A Rogue in Winter

by Grace Burrowes

  “I apologize for imposing,” Joy said through chattering teeth. “We won’t stay long.” She tried to pull off her gloves, but her fingers were too numb to get a proper grip on the leather. The ribbons of her bonnet were a more hopeless challenge, and even the buttons of her cloak joined the conspiracy to make her look clumsy and witless.

  “Allow me,” the vicar said, stepping close. “The cold is beastly, and we’re only halfway through December. January looms in my nightmares, and February harbors my worst fears.”

  Warm fingers brushed Joy’s chin, and a whiff of cedar tickled her nose. Then she was free of her bonnet. The vicar knew not to simply wrest her millinery away, for he took the trouble to remove Joy’s hatpin first, lift the bonnet off carefully, and replace the hatpin in the crown.

  He was apparently married, not that the future Lady Apollo Bellingham had any business noticing such a detail.

  “Your gloves next?” he asked.

  Joy surrendered to his assistance. “I can’t recall when I’ve been this cold.”

  The vicar hung her bonnet and cloak on pegs. His greatcoat was draped on the next peg over, a garment more sturdy than fashionable. Even in the thin wintry light, Joy could tell that the house was spotless, and somebody—his wife?—had taken the time to hang mistletoe from the crossbeam and cloved oranges in the windows.

  “Give me your hands,” Mr. Sorenson said, holding out his own.

  One obeyed vicars in the general case. Joy proffered hands red with cold. He enfolded them in a warm grasp and simply held her hands.

  “No lap robes in that fancy coach of yours?”

  “I used them for Hiram. He was shivering at one point, and then he wasn’t, and then he was again. Might we go to him?” Though never had Joy appreciated what an animal comfort it could be simply to clasp hands. Perhaps life out near the moor fashioned that awareness, because the vicar seemed entirely comfortable with what in other surrounds would be an astonishing familiarity.

  “Mr. Wentworth is with your brother,” the vicar replied, letting go of Joy’s hands. “We are without a housekeeper at present, but I have assisted in more sickrooms than you can imagine and am an adequate nurse. I don’t suppose you’re hungry?”

  “I will be when I thaw out.”

  “Which might be about March?” He offered Joy a slight, conspiratorial smile as he led her down a corridor of polished oak flooring. The smile made him look impish. That such an otherwise austere countenance on such an imposing fellow could convey mischief came as a surprise.

  Happily married, then.

  Simple drawings were framed on the walls—a collie panting on a doorstep, a vase of painstakingly symmetric tulips, a butterfly on a blossoming branch. His children’s work, no doubt, and a sweet touch for the vicarage’s public areas. Joy thought back to her own fledgling efforts to make art and wondered what had become of her birds and bowls of fruit.

  The study was a larger room than Joy had anticipated. Rather than a cramped lair full of books and newspapers and smelling of pipe smoke, the room might have more properly been called a library. The inside wall was lined with bookcases, while French doors and a pair of floor-to-ceiling windows let in the morning light. A chess set of ivory and ebony sat at a small table along the windows, the armies poised to begin battle.

  A hearth occupied the third wall, and a blazing fire threw out both heat and the sharp tang of peat.

  “Joy.” Hiram croaked her name from a long sofa occupying the fourth wall. “I appear to be somewhat under the weather.”

  Mr. Wentworth draped a green and purple tartan blanket over Hiram’s shoulders. “Ague would be my guess. Can come on quickly and knock a man on his—”

  “Mr. Wentworth.” The vicar spoke pleasantly. “A lady is present.”

  Mr. Wentworth grinned. “I do apologize. I meant to say that flu can knock a man sideways, particularly if a fellow has been dosing himself with an occasional nip. Do you have medicinals, Vicar, or shall I have some sent down from Lynley Vale?”

  “A vicarage always has medical stores on hand. Mr. Danforth, how are you feeling?”

  “About ninety years old and ready for a nap. I do apologize. Not the done thing to impose on strangers.” He shivered and huddled into his blanket. “Should have dressed more warmly, I suppose.”

  Hiram should have left the brandy alone, at the very least. Joy would point that out to him when she and her brother had some privacy.

