Page 16 of A Mistletoe Masquerade

'Hadn't you better look, before it gets too wet?'

'Yes.'

He did not move. It was really very pleasant, standing so close. Warm, intimate, friendly. Only her toes were becoming very cold and her inner voice was demanding to be heard. Her behaviour could be excused, just, it reminded her sternly, if the man concerned was betrothed to her. Under no circumstances could she ever have such a relationship with a valet, so she had acted purely for the pleasure of kissing him. Which was scandalously wanton and she should be ashamed of herself. But she wasn't, which was even more shameful. Her conscience nagged on, relentless.

'Oh, do be quiet,' she muttered, earning a startled look from Lucas. 'Sorry-just thinking aloud. My feet are cold.'

'Then we must go in.' This time he acted on his words, turning to pick up his tall hat and brushing the snow off it as they walked towards the kitchen garden gate. 'Where were you last employed?' he asked, abruptly changing the subject.

'With a middle-aged person-more as a companion than anything,' Rowan said, with perfect truth. 'Abroad, mostly.'

'In which country?' Lucas opened the gate onto the practical formality of the kitchen garden. Within the sheltering walls the snow lay only patchily. Men were working around the glass frames, shifting covers. One lad was picking the tight button heads of borecole off the robust stalks that leaned drunkenly in the cold earth, and a man Rowan guessed was the head gardener was supervising a delivery of coals by the stovehouse door.

'Austria.' There was no point in lying about it. If he knew she had been out of the country he was not going to ask questions about English families or houses, and she was not going to have to risk an error.

'The Congress?' he asked, and she nodded in reply. 'Interesting.'

'It certainly greatly entertained my employer.' It had entertained her as well. The endless round of balls and receptions, picnics and parties, political gossip and scandalous on dits were a world away from the careful formality of the servants' hall at dinner time. 'It seems a different world,' she added, stamping her feet on the brick path to get rid of the snow.

In Vienna now she could be going on expeditions into the forest in a horse-drawn sledge, or shopping in the luxurious stores and emporia that lined the streets. But Papa was coming home early in the New Year, and she had agreed with him that it would be best if she came on ahead and got the town house opened up.

If she had not come then she would not have known about Penny's predicament until the deed was done and her friend irrevocably married. And she would not be having this insight into the parallel world of the servants, or the freedom to indulge in her scandalous flirtation.

'I'm not sorry to be back.'

'No. Neither am I. Although I suspect I will never get warm again. I had forgotten how cold this country can be.'

'You have been abroad, too? For how long?'

'Five years. I got back a few weeks ago.'

Thank goodness. He could have had nothing to do with Lady Danescroft's death.

'I have been in the West Indies.' That explained the faint colour his skin held, as though he had been brushed lightly by the sun.

'As a valet?' The sound of the other servants arriving back met them as they rounded the edge of the stableblock and the yard behind the kitchen door came into sight.

'No. More as an estates manager. I had not expected to take this job when I returned, but it was…expedient.'

An estates manager sounded considerably more respectable than a valet. Younger sons of quite good family became estates managers. Rowan realised she was pleased by this discovery, and then, a moment later, why she was. For goodness' sake. Slightly better breeding does not excuse flirtation! Valet or younger son of a gentry family, it does not matter. I am the only child of Roland Chilcourt, third Earl of Lavenham, and I know what is due to my name. The scandal would be resounding if anyone ever found out. Acting as Penny's dresser might be excused as a prank; kissing a valet would put her beyond the pale.

Then don't get found out. She was shocking herself. She glanced at Lucas as they mingled with the other returning churchgoers, all shedding hats and wraps and stamping the snow off their feet as they trooped back into the warmth. There had been other men in her life- attractive, eligible men whom she had liked very well. Several had proposed, and with two of them she had thought long and hard before refusing. But never had she been tempted to kiss one of them. She had not felt oddly breathless with either of them, and they had certainly not disturbed her dreams in the way this man had last night.

'What are you daydreaming about, Miss Lawrence?' Miss Mather's dresser enquired acidly. 'I would have thought Miss Maylin required all your attention.'

'What? Oh, Lord-they'll be back, of course.' Rowan gathered up her outer things and hurried to the foot of the stairs. Time to do what she could to ring the changes with Penny's limited selection of afternoon gowns-and to find out what had happened in the big box pew.

She fled up the spiral stairs to her tower room, pausing to gasp for air on one of the cramped little landings. There was a stone window ledge at just the right height to rest her elbows on while she caught her breath. The view, once she had scrubbed cobwebs off the glass, was the same as they had had just now, looking out from the orchard over to the lake.

And there was their apple tree. As she watched a tall figure appeared, hung his coat over a low branch and stood for a moment, hat in hand, as though wondering what to do with it. Then, with a shrug, he tossed it over his shoulder into the snow and swung up into the tree.

Lucas. What on earth was he doing? Then she realised: he was picking mistletoe. 'Going to work his way round all the female staff, I'll be bound,' Rowan said severely. But with a small glow inside she knew it was only for her. It took only a few seconds and then he swung down again, as lithe as a lad scrumping apples, and pushed something small into his pocket.

Penny was looking somewhat pale when Rowan hurried in, trying to keep the grin off her face. She was more composed than Rowan would have expected after having been singled out by Lord Danescroft quite so conspicuously.

'Well?' Rowan demanded, whisking round her, untying bonnet strings and shaking out her cloak. 'Were you able to put him off?'

'Put him-? Oh, the tale about wagering. I tried, and he laughed and said he would wager on how many times Godmama dropped her prayer book, if I liked.'

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