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Leila paused to wring some of the water from her soaked gown before falling into step behind them, with Gideon bringing up the rear.

They stopped outside a modest servant’s room, where the footmen carefully eased the coachman onto the narrow bed.

Gideon was soaked through, and his skin crawled from the cold. He could only imagine how frigid and miserable Leila must have felt. Still, she didn’t complain. She calmly listed the items she needed and began directing Gideon’s servants as if they were her own.

Gideon watched from the doorway as she worked, cleaning the wound and dressing it, moving with confidence—though her hands trembled.

Water pooled on the floor around her feet, and she had to pause several times to turn away as sneezes racked her body.

When she finally finished, she walked out of the room, leaving Mr. Rodgers to rest for the night.

Leila wrapped her arms around her middle, shivering as water dripped steadily from her hair and clothes onto the floor.

“Achoo!” She sneezed again into a simple cloth she’d gotten from Mrs. Hill. “Forgive me.”

“You’re soaked through,” Gideon noted. He pulled out a half-wet handkerchief from his coat pocket and handed it to her, then called, “Mrs. Hill! Is the room for Lady Leila ready?”

The housekeeper hurried toward him. “Almost, my lord. All the guest rooms have been unoccupied for years—they’re so cold it would take hours to warm them up…”

Gideon, despite having inherited the Wolverstone title only a few weeks earlier, refused to move into the previous duke’s house. He’d kept his own old townhouse, which hadn’t been in use for over a decade.

“She’ll catch her death if that’s the case,” Gideon grumbled.

“Of course, Your Grace,” the housekeeper said, twisting her apron. “That’s why I asked the maids to prepare the blue chamber.”

“No,” he said sharply, without pause, making the poor woman flinch. “Not that room.”

Not the blue chamber. Anything but that.

“But Your Grace, all the other chambers have been closed for so long,” she hastened to explain. “They’re cold and damp, and it would take hours to air them properly and light the fires. The blue chamber is the only one that remains close to the source of heat from your own hearth.”

Because it sat right next to it—connected to his room by an adjoining door.

Gideon shot her a look that made her take a step back.

“I can take a chamber in the servants’ quarters that is not—” Lady Leila began, trying to ease the tension, but Gideon cut her off, slicing the air with his hand.

“No, that’s fine. I would never dream of keeping my guests in the servants’ quarters.” The words came out as a growl, but Gideon forced himself to say them. “The blue chamber it is.”

“Really, Your Grace, I am quite content—” Lady Leila tried again, but her insistence only made him more irate.

“No.” He ground out. “You’re staying in the blue chamber. That’s final.”

She swallowed, her chest rising and falling rapidly with quick breaths.

He had frightened her. And Mrs. Hill.

The poor housekeeper backed away. “It will be a few minutes before the room is ready, Your Grace,” she mumbled before turning and practically running away.

Gideon closed his eyes and tried to temper his foul mood.

“Come,” he said after a brief silence. “You can warm up by the hearth in the meantime.”

Leila didn’t say a word, but she followed him down the hallway to his bedchamber.

He was certain this was improper, but he didn’t care for proprieties at the moment. This room was the only one where a fire still burned low in the grate. The rest of the house was cold and uninviting. Unless she wanted to freeze to death, this was the only place for her to warm up.

Gideon quickly lowered himself to his haunches before the hearth and stirred the embers with the poker. Then he rose and stepped aside, gesturing for her to come closer to the fire.