Kitty darted a glance over her shoulder. “I am sorry you must be trapped here with a gentleman you so dislike.”

Emily secured the laces and reached for Kitty’s petticoat and gown. “I do wish we had a button hook.” She began fastening the wool. “I don’t dislike him, Kitty. I disrespect him. The two are far different.”

“Are they?” Kitty saw nothing in Lord Blackwood that she typically admired in gentlemen, no elevation of mind or character. Except something about him was not right. The pieces did not fit together. The steely glint in the backs of his eyes that had been there even as he’d said he wanted to kiss her did not suit the man he otherwise appeared. And how strange his expression when he had come in from the stable earlier and told her he would go out after the servants if she wished.

But perhaps that coldness was only a remnant of his tragedy. And perhaps Kitty was refining upon it far too much and making herself a complete ninny.

“Of course they are different, Kitty,” Emily said soberly. “Liking has everything to do with character and disposition. Respect has to do with a gentleman’s mode of life. But I shall get along well enough until we leave. Lord Blackwood has lent me another book,” she finished as though that was all in the world a woman needed to be happy.

“More poetry?”

“A play in verse. Racine’s Phaedra.” Emily made quick work of fastening Kitty’s gown and then Kitty went to the pitcher of water on the stand. She broke the thin crust of ice and washed her face.

The handsome barbarian with big shaggy dogs liked to read French theater. Her insides felt somewhat trembly too now.

“Has Mrs. Milch prepared breakfast yet?”

“Eggs again. We must make the bread for dinner tonight.”

“You are determined to do so?”

“Of course.”

“How is the road this morning? Has anyone seen the mail coach?”

“Mr. Yale reports that no one has passed yet.”

No escape then from her foolish nerves and this unwise preoccupation, made considerably worse since she now knew far too much about him—his scent, the caress of his tongue, the hard contoured man-shape beneath coat sleeves and waistcoat. She could not think, could not organize her thoughts at all, it seemed, a thoroughly unprecedented state.

Being infatuated with a man at five-and-twenty felt absolutely idiotic. But perhaps it was not so singular. Her mother occasionally showed moderate giddiness over Lord Chamberlayne. Of course, Lord Chamberlayne was intelligent, a consummate gentleman, and a successful politician. While Lord Blackwood … had very large dogs.

She must be mad.

And so bread baking it would be.

Kitty stood before a wooden block in Mrs. Milch’s kitchen, bent over a lump of dough as the inn mistress offered instruction on kneading. In a matter of days she would be sweeping floors and plucking chicken carcasses. Possibly feeding slop to the pigs if there were any pigs to be fed.

“One must press it like this, Mrs. Milch?” Emily queried, brow creased.

“No, miss. Like this. But the Quality shouldn’t be making bread, I still say,” she added damply.

“As like, milady agrees with me.”

“Oh, I haven’t any feeling about it one way or the other.” Kitty didn’t care how she busied herself.

At this point she would do anything to escape her confusion. The snowbound inn was closing in on her with merciless vigor, much as Emily’s knuckles now dug into the dough.

She felt ill, betrayed by the spinsterish longings suddenly burst upon her. For over five years, since Lambert took her innocence and she began to hate him, she knew she would never marry. She was ruined to be a bride to a respectable gentleman, and as she could not provide children even if a man were to offer for her, she could not in good conscience accept. She’d told herself she did not want a husband. Men were not to be trusted. She would be perfectly happy living out her days with her mother as her closest companion, Lord Chamberlayne or no.

But Kitty could pretend no longer. In truth she had known that the night she determined to follow Emily into Shropshire. She’d left her mother and Lord Chamberlayne to settle matters between themselves because she did not wish to live with her mother her entire life. She wanted something else of life.

Her hands stilled, then slipped from the dough. She had not been honest with herself. Her infatuation with a man of the Earl of Blackwood’s cut proved it.

She was tired of justifying her childhood mistake through sophistication and pretending to the world that she was glad to be spurned by so many among polite society. She was tired of the lonesome future she had envisioned for herself. Her heart ached for something else, something sweeter and finer. She longed to fall. Image shattered. Innocence regained in simple, unpremeditated happiness.

But a woman like her was not allowed to fall. A woman who had given away her most precious possession without benefit of marriage was, rather, propositioned and groped. She was kissed in dark stairwells, and the gentlemen who did the propositioning, groping, and kissing did not feel obligated to offer anything more. Anything respectable. Anything permanent. Anything that might fill the loneliness.

“Milady, you mustn’t muss your skirts.” Mrs. Milch lifted Kitty’s hands and wiped them with a clean cloth with the delicacy of a lady’s maid. “I never mind a bit of flour on me, but don’t you be getting it on your fine silks and what have you’s when there’s Quality gentlemen about.”

Kitty looked into the woman’s droopy eyes and saw understanding. But that was impossible.

Everything about this dreamlike sojourn in snowy Shropshire was impossible.

She cast her gaze to the kitchen doorway as though it were a portal for escape, like the open door of Emily’s traveling carriage had seemed to her in London.

The earl appeared there.

Her entire body flushed with heat. She had always before admired the unmarred visages of gentlemen who spent most of their time in town. Lord Blackwood’s cheeks glowed with cold and exertion, and she revised her position. He was wonderfully tall and as thoroughly gorgeous as the night before by firelight during dinner and in the dark stairwell during her own private dessert. She felt like the girl he had called her, idiotically infatuated and wanting him to kiss her again more than she could bear.

