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She walked back into the great hall and stood looking at him. He tried to rouse the energy to sit up and tell her he was fine, but his body still didn’t seem to be cooperating. He just needed to move. Even with the heavy damask curtains drawn, it was draughty by the door. But it was a good twenty feet to the hearth; he’d never make it.
She approached cautiously, like she would the grizzly bear he was sure that he resembled after his hour in the woods.
‘Hey,’ she said, giving him a shake, which made him wonder how good a job he’d done of waking himself up just now. ‘I just spoke to 999 and they said we’re completely inaccessible.’
‘Don’t need an ambulance.’ The effort of speaking sapped him of what little energy he’d been summoning, and the urge to sleep was becoming harder to resist.
‘Well, frankly, I disagree,’ she said. The corner of his lips raised involuntarily. ‘But that’s a bit of a moot point because they’re not sending one. But she said to get you as warm as I can. We need to get you closer to the fire, and you need to stick these in your armpits, apparently’—she brandished a couple of tea towels folded into heat packs.
He started to struggle against the blankets and she helped to free him; he tried not to notice when her hands brushed against his bare skin, but against the ice of his limbs they felt like fire. When he stumbled, trying to stand, she wedged herself under his arm to stop him falling, and they shuffled towards the fire. Eventually, he collapsed against a large sofa, pulling the blankets around himself.
She poked at the fire for a minute while he struggled with the blankets, but then took pity on him and pulled them up to his chin. She even found a woolly hat in the pocket of her coat and pulled that on him too. Even if he’d had the energy to put up a fight, he would have stood no chance with his arms pinned by his sides.
She dropped into the chair opposite, still not taking her eyes off him. She thinks I’m a murderer, he considered. And no wonder, he thought, the reality of their situation starting to hit him.
Shouldn’t someone else be here? Wasn’t she meant to be bringing someone with her? His brain still felt hazy on the details. But it didn’t seem as if there was anyone else in the house.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Rufus,’ he said, trying to control the shivering to bite out that one word. It would feel so good now to just close his eyes and drift off. How much harm would it do, now that he was indoors and warming up?
‘Rufus,’ she said, and he realised he liked the sound of his name on her lips. That woke him up a bit. ‘Any particular reason you were freezing to death on my doorstep?’
‘My doorstep,’ he said, groaning at the thought that she was keeping him talking. Keeping him awake. Bloody people on the end of the bloody phone didn’t realise he was fine now. Just tired. Needed to sleep.
‘Pardon me?’
He opened an eye at the surprise in her voice. She didn’t know this was his house?
‘My house. My door, my doorstep.’ He got the feeling he was really doing a terrible job of explaining, but the cold was like cotton wool in his brain, making it impossible to think or speak clearly. If she’d just let him sleep, he was sure he would feel better.
‘You’re the owner of the house? Oh, good. I’m glad in a crisis we’ve established that it is, in fact, your doorstep. You’re right—the “freezing to death” part barely needs acknowledging at all.’ She looked at him for a moment, narrowing her eyes. Maybe she was wishing she’d left him out in the snow after all.
‘Not planning on dying,’ he tried to clarify.
She shrugged. ‘And I wasn’t planning on dragging a stranger into the house by his armpits and taking his trousers off.’ He groaned. He didn’t need reminding of that. ‘What a shame that I’m the one who had to change her plans.’
He frowned again, and despite her obvious frustration he saw another hint of a smile playing around the corner of her mouth, turning up a bottom lip that was just a little fuller than the top. Her mouth bracketed by smile lines.
‘Shouldn’t have had to do that,’ he said, hoping he sounded sincere through the shivers. ‘Sorry.’
‘Well, I figured a corpse on my doorstep—’
‘My doorstep’
‘—wouldn’t be very festive. There’s no way I would be out in that weather without my thermals and I felt sorry for you.’
That thought caught in his brain, clearing out some of the fog. He looked at her properly, his eyelids finally cooperating, so that his gaze could sweep her up and then down.
‘You’re wearing thermals?’ he asked.
‘I’m in Yorkshire in the middle of a blizzard.’ Her hands had come to rest on her hips, and he wondered if she was angry. Mainly she seemed faintly amused by him and his frozen brain functions. ‘What else would I be wearing?’
‘I’m here too,’ he couldn’t help but point out. ‘Not wearing thermals.’
She held her hand up to stop him—held his gaze too, and he couldn’t look away. Seemed like moving nearer the fire must be doing the trick, because gradually the frost had been leaching from his limbs, and, with that look that had just passed between them, he was starting to feel positively warm.
‘You’re not even wearing trousers,’ she pointed out, scuppering his argument. ‘And you nearly died, which is what we’re discussing here, so I get to win that one, I think.’
