Carola Dunn (17 page)

 Several people, as soon as they actually saw the ice, decided discretion was the better part of valour and spectatorship the better part of sport. Footmen had carried down chairs to supplement the two wooden benches, so they sat or strolled about.

 Two or three ladies not quite bold enough to try skates sat on chairs to be pushed about on the ice by obliging gentlemen. Lady Estella regarded these with great scorn. Strapping on a pair of blades, she set off whizzing across the lake with the same verve and aplomb with which, mounted, she tackled the highest hedges.

 This was a tactical error if she hoped for Rusholme’s company. Lady Anne sat prettily helpless on a chair and held out a dainty foot in a pink leather half-boot.

 “If you would be so kind, Lord Rusholme. I have no notion how to put them on, I vow.”

 Politeness won. “Of course, ma’am,” he said, swallowing a sigh.

 Once the skates were attached, she revealed that she had never skated in her life. “But I am determined to try it, if you will support me, sir.”

 So he gave her his arm and she clung to it as they made a circuit of the lake. Her progress was suspiciously free of staggers and stumbles, although she gave less attention to her feet than to fluttering her eyelashes and looking up at him adoringly—in a way Prudence would have done well to emulate. Rusholme was certain she was a competent skater, but he could hardly call her a liar.

 “I expect you’d like to rest for a while,” he suggested hopefully as they returned to the chairs.

 “Oh no, I am just beginning to master it. Pray let us go round again.”

 As the sun’s red disk began to sink behind the hills, the air seemed to grow chillier. The spectators, shivering, started to stroll back towards the house. Soon skaters were taking off their skates and departing likewise. Footmen came to remove the chairs.

 Rusholme and his partner once more approached the benches.

 “What an excellent teacher you are, Lord Rusholme,” cried Lady Anne gaily. “I do believe I shall venture across on my own, if you will wait for me at the other side.”

 No gentleman could desert her alone in the dusk. With the deepest reluctance, he agreed. He was not in the least surprised when, reaching the centre, she floundered for the first time and subsided gracefully onto the ice.

 “Oh, my ankle!” she wailed. “It hurts dreadfully. I fear it is broken.”

 Rusholme looked around wildly. Not a soul in sight. Whether he carried her home in his arms or stayed with her in growing darkness until someone realized they were missing, Lady Anne could claim she was compromised and demand marriage. What the devil was he to do?

* * * *

 “Go out in the bloody cold when we don’t have to,” Aimée exclaimed with a shudder, “and all for what? So’s we can fall down and get bruises all over! And maybe break a leg like Ben. You know what, Sera, you got windmills in your head.”

 “I’ve always wanted to try skating.”

 “Go ahead, dear, but I’m not going with you. If you’re not back by half an hour after dark, I’ll send someone to pick up the pieces.”

 Prudence had much the same reaction from the rest of the troupe. She was determined, however. With visions of herself swooping gracefully across the ice, she went to find the First Footman.

 “Yes, miss, I’ll find you a pair of skates, and show you how to put ‘em on, right enough. If you go down to the lake round about sunset the nobs’ll be leaving and you’ll have it all to yourself.”

 “None of you servants skate?” she asked.

 “After Twelfth Night, maybe. With all the people in the house and the New Year’s ball coming up, we’ve none of us a minute to call our own. A couple of the under-footmen’ll go to fetch the chairs, though. You can go with them.”

 So Prudence set off with an escort of three smart footmen in puce livery. One carried the skates for her, curly-toed steel blades attached to wooden soles, with leather straps to fasten them to the feet. As they approached the lake, they heard voices coming towards them. With a whispered word of thanks, Prudence took her skates and, stepping off the path, she slipped in among the bushes.

 She found a spot where she could watch without being seen. Several people were leaving already, but a number of skaters still skimmed and whirled across the ice with varying degrees of expertise. It was a delightful scene, the ladies in vivid-hued velvet pelisses with fur pelerines and muffs, the gentlemen with their coat-tails flying.

 Quite against her will, Prudence’s eyes sought out Lord Rusholme. She had not the least difficulty recognizing him, though he was on the far side of the lake, a lady in ruby velvet clinging to his arm.