  Mr. Sorenson knelt to pull off Hiram’s boots. “I’m not sure clothing exists sufficient to take the teeth from a Yorkshire winter wind. Other foot.”

  “Are they ruined?” Hiram asked.

  “Not nearly,” Mr. Wentworth replied. “But they aren’t very practical for this weather either. Hoby?”

  Hiram nodded. “I treasure those boots. May never see their like again.”

  When I am Lady Apollo Bellingham, my brother will have new boots. Warm, practical, and stylish.

  “Mr. Wentworth,” the vicar said, “perhaps you could keep an eye out for our soup? The sooner we get our guests warm, the better. I will find some decent stockings for Mr. Danforth. Miss Danforth, do have a seat. The appointments are modest, but at your disposal. If you need to pen a note to somebody, the desk has writing supplies.”

  Joy sank into the seat behind a desk angled to take advantage of the natural light, though the chair dwarfed her. The vicar extracted another plaid blanket from a chest before the sofa and draped cedar-scented wool around Joy’s shoulders.

  “I’ll be back in a moment. Please try not to fret, you two. Traveling in winter invariably meets with frustrations.”

  Then he was gone, leaving Joy swaddled in warmth and before a crackling fire, while her feet and fingers itched back to life.

  “Sorry about this, Joy,” Hiram said, patting his pockets and producing a flask. “Not much of an escort, am I?” He tipped the flask up, and shook a few drops into his mouth. “A vicarage. Whatever did I do to deserve the charity of a vicarage?”

  He’d literally drunk himself into a snow drift. “You weren’t given any choice.” Mama and Papa had insisted that Hiram see Joy to the Bellingham family seat in person, because every opportunity for Hiram to gain the notice of his prospective brother-in-law must be exploited.

  “Bedamned Yorkshire,” Hiram said on a sigh. “You couldn’t catch the eye of an earl’s heir in Kent, could you? Had to be Yorkshire. I suppose it could be worse. Could have been some Hebridean chieftain whose heir took a fancy to you.”

  “Mama would have drawn the line at the Hebrides.” Joy hoped. The Highlands were a fashionable walking destination, while the islands lacked social cachet.

  Hiram’s gaze landed on his once-beautiful, muddy, water-stained boots. “If that Hebridean chieftain had money, we’d be rowing out to his island at this moment. Bellingham must be sorely smitten with you, Joy.”

  “Need you sound so puzzled? I’m not awful.”

  Hiram’s assessing gaze said she also wasn’t the stuff a marquess’s spare typically dreamed of, much less courted. “Treat your intended to that tone of voice, my girl, and he will row himself out to sea. Bellingham is quite a catch, and you are nearly at your last prayers. You know what Cunningham says.”

  Elvira Cunningham, Joy’s erstwhile finishing governess, had aphorisms for every occasion. “The approach to spinsterhood,” Joy quoted, “is like hacking out on a seasoned mount. The closer you come to your destination, the faster the journey goes. I am eight-and-twenty, Hiram. I do not need a finishing governess to explain my situation to me.” Nine-and-twenty loomed just around the corner, in fact.

  And a tired, nasty, honest part of Joy wanted to add that if Miss Cunningham had been as highly qualified as she’d believed herself to be, Joy’s three London Seasons would have yielded matrimonial fruit rather than nothing more than aching feet, and a lot of bills from the milliners, modistes, and tailors.

  “You need Apollo Bellingham’s ring on your finger. Perhaps you could journey on witho
ut me?”

  “Perhaps fever has rendered you delirious. Get well, and we’ll be on our way. We can blame the delay on the weather, which is, indirectly, the truth.”

  Hiram looked like he wanted to argue—university had turned a sweet boy somewhat self-important—but the vicar returned, bearing a bundle of clothing and blankets.

  “Until I have the fires going in the bedrooms, we’d best make you comfortable here, Mr. Danforth. This is my favorite room in the house. Small enough to be easily heated, and the view makes it peaceful too.”

  The view was a bleak expanse of snow, dotted with bare birches and aspens in the folds of the rolling countryside. An ancient manor peeked up from behind the nearest hill, and a walled orchard topped another.

  “You don’t find this view desolate?” Joy asked.

