rich and extremely dull husband, Augusta had emerged from mourning and scandalised all and sundry by declaring that she was devoting herself to gardening, painting—very badly, as it turned out—and rural seclusion.
At the age of five and twenty Decima, in disgrace for failing to please when paraded in frilly pink muslin before a depressing dowager and her equally depressing and chinless son, was sent to rusticate in Norfolk. The cousins formed an instant attachment and she was allowed to stay there.
‘Out of sight and out of mind,’ she had said hopefully at the time. Although not, it had proved, completely out of mind. She suspected that Charlton and her various aunts made notes at regular intervals upon their calendars that read ‘Marry Off Poor Dear Dessy’, and took it in turns to summon her to stay while they produced yet another hapless bachelor or widower for her. And always, meekly and spinelessly, she had gone along with their schemes, knowing each and every one was doomed to failure. And each and every one left another scar on her confidence and her happiness.
Enough was enough, she had decided while helping Pru fold garments into her travelling trunk. Why it had taken until breakfast this morning for the penny to drop and for her to realise that, by coming into control of her inheritance, she had also come into not just the ability but the right to control her own life, she did not know. It was part and parcel of the passivity she had shown in the face of her family’s constant reminders of what a disappointment she was to them. Of course, the kinder of them agreed, she not could actually help it. She was a sweet girl, but what, with her disadvantages, could one expect?
Decima bit her lip. If she looked critically at her life since she was seventeen she could see it as a series of evasions, of passive resistance aimed at stopping people doing things to her. Well, now it was time to start being positive. Just as soon as she had decided what it was she wanted to be positive about—that was the first thing.
She certainly had much to learn about taking control of her life. Why, it had just taken three months, since her twenty-seventh birthday, for her to realise that the fortune, which she had always known she possessed, was the key to more than financial independence. Charlton had been very cunning, giving her a generous allowance that more than covered her needs and her occasional fancies—nothing to rebel against there, no reason to grasp the prospect of access to her entire capital with desperation.
After today, Decima decided, she would leave immediately on each and every occasion in the future when her relatives tried to matchmake. If she was not there to hear them, what did it matter how much they lamented her shortcomings?
She was reviewing this resolution, and deciding that it was an admirable one for New Year, when Pru exclaimed, ‘Look at this weather, Miss Dessy! This is taking an age—we only passed that dreadful ale-house, the Red Cock, twenty minutes ago.’
Startled out of her reverie, Decima focused on the view. It was indeed alarming. Although it was only about two in the afternoon, the light was heavy and gloomy as it fought its way through the swirling snowflakes. Great mounds of snow hid the line of roadside hedges, the verges were an expanse of unbroken white and the trees, which at this point formed a little coppice, were already bending under their burden.
‘Oh, bother.’ She scrubbed at the glass, which had clouded with her warm breath. ‘I thought we would make Oakham for a late luncheon quite easily, now we will be lucky to arrive there for supper. I suppose we will have to stay at the Sun in Splendour overnight.’
‘It’s a good inn,’ the maid remarked. ‘It will be no pain to stay there, and in this weather I don’t expect there’ll be that many folks out on the roads. You should get a nice private parlour with no trouble.’ She sneezed violently and disappeared into a vast handkerchief.
The prospect of a roaring fire, an excellent supper and the Sun’s renowned feather beds was appealing. And there would be no one to nag her. She could kick off her shoes, drink hot chocolate curled up in a chair with a really frivolous novel and go to bed when she felt like it. Decima contemplated this plan with some smugness until the carriage came to a sudden halt.
‘Now what?’ She lowered the window and leaned out, receiving a face full of snowflakes. ‘Why have we stopped?’ Through the snow she could just make out that they had halted at a crossroads and that another vehicle, a curricle and pair by the look of it, had stopped on the road that intersected with theirs.
One of the postilions swung down from his horse and made heavy weather of stamping back through the snow to the door. ‘Can’t go no further, miss. The snow’s too deep, drifting right across the road. Look.’
‘Then we’ll have to go round.’ The snow was blowing down her neck now and she pulled the velvet collar of her pelisse tighter.
‘Round where, miss?’ the man asked bluntly. ‘This isn’t just some little local shower, it’s a regular blizzard—I’ll wager it’s this bad right across the Midlands. Only thing to be done is to go back to the Cock—the horses won’t manage to get further than that, not until this lets up. There’s nowhere else for five miles.’
‘The Cock?’ Decima stared at him, horrified, the vision of the Sun’s snug private parlour dissolving like a snowball in a muddy puddle, into an image of the squalid alehouse. ‘That is out of the question. They have no bedchambers, let alone a private parlour, and we could be stranded there for days, in goodness knows what company.’
The man shrugged. ‘Not much option, miss. We’d better be getting back now, before the place fills up with other travellers in a like fix.’
‘Might I be of assistance?’ The man’s voice reached them clearly, despite the snow, and Decima strained to make out the speaker through the thickening whiteness. The voice sounded reassuringly deep and pleasant, but as the figure loomed up she gasped. It was a giant.
Then he came nearer, wading through the drifts, and she realised that he was simply a particularly tall gentleman wearing a many-caped driving coat and low-crowned hat.
‘Ma’am.’ He doffed the hat, revealing dark hair that instantly became spangled with white, and came right up to the carriage. ‘I suspect, like me, you have come to the conclusion that the road ahead is impassable for carriages.’
‘Indeed, sir. My postilion is convinced that the only shelter is the alehouse back a mile or so, but—’
‘But that is quite unsuitable for a lady, I could not agree more.’ What Decima could see of him was reassuring. A formidable breadth of shoulder, a pair of level grey-green eyes, a determined chin and a mouth that, although serious now, seemed ready to smile. And he agreed with her, a definite point in his favour in a world of men who all seemed determined to point out to her that she was just a foolish woman.
‘Yet there seems no alternative, unless you know of some more reputable hostelry in the vicinity, sir.’
Adam dug beneath his greatcoat and found his card case. What a lady with only a maid as companion would make of his proposal, goodness knows, but as her alternatives were to be snowed up in a flea-ridden drinking den or to freeze to death in her carriage, he suspected that all but the most straitlaced would agree.
‘My card, ma’am.’ She took it and studied it, giving him an opportunity to study her. Large, wide-set grey eyes, now masked by thick lashes as she read; brown hair peeping from beneath a stylish green velvet bonnet; a generously wide mouth, set in serious lines, and a wild sprinkling of freckles all across her nose and cheeks.
Her maid began to sneeze violently and she glanced across, a slight frown between her brows. ‘Bless you, Pru.’ She turned back to
