Ah, so now it was a little bit his fault after all. Despite the cold, he felt the corners of his lips pull into a smile. This was the Nora he recognized.
“I suppose,” he said, “because I rather fancied the idea of kissing you in the snow. With scarcely any clothes on.”
“We’ve always had a connection. Haven’t we?”
He nodded.
“We could have been good together. Tell me you felt that, too.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“I knew it couldn’t have been just my imagination. At least I’ll go to my grave knowing I was right on that score.”
A violent shudder went through her, and then the shivering ceased. That couldn’t be good.
The tips of his ears had gone numb, and frost stung at his nose and lips. He pulled her head tight to his chest and buried his face in her hair.
“Be calm,” he whispered.
“I can’t be calm. We have to do something.” She perked with a sudden surge of energy. “I’m not going to go easily.”
No, my darling. You never would.
“We were always best at solving problems as a team.” She turned to investigate the window and its frame. “Of course the hinges would be inside. We can’t remove it altogether.”
“And it’s too high for me to try battering it in. If I had an axe, I could break through.” He pushed at the seam of the two wooden panels, testing the latch. “If we could manage a slender lever of some sort, perhaps we could ease it through the gap and lift the hook.”
She tugged at his sleeve. “My c-corset. There’s a whalebone busk down the center, just here.”
She drew a line from the midpoint of her sternum to her navel, tracing the shape of a narrow bar.
He framed her rib cage in his hands, running a thumb down the inch-wide spur of whalebone. “That just might do the trick. We only have to get it out.”
He curled his fingers under the two cups of her corset and pulled them in opposite directions.
“You mean to rip it in half?”
“I’ll have it in a moment.” He braced his feet, took a stronger grip, and tried again. “This stitching . . . is remarkably . . . strong.” He let go and stood back, breathing hard. “How do pirates manage their plundering?”
She giggled. “I don’t know about pirates, but I know seamstresses sew these with a little p-pocket.” She guided his fingers to the valley between her breasts. “Just here. To slide the busk in and out.”
His fingers took hold of the pale, thin divider, and out it slid. “Ah. I see. That does make more sense.”
“I would have thought you’d know your way around a lady’s undergarments.”
Dash shook his head. There wasn’t time to discuss this now. Nor was there time to contemplate the exquisite softness of her breasts.
“I’ll boost you.” Lunging one boot forward, he made his knee into a stepstool. “Like so. You’ll have to wedge the shutters apart with your shoulder and sneak the busk through.”
“I know.” Her teeth chattered.
“Are your hands warm? Because if you bobble that thing and drop it inside before the shutter’s unlatched, we’re finished.”
“I know. But I’m not getting any warmer.”
Dash wasn’t convinced. He took the busk from her shaking grip and caught it in his teeth. Then he yanked up the hem of his shirt and pulled her chilled hands flat against his abdomen before drawing their two bodies close.
God above. It was a good thing he had something to bite down on. The shock of her icy hands against his torso was torture.
But soon, they began to warm. To soften. She rubbed up and down, tracing the ridges of his tensed abdominal muscles with her fingertips.
Those wicked fingertips, each filled with a woman’s worth of passion.
This was torture of a different kind.
“I’m ready,” she said. “I think that’s enough.”
No, no. That wasn’t nearly enough. He wanted those hands on him everywhere.
But first, he wanted to get inside.
“Just keep steady,” she said, bracing one hand on his shoulder in preparation. “If I’m halfway through this little operation and you falter, the shutter will smash my fingers right off.”
“And you’d never hold a quill again. That would be a shame.”
She gave him a horrified look.
“I’m only joking. Nora. Nora.” He reached for her in the dark. “I swear to you. I’ll never hurt you again.”
He touched her cheek, and was appalled by its icy pallor.
“Let’s continue this conversation inside. On three, now. One, two—”
She stepped on his knee, and he pushed her plump little backside up onto his shoulder. Then he did his best impression of a stone gargoyle whilst she wiggled the sliver of whalebone through the shutters’ gap.
