Tied With a Bow

lifted the child straight from the water—an amazing feat of strength—and hauled her onto the ice.
    Susan Netherby was sobbing. “My baby! Oh, my baby!”
    Lucien inched backward, dragging Harriet, dripping, slipping, and crying, with him.
    Aimée held her breath, afraid to venture nearer. Surely the ice would break under their combined weights.
    But it did not.
    Another inch. Another yard. In a long, smooth motion, Lucien pulled Harriet level with his shoulders and then pushed her down toward his feet.
    Aimée skated forward and snatched her up. Clutching the wet, shivering child to her chest, she stumbled to the bank.
    Hands grabbed and supported her up the slope.
    “You stupid girl! I thought you were watching her!” Susan’s face was pinched and pale. “How could you be so careless?”
    George Netherby, Harriet’s father, pushed through the crowd.
    “Your coat,” Aimée said through chattering teeth. “She needs . . .”
    “Yes, yes,” he said impatiently and peeled the little girl from Aimée. “You’ve done quite enough.”
    The front of Aimée’s pelisse was soaked with icy, rank pond water. Her arms felt empty and cold. She wrapped them around her waist as a flock of servants led by Freddy Keasdon swooped from the house.
    The servants enveloped the children and their parents in a cloud of blankets and concern, sweeping them up and carrying them off toward baths and fires and safety. George Netherby carried Harriet up the stone steps of balustrade. Peter trudged in his father’s wake. Lottie sniveled in her mother’s arms. Most of the house party trooped after them, leaving Aimée standing on the bank.
    Forcing her weighted limbs to move, she dropped onto the bench. Fumbled with her straps.
    “Let me help you.” Howard Basing crouched at her feet, brushing aside her frozen fingers.
    She glanced over her shoulder, shaken and more hurt than she would admit by the Netherbys’ recriminations. “I have to go. They will need me in the nursery.”
    Howard tugged on her skate buckles. “We have servants. Let them deal with the brats. It’s even possible that my sister, now that she’s been reminded of her offspring’s existence, will care for them herself.”
    Aimée barely heard him. On the frozen lily pond, Lucien was getting slowly to his feet, brushing ice from the front of his waistcoat. His right hand dripped blood.
    She sucked in her breath. Harriet must have kicked him with her skates when he pulled her across the ice.
    She felt a touch on her ankle and then on her calf. Startled, she looked down.
    Howard smirked and squeezed her knee, his hand under her skirt. “We must get you back to the house and out of these wet things.”
    She froze a moment in numb disbelief.
    And then hot anger flowed through her veins, flushed her cheeks, burned in her heart. She lashed out, kicking at him, his hands, shoulder, stomach.
    With a grunt, he slipped and tumbled backward.
    “ Connard! Cochon! Pig!” Rage, kindled by fear and fueled by disgust, thickened her voice. “Don’t you touch me! Don’t ever touch me again!”
    Howard scrambled up, an ugly look in his eyes. “You little bitch, I’ll—”
    “You heard her.” Lucien stood at the bottom of the bank, tall and solid as a church, his eyes hard and cold. “Back off.”
    Howard glanced over his shoulder. Growled. “This is none of your concern.”
    Aimée jumped to her feet, prepared to throw herself between them.
    Lucien narrowed his eyes. “I have bloodied my knuckles once already rescuing your niece. It would cost me nothing to bloody them again.”
    Howard sneered. “Except my family’s goodwill.”
    “Miss Blanchard is also family, is she not?” Lucien asked in a deadly soft voice. “You are cousins.”
    Howard’s face reddened. “Once removed.”
    “And now removed again.” Lucien shook out the coat draped over his arm and dropped it around Aimée’s shoulders, overlapping its edges in front. The collar reached up around her ears.
    His coat was wonderfully warm and smelled like him, like man and sandalwood. She clutched its heavy folds gratefully, shielding herself from the cold and Howard’s eyes.
    A dizzying memory swept over her, an impression of hard, strong arms and wheeling stars and a road far below unspooling like a silver ribbon in the dark. She almost staggered.
    Lucien offered her his arm. “Permit me to escort you to the house.”
    She blinked at him, disoriented, trying to force her mind to