a direct result of his rescue of her. A rescue that must surely satisfy every longing for adventure she had ever felt.
A longing she would never feel again, Anne vowed. She saw, thankfully only in memory now, the face of the man with the torch, missing tooth revealed by that ghastly, leering smile, and she shivered. And if it hadn’t been for Ian…
For Mr. Sinclair, she corrected. It would not do to presume, even in her thoughts, which had centered, almost exclusively, throughout these long days and nights, around her guardian. And some of those thoughts—
There was a discreet knock on the door, and Anne scrambled off the high bed across which she had been sprawled in unladylike abandon. She straightened her dress and then her hair, tucking in tendrils before she hurried across the room. She even bit her lips and pinched her cheeks to give them some color.
It was not until she was halfway to the door that she realized this visitor could not possibly be her guardian. And she couldn’t imagine for whomever else in this household she might be concerned about her looks. The acknowledgment that she would wish to appear attractive before Ian Sinclair was a clear affirmation that she had spent too much time daydreaming about him in the last few days, she told herself sternly.
She opened the door and was confronted by the disapproving features of Mrs. Martin, the Sinclair family housekeeper. Unfamiliar with the protocol governing the servants in such a large house, Anne wasn’t sure if she should invite the woman in or converse with her standing in the hall.
“Mr. Sinclair wishes to see you, miss. Mind you now, no matter what he says, I won’t have you tiring him out,” the housekeeper warned. “Ten minutes and no more. You understand?”
“Has he been so very ill?” Anne asked, the fear she had lived with through these lonely days rising to block her throat.
“Mr. Sinclair allows no discussion of his health. Those of us who wish to keep our positions in his household learned that long ago. Something for you to remember,” Mrs. Martin added.
The housekeeper turned and bustled forward with an important jingle of keys, passing door after door along the long hallway. Anne followed, wondering exactly what her warning had been meant to convey. That if Anne mentioned Mr. Sinclair’s health, she would be sent back to Fenton School?
An idle threat, considering that during the past week she had pined for its safe familiarity. She regretted the thought as soon as it formed. Whatever Mrs. Martin meant, Mr. Sinclair had risked his life to save hers. And at last, it seemed she would have the opportunity to tell him how grateful she was.
Finally the housekeeper stopped before one of the doors. She leaned her ear against it for a moment before she straightened and knocked.
“Come in,” someone instructed.
Anne couldn’t tell if it had been her guardian’s voice, but she wasn’t given much time to wonder. Mrs. Martin opened the door and indicated with her hand that Anne should step inside.
Only when she had did Anne realize that the housekeeper wasn’t coming in with her. She started to protest, just as the housekeeper stepped away from the door she had opened and started down the hall. Anne drew a fortifying breath and then looked back toward the room she had just entered.
Ian Sinclair was seated in a comfortable chair before the cheerful fire. He was fully dressed, as elegant as the first time she had seen him. Expecting an invalid, perhaps even a dying one, Anne could not have been more surprised had she entered the room and found one of the men who had attacked them that night holding court.
“I understand you have been ill,” she said, walking forward.
There was a small, uncomfortable silence.
“And I wonder who told you that?” her guardian asked.
He sounded as if he really wanted to know. Remembering Mrs. Martin’s warning, Anne understood why. And despite the servants’ coldness, she had no wish to get any of them into trouble.
“After several years of looking after the younger girls, my powers of deduction are well-honed,” she said. “You disappeared the night we arrived, and I haven’t seen you since. In that time, both a physician and your brother have come to the house, the former on several occasions and the latter for a visit of some days. It seemed rather obvious.”
“I’m sure none of your charges were ever able to put anything over on you,” Mr. Sinclair said, laughing.
And then his laughter became hard coughing. Lucy Bates had died last year of such a cough. Of course, Lucy had never been very strong to begin with, Anne reminded herself, remembering the fragile little girl, whose arms and legs had been more like sticks than like the sturdy, rounded limbs of most of her girls.
And just because something terrible had happened to Lucy Bates didn’t mean anything terrible would happen to Mr. Sinclair. She could not, however, control the surge of anxiety as she listened to the deep congestion the cough revealed.
“Are you all right?” she asked finally as it faded.
“Of course,” he said.
His hand was pressed against the center of his chest. However, since Mr. Sinclair preferred it, Anne gave in to the pretense that what had just happened had not happened and that he had not really been very ill at all.
“I have wanted to thank you since that night,” she began, determined to say all the things she should have said then and had not had the chance to say since.
“I truly wish you would not.”
“I owe you my life, Mr. Sinclair. Or at least…”
She almost said my virtue, but then thought that the expression of that reality might be improper. Although she had had a sheltered upbringing, there had been no doubt in her mind about the kind of danger she had faced.
“You owe me nothing of the kind,” he said into her pause. “Quite the reverse, I believe. If you hadn’t taken a hand, the outcome might have been very different. You had an uncomfortable journey and a dangerous encounter with a couple of rogues you should never have been exposed to. On top of that you have spent a lonely holiday in a house full of strangers. I can only promise you that was not my intent and apologize profusely.”
“I am not to express my gratitude for your rescue, and yet you may apologize for a series of things that were not your fault and were undoubtedly beyond your control?”
“As your guardian, I should never have put you in the position of having to be rescued, either from rogues or a broken axle or a snowstorm.”
“And if you had not, I should probably never in my life have seen the outside of Fenton School,” she retorted.
“I take it, then,” he said, smiling at her, genuinely relieved, she realized, “that your experiences have not all been unpleasant.”
The memory of her arms wrapped around his body while they knelt together in the snow brushed through her mind. She supposed that was not the kind of experience Mr. Sinclair meant.
“Indeed they have not. Your home is very lovely.”
“And the servants have seen to your needs?”
Except
