Excerpt: Taming the Winter King

Charlotte was jolted from sleep by a harsh volley of knocking at the door.

In those first seconds before her eyes adjusted to the confines of the dark, narrow bedroom, her breath came hard and sharp, her lungs squeezed with panic.

They’re here, she thought. They’ve found me.

“Miss,” came a muffled voice from the other side of the door. “Miss Tyrell ... there’s a man here asking after you, miss ...”

Charlotte closed her eyed and tried to will her hammering heart into stillness. After a moment she felt carefully over the top of the night-table for her spectacles and slipped them on. The darkened room around her clarified, so that she could see where things were: the washstand, the dressing table, the small bookcase to the right of the bed, the window with its curtains left open so that she might see the stars on a clear night.

There were no stars now. The sky was overcast, evidently, for there was nothing but blackness filling the window pane.

She heard the bedroom door swing open behind her and turned on the bed. There, haloed in the soft light of a taper stood Lily, one of the upstairs maids, clad in a shawl and nightdress and a rather unbecoming lace cap. Her normally cheerful round face looked harried, even frightened. Directly over her shoulder stood a tall man in fine livery, though he, too appeared haggard, as though he hadn’t slept in some time.

Lily blew a strand of loose hair off her face and looked apologetically at Charlotte. “I tried to stop him, Miss Tyrell. Truly I did. I told him it weren’t proper. Especially at this hour of the night – but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, said as how he had to see you ...”

Charlotte reached for her wrapper to cover herself, standing up from the bed. “It’s quite all right, Lily.” She gave the man an assessing gaze. He looked quite young, she decided, and not a little embarrassed.

“Beg pardon, miss,” he said. “I know it ain’t strictly proper, but Mr. Iverly was that insistent, ma’am, he said as how you could help.”

Charlotte frowned. “Mr. Iverly?” she asked.

“The duke’s valet, miss. Said as how you had ... done him a kindness a few weeks since. In the Grand Circle park ...”

Of course. She recalled the incident now. A smart-looking gentleman nearly run down by a reckless horseman. Charlotte had helped him to his feet and to retrieve his wig. He’d had a cut on his face, and she’d felt terribly sorry for him.

Whatever had possessed her in that moment she surely didn’t know ...

“The thing is, miss – the duke is bad – mortal bad. The doctors have tried bleeding him, only Mr. Iverly made them stop. They say the wound’s gone infected and there’s nothing more they can do ...”

The duke ... he could only mean the Duke of Wynter, Charlotte realized. All of fashionable society was whispering that the old roue was on his deathbed, the result of a duel, apparently. Even a lowly governess could not help overhearing some things. She had not realized that the fallen pedestrian she had helped in the park weeks ago was the duke’s man.

Charlotte raised her eyes to the curiously hopeful face of the young messenger. The Duke of Wynter was said to be a thoroughly debauched man, and cruel as well – it was well known that he had seduced and discarded any number of women, including one or two of his own class. Yet his servant seemed genuinely distressed for the duke’s health – as evidently was this Mr. Iverly. What kind of man could hold the Duke of Wynter’s reputation and yet still inspire such devotion in his servants?

She glanced at the locked trunk at the foot of her bed that held most of her worldly possessions. She’s have to take her notebooks, she mused, but she still wasn’t certain she could ...

She looked up once more at the young man. “You will need to give me a few moments to get dressed, Mr. ...?”

“Thomas. Thomas Oates, miss.” Even in the failing light of Lily’s candle, she could see that he flushed little. Lily herself was frowning.

“You’re never thinking of going with him, Miss Tyrell?” she said. “Not at this hour? Why, you’re not a doctor, miss – and well, the His Grace does have such a reputation ...”

“I doubt that a dying man will attempt to ravish me,” said Charlotte wryly.

Lily colored and said nothing. Above the maid’s head, Charlotte met the gaze of Thomas Oates once more.

“Only you must understand one thing,” she said, her voice low and sober. “ – you and your Mr. Iverly. You must understand that -- I can promise nothing.”

Oates bobbed his head in a curt nod. “Aye, miss. We understand.”

****

Charlotte clutched her worn valise to her chest as Oates assisted her out of the duke’s carriage. The luxury of the vehicle had astonished her, but it was nothing at all to the house itself, a tall, imposing edifice with alabaster white pillars flanking the doorway. Her guide escorted her up a wide staircase and into the marble-floored entryway.

“If you’ll just wait a moment, miss.”

