and got on with all that needs doing.’
Chloe sniffed a very expressive sniff of reproach, yet something else lurked behind her coolly composed look. The thought of what Virginia would make of them standing here like a pair of star-crossed lovers unwilling to say goodnight hung unspoken in the air between them and made him flinch.
His beloved but infuriating great-aunt would be planning their wedding before one more late and reluctant January dawn had passed. Virginia usually opposed misalliances and a viscount and a housekeeper were one of those many times over, but something told him she would have been delighted if they ever found the courage to defy convention and wed. So what did Virginia know about the woman he didn’t?
‘I am going to sit with my beloved late employer and friend and you are going to sleep, my lord, and that is all,’ Chloe said sternly and he let her lead the way while he struggled with puzzlement and weariness and did as he was bid for once in his life.
* * *
The next morning was bright and frosty with a sky as clear and delicate a blue as the flower of a mountain harebell. Chloe finished drying her hair by the fire Lord Farenze had ordered to be lit in her room and told herself she hadn’t really needed the bath he ordered after she spent half the night nodding in a comfortable chair in the late viscountess’s bedchamber. Even so, it felt good to be clean and new vitality sparked through her along with the crackle of electricity in her heavy auburn hair. She really ought to have it cut, but it had been easier and cheaper to let it grow so ridiculously long she could sit on it when it hung down her back.
It seemed wrong she should feel vital and alive, today of all days, and she looked at the frosty scene outside the window and let herself be sad Virginia wasn’t here to see the rolling hillsides wrapped in sparkling crystal, or the dark bare branches of the trees in the wood that couldn’t quite hide the brave snowdrops flowering in the sheltered hollows. She almost heard the words as if Virginia put them straight in her heart.
Don’t mourn me, Chloe; after sixteen years without my love we’ll never be apart again.
If she took that last piece of advice she could glory in the morning and forget the future until the funeral was over and the will read. Impatient of the last damp strand of hair, she wound it into the heavy knot she usually confined it to, but left out some of the pins that would have screwed it back from her face and made it possible to wear the all-enveloping housekeeper’s bonnet she’d bought herself behind Virginia’s back.
Today she’d restricted herself to the frivolous piece of lawn and lace her late mistress had reluctantly allowed became a companion and let herself be the girl who shared Virginia’s lonelier years again. She recalled her employer saying she wanted bright faces about her, not a death’s head got up to fright babies when Verity took one look at her mama in her first all-enveloping cap and burst into tears.
Mrs Winterley would send her a hard-eyed glare for being a housekeeper got up as a lady today, but Chloe owed Virginia one last glimpse of the light-hearted girl she would have had her be, if she could spoil her and Verity as she wanted. There would be little enough cause to be anyone but her mature and sensible self once she took a post in another household.
She tiptoed down the secondary staircase the architect ordered for less important visitors lodged in her corridor of this grand house and wondered who she was being quiet for. Lord Farenze was up and being his usual lordly self, Miss Eve Winterley was downstairs and Verity had begged to be allowed an early morning ride with the grooms, before anyone else was awake to forbid it on this solemn day.
‘Mr Filkin says horses need exercise whatever the day brings and I might as well help with the ponies as lie a-bed fretting,’ she reported when she came in to ask if she could go and change into her habit.
‘Be sure to come back by the nursery stairs though, love. I doubt his lordship’s stepmama would approve of you careering about the countryside today.’
‘She’s an old misery and his lordship won’t listen to her,’ Verity claimed confidently and Chloe wondered how Luke Winterley had made such a favourable impression on her daughter in such a short time.
She felt beleaguered; the indoor staff adored him; the stable boys and grooms were always full of tales about his horsemanship and now Verity appeared very ready to admire him as well. He sounded as if he’d been reckless and outrageously lucky to live through most of the incidents she’d heard related and she frowned and wondered what manner of man he’d be now if he hadn’t made such a disastrous early marriage. A happy one, she decided gloomily.
She snatched up the old cloak she kept in the flower room and stepped out into the winter sunshine to escape the house and her duties for a few precious moments. How unworthy of her to find the idea of Lord Farenze happily wed and content with his wife depressing, rather than wishing him better luck next time.
‘Dratted man,’ she muttered under her breath as she marched towards the Winter Garden. ‘Why does he have to disturb me so deeply?’ she asked the statue of some god among the frost-rimed box and the few brave winter flowers hiding their heads under frozen leaves this morning. ‘For years he pretends I don’t exist, now he’s back and I’m wasting time dreaming about him all over again.’
The statue stared into the parkland as if silently slumbering winter trees made more sense than she did and Chloe suppressed a childish urge to kick him.
‘Men!’ she informed it, glad nobody could hear her. ‘You vex women with your ridiculous arguments, pretend logic and stupid longings, then you swat us aside like annoying insects and walk away. How the devil does the contrary great idiot expect me to carry on as if nothing happened now? Does he think we can act as if he never saw me sitting in that bed staring at him like a besotted schoolgirl or came to rescue me from my nightmares? Oh, I’m sorry, you’re a man, aren’t you? Or at least you would be if you were real. Then you’d huff and puff like the rest of them and drive us all mad before you stamped off to roam about the country shooting innocent animals or riding your poor horses into the ground until you felt better.’
‘He might do, if he wasn’t made of stone,’ Luke Winterley’s deep voice said from far too close for comfort and Chloe refused to turn round and blush at being caught talking to a piece of stone. ‘Otherwise you would probably be quite right, of course.’
‘You should still be asleep,’ she told him crossly.
‘Lucky I’m not then, for this would be the oddest dream I’ve ever had,’ he told her with a lazy grin.
She wanted to walk into his arms and kiss him good morning so badly she had to swing away and march down the nearest path away from him to stop herself doing exactly that.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, following and putting out a hand to prevent her walking straight into a sacking-shrouded potted plant the gardeners had wrapped up for winter.
‘I’m counting to a hundred,’ she told him between clenched teeth.
‘Isn’t it supposed to be ten?’
‘With you ten is never enough.’
‘Oh dear, that bad, am I?’
‘Worse,’ she bit out.
She would not turn round at the warm rumble of his laughter; refused to feel warmed and soothed into good humour because she’d amused him at this saddest of times. Half of her might want to be in his arms so badly she could almost feel his warmth and strength wrapping her up again;