  “Desolate?” Mr. Sorenson passed Hiram a pair of thick, knitted stockings. “My gracious, how could it be desolate? Open that window, and you’ll hear the local children setting up a racket as they skate along the river. The orchard is sleeping now, but in a few months, the top of that hill will be literally awash in blooms. We have daffodils without number if you know where to look, and nothing in all of creation compares to the joy of watching spring lambs enjoy the fresh air.”

  As if to emphasize the vicar’s words, a trio of robins fluttered onto a bird feeder set on a pole beyond the windows.

  “You feed the birds?”

  “The robins sing for us, even in winter. I am happy to reward their generosity.”

  Mr. Wentworth returned, bearing a wooden tray laden with a heavy crock swaddled in toweling. The vicar ladled out two bowls of steaming beef barley soup, laid a slab of generously buttered bread on the edge of each bowl, and reswaddled the crock.

  “Enjoy,” he said. “I’ll see about getting the fires going in the bedrooms.”

  “We don’t want to put you to any trouble,” Joy said. “You have been more than kind.” The scent of the soup was heavenly, and Hiram had already started in on his. No grace and no thanks for the food suggested he was feeling worse than he let on.

  “To have some company on a chilly morning is my pleasure.” The vicar bowed slightly and withdrew, and Mr. Wentworth followed in his wake.

  “Will you write to Mama?” Hiram said, dunking his bread into the soup. “This feels good on my throat. Best eat it while it’s hot, Joy.”

  Joy took a spoonful of hearty, tasty soup that had just the right amount of salt. “We should be on our way in another hour. I see no need to inform Mama of a slight delay. She would worry.” And she would interrogate Joy.

  Who is this Mr. Pietr Sorenson? Who are his people? Do we know them?

  Which was Mama-ese for, Do his people have money?

  At the moment, Joy did not particularly care who had money or who had titled relatives. Pietr Sorenson was kind and practical, and sometimes, that was worth more than all the money and titles in creation.

  Chapter Two

  “I know how to light a coal fire,” Ned Wentworth said, watching as Pietr used a lit taper to start the fire in the first guest bedroom. “I’m not familiar with the dirt you burn out here in the provinces.”

  “Peat is cheap, plentiful, and fragrant,” Pietr replied, rising. “But we generally start a coal fire first and add the peat later.” And in his opinion, if fire was wanted, then somehow, Ned Wentworth would figure out how to get one started. All the London tailoring in the world did not disguise how carefully he watched as Pietr stacked kindling over coals and a crumbly square of dried peat, then lit the kindling—early drafts of sermons—in three places.

  “Miss Danforth has never lit a peat fire in her life,” Ned said. “I can tell you that.”

  Though Ned Wentworth was only a few years older than Mr. Danforth, he apparently carried a great deal of responsibility and handled vast sums of money. Something about Ned worried Pietr, though, a subtle self-possession as vast and unyielding as the frigid moor.

  Ned Wentworth was too young, and living too comfortable a life, to carry such coldness in his soul, but then, he was a Wentworth, whether he admitted it or not. Unfortunate experiences in earlier years had left their marks on that family.

  “Miss Danforth is fashionably attired,” Pietr said. “We don’t see much fashion in the village, save for what our ducal neighbors display in the churchyard.” Though neither the Wentworths nor the Rothmeres were prone to ostentation.

  “Her brother should never have allowed her to set foot in that coach without a muff, scarf, hooded cloak, and decent boots. You will have two patients on your hands by nightfall. You could send them up to Lynley Vale.”

  The fire caught, and sparks crackled up the flue. The room would take hours to heat properly, but then the fieldstones of the old hearth would take in the warmth and radiate it out through the long, dark night.

  “I am the vicar,” Pietr said, a statement that had been a self-directed homily when he’d first come to this village. “Being a good Samaritan goes with the job, and if Mr. Danforth is contagious, he should stay put.”

  Wentworth ran a hand over a quilt folded at the foot of the bed, one Pietr’s sister had sent along with him to Yorkshire all those years ago. The central theme was a pair of turtle doves wreathed in flowers and greenery.

  What Clara lacked in subtlety, she made up for in exquisite needlework.

