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The notion made her laugh. First one absent “suitor”, and now a second? Ward doing all he could to avoid showing his face and form before the holiday. When her agreement to wait expired.
“Not any longer.” Not ever, for when he did finally appear, she had full intention of ordering him right out of her home and right back to London, no matter that the more time she spent with Lady Redford and at Redford Manor, the more she could picture herself living there.
“The only one expecting anything of me tonight is Owen.” Her cold hands finally free, she knuckled frozen tears from her lashes, the five-year-old’s sadness still near the surface. Sheer determination the only thing keeping her upright at the moment, despite the perceptible lift to her spirits now that she was no longer alone. “And Lord Grayson, of course.”
“Lord Grayson?” ’Twas a grunt, the stranger’s exertion with the shovel as noisy as her own had been.
“Owen’s cat.”
“Who—” She heard him plunk the shovel in the ground and straighten. “Is Owen?”
“The Timmonses’ five-year-old.”
She really should have prepared herself. Shouldn’t have been surprised at the seconds of silence, interspersed by a fresh wall of sleet and then another curse. Followed by another, coarse swear. And then—
“Lord Grayson? We’re doing all this for a cat? One that’s not even yours? In the middle of the blessed night? In a lull between snowstorms?” The more he uttered, the more insane her actions seemed. “Damn fool woman—you have been pounding the frozen earth for a blasted feline?”
She refused to acknowledge his vocal ire.
“A blame cat?” He refused to stop. “Of all the asinine, totty-headed, inconceivable, incomprehensible—”
“Incomprehensible?” Anne exploded. “How dare you malign my task, not knowing all the circumstances that surround it. Why, how some gamekeeper—”
“Returning soldier.”
“—returning soldier turned gamekeeper thinks he has the right to criticize the well-intentioned efforts of a stranger—”
“Well-intentioned? Madam, do you not mean ill-conceived?”
Ill-conceived? Anne sputtered, cursed the night, the timing and Lord Spier all over again.
But she could not deny how the longer they argued, the more her exhaustion melted away as she hotly defended her questionable actions.
Had she ever spoken with such candor before? With anyone beyond her family or Isabella?
Not that she could remember. Certainly not with a man.
How very freeing. How exciting.
“I may be here in the dark digging”—for what feels an eternity—“but at least I did not fall off my horse! And then lose him!”
“Did you even ride today?”
“Nay! I walked!”
WALKED! Walked!… Walked… Walk…
Her strident claim echoed between them, the sound horribly loud against the background of silent snow and stinging sleet.
“My,” Anne ventured softly, “that was loud.”
“We both were.”
“I do not usually…express myself thus.”
“What? By arguing with people you know not?”
“By yelling.”