“Any progress?” he grated out. The muscles in his shoulders were knotting.
“Almost have it,” she said, her voice dreamy. “It’s moving.”
Dash gritted his teeth against the pain and dug his heels into the snow. “Take your time.”
With a creak, the shutter gave way, spilling a square of yellow light onto the snow.
“Brilliant,” he said, gathering one arm around her knees and putting his hand under her backside. “Now I’ll boost you up and through.”
She glanced down at him. “Promise you won’t look up my shift.”
“It’s freezing. We’re in danger of dying of hypothermia. Stealing a glance up your shift is the last thing on my mind.”
She made a sound that communicated doubt.
Well-founded doubt, Dash had to admit. Even though it was true that the two of them were in danger of freezing to death, stealing a glance up her shift was not the last thing on his mind.
It wasn’t even near the last.
It might even be among the top three or four things on his mind, were they ranked.
After all, it sounded like a nice way to die. A little glimpse of heaven before the lights dimmed.
Nevertheless, he marshaled what remained of his gentlemanly reserve to rebuff the temptation.
One more growl and flex from him, and she was halfway through.
“Slowly now,” he warned as she eased her knee over the window’s edge. But the wind and cold stole his words. He didn’t hear her respond.
In fact, he didn’t hear anything . . .
Until a dull, heart-stopping thud.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Griff pulled his gelding to a halt at a crossroads. Colin, Bram, and Thorne did the same, clustering around him for direction.
It had to be well past midnight, or so Griff assumed. He wasn’t sufficiently curious to unfreeze his fingers from their clutch around the reins and go fishing his pockets for a timepiece.
It didn’t matter how late it was. It was dark and cold, and the horses were trudging more and more slowly through the snow. And despite a thorough survey of the past twenty miles, they yet hadn’t found any sign of the stagecoach or Miss Browning.
“The coach would be coming from that way.” He nodded in the direction of the east fork. “We’ll continue to follow the route in reverse, stopping in at each turnpike, inn, and tavern to inquire after them. Either their progress is slow, or they stopped somewhere to wait out the rain.”
“Snow,” Thorne corrected, brushing a fresh dust of flakes from his sleeve.
“To wait out the snow, then. Right.”
Griff jammed the brim of his hat down over his eyes, trying to shield himself from worry. Neither rain nor snow was foreign to Sussex roads. The drivers and teams managed to keep their schedules in inclement weather all the time. If everyone in England stayed home for a spot of rain or snow, no one would ever go anywhere.
“Let’s be on our way, then.”
“Wait,” Colin said. “I think we need a name.”
“A name?”
“A name. You know, for our group. We might as well be a cricket team or a crime gang, so long as we’re wearing these.” He indicated the poorly knitted, violet-and-green-striped muffler about his neck.
The mufflers were a gift of Griff’s mother, the Dowager Duchess of Halford. The woman was a menace to yarn.
“We don’t need a name,” Bram said.
“No, we don’t need one,” Colin said. “But it would make this little outing immeasurably more entertaining.”
Griff nudged his horse into motion.
Colin was, as ever, undeterred. “How about the Sons of Debauchery?” he suggested, his voice carrying over the wind. “Or the Lost Lords. The Fallen Fellows? The Hellraisers. Oh, I know. The Duke and His Dissolutes.”
Griff shook his head. The Duke and His Dissolutes? That last was a bit too close to describing his old life. Before Pauline, he’d surrounded himself with the worst sorts of reprobates. Colin Sandhurst among them.
Was it any wonder she’d doubted him when he’d refused to name his mysterious friend?
“We don’t need a name,” he repeated.
“A musical theme, at least?”
“No.”
This answer came from Griff, Bram, and Thorne in unison.
Colin harrumphed. “I’m telling you, you lot have no sense of adventure.”
They stopped and dismounted to let the horses drink. The layer of ice glazing this creek was the thickest they’d encountered yet.
“Don’t worry,” Bram said. “If she stopped this far east, that means they stopped before the worst of the weather hit. She’s likely snug in an inn somewhere near Rye.”