  Wentworth left off smoothing the quilt. “One can be too virtuous, Sorenson. See that you don’t come down with the ague yourself. I have the sense your little flock would soon fall to dicing and profanity if anything happened to you.”

  “Gracious heavens, not profanity. My holy ears would fall off. Dicing would give my blessed spleen palpitations.”

  “Your parishioners were ready to toss Danforth right back into his coach and consign him and his sister to the moors.”

  That bothered Wentworth, and bothered Pietr too. Time to preach about entertaining angels unawares again.

  “Miss Danforth would have prevented that,” Pietr said. She was small and sturdy, and despite her elegant attire, Pietr would have backed her in a fair verbal fight with Mrs. Blackwell any day. “Miss Danforth would have commanded a private dining room for the nonce and eventually shamed Blackwell into finding them a room. She is protective of her brother.”

  She should be in that private dining room, enjoying more impressive fare than bread and soup. Instead, she was in Pietr’s study, probably wondering why a country vicar read salacious French novels and filthy Latin poetry.

  “She’ll expect you to wait on her,” Wentworth replied, heading for the door. “What sort of woman dresses for Almack’s when she’s crossing the moor in December?”

  “What sort of man comes to Yorkshire in December without knowing his way around a peat fire?”

  Wentworth laughed as he reached the top of the steps. “Touché, Sorenson. Shall I take the dishes back to the inn for you?”

  “Certainly not. Mrs. Blackwell will send her best spy, who will ask to sit for a bit in the kitchen to get warm—it being approximately fourteen miles across the green—and the lad will carry a detailed report back to his commanding officer.”

  “They watch you that closely? I would not enjoy that.”

  “You watch the Wentworths that closely. When one cares, one pays attention.” Would Pietr’s successor take that approach to leading the village flock? Or would the bishop send out some old relic who bleated on about damnation and fallenness? The congregation would lap up that sort of scold, as they seldom did Pietr’s little maunderings on loving thy neighbor and casting out the beam from thine own eye first.

  His Grace of Rothhaven had authority over the vicarage’s living, and he would not suffer a fool or a windbag to take Pietr’s place. Nor would Her Grace, for that matter.

  “I’d best pay attention to my errands,” Wentworth said when they’d reached the bottom of the steps. “I will report that the patient is resting comfortably and expected to make a full recovery.”

  Pietr held
his coat for him, then passed him hat, gloves, and scarf. “You will want to be expeditious about your errands, Mr. Wentworth. The snow is merely flirting with us now, but by this afternoon, we could well be in the midst of serious weather.”

  Wentworth peered out the window beside the door. “How can you tell?”

  A feeling in the bones, which were not exactly young bones anymore. “We can see the sky here, unlike your situation in London once the coal fires start roaring. We can see the clouds, feel the wind. Yesterday, we had the sort of high, wispy mares’ tail clouds that make for a spectacular sunset. This morning we rose to more of a quilted sky, and that presages greater mischief. Don’t dawdle in the village, no matter how much you dread returning to Lynley Vale.”

  Mr. Wentworth buttoned up and tossed his scarf around his shoulders. “I don’t dread it so much as I feel as if I’m visiting a foreign country full of addled citizens. Holiday decorations, singing footmen, mistletoe dangling from every chandelier. No restraint whatsoever. The duke is the worst of the lot, calling the children elves and making up silly lyrics for the carols.”

  “How dreadful,” Pietr said, redraping Mr. Wentworth’s scarf so it would provide some protection for his ears and chin. “Be wary, sir, lest the high spirits take you captive. Next thing you know, you will join in for a chorus or two of ‘Good King When Does This Song Ever End,’ and civilization will cease to exist. Stand firm against the temptation to holiday merriment, Mr. Wentworth. The curmudgeons of rural Yorkshire are counting on you.”

  “The duke calls it that—‘Good King When Does This Song Ever End.’”

  “Where do you think he heard it first?” Pietr lifted the door latch. “On your way, and be mindful of Blackwell’s winter ale. The stuff is brewed for Yorkshiremen—and for our womenfolk.”

  Mr. Wentworth departed on a gust of stinging cold air. Pietr said a quick prayer of the secular sort that Ned would find his way safely back to Lynley Vale, but then, Ned Wentworth had the air of a man who’d weathered many storms.