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She had to agree. She was wearing a gown of ice.

“Wait here,” he said. “They won’t be back. They did what they came to do before we arrived. I must have scared that fellow your way.”

He pulled free, and she let him go. The cold in the house was deep. She supposed that no fire had been lit for weeks. She heard him moving in the next room. She needed to tell him the ruffian’s mistake about her identity.

He returned with a lit candle. “Upstairs,” he said. “Let’s get you warm.”

They climbed by the candle’s steady glow and the storm’s sudden flashes. At the top of the stairs a hall led to a bedroom at the rear of the house.

Lynley set the candle on a dressing table, revealing a scene of disarray. Someone had swept everything from the table to the floor, including a box of loose powder. A streak of it lay white on the blue carpet, giving off the powerful flowery scent of the papers Lynley had found in Clive Walhouse’s room. Dresser drawers had been emptied onto the floor, and the doors of a tall wardrobe hung open, with a lavender silk wrapper spilling out.

Lynley ignored the mess. Standing in front of her, he stripped off her sopping cloak. Then he took hold of her shoulders and turned her around to fumble with the tiny buttons at the back of her gown.

“I suppose these are the height of fashion,” he said. “A sensible woman would have buttons a man could see.”

Emily thought a sensible woman would not be mixed up with wardrobe-wrecking spies and ruffians.

With the same brisk efficiency with which he’d removed her cloak, he pushed the gown over her shoulders and down past her hips. He untied the tapes at her waist to let her petticoat fall around her ankles. She felt him hesitate, his hands still at her waist, then he began to undo the laces of her stays. Her corset dropped to the floor.

Taking her hand, he turned her toward him and helped her step out of the pile of wet garments. Then he stopped moving. In the gap between intention and action, he simply gazed at her.

The candle’s glow enclosed them in a circle of wan golden light.

Her skin burned with the cold. Her hair dripped. Stinging rivulets of water trickled down her back and shoulders. Her ordinary, white lawn undergarments clung to her skin like sticking plasters.

A man of sense would see a melting figure of ice, like some frozen sculpture dissolving amid the fruits and desserts at the end of a grand party. Lynley stood transfixed. Emily had never seen the look on his face before.

She shivered, and he recovered and turned to the bed. He tore apart the coverings, pulling out a quilt and wrapping her in a cocoon of warmth. His hands moved over the quilt in a steady chafing motion. Emily let him warm her, keeping her jaw clamped shut, waiting for the violent chills to stop.

“That fellow must have searched the house,” he said. “I recognized him, one of Barksted’s hirelings.”

She wanted to tell him what the man had said, but she could not keep her teeth from chattering.

He kissed her mouth briefly, his lips warm and firm. “Tell me later,” he said. He pressed her head to his chest and kept up the chafing motion.

The storm drummed on the roof and water ran in sheets down the windows. The flicker of lightning and rumble of thunder moved north. When the chills subsided, she tried to speak again.

“Better?” he asked. She nodded against his chest. “Wait here. I’ll get a fire going.”

He stepped away, and Emily stared at the bed. The frame was heavy, dark wood. From the tall posts hung gorgeous blue and white bed curtains. Lynley’s attack on the covers revealed layers of sacking and straw stuffing piled under a mattress, pillows, and silken coverlet. It was a bed in which the princess would never feel the pea. When the bed curtains were pulled, the sleepers would be in a private world. It struck Emily that the house existed solely to hold this bed from which the rest of the world could be shut out. Outside, storms could rage. Inside it, the lovers would only be aware of each other.

Lynley returned with another candle, a bottle of wine, and two glasses. He lit the coals in the hearth and made them a nest of bedding and pillows on the floor. He settled Emily against the pillows, poured the wine, and stretched out beside her.

“Help is on the way,” he said.

“Help?” She managed to hold the glass he offered without spilling.

“I’ve sent for two reliable people. They’ll come with a closed carriage, and some things we need to get you safely home.”

She should be relieved, but she felt flat instead. She’d ended up soaked and useless. Their adventure would end before it began, without finding the spy. They had two mysteries to solve, and the questions remained unanswered. What trouble had Lady Ravenhurst gotten herself into and what had happened to her husband’s papers?

“This house is a lovers’ hideaway, isn’t it?” she asked Lynley. “What were Barksted’s men looking for, do you think?”

“Something to give Barksted a hold over Lady Ravenhurst. He knows she has a gaming habit, but apparently Walhouse held her IOUs, the ones we found.”

“Did Walhouse buy her then?” Emily shivered again, recalling Lady Ravenhurst’s bleak look of despair the night of her party.

Lynley nodded. “And Barksted wants to be the next man to have a hold over her, but his bully boys did us a favor with their search.”