Charlotte nodded, and Thomas Oates vanished, leaving her for a moment to stand alone in what seemed a vast, echoing space, nervously gripping her valise in one hand while adjusting her spectacles with the other. The grandeur, the sheer largeness of the place easily dwarfed anything she had ever known. She felt the kind of hush that one feels on stepping into a museum.

Only this wasn’t a museum. The duke lived here.

If he still lived, she thought. For the house was hushed in a way that seemed unnatural even for this hour of the night. She felt a small pang of anxiety. To have come all this way and then not even to see the man ... or to see not a living man but a –

She refused to finish the thought.

A moment later Oates returned, and Charlotte did recognize the thin, immaculately dressed man who followed in his wake. He bowed to her as if she were a lady.

“Miss Tyrell, thank you for coming at such an ... unseemly hour. We are all so very grateful --”

Charlotte cut him short. “How fares His Grace?”

Mr. Iverly shook his head. In the low light of the entryway, she could see that his narrow features were quite haggard. “Not well,” he admitted. “Yes, perhaps it is best that you see him straightaway. May I take your --” He gestured at the bag she held. Charlotte felt her hand tighten around the worn handle.

“That will not be necessary, thank you, Mr. Iverly. I merely packed a few things that might be useful to me in trying to help the duke.”

“As you wish.”

He led her up a vast, sweeping staircase and down a series of grand, empty hallways. There were paintings hung on many of the walls – landscapes and portraits in heavy gilt frames, most of them obviously quite old. At last, Iverly stopped at a door and gently pushed it open to exchange whispered words with someone else standing just inside.

A moment later, he ushered Charlotte inside the room.

She set the valise down on the floor at last and for a moment just stood, adjusting her spectacles, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom, for the room about her was dark and stuffy, lit only by a few tapers and the low-burning embers on the hearth. There was a smell of medicine, of sickness and impending death, a faintly sour smell mingled with more astringent odors. The space was dominated by a great, shadowed, canopied bed.

Charlotte took up a candle and moved closer to glimpse the figure lying there.

Her breath caught as the candlelight fell on the duke’s face. She was not sure what she had expected, but surely it had not been this – this incongruous mixture of raw, masculine beauty coupled with the kind of frailty that a long illness invariably brings.

The Duke of Wynter lay on his back with one hand draped over his chest, the other extended at his side, the fingers trembling and twitching just slightly, as if he dreamed uneasy dreams. The bones and tendons of his hand stood out sharply in the candlelight, and his whole body – what she could see of it, had a gaunt, wasted look. His skin was pale, almost luminescent.

His head tossed briefly back and forth on the pillow, the lips moving as if in speech, but Charlotte could hear nothing that sounded like words, only a kind of low, breathy murmuring, indecipherable.

And yet for all that, he was somehow impossibly beautiful in a way that made her heart twist. Overlong hair of tawny gold was plastered with sweat to his cheeks and forehead, and there was something even now defiant about the sharp planes and angles of his face. The too-large nose, the rough-hewn chin and jaw-line, covered with a bristling golden stubble. With his wide shoulders, lean form and golden hair, he had the look of a wounded lion. Beautiful, powerful, and somehow still dangerous, despite being laid low.

Charlotte sucked in a breath. Her fingers itched to touch this lion, but she did not yet dare such a familiarity. Instead she straightened up and squared her shoulders. “May I see the wound?” she asked, aware that her voice was not quite steady.

The man who had evidently been sitting at the duke’s beside before their arrival now came around the bed and carefully lifted and bent Wynter’s arm so that it lay with the other across his chest. His bare chest, Charlotte now noted, blinking -- covered with fine, short hair the same golden color as that on his chin. Only the hair on his chest looked ... soft. Touchable, like velvet. She shook away that improper thought and followed the servant around the bed, watching as the man carefully peeled away a bit of gauze padding to reveal the ugly, open wound in the duke’s side, just beneath his arm – a wound that was still oozing blood. A faintly foul smell touched her nostrils.

Charlotte looked across the room at Iverly, who was watching her with a kind of desperate hopefulness. “Mr. Oates said the wound was infected?”

Iverly nodded. “We thought it was healing at first. We had used whiskey to clean it ...” The valet’s voice trailed off. “Apparently that was of no avail. The last doctor to see him – yesterday it would have been – had to take a knife to the wound to clean out the poison.”

Iverly’s face was quite white as he said this. Charlotte winced. Stoic as he looked, Wynter would undoubtedly have been screaming in agony during such a procedure. Little wonder he looked so close to death now.

