leaving Fiona alone with her racing pulse, her aching ankle, and the mortifyingawareness that she had just screamed in the face of the man who had saved her life.
“Oh, miss.” Molly hurried forward from the fireside—where she must have kept watch through the night. Her maid’s face was pale but unmarked, and she moved without the stiffness of serious injury. “Oh, miss, you have done it now.”
“Done what?” Fiona attempted to sit up, wincing as the movement jarred her ankle. “Who was that man? Where are we? And Mr Briggs—?”
