Page 7

Yes, she would do just fine if she ended up at the house party.

Leaving the inn behind—and any risk of being caught unaware by Hannah Radcliffe—Oliver took his bay gelding out of Applebury and rode him along the river that slipped coldly along its path. A few patches froze at the edges of the banks, though the water still trickled beneath the glassy ice.

His friend might not like the cold, but Oliver found it invigorating. Far more than stuffy heat.

White air puffed out around him from both him and his horse, Atticus’s hoofprints thumping against the cold, frozen earth beside the river.

It was just he and his horse in the world right now. No one else, nothing else, existed.

Well, apart from the woman washing her hands in the river downstream.

Four

Oliver narrowed his eyes, slowing Atticus in the process.

The woman knelt on a long, flat rock at the side of the river, bending down low toward the frigid water with her simple, brown pelisse around her. Her blonde hair fell out of her simple bun in crimped waves, framing her stunning features as her fingers moved back and forth in the stream in a washing motion, and dirt was smeared across her pale brow and high cheekbones, the smooth lines of her jaw as alluring as the curve of her neck.

And she was all alone.

This told Oliver all he needed to know. The stunning woman was a servant—or at least a daughter of a tradesman. Either way, she would be perfect for him. A simple way to pass the time before the house party.

Better yet, there was no bed chamber or vacant room anywhere in sight—like Hannah Radcliffe had attempted to coax him into—and there was not an entire house filled with Lady Dalmeer’s guests, as there would be at Bellthorne Hall. His seclusion with this stranger couldn’t have come together more perfectly if he’d planned it himself.

She looked bitterly cold, too, her fingers as red as the tip of her nose. She could clearly do with a bit of warming up.

Now to see if she’d be up for it.

Dismounting Atticus, he tied his horse to a low branch nearby, then approached the woman, who still had not yet heard his presence due to the rippling water.

As he approached her from behind, he cleared his throat. “Excuse me, miss?”

The woman yelped in surprise and made to stand, but her boot caught on the edge of her pelisse, and suddenly, she was plunging face-first toward the water.

Oliver cursed under his breath, running forward to catch her just as her hands reached the water, splashing glacial-like droplets across her features. She gasped, no doubt inhaling water as she did so, but he wrapped his arms around her waist and hoisted her upright in one swift movement, preventing her entire body from being engulfed in the river’s movements.

Gasping deep breaths in between her coughing, the woman doubled over with her fisted hand to her mouth. Oliver winced. He was the cause of her veritable drowning.

He patted her back to rid her lungs of the water, then finally, her breathing leveled, and she stood, facing him with droplets clinging to her cheeks as more fell from her quivering chin. Her pelisse was dark up to her elbows, marking how far she’d fallen into the river.

Oliver could do nothing but sheepishly grin as her condemning eyes fell upon him.

“My apologies,” he began. “My intention was not to frighten you.”

“What were your intentions, then?” she asked.

He held up his handkerchief, and she snatched it from his hand. “Merely to ask what a beautiful woman such as yourself is doing out and about on her own—so close to nightfall and in such frigid temperatures.”

She blinked twice after his comment, then dabbed the remaining moisture from her features before returning his now sopping handkerchief to him. “I was washing my hands.”

The dirt he’d seen on her brow and cheeks had been wiped clean, but he caught ink stains between her fingers.

She must have noticed his stares, for she pulled her gloves from her pelisse pocket and tugged them on. “The washing obviously did not help,” she mumbled.

Despite her hair falling in wet strings around her features now, her cheeks were as rosy as holly berries, her lips matching in a similar shade, and he was completely captured by her.

She truly was a stunning creature.

“I truly am sorry,” he repeated.