Tied With a Bow

distraction he did not need, a temptation he could not avoid.
    “What do you want with her, then?” Martin asked.
    “I don’t know yet,” Lucien admitted. He had Fallen for her once. He was prepared to sacrifice for her again. But how much this time? “She wants my help.”
    Martin clipped the bandage ends. “Seems to me you got enough strays counting on you already.”
    “Then one more should make no difference.”
    But Aimée was different. She always had been.
    “Tell that to Fanny next time you give her the housekeeping money.”
    Lucien’s jaw tightened. “She asked for my help,” he repeated stubbornly.
    “Coming to your room with you starkers in the bath, she’s asking for something else. And you looked ready to give it to her.”
    Lucien chafed. But there was no point in being offended by the truth. No point in denying it, either, to Martin or himself. More than his own fate depended on his decisions now. He would not risk his future or theirs again.
    “I have nothing to offer Miss Blanchard,” Lucien said stiffly. “Except my assistance.”
    The manservant met his gaze, his own eyes dark with sympathy and understanding. “Best you remember that, then, sir. Next time you see the lady.”

Chapter Six
     
    In his dream, Lucien struggled up and up a long, twisting stairwell, his pulse thudding, his face wet with perspiration. Cold seeped from the ancient stone. A draft rose from the depths of the tower.
    Aimée climbed ahead of him, around and around, her light flickering like a candle in the dark. She turned, her smile beckoning, her face glowing in the shadows. “This way. Follow me.”
    Reckless little fool, she wasn’t looking, she might slip, she might trip, she could fall and break her neck. His mouth dried as her slipper scraped stone. He lunged to save her.
    And missed. His reaching hands grasped at air, at nothing.
    For a moment he hung suspended, her cry echoing in his ears, before he fell.
    And woke in a tangle of sheets, his heart pounding and a headache pulsing behind his eyeballs.
    Gray sunlight slanted across the carpet of his room. Lucien swore and stumbled from his bed. It was late.
    By the time he made his way downstairs to breakfast, the room was full of far too many fellow guests, flapping and jabbering like crows in a winter landscape.
    No Aimée.
    Lucien blinked his bleary eyes, stupid with lack of sleep. Was she still in the house? Had he missed her?
    He struggled against the remnants of his dream, sticky and persistent as cobwebs. Outside the windows, the snow lay thin and hard across the lawn. A line of footprints and the icy tracks of a cart led past the orchard and into the wood.
    Aimée.
    This way. Follow me.
    His head throbbed. His stomach growled.
    Julia lifted the teapot invitingly. “Will you have some tea, Mr. Hartfell? Or do you drink chocolate in the mornings?”
    He wanted coffee desperately.
    He glanced once at the sideboard set with pound cake, plum cake, breads, and rolls and then again out the window. Imagined facing Julia’s pert prettiness across the breakfast table every morning for the rest of his life and said, “Thank you, no. I have just remembered an errand that requires my attention.”
    “I haven’t had my tea yet,” Tom Whitmore announced beside her.
    Julia set the pot down with a little thump. “You might have taken breakfast at your own house rather than call on us so early in the morning.”
    “I can’t get what I want at home,” Whitmore said.
    Julia looked at him through her lashes. “And what is that, pray?”
    Whitmore grinned. “Plum cake,” he said, and reached for a slice.
    Lucien was heartily sick of Julia Basing and her games and her suitor. It was a relief to escape outside into the cold air and the quiet.
    He crunched across the frozen ground under the dark, straggling cover of the trees, trying to ignore his pounding head and empty stomach. Small outbuildings huddled under a thin blanket of snow. The cart had dug shallow ruts in the ice. He thought he could hear the squeak and rumble of its wheels through the trees.
    Lucien frowned. Of course Aimée would have servants with her to bring back decorations for the ballroom. He would have to find some way to speak with her alone. Last night she had refused to confide in him in front of Martin.
    His jaw set. Or perhaps she had simply used his manservant’s presence as an excuse to run away.
    Perhaps it is myself I do not trust.
    He expelled his breath in a cloud of