 As they moved around the perimeter towards her, Prudence recognized Lady Anne. Her beautiful face, framed by golden ringlets and aglow from the exercise, was raised to gaze adoringly up at Rusholme. Prudence watched her smile, pout, delicately flutter her eyelashes, tap him on the cheek with one gloved finger.

 So that was how it was done, though admittedly Rusholme did not look as if he was enjoying the flirtation. In fact, he seemed to be trying to hurry while she held him back.

 By then the rest of the skaters had taken off their blades and set off for the house, chatting hopefully of tea and hot chocolate. The footmen gathered the chairs and trudged after them. Rusholme and Lady Anne stopped on the ice near the benches.

 “What an excellent teacher you are, Lord Rusholme,” cried Lady Anne gaily. “I do believe I shall venture across on my own, if you will wait for me at the other side.”

 “It’s getting dark. You had best try it tomorrow.”

 “There may be a thaw, or I may have lost the knack by then. I want to do it now.”

 She let go his arm and started straight across the lake, her movements not fast but with none of a learner’s precarious balance. From behind her juniper, Prudence heard Rusholme softly groan.

 Hands on hips, his stance the essence of exasperation, he watched Lady Anne for a moment, then set off after her. Reaching the centre, she suddenly faltered, waved her arms, and sank down onto the ice.

 “Oh, my ankle!” she wailed. “It hurts dreadfully. I fear it is broken.”

 Rusholme swivelled on his skates and looked back, peering through the gathering gloom. His shoulders slumped. He turned and headed for Lady Anne, deep reluctance in every line of his body.

 Prudence decided it was time to intervene. Dropping her skates on the nearest bench, beside a greatcoat draped over its back, she set one tentative foot on the ice.

 “May I be of assistance?” she called.

 Rusholme swung round. “Miss Savage! Thank heaven! Lady Anne has injured her ankle.”

 His sceptical voice echoed Prudence’s thoughts. However, when she set her second foot on the ice and realized just how slippery it was, she began to feel more charitable. Lady Anne had undoubtedly deliberately contrived to be left alone with Lord Rusholme, but it was just possible her fall and her injury were genuine.

 Sliding one foot forward at a time, Prudence made her way towards the pair. Lady Anne scowled at her.

 “Allow me to present Miss Savage,” said Rusholme, always the gentleman even in the most unpromising circumstances.

 “My lady.” Prudence embarked upon a curtsy and quickly changed her mind as one foot slithered a few inches.

 “I don’t care to consort with actresses,” said Lady Anne coldly.

 “Don’t be caperwitted,” snapped Rusholme, and she gasped in shock. “Miss Savage, if you wouldn’t mind supporting me while I take off my skates, perhaps between us we might help Lady Anne off the ice.”

 Prudence willed her feet not to slip out from under her as he put one arm round her shoulders. He stood on one leg, reached down to unbuckle the straps on the other foot, then reversed the process. The weight of his arm was warm and somehow comfortable. She thought he gave her a brief, one-armed hug before he released her but she couldn’t be sure.

 Crouching, he removed Lady Anne’s skates. “I cannot carry you across the ice,” he said. “We should both go flying. With Miss Savage on one side and me on the other, I hope we can lift you so that with support you can hop to the bank.”

 “I can’t possibly,” she moaned.

 “You cannot stay here. The ice will begin to melt beneath you. I shall have to drag you.”

 Picturing Lady Anne sliding on her bottom across the ice, Prudence suppressed a giggle. Perhaps the girl envisioned the same undignified posture, for she said ungraciously, “Oh, very well, then, I shall try to hop.”

 Fortunately Prudence was beginning to get the knack of walking on ice. Somehow they made it to the bench without worse than a few wobbles. Lady Anne touched down with her supposedly bad foot two or three times, each time letting out a gasp a trifle too late to be quite convincing. She plumped down on the bench with a martyred sigh.

 “Here, this will keep you warm.” Rusholme took his greatcoat from the back of the bench and spread it over her, then turned to Prudence. “Thank you, Miss Savage. Would it be too great an imposition to ask you to keep Lady Anne company while I go for help?”
Please
, his tone begged.

 “Of course not.” Prudence hoped her amusement was hidden by the darkness, now near complete but for a glimmer of starlight reflected off the ice.

 “You stay with me, Lord Rusholme,” said Lady Anne. “She can go for help.”

