A Scandalous Situation. Patricia Frances Rowell
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look at the situation you face. Then if you still believe you can travel, I will accompany you.”
He turned and towed the unwilling Iantha up the first few stairs. After several steps she yanked her arm out of his grasp, glaring at him. “Very well. If you insist, I will go up.”
His lordship said nothing, but moved aside, gesturing for her to precede him. The old castle was bitterly cold. Iantha wished she might thrust her gloved hands into the pockets of her heavy coat, but had to use them to hold up her skirts. Her nose threatened to drip. She could only sniff as unobtrusively as possible. Finally they reached a heavy wooden door. Lord Duncan reached past her and pulled it open.
Iantha stepped out into a dazzling landscape. When her eyes had adjusted from the dark of the old keep, she gazed about her at a sparkling fairyland. Against the dark clouds, snow covered all but the highest wind-scoured peaks. From many of them, where springs near the summit had frozen in their leap into the valley, diamond cascades of ice glistened. Everywhere the sun struck the hills at an angle, rainbows sprang up.
Iantha stood transfixed.
Lord Duncan stood beside her silently, apparently captive to the beauty of the sight himself. Together they began to walk the battlements, where the parapets had shielded the path from snow, pausing occasionally to appreciate a particularly breathtaking view. When they had traversed three sides of the castle, they stopped at the foot of another stone staircase. Less than three feet wide, it rose in dizzying flight from the battlements to the top of the tallest tower. Neither handrail nor barricade protected the climber. The drop fell sheer into the valley. Today snow and ice festooned the steps.
Iantha moved toward them. “Oh, look! How beautiful. What is up there?”
His lordship seemed a bit alarmed. “Only the lookout tower. But please do not attempt the stairs, Miss Kethley. They are not safe at any time, let alone when covered in ice.”
“Yes, I can see that, but perhaps one day I may climb them. I have a very good head for heights.”
“Which is more than I do. I could not permit it.”
“Very well.” Iantha shrugged and gazed around her, brows puckered. “But where is the road?”
“Where, indeed?” His lordship turned in a full circle. “If I am not mistaken, it lies just below us there.” He pointed.
Iantha squinted down the hillside. “Where? I do not see it.”
“Neither do I. But if you believe you can find it, it will be my honor to escort you home.” His lordship folded his arms across his chest, looking insufferably smug. There was no kinder word for it; he looked smug.
Iantha bristled at this display of male arrogance. “Well, I won’t know until I look, will I?”
“Nay. You won’t.” His expression softened, and he laid a hand on her shoulder. “Miss Kethley, I sympathize with your desire to relieve your family’s anxiety and your desire to remove yourself from a situation that can be nothing other than uncomfortable for you, but you can see for yourself—it would be the height of folly to try to set out today.”
Tears threatened to shatter Iantha’s firm control on her emotions. She willed them away, concentrating on the problem at hand. She would not succumb to a womanly excess of sensibility. She must think, rely on her intelligence. Stepping back from his comforting hand, she nodded. “You are correct, of course. Forgive me.”
His voice sounded gentle and kind. “Perhaps tomorrow, if it is warmer.”
Iantha nodded and took several sustaining breaths, gazing around her once more. “I believe, my lord, if you do not object, I would like to bring my paints up here and attempt to capture this remarkable scene.”
“I don’t object, precisely, but I fear you would freeze.”
Glancing around her, Iantha spied a small guardroom. “I could sit in the doorway there, out of the wind. I am warmly dressed. With your permission?”
Lord Duncan sighed. “If I cannot dissuade you. Come, I will show you a way directly from the old castle to the floor where your bedchamber is found. Your paint case is there, I believe.”
“Thank you.”
Iantha followed him partway down the stairs and through a connecting door. Several more turns brought her back to the door they sought. It took only a few minutes to locate what she wanted, and follow his lordship back to the older building. He left her there, and she hastened to find just the prospect she wanted to paint.
Quickly lost in her work, she started when a red-haired young man she had not seen before appeared at her elbow. He bowed politely. “Good day, miss. I’m Thursby. His lordship asked me to make you a fire in the guardroom.”
Suiting the action to the word, he dumped coal and tinder into a brazier stored in the room, and pulled a rickety stool from the shadows and dusted it, setting it behind Iantha. Lost in the magic of the setting, trying fervently to transfer it to her paper, Iantha never heard him go.
She worked on through the afternoon, pausing to warm her hands at the brazier only when her fingers became too cold to hold her brush, or to melt another small cup of snow for the watercolors. Or when the colors froze in her brush.
Heedless, she worked on.
Her spirits soared like the mountains surrounding her, like the towering clouds. Space and air. Light and shadow. They liberated her as nothing else could. The walls fell away. No longer was she a prisoner in a strange place, nor a prisoner of her own emotions. As the light began to fail, she worked doggedly, hoping to get as much recorded as she could. To finish, she would have to rely on the pictures in her mind. On the enchantment stored in her heart.
She was striving to catch the effect of the last rays of light when Lord Duncan appeared before her, arms folded across his chest. She looked up, startled. He moved very quietly for so solid a man.
“Will you stay here all night, Miss Kethley?”
“Only a little longer. I need to use the last of the sunlight….”
He reached out and plucked the brush from her numb fingers and rinsed it in the crystalizing cup of water. Before Iantha could protest, he laid it in her case and pitched the water over the parapet. “I have come up several times these past three hours, but you seemed so absorbed in your painting, I had not the heart to stop you. But now it is getting colder, and I must call a halt. You will become ill. You have even taken off your glove.” He took her bare hand in both of his, scowling in disapproval.
“It is very difficult to paint with a glove on. Indeed, I don’t remember when—” Automatically Iantha tugged on the hand, but he did not let her go. Then the warmth of his strong grasp became so welcome, she did not want him to. She began to shiver. “I d-did not realize how c-cold I was getting.” Her teeth rattled against one another. “I b-became so immersed in the p-painting….”
His lordship pulled her to her feet. “The only thing you need to be immersed in at the moment is a tub of warm water. I fear you may have frostbitten fingers—or toes. Can you feel your feet?”
Iantha wiggled her toes. “A little. I don’t think they are frostbitten.”
“Come then. I will send Thursby to fetch your paints. I left Burnside filling a bath for you.” He took her elbow and steadied her steps down the rough stairs.
She could feel his energy coursing through her arm and into her fingertips.
She simply could not shield herself from him.
Chapter Three
S he floated down the stairs, a wraith made solid by the desire of the beholder. Rob almost held his breath for fear that she would disappear. Did her feet even touch the floor? She had chosen another of his grandmother’s gowns, this one a deep sky-blue. A shawl of silver lace lay across her shoulders, and silver slippers peeped from under her skirt. Around her neck, completing the ethereal