And now she was acutely aware of his hands on her and the delicious, almost entirely foreign sensation of being held.
She quite liked it.
“Yes,” she said rather breathlessly, realizing she sounded like a ninnyhammer and not caring in the slightest.
“I insist on seeing you home.” He looked up at the sky as the snow seemed to be falling in larger flakes than it had just five minutes before. “Where is that?”
She was cold and now wet, and for some reason she felt safe with him. “Stour’s Edge.”
He gave a firm nod then wrapped her arm over his. “We’ll walk briskly. If you can.”
She nodded then wiped at the dirt and grass that seemed to cover her cloak. He helped her, his hand moving over her hip and then her backside. The moment he made that contact, their gazes connected.
“Sorry,” he murmured before averting his gaze.
They walked in silence for a few minutes, a hundred questions tumbling through her head and an equal amount of sensations coursing through her body.
He glanced over at her, a snowflake landing on his dark lashes and melting almost immediately. “I know we haven’t been properly introduced, but it seems we should take care of that.”
“It’s a bit scandalous, isn’t it?”
“No more so than my caressing your backside.”
Caressing. Oh dear. Those hundred sensations doubled.
“I’m Frances.” She decided it was best to just keep things simple. He didn’t need to know she was Fanny Snowden, sister-in-law to the Duke of Clare.
“I’m David.”
“Pleased to meet you David.” For all she knew he was a footman at a neighboring estate. She doubted that, however. While her experience with anyone outside her tiny village of Pickering in Yorkshire and its environs was limited, she could tell he was Quality. Or at least good at mimicking it.
“What brought you so far from home?” David asked.
“Providence, thankfully.” She realized belatedly he didn’t mean that home. She blamed the fact that she’d just been thinking of Pickering. Though she’d been at Stour’s Edge for nigh on six months, apparently she could still think of her lifelong home as home.
He gave a soft laugh. “Because you met me?”
Now she realized how that may have sounded. “No, I didn’t mean that. I meant... Oh, never mind. I am abysmal at polite conversation. I’ve almost no experience with it.”
“Are you in service?” he asked, voicing about her what she’d just been thinking of him.
She seized on the opportunity to mask her true identity and have a way to explain why he couldn’t escort her to the house. “Yes, I’m a maid.” She looked at him askance. “What about you?”
“In service?” He started to shake his head but then stopped. “Not precisely. I’m serving as apprentice to a steward.”
“That sounds exciting.”
He turned his head toward her. “Indeed?”
“Oh yes. To be responsible for so many things... You must be quite intelligent.”
He shrugged. “My father always told me so.”
“My father always told me I was a featherbrain.”
“I find that hard to believe.” He said this with utmost certainty. “Although, you did wander far from home in a snowstorm.”
“It wasn’t snowing then, and I was trying to save a rabbit.” She exhaled. “I’m afraid I’m terribly soft-hearted when it comes to animals. My father also told me I was far too kind. Once, he made me abandon a litter of puppies after their mother died.”
David gasped. “That’s atrocious.”
She nodded, glad for his support. “Yes, but I sneaked back out to where they were and rescued them anyway. One of the neighbors had a dog who was almost finished nursing her pups, and she was more than glad to adopt the four little babies. Ironically my father took one of those dogs several months later, never realizing it was one he’d left for dead.” She shook her head. “He loved that dog more than any of us, I think.”
“What an astounding tale. I would say you have a kind heart, not soft. There’s a difference, I think.”
She swung her gaze to his. “Do you?”
“I do.”
They stared at each other a moment before she tried to trip over a rock. He caught her, his free hand clasping her hand while he gripped her arm. “All right?”
“I’m also rather clumsy.”
“Then allow me to assist you over the stream, though I gather you made it across by yourself earlier.”
They’d arrived at the slender, but swift-moving brook. “It was a miracle, really.”
He laughed then withdrew his arm from hers. “I’ll go first and help you.” He leapt over the water with ease, and she decided she could watch him do that a thousand times. In her mind’s eye, she would.
He held his hand out to her. “Ready?”
She clasped his appendage, and he brought her over the stream with a fluid grace she didn’t possess on her own. “I bet you’re a fine dancer,” she said.
He grimaced. “Barely passable, I’m afraid.”
“I’m quite good. That is one area in which I seem to possess adequate agility.”
He chuckled. “A maid who dances and rescues animals. You are a treasure, Frances.”
Heat rose in her face, but she suspected her cheeks were red from the cold and was relieved he couldn’t see her blush.
He tucked her arm over his once more and they started on their way, keeping up their rapid pace. “Do you often get lost?” he asked.
Only when she struck off in a new direction and then only sometimes. Snowstorms were particularly helpful if one wanted to lose their way. “No, but then I just left home for the first time less than six months ago.” She wished she hadn’t revealed that much. But he was so easy to talk to.
“You’re new to your employment then?”
“Yes. What about you?” she asked, hoping to divert the conversation away from herself lest she bore him with the story of her life. “What are you doing out in the middle of a snowstorm?”
“I’m afraid I was just taking a walk. Then I saw you running up the hill, and I was curious.”
“So you followed me?”
“Guilty.” But the look he cast in her direction didn’t reflect even a tinge of regret.
She was glad and more than a little...tantalized. “Well, I suppose I must be grateful since without your help I would be lost and cold.”
“But dry. I can’t imagine you would have fallen without my intervention.” Now she detected a dash of remorse.
“That’s a nice theory,” she said wryly, “but I did tell you I was clumsy.”
“I suppose we’ll never know,” he mused. “Come, let’s move a bit faster or we’ll both be soaked to the skin.”
She had a sudden vision of him in clothing that was plastered to his muscular, athletic frame. Muscular? Yes, she could tell from his arm and the way he’d lifted her effortlessly from the ground and assisted her across the stream. Athletic? Evidently given how quickly he’d made it down the hill after she’d fallen and the fact that he hadn’t lost his balance as she had. Besides all of that, she had eyes, and she could see he was broad-shouldered and long-legged.