 “I shall go much faster,” he pointed out, “and as it is my home I know what orders to give and to whom to give them.”

 Not, Prudence noted gratefully, “
no one will take any notice of an actress’s orders
.” What a dear he was!

 Before Lady Anne could think up some credible reason to keep him at his side, he strode off up the path. Lady Anne sat there in a silence from which sulkiness emanated in waves. Prudence pulled her cloak about her and strolled up and down, unwilling to risk a rebuff if she dared venture to share the bench.

 After a few minutes, Lady Anne said petulantly, “I daresay I may as well go after him.”

 “What of your ankle, my lady?”

 “I only twisted it, after all. It is quite better now.”

 “Shall I walk beside you in case it fails again?”

 “No!” Without further ado, she flung off Rusholme’s coat and stalked away.

 Prudence watched her go. No one could have said there was a spring in her step, but she walked without any sign of a hobble, not even pretending to favour her supposedly twisted ankle. Grinning, Prudence shook her head.

 About to follow, she realized it was growing lighter instead of darker, as a nearly full moon edged above the woods to the east. Sitting down, she strapped on the skates.

 Two tottering steps and she was on the ice. She sat down again, hard.

 
Perseverance
, she told herself sternly, struggling to her feet. In her effort not to go over backwards again, she overcorrected and landed on hands and knees. “Ouch!”

 “Miss Savage?” Rusholme’s voice, at once followed by Rusholme’s roar of laughter. “Methinks you need my arm.”

 Cautiously she knelt up and turned her head. “What are you doing here?” she asked crossly.

 Coming over to set her on her feet and help her back to the bench, he explained. “I’d scarce reached the house when I met Lord and Lady Winkworth setting out after their daughter. I told them what had happened. Lady Winkworth turned back to organize a rescue party, which she seemed oddly reluctant to do. Lord Winkworth and I set out down the path and met a miraculously recovered Lady Anne. He turned back with her. I came on.”

 “They must have thought it odd.”

 “I insisted on fetching the two pairs of skates we’d left in the middle of the lake, in case they are needed tomorrow.”

 “Either they would still be here tomorrow,” Prudence pointed out dryly, “or it will thaw, in which case they’ll sink but you won’t need them.”

 “True,” he said, sounding crestfallen. “I hadn’t thought of that. Still, I don’t expect
they
will, either.”

 She smiled. “You should have said you came for your coat.”

 “She left it here?” He turned his head and saw it, where Prudence had laid it over the back of the bench. “The little... ahem! Of course, I really came back to see that you were all right. Were you going to try to skate in the dark?”

 “It’s not dark. There’s a beautiful moon. I shall go on trying a little longer but it’s more difficult than I thought,” she confessed.

 “May I help you? Let me, Prudence.”

 Her prosaic name sounded almost romantic on his lips. The moonlight was romantic; the vast starry vault above was romantic; his dark eyes gazed down at her, filled with mystery and romance. She dared not. “No.”

 He took her hand. “I promise—I swear by the honour of a gentleman, I shan’t force my attentions on you.”

 With a sigh for her own weakness, she acquiesced. After all, it was far too cold for serious misbehaviour. What harm could there be in taking a couple of turns about the lake?

 He fetched the abandoned skates, put his on, and led her onto the ice. Concentrating on her feet and his instructions, at first she was to busy to pay much heed to his closeness. Then she found the rhythm and her balance. Exhilaration swept through her.

 As if Rusholme sensed it, he speeded up. Gently, irresistibly, he drew her with him in a soaring, swooping flight that seemed to last forever—or no time at all before, both hands at her waist, he swung them to a halt in the middle of the lake.

 Laughing with delight, she gazed up at his smiling face. His smiled faded. In the magical moonlight his face was intent, eager. He pulled her closer, into his arms, and the fragrance of sandalwood filled her nostrils. Her heart thudded in her breast as his head bent towards her.

 The crunch of feet on gravel sounded loud in the stillness. “Seraphina? Aimée sent me to see.... Oh, beg pardon, I’m sure. I didn’t mean to interrupt anything.”

 “No! Wait! I’m coming.”

 Lord Rusholme gave her his arm to the bench. He crouched to take off her skates and, gentlemanly to the last, when she shivered he draped his greatcoat about her shoulders. Then all three, in silence, walked back up to the house together.