He wanted to call out, but he was a duke. A duke didn't, couldn't, needn't, show emotion.
The wind was still a lethal whip of iced air. It was colder than anything he could remember feeling, colder than the coldest thing he'd ever encountered—his father's icy hard voice.
"You are the heir, Alec. You!"
his father had said.
"You will be the duke someday. A Belmore Duke does not cry. Stop it, Alec! You need no one. Understand? No one. A Belmore Duke does not laugh. Laughter is for fools. A duke does not need anyone or anything. Do you understand? Do you? Emotions are for weak fools. You are a Belmore. No Belmore is a fool. You need no one. You are a Belmore . . . a Belmore—"
Alec stiffened, that cold voice echoing in his mind as if his stoic father still stood before him. He sucked in a deep breath of windswept air. He opened his eyes, expecting to see his father's face. He saw a white blur. It was snowing again.
His lungs felt suddenly tight. His head hurt. He was tired, more tired than he could ever remember being.
He could not, would not, sleep or stop.
He made the top of the hill and collapsed, falling on his back in the snow and sliding down another incline, his wife a deadweight on his chest. Still he clung to her until he stopped sliding at the base of the opposite hillside. He sucked in a ragged chestful of air and closed his eyes, his head sagging to the side, and succumbed to exhaustion and the elements.
The odd distant sound of a bell pierced what little consciousness he had left. "Here," he whispered what felt like a shout into the snow. "Belmore . . . we're over here." Might be help. He needed to open his eyes, but they were heavy and cold. He wanted to swallow but couldn't find the strength. Even the inside of his throat was dry and cold.
Again he heard the bell. The bawl of a cow. Distant voices. A song, a quiet laugh, so faint he wondered if it was only in his mind. He tried to lift his heavy head. He couldn't feel his neck muscles. He couldn't move.
They would die.
His arm lay across his wife—little more than a still, wet weight atop his drained body.
The Duke and Duchess of Belmore, frozen to death in the middle of nowhere.
Somewhere in the depths of his mind a part of him fought the inevitable, a part of him refused to give up. If he gave up, he was little more than the weak child who would never live up to being a Belmore Duke in his father's cold and unforgiving eyes.
He managed somehow to turn his face an inch more and he bit into the wet snow. It melted in his mouth, trickled down his dry throat, reminding him that they were still alive. In one last effort, one last attempt to survive, he lifted his heavy head from the ice-flaked ground and willed his eyes open.
He saw little, only blurry white.
Again he thought he heard a cow bell. He took a breath and gave a weak shake of his head. Snow fell in a sodden clump from his eye sockets.
Then he saw it—golden yellow light spilling from the narrow windows of an ancient daub-and-wattle inn, its plump thatched roof blanketed with snow.
"God Almighty, Scottish, the inn . . . ” He pulled his wife tighter against him and lurched upward, only to fall backward again. He turned, still clutching her to him and crawled a few feet toward the inn. His weight packed the snow enough for him to dig in his boots, to get his footing. He stumbled to his knees and fell forward atop her.
She moaned, a weak, small thread of a moan, but it was a moan.
"We've found the inn. Wake up! Damn you, wife, wake up!"
He rose to one knee, holding her tighter than he'd ever held anything in his life—and he managed to stand.
He limped. He stumbled. But he moved forward, closing the distance to the inn door, the last hundred feet, his breath coming in heaving pants that fogged in front of his face, his body numb, cold, and functioning on only God knew what.
His shoulder rammed against the solid door. It didn't open. He could hear muted voices, laughter and music. He raised one foot and found the strength to kick it open, then stumbled into the suddenly silent tavern room in a flurry of ice and snow.
"Help us," he said, unable to focus on anything but the massive stone hearth and the blazing fire within it. "Cold . . . fire . . . my wife . . . ”
Alec moved toward the fire, Scottish in his frigid arms. At the feel of the heat he dropped to his knees, his arms still gripping her tight. Just before he collapsed, he rasped, "You are the Duchess of Belmore. You will not die."
A pair of hard, strong hands grasped his shoulders. "Steady, I've got ye," came a rough dark voice.
Someone tried to take Scottish from his arms, but he refused to let go. "No! I have to make her warm.
The fire . . . ”
"Leave off. I 'ave them both," the dark voice said. The hands stopped pulling his wife away. The dark voice said, "Fetch some more blankets 'n' stoke the fire upstairs."
Alec heard the scurrying of feet, the creak of stairs, a door slamming, the crackle of the fire, and then those same scurrying feet in some room above him. Then he felt himself being lifted by some massive body, and the intense heat of the fire hit his face. It burned his skin and sucked the breath from his lips, but he knew it was what she needed. He held her tighter.
"Here. Sit. Ye'll 'ave to let me 'ave 'er."
"No!"
"Calm down, Yer Grace."
The heavy ice-crusted cape was lifted from his shoulders and replaced with a thick warm blanket.
"Forget about me. She needs to be warm."
"Ye 'ave to let go o' her. Best get her out o' them wet things."
Alec looked up toward the voice, and his blurry vision sharpened. He saw a rough, broad man with a big potato of a nose and bright yellow hair that hung to his shoulders. The man was examining him with shrewd gray eyes.
Alec's teeth began to chatter. He tried to stop it, but couldn't and he shivered. "I—I'll do it."
