Chapter 1
Chapter
The wind came first, biting and harsh, tearing through every gap in Farrow Cottage’s rafters. Snow followed quickly after, a late-season storm sweeping across the countryside, leaving icy draughts in every corner of Dorset it touched.
Julianna woke to the sound of Thomas coughing. Not the first time this had been the noise that awakened her, but this fit was worse than ever before. She was up in an instant, bare feet flying to his bedside.
“Thomas!” She pressed her palm to his brow, even as the rattling in his chest, wet and broken, reverberated in her ears. His skin was aflame, far too hot to her touch for her liking.
Mrs. Sykes bent low over him, dabbing at his mouth with a folded cloth that came away tinged with red. “His fever has risen,” she said grimly. “He must have warmth, my lady. And the doctor. I cannot nurse him in this cold.”
A knot rose in Julianna’s throat. She had already heaped every blanket they possessed on Thomas.
Already stoked the fire until it roared and pressed hot bricks wrapped in flannel to his feet.
She’d rubbed his hands between her own until her fingers went numb and made him cup after cup of scalding tea.
None of it mattered. The pitiless cold still seeped through every chink in every wall, stealing all the warmth she’d managed to provide.
Thomas’s thin body shuddered with another wracking cough. She gathered his hand into hers, his fingers icy despite the fever. “Tom,” she whispered. “Stay with me. I mean it.”
He attempted his usual grin but couldn’t quite pull it off. “Always so bossy, Julie-bug,” he rasped.
His fingers tightened around hers then, his good humor dissipating into the fear she knew he felt. The nurse pressed the blanket more tightly around his shoulders and motioned for Julianna to step out of the room.
As soon as they were alone in the hallway, she said, “I fear he will not last the week here, my lady. Is there nowhere else we can go?”
Julianna’s heart hammered. There was one place she knew of, of course. Sedgewick Manor might be in ruins but it was better in a storm than Farrow Cottage. It had to be.
She glanced at her mother’s gown that still hung upon its peg from her wedding the week before and then back at Thomas, his eyes too big in his wasted face.
“You’re right,” she said hoarsely. “He cannot stay here.”
She returned to Thomas’s bedside and pressed a kiss to his forehead before rushing out of the room and down the stairs.
She wrapped herself in her heaviest shawl and cloak and laced her boots with shaking hands.
She wanted to go before the storm got much worse and before she changed her mind.
Frederick Sedgewick was going to do the right thing for once in his godforsaken life, even if she had to drag him back to Farrow Cottage herself to see it done.
“Where are you going?” Mrs. Sykes called to her.
“Sedgewick Manor.”
“In this storm? Wait until the morning at least.”
“No.”
Julianna walked outside and into the gale. The snow struck her face in a sideways slant, stinging her cheeks raw. She bent her head against the wind and pressed on, one sodden step at a time.
Her boots sank into drifts, her skirts soaked through and dragging at her legs.
The road was half-lost beneath the whiteness, but she knew the way.
She’d crossed the fields to Sedgewick Manor a thousand times over when they’d been children together.
Thomas and Fred running wild through the estate as she followed behind, doing her best to keep up.
The memories struck her differently now. She’d never considered before why Fred had always been with them. Why he’d spent every day he could at Farrow Cottage instead of Sedgewick Manor. His father had died before she was even born, his step-mother had never remarried. He must have been…lonely.
She shook her head, as the wind gusted harder, trying to rid herself of the thought.
She needn’t turn maudlin now. Nor did she need to consider Fred in any light but the current one.
Those years were a long time ago and his life had turned out quite well, hadn’t it?
He had titles and London and enough money to buy anything he might like, including companionship.
Loneliness was not an issue for men like him.
Her shawl whipped loose at the next sudden gust of wind, and she clutched it to her throat, fingers stiff with cold. Almost there.
At last, the looming bulk of Sedgewick Manor emerged, dark and forbidding against the white flurries of snow.
Its windows glimmered faintly with light though.
Someone was home, thank heavens. She’d been afraid Fred had left for London already.
And then she realized that he very well might have and whoever was there wouldn’t know her at all.