“Guid day, leddies.” He took them all in with a glance, then looked to the inn mistress. “Ma’am, yer husband begs ye set a kettle o tar on the fire for sealing the boards.”

“Now the man’s sending the Quality on his errands instead of Ned. Where’s that boy got to?” Mrs.

Milch released Kitty’s hands.

“Gane tae the smithy tae retour the saw.”

Emily looked up. “Have you finished the stable roof already?”

“Aye, miss. Moony haunds, as ye be at weeman’s work here.” He glanced at the dough-covered table and smiled.

Kitty had to look away. Women’s work . He approved of ladies baking bread, she understood possibly three out of four words he spoke, yet his smile took her breath.

Oh, God, what was going on inside her? How could she swing from one extreme to the other?

“I am astounded at the difficulty of this task,” Emily commented. “But Mrs. Milch is a very competent teacher after so many years laboring at it.”

Kitty swallowed over her lumpy throat. “My lord, is y—” His gaze shifted to her.

“—y-your—” Her tongue failed.

An exceedingly uncomfortable silence filled the kitchen.

His mouth quirked slightly to the side. Kitty could not spare a thought to care that Emily stared at her now, or that she had never stuttered before in her life. If only he would talk more and look less she might make it through this without embarrassing herself completely.

“Is your horse all right?” she managed beneath his dark regard.

“Aye, lass. Ma thanks.” His expression remained pleasant as he broadened his attention again to include them all. He was a casual flirt. One might believe he had not in fact kissed her thoroughly on a stair the night before. But she knew his reputation, and he had no doubt kissed her because he imagined he knew hers. “Leddies, ye dae us all a fine service far the holidays.”

“There’ll be no goose,” Mrs. Milch muttered.

“Who needs goose when fine ladies are about such noble work?” Mr. Cox announced at the earl’s shoulder, casting a pleased glance about the chamber.

“There is nothing noble in baking bread, Mr. Cox,” Emily stated. “The poor labor at such work and they are barely compensated for it.”

“I have labored my whole life, Lady Marie Antoine,” he said brightly, moving to Emily’s side.

“Yet I have never had the pleasure of baking bread with a lady. I beg to assist.”

“Have you baked bread at all, sir?” She seemed truly curious.

“Why, no.” He laughed.

“Then you’d best put on an apron as well.” Mrs. Milch shook her head sorrowfully.

“You must remove your coat first,” Emily instructed.

“Certainly not in the presence of ladies.” Mr. Cox cast Kitty a playful grin and tied the cloth around his elegant coattails. “My lord, will you join me with our fair companions in this charming domestic task?”

Lord Blackwood shifted his booted feet at the threshold.

“A’ll best be leaving that tae those mair fitted.” He bowed, cast Kitty the swiftest and most enigmatic glance, and disappeared.

Kitty pulled in steadying breaths, every iota of her tingling nerves drawn to follow him.

“Mr. Cox,” she spoke to fix her feet in place, “is Mr. Yale still in the stable?” She couldn’t care less. She only wanted to know where the earl was going now. It was impossible. Grown women did not feel this way. But perhaps this was her punishment for the dishonest program she had pursued for so many years, no matter that the man she had helped bring to justice was in fact very bad.

“He has gone to the pub with the carpenter who helped us patch up that roof. Nasty business.

Nearly caught Blackwood on the shoulder.”

“He only said his horse was in the way of it,” Emily said.

“He was grooming it.” Mr. Cox set his fingertips to the dough. “Odd for a gentleman of his distinction to care for his own cattle, I say. But the nobility will have its eccentrics,” he added with a confiding smile.

Emily pointed at the round of dough. “You must put the heels of your hands into it, Mr. Cox. Like that.”

Kitty’s heart pattered. She wiped her palms on a cloth.

“Will you excuse me?” she muttered. Mrs. Milch was sufficient chaperone for Emily, a chaperone like the one Kitty ought to have had in the stairwell the night before. Emily dug into the dough anew and Mr. Cox studied her actions. Mrs. Milch did not look away from the pot of sealant. Kitty fled.

She must escape the inn, if only for a few moments. She needed cold air in her lungs to clear her clouded head. It was vastly unwise to fixate on the Earl of Blackwood, his breathtaking jaw, his skillful caress.

In the parlor Ned stood with one of the dogs. The boy’s head came up and something gold glimmered in his palm.

He grinned. “Sky’s fair clear today, milady.”

She could barely think to put together words. “It seems so.” She went toward him. Distraction of this sort was exactly what she required.

The dog snuffled his hand.

“Are you feeding treats to the animals, Ned?” She tried to smile, but her lips felt wobbly like the rest of her.

“No, ma’am. It’s only a trinket I found a fortnight since on the road down a’ways at Shrewsbury.”

His brows perched high under jutting hair. He turned his hand upward. A painted cameo covered his palm, a portrait set in a gold frame of a young woman with gold ringlets and a pleasingly dimpled cheek.

“How pretty she is, and how sad her beau must be to have lost it.” Kitty smiled, nerves jittering recklessly. Distraction, it seemed, was not helping matters.

“Reckon.” Ned tucked the cameo in his pocket, tugged his cap, and went with the dog out into the yard, where the earl had presumably gone returning to the stable. She could go out there and… No.

She would brave the icy rear stoop where she might press her fiery cheeks into a handful of snow to calm her heated nerves. Then perhaps she could throw herself into the snow entirely to cool the rest of her. She hurried toward the rear foyer for her pattens and cloak.