“His Grace fainted from the pain,” Iverly said, as if he’d read her thoughts. His voice was a bare whisper. Charlotte nodded. Her mouth had gone dry. She wet her lips uncertainly with her tongue, then extended a cautious hand toward the fearsome-looking wound.

“May I?” she asked softly. The servant dropped his own hand and stood away from the bed.

She did not touch the man lying on the bed. Instead she brought the palm of her hand to hover over the open breach in his flesh, closed her eyes for a moment and tried to sense the energies radiating from this particular injury. After a moment, she frowned, withdrew her hand, and blinked down at her patient. This was not a normal wound – though that would have been bad enough. The healing would not be simple.

She bit her lip. Her reading, extensive though it was, had not prepared her for this.

She glanced up to see Iverly’s gaze still on her. The valet looked as though he restrained tears. “Can you help him, miss?” It was a bare, rough, whisper. A plea.

Charlotte frowned again, but then nodded, gazing down at the wounded lion entangled in the damp bedsheets. Somehow the choice had been made the moment she had laid eyes on him. “I may be able to do him some good. I am willing to try.”

She met Iverly’s gaze. “So long as you understand that there is always the risk that I may inadvertently do harm. It is even possible that I might make it worse.”

“He is dying now,” said Iverly softly. “I think there can be little that is worse than that.”

“Very well.” Charlotte straightened her back once more. “There a few things that I shall need – privacy among them. I shall need to be alone with His Grace for some little while.”

She was fully aware of what that meant. A woman who closeted herself alone with a man, let alone one of Wynter’s reputation, was a ruined woman. Never mind that the man in question was feverish and near death.

Iverly knew this too, yet he also knew that it must be so. Very probably he even guessed why. He nodded his agreement.

“No one in this household will say a word, Miss Tyrell. I promise you that.”

****

He was burning. His skin, his lungs, the raw place underneath his arm – everything was on fire.

Of course, perhaps that was better than the cold steel blade someone had tried to gut him with the last time he’d been awake.

The fever came and went, cyclical, like the tides. At its peak it was like being trapped in a kind of red haze. His chest ached with the effort of drawing breath, and he knew he mumbled nonsense. Gods only knew what sort of salacious tidbits the servants had picked up by now. The thought made him want to smile, but he wasn’t sure that he could. None of his muscles seemed to work properly.

He was aware of their whispers and hushed movements around him. He sensed their fear. Stupid, really, to fear a man lying flat on his back with a sword wound. Irrational. But perhaps their fear had a source other than himself ... not that he wasn’t well accustomed to striking fear in others. There had been a time, he supposed, when he had even rather enjoyed it. It hurt to think about that now.

Indeed, it hurt to think about almost anything, as he couldn’t keep the thoughts straight. Nor, however, could he seem to stop them. Threads of ideas and fragments of thought raced along his mind of their own accord, a tumble of mental rubbish. Sometimes it seemed as if he were having an actual conversation or even an argument with someone. Then he would begin to open his mouth to frame a reply – and realize only then that no one had been speaking to him. That the argument existed only in his own head. With himself.

By all the devils in the seven hells, why couldn’t he just die now and bloody well get it over with? Who would’ve guessed that dying was so damned much work?

He usually didn’t open his eyes at all, even when he was awake. It was too much trouble, and there was nothing to see but the dimness and the gloom. He knew he hadn’t died yet because he could still smell the foul odor of the room.

He was truly beginning to wish that Temple had simply run him through. It would have been quicker. He would have seen the sky and smelled fresh air while the blood ran out of him.

It was the brief, cool touch against his wounded side that actually prompted him to open his eyes this time. It was feather-light, barely a touch, and for the briefest of moments he felt oddly soothed. The hot pain of the wound melted away, as if displaced by a soft breeze or the very lightest touch of a woman’s hand ...

He turned his head, and there she was.

His gaze was unfocused at first, so he could only make out a pale, thin little face framed with sedate, dark brown curls. Dark eyes, too. Something glinted on her face, touched by the firelight. Ah, wire frames. The chit was wearing spectacles. Pity, that. Though perhaps they did make her eyes look larger.

Her fingertips ran lightly over his forehead and then along his cheek, brushing damp hair off his face. And something almost like pleasure trembled uncertainly down the length of his spine. She was murmuring something indistinct, low and soft, with her eyes closed. Very like an incantation, he mused. He watched her lips move. Soft, full lips. Her mouth was too wide to be called pretty. It was sensual, he decided. The mouth of a wanton on that prim little schoolmistress face. Clearly the gods had chosen to torment him on his way to the grave.