No matter. She needed help for Thomas’s sake and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She fixed her gaze on those lights and made her frozen legs move faster. By the time she reached the great doors, her hair was crusted with ice and her fingers numb, but she raised her fist and pounded.
When no one came, she knocked again, louder, until her knuckles were raw beneath her gloves. At last the door creaked open a hair’s breadth, revealing the pale, blinking face of the butler. Her butler. Although, he did not know it yet.
“May I help you, Miss?” the man asked, clearly startled to find her on the doorstep, looking no better, she presumed, than a half-drowned cat.
“Yes,” she said, sweeping past him and into the great hall before he could answer. “Where is Lord Chester?”
The butler’s eyes flitted over her snow-caked hair and the wet hem of her cloak and shawl. “His lordship is not available but if you’d care to wait in the anteroom, I’m certain that—”
“No,” she said. Not unkindly but in no tone that could be argued with. She’d seen his eyes flick backward into the interior of the house.
Fred was here somewhere.
“Fred!” she called, her voice ringing through the vast hall as she made her way further into the house. “Fred!”
“Whatever is that racket?” Fred appeared from the shadows of the corridor—sleeves rolled, hair tousled, dimples in full effect—and stopped short at the sight of her, his throat working as he swallowed.
“Julianna? What happened?” He looked around wildly. “Where’s Thomas? Did he—?”
“He needs the doctor. And somewhere warmer than Farrow Cottage. I can’t—” She inhaled a breath and tried again. “Fred, he’s not going to—”
Her words broke on a sob. The tears she’d been fighting finally spilled out.
She turned away from him, pressing her hand against her mouth to regain her composure.
She hated this. Hated that she’d come, hated that she needed him, hated most of all her urge to go to him and bury her face in his chest.
She shook her head. She had to convince him to go with her back to Farrow Cottage. She had to—
But suddenly, she was wrapped in warmth, as if he’d understood what she needed before she’d spoken the words.
Fred had taken her in his arms and was holding her tightly against himself.
His shirt was warm, his heartbeat steady beneath her cheek.
For one long, ridiculous moment she clung to him, drawing comfort she couldn’t quite help but take.
She let herself breathe him in. The relief of his embrace settled into her bones until she very nearly reached a finger up to press it into the hollow those infernal dimples made in his cheeks.
“Jules,” he murmured, low and rough. “It will be alright, dearheart.”
Jules. It was what he used to call her. Before. The sound of it struck something loose inside her. Before was gone. They only had after now. The sad, awful aftermath of Fred’s choices.
With a gasp she wrenched herself free. Fred’s arms fell away from her at once and he turned away quickly, so she could not see his face. She stood there shaking, furious with herself for noticing him much less needing him. And for missing the warmth she’d just shunned into disappearance.
“Gilbert,” Fred snapped at the butler, whose eyes had gone wide as saucers, “send at once for the doctor. Do not return without him. And for God’s sake, man, show the Countess properly to her rooms. Do not leave her shivering in the anteroom like a scullery girl.”
He seized his overcoat, swung it about his shoulders, and left.
Fred had held her for only a moment. A heartbeat, really.
Yet the feel of her in his arms lingered on his skin like a brand.
He hadn’t realized—hadn’t meant to realize—how much he’d wanted that closeness until she was there, soft and trembling against his chest. The scent of her hair like pine and snow, the brush of it against his jaw, the heat of her cheek against his chest…
He had wanted, Christ help him, to keep her there. To stop the trembling. To shield her from the cold and the storm and whatever else might cause her harm.
And then she’d pulled away.
That should have steadied him, but it didn’t.
It only reminded him why she’d come and made him feel like the monster she’d not so long ago accused him of being.
She wasn’t at Sedgewick Manor for comfort.
Certainly not from him. She was there for Thomas.
Because her brother was sick enough to make her swallow her pride and wade through a snowstorm to ask him, of all people, for help.
And he’d used that moment of vulnerability to touch her. Like a fucking heathen.
It was her tears that had undone him. Made him forget himself and break his promise to Thomas.
Christ, that promise was one of his only tethers to another human being in this world and he couldn’t even keep that sacred.
The realization unsettled him more than the storm howling at his windows all evening had done.