The Winter Bride (A Chance Sisters Romance) by Anne Gracíe Page A

visible indignation. “The cheek of you! I just told you to stay away from her. Asking for a beating, you are.”
    “No,” Freddy said coolly. “Simply asking what time she finishes work. I shall escort her home.”
    “Down the Road to Roon is the only place you’d likely escort her,” the woman declared. “My lads will walk Damaris home, right to ’er very door. So how d’you like that, Sir Rake?” she said with an air of triumph.
    “Damn. That’s foiled me,” Freddy said with what he hoped was a convincingly frustrated air. Having satisfactorily arranged the matter of Miss Damaris’s safe escort home, he took himself off to catch up on some much-needed sleep.
    No trouble?
Max had a great deal to answer for.
     • • • 
    I nside the pottery, Damaris hung up her cloak—Abby’s old cloak, really—on the nail on the back of the door, collected her brushes and sat down at her usual bench. On a stand to the left of her, Mrs. Jenkins had laid out all the pieces to be painted. They’d already been fired with a white overglaze. Each piece would be perfect; anything with even the slightest imperfection would be put aside and painted by one of the other girls. Damaris’s work fetched the best prices.
    The stand on her right would hold the finished pieces, left to dry, then be taken for a final firing. She picked up a brush and frowned. Her hands were shaking. Why? Surely not from that mild little exchange with Mr. Monkton-Coombes.
    She’d managed to appear calm and undisturbed while talking to him—she was used to keeping calm when men raged, and Mr. Monkton-Coombes could hardly be said to have raged. Papa in a rage had been far more frightening. She hadn’t been at all fearful of Mr. Monkton-Coombes. More . . . annoyed.
    So why this reaction? It was almost as though she could still feel his leather-gloved fingers holding her wrist. But he hadn’t hurt, or even threatened to hurt, her. He hadn’t shouted or menaced her in any way. He just wanted to know what she was doing. Because Max had made him responsible.
    It was inconvenient, but not outrageous. And he’d been perfectly gentlemanly about it. So why, now she was inside, had her hands started trembling?
    Cold, perhaps? Whatever the reason, she couldn’t paint with shaking hands. She rose and went to stand beside the small iron stove—the pottery works were always warm from the kiln, but even so, a fire was always kept going in the workroom stove, for mixing glazes, for making tea and, on mornings like this, to thaw out the cold hands of the girls who painted the china. It had been an exceptionally cold summer, and the winter was expected to be even worse.
    She was holding out her hands, rubbing them next to the stove, when Mrs. Jenkins bustled in from outside.
    “I sent ’im off with a flea in his ear,” she said, dusting down her skirt with a satisfied air. She snorted. “Tomcat in gen’leman’s clothing, that’s what ’e is—a rake through and through.”
    “Rake? You thought—”
    Mrs. Jenkins snorted. “I knew what he was the instant I clapped eyes on him! Dressed like that in his fancy duds at this hour of the mornin’. The cheek of ’im, thinking he could seduce away one o’ my girls in broad daylight.”
    “But he wasn’t—”
    “Bless you, my dove, you’re too young to recognize a Wicked Seducer when you see one, and I grant you that one is an ’andsome devil, and charmin’ as an oiled snake, I have no doubt!” She fixed Damaris with a gimlet eye. “But it don’t do for a girl like you to catch the eye of a gentleman, take it from me. He’ll soften you up with sweet words and little gifts and . . . and
poetry
, and you’ll think ’e’s
ever
such a nice fellow, then in the twinklin’ of an eye, he’ll ’ave your skirts over your ’ead, and there you’ll be, rooned forever!”
    “But Mrs. Jenkins—”
    “Rooned forever!” Mrs. Jenkins repeated firmly. “And we don’t want that, do we? Now, I’ve