“Your Grace?” Her voice was low and husky, and she turned his head – a rather commanding gesture – so that he was suddenly blinking up at her dark eyes behind those damned spectacles. He found himself irritated. His fingers twitched as he thought about tearing the bloody glasses off her face. But it would’ve been too much effort. Herculean, in fact, given that his body couldn’t even manage a simple erection right now.

Damn the woman.

“Your Grace.” Again. More firmly now. Just what in hell did she expect? A courtly bow by way of greeting? He could visualize himself doing it. A bow executed in his mind would have to be good enough. “Excuse my poor manners, dear lady, but I do seem to be dying. So if you could just bear with me ...” The thought made him smile, and his eyes drifted shut again. He thought about placing his own lips on that soft mouth. Yes, damn her. Damn her, anyway.

She gave his chin a little shake, and he was brought back to wakefulness, back to the smell of the sickroom. His eyes snapped open. He glared at her.

She frowned down at him. A look of consternation.

“Can you hear me, Your Grace?”

It seemed that she really did expect him to speak, and would not leave him alone until he obliged her.

“Yes,” he managed to grate, keeping the response short and to the point. He would have liked to say something infinitely more witty and certainly more cutting. Something along the lines of: “As it happens, I can hear you quite clearly, Miss Governess with the Courtesan’s Lips. I am not deaf – only incapacitated by the merest little sword-cut. If you give me a week or so to recover, I will natter at you to your heart’s content – or maybe just have you on the top of my dining room table. Yes. That would be most pleasant, don’t you think?”

He heard the words quite clearly in his mind, and he gave her what he hoped was a malicious smile.

“And kindly stop ‘Your Gracing” me,” he growled. An afterthought, really. He was surprised to actually hear the words come out of his mouth. His voice sounded raw and rusty to his own ears.

Damn if the woman didn’t actually smile at him. Her dark eyes danced for a moment with something that looked suspiciously like laughter. She tilted her head to the side, like a small bird cocking its head at an unfamiliar sound.

“What am I to call you, then?” she asked, not unkindly.

“You might try Alexsei,” he grumbled. “As it is my name.”

“Your given name,” she said. She didn’t frown, but her smile faded and thinned into something more uncertain. “That’s rather personal, isn’t it?”

“I’m dying, Miss Whoever-You-Are. I don’t have time to be impersonal.”

For some reason, this made her smile come back. “I see.”

“I very much doubt it.”

The smile did not waver. There was something almost impish in it. He began to suspect that whatever proprieties this woman covered herself in, that mouth would always give her away. He felt an odd surge of liking for the impertinent chit – and not merely because he would certainly have wished to bed her, had he been able.

“Since we’re being intimate then,” she offered. “My name is Charlotte. Charlotte Tyrell. Your valet summoned me to try and help you.”

Alexsei looked at her more closely. She was not an aristocrat – or not a wealthy one, at any rate. Her speech and voice were cultured, but her clothing was painfully shabby. The dark wool dress was woefully out of fashion and had been mended many times. Granted, his observation was not, at this particular moment, as sharp as it might have been – but even on a sickbed, His Grace the Duke of Wynter had an eye for clothing. There was an undeniable worn-down, threadbare quality to this girl. She was thin, too, as if she did not eat substantial fare all that often. The idea made him angry for some reason.

Iverly had brought her to the house because he thought that Miss ... Tyrell, was it? – could be of some help to him. What in the seven hells had the man been thinking? Perhaps his trusted valet had lost his mind.

Alexsei gave the girl a wry little smile. “Mayhap then you have magical powers, Miss ...” The name slipped away from him. His moment of lucidity was on the wane. He heard the exhaustion creep back into his own voice. “Miss Governess?”

For a moment, she looked startled. Then, quite to his astonishment, she reached across the coverlet and took his hand, squeezing it. He looked into her face and saw her narrow jaw set with determination. A knowing, steely look came into her eyes. Her voice was earnest as she continued to hold his hand.

“I believe that I might be able to help you, your -- Alexsei.” She stumbled over his given name, clearly aware of the impropriety of using it. “But my methods are a little ... unorthodox. I am neither a doctor nor even a midwife.” She paused, drawing breath. The hand holding his trembled a little. “I must ask you to trust me, I fear. But I shall not attempt anything without your consent first. If you wish me to leave, I will do so.”

“Ah,” he smiled. “Then you are a witch.”

She did not smile now. She looked very serious. “Some would call me that. Though I would consider the term inaccurate. I can ... that is, I have on occasion ...” She seemed uncharacteristically tongue-tied. “Three weeks ago, I healed a cