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“Of course you’re cold, that shower was not particularly warm, m’lady,” the duke announced with a confident smile as he placed his hands strong upon her shoulders, leading her gently across the quaint cottage. Spartan in its accoutrements, it certainly didn’t seem particularly fitting for a hovel placed upon the wealth Roxborough estate - a dust-covered, single-colored rug ran along the floor, leading to a sitting area sparsely populated with crudely-carved wooden furniture and one single sofa, set before the fireplace. Anne recalled the nights she had spent set fireside in the waning moments of each day - she spent much of her youth secreting away here, to read the books left by the cabin’s previous owners, a pair of hunters who had worked for her father, in the days before she’d been born. A dozen or so such cottages dotted the estate, but none housed the library that this did. Two beds set in each corner, flanking the fireplace, the far wall of the small hovel housed books - books, books and only books, vast shelves full of them, shelves set upon more shelves to house more volumes. She had read grand adventures and tales of excitement; histories of war and tales of the purest love.
And it was those she always secretly treasured. For even with her slighting statements and sense of disdain for the manner in which society functioned, even she longed for a true love - a pure love, a heart to come and rescue her and to understand her and to appreciate her for precisely who she was. Not a man who wanted to transform her into desirability - but a man who saw her desirability. Alas, she had begun to fear those sorts of loves existed only in storybooks and not upon the cold hills and scattered, opulent estates of England.
The duke led Anne to the couch near the fire; her shoulders shook as she felt the chill run down her spine and grip her intensely. She tried to still the jitter of her teeth but she could not; her reflexes worked against her, trying to generate some sense of energy and warmth to keep her cooled heart beating.
“I’m c... cold, Lawrence,” she managed to put a sentence together, as her companion moved with a sense of urgency and duty; he moved quickly, to the fireplace, opening the flue with a tug on a metal bar. He looked back at her, and she could see caring determination in his eyes, and in the rugged smile smoldering beneath his deep gray eyes.
“I’ll have that fixed quite quickly, m’lady,” he insisted, searching along the front wall for the tools needed to light the fireplace. She watched him through her cold-glazed eyes, her breathing heavier as she felt the rain-drenched dress stick tightly to her skin.
“You’re... q-q-quite ha... handy,” she commented, watching him as he grasped at the pile of wood near the fireplace. Having found no usable flint and tinder he began to press the wood together, carving away an exposed area from the bark to try to pull a spark from the logs.
“I had a talented teacher in the means of survival, m’lady,” he replied.
“Y-you mean your sister?” Anne warbled.
“She taught me quite a lot,” he confirmed with a nod. “We’d start campfires, scrounge together whatever we could, build a shelter of out sticks and live like savages upon the estate land when w
e were children,” he mused. “I’ve not a taste for riding horses because sister and I spent most of our time ranging like steeds, ourselves,” he chuckled as he tried with muffled condemnations to light a spark on the lumber.
“I wish I h... h-had had a chance to meet her,” Anne chattered out, the rain running in rivulets down her back, dripping from her soaked strands of hair. “Sh-she se-seems like...”
“Blast it!” the duke exclaimed. “The wood, it’s soaked through, waterlogged,” he declared, his expression wincing in the sting of failure. “I’m... damn it all,” he growled, before he began to scan the cabin for another solution. Anne watched him closely, or at least as closely as her shaking body could.
“I-I’m sure I’ll be f-fine,” she quaked. “I’m—”
“M’lady, you’re soaked through and freezing,” he insisted. “You need some manner of warmth. Here,” he looked along the walls to the books. “Paper, bindings - another potent source of fuel for the fire. I can just—”
“What? No!” Anne exclaimed as he moved to the shelves and grasped the first tome that he could - a thick volume bound in red leather, flowery figures of gold filigreed onto its spine. “You can’t commit such base vandalism,” she exclaimed.
“M’lady, I’ve no interest in seeing you shake and chatter yourself to the grave, and I doubt your father would be all too pleased with me should I let that happen,” Lawrence laughed. “These books have been here for how long? Have you not already read each of them thoroughly?” he asked with a churlish smile.
“It’s not... y-yes, I’ve read a great many of them,” she said sheepishly. “That’s... that’s scarcely the point, though, Lawrence. These books, they represent knowledge, they represent... art, beauty, there’s poetry, and even some of Shakespeare’s works here, and—”
“Then we’ll simply choose a poor book to fuel the fire, hmm?” he said with a chuckle, pulling the red tome from the shelf. Anne, recognizing the volume, blushed profusely, her cheeks burning. Quite ironically the embarrassment had warmed her prickling skin against the chill, though she did not know whether freezing or her precarious emotional position was worse. “This one... I’ve not heard of this author, but the title is quite... curious,” Lawrence observed. “Torn Across the Stars... have you read this one, m’lady?”
“I’ve... I, I’ve read— I’ve read a part of it, yes if I do recall correctly,” she said. “I don’t rem... member,” she chattered out tensely.
“Perhaps a few sentences will refresh your memory then,” Lawrence said nonchalantly, flipping the tome’s red-bound face open to its first page.
“N-no! I-I mean, no, that’s— that’s wholly unnecessary, m’lord, I think you... y-yes, that book, dreadful, perhaps you c-could use it for the fire,” she stammered. Nerves and chill combined were quite terrible for one’s speech. Anne could tell that, having been at the rough end of the woman’s teasing on his equestrian skills all afternoon, that now Lawrence smirked at an opportunity to find something quite as equivalently embarrassing for her to deal with, and her stomach knotted with dread.
“And I thought you averse to the very idea of burning any of these books, m’lady?” he joked. She gulped hard.
“N-not that one, it’s dreadful!” she exclaimed nervously.
“I thought you didn’t quite remember this one?” he chided her. “Let’s read an excerpt, just to make sure,” he smiled, flipping about halfway through the book. “Ah, here, this seems as good a passage as any.”
“You needn’t go to such trouble, m’lord,” she insisted, her voice quivering more in anxiety now than from the freeze setting into her blood.
“I insist!” he exclaimed broadly, running his eyes along the page. “Let us see, here. ‘He laid upon her lips a cottony caress, with his...’” Lawrence began to read the excerpt, before stopping cold and clearing his throat loudly. His eyes widened and Anne’s blush burned harder; she looked away, biting her bottom lip as tremoring embarrassment blossomed in every corner of her body. He looked over to her with a brow lofted. “This book was quite dreadful, you say?” he asked. “You read it?”
“I’m... I d... I didn’t read the... the whole th... thing,” she murmured, shuddering. “I’m... th-that is to say, y...”
“You read this, m’lady?” he asked again plainly. Anne gulped, squirming on the couch.
“I thi... think, I may have.”
“Here’s a few more sentences, to refresh your memory,” he added.
