room but couldn’t settle. It was one thing to be a failure on the battlefield. Betsy was right: Any man who went to war was a failure, if he lost even one man, one companion. It made him feel better, somehow, to acknowledge it.
She’d made him feel better, and to repay her, he’d made her feel horrible. He was an unforgivable lout.
The raging hypocrisy of his chiding anyone—for anything—wasn’t lost on him either. Betsy hurt no one with her masquerade. Thaddeus looked at her with genuine affection and admiration. Damn it. And he was a good man. The best.
Better by far than Jeremy with his blackened soul.
He walked restlessly from one end of the room to the other. Snow was still coming down outside, so he stood at the window watching the way drifts bunched up in the corners of the courtyard, looking deceptively soft and warm.
His eyes fell on a bundle he’d found earlier. Lady Knowe must have ordered it brought from Lindow. Seeing it held male clothing, a groom had delivered it to his room, but in fact the clothes inside were too small: boy’s clothing for a girl with too much exuberance to be confined to skirts, no matter how wide. He could go along the corridor and knock on Betsy’s door. It was only two down from his; he’d noted her chamber, of course.
No.
Likely Betsy’s maid was in her room, helping her disrobe.
He wrenched his mind away from that vision because it wasn’t his to think about.
His room faced the front of the inn, as did Betsy’s. Perhaps she was staring out the window as well. His hands curled into fists at the idea she might be crying.
Her pointed comment about his being a guest at the castle was a signal. He could leave in the morning in grand style, in his father’s carriage. No one would guess that he was fleeing the scene of a crime.
He discovered that he was grinding his teeth when his jaw started aching.
Snow was drifting higher against the stone walls in the courtyard. The iron-wrought railings outside his window were decorated with ornate metal spears, each of which held its own snowy nightcap, like a line of thin, old men.
Iron-wrought railings.
A balcony . . .
He brought back an image of the inn. A narrow balcony ran along the front of the house and curved around both sides.
Looking out the window, the balcony seemed wide enough. A man could walk to the left, pass one window, stop at the next.
He waited until he hadn’t heard any footsteps for a good half hour. Then he opened his French window and stepped into snow that mounded over his ankle. It was coming down in an irresolute fashion, appearing from the blackness to float through the circle of light cast at his back.
He walked past the room next to his. It was lit from within, the curtains well-drawn against the cold. With a start, he realized that his father was inside, belting out “Amazing Grace,” which meant he was in the bathtub. The marquess always sang in the bath.
The sound brought him back to the family pew at Thurrock, standing beside his father as a little boy, listening to his deep voice growl out lyrics.
“I once was lost but now am found,” his father sang now. “Was blind but now I see.”
Jeremy kept walking, cold biting at the back of his neck. The next window was Betsy’s. Only a muted glow came from the split in the curtains. With luck she was tucked in bed, her maid . . .
What would he say if her maid came to the window? He could hand her the bundle and walk silently back to his room. Presumably her lady’s maid wouldn’t destroy her mistress’s reputation by telling others that a man had visited the room.
Before he changed his mind, he put his palm on the left-hand glass and pushed. Sure enough, the glass swung open gently, stopped by thick velvet.
He heard a muffled exclamation, so he stayed where he was on the balcony, snow building up on his shoulders and freezing his fingers.
The drape pulled back with a rattle of ironmongery and—
There she was.
God, she was beautiful. The fire burning in the hearth bathed her in golden light. Her hair was down, tumbling over one shoulder. Her dark eyebrows stood out in her face; her eyes were shadowed but, thank God, showed no signs of being swollen with tears.
He cleared his throat. “It’s me.”
“I can’t imagine that