The man eyed him skeptically. "Can ye make it up them stairs?"
Alec nodded and tried to stand, but his legs were so cold they buckled.
The man's arms clamped around his shoulders. "Best let me 'elp ye." The man led him up the narrow rickety and creaking stairs."Watch yer 'ard 'ead on the blimin' beam," he warned, ducking under the timbered overhang and leading Alec toward a narrow door. "'Ere." He opened the creaking door.
The room was small but very warm from the blazing fireplace opposite the bed. Alec's wits were fast returning, as was the feeling in his numb hands and feet.
He knelt on the hearth, letting the blanket drop from his shoulders. He laid his limp wife atop it, then awkwardly peeled the icy gloves from his hands. "Send up a maid and send for a physician."
"No womenfolk 'ere, an' no leech."
"Bloody hell." Alec jerked the snow-crusted coat off his wife. His hands were still so numb he couldn't feel the cold of the coat. "She needs help." He could hear the frustration in his dry voice.
"Take them wet rags offer. 'Ere, I'll 'elp."
"No! I shall do it. Alone." He looked down at her, one meager blanket around her. "Are there any more blankets?" He covered her with his own.
The door creaked open and a small white-bearded dwarf came into the room, his pudgy arms laden with a stack of old thin woolen blankets. He waddled over to where Joy lay and set the blankets beside her, his eyes odd and wary. Then he was out the door again.
Alec lifted Joy onto those thin blankets, then crossed over to the bed and stripped the bedclothes off of it.
The big man eyed him speculatively, then said, "Ye need to get out o' them clothes."
"First my wife." Alec grabbed the edge of the wide straw mattress and tried to pull it off of the bed. The cold had taken its toll. He had little strength in his hands, which tingled with a thousand sharp needlelike sensations.
The huge man had joined him and grabbed one side, muttering about stubborn Englishmen while he helped move the mattress close to the fire. Alec settled Joy atop it, then stared at her white face. He sank to his knees next to her and felt another blanket cover him. He said nothing, just struggled to get the sodden clothes off her.
The big man still stood over him, watching. Alec struggled with the wet dress. He stopped suddenly and looked up, his eyes hard, his mind sharp—all Duke of Belmore. "I will see to it. She's my wife."
The man gauged him for a second, then moved back toward the door. Frustrated at his awkward hands Alec stared at the sodden dress, then grabbed wet wads of it in both hands and ripped it in two.
"I guess ye will," the man muttered and opened the door. He paused and turned back. "I'll bring ye up a kettle to warm over the fire. Ye'll be needin' hot water."
Aware that he needed it, but loath to admit it, Alec looked up and nodded. The man closed the door, and Alec tore off the rest of Joy's clothes. Her shoes were ice and stuck to her poor cold feet. If it hadn't been for the stockings he would have had to cut the shoes off her. Her skin was a bluish white, what little he had glimpsed in his rush to bundle her up in the thin blankets. A feeling of complete ineptness swept through him as he stood there. Since the moment this witch popped into his life he'd felt as if everything was out of control. Nothing was right.
Watching her as she lay there, bundled in blankets, half frozen, half alive, and perhaps half dead, something wrenched inside him, something deep and unsettling, and in his confusion he had the merest glimmer of a premonition that nothing would ever be the same again. The thought did little for his peace of mind, did little to assuage this new feeling of vulnerability.
He bent down and tugged at his own frozen boots. The blond man returned with a steaming kettle of water in his hand. Alec glanced up and met his gaze. The man drew a knife from his belt. For a tense minute neither moved. Alec realized the vulnerability of their situation—an isolated inn, snowed in. Wouldn't it be ironic to have survived the frigid cold only to be murdered by some giant in the warmth of a cozy inn?
A pair of sharp gray eyes gazed back at him, assessing him, weighing him, almost reading his thoughts. Then the man averted his eyes, knelt at Alec's feet, and sliced the side of one of his Hessians. Alec relaxed.
The dwarf came in with a tray laden with bowls of steaming soup and some bread. He set the tray on the floor near the fire and then left as quickly and wordlessly as he had come. An old hinge squeaked in the silent room. "There be wood in 'ere." The blond man pointed to a deep pine chest. "We'll leave ye be, now," he said, his boots clomping like the hooves of a draft horse on the wooden floor as he went to the door.
"Thank you," Alec said quietly—words that were seldom spoken by the Duke of Belmore.
"Ye be welcome, Yer Grace." And he left them alone.
Alec checked Joy, lowering his ear to her lips and listening for her breath. It was still shallow. He pulled his own wet clothing off, wrapped one of the blankets around himself, and moved on stiff and tingling feet to kneel near his wife—the witch.
The Duchess of Belmore was a witch. He found the idea incomprehensible. He had thought his days away from her would assuage the feeling that he was having a nightmare.
The scene on the roof had convinced him otherwise. He was living the nightmare.
From the moment she'd convinced him of the truth, his mind had viewed her as something unreal, inhuman. Then he'd done what he always did—pushed his emotions aside and rationally thought the situation through. He realized there was nothing he could do about it. He'd married her in front of witnesses, and divorce or annulment was out of the question. He was a Belmore. He needed heirs. He needed a wife. He would deal with her the way he had always dealt with everything. He would take charge and command her to be normal. Then perhaps he could view her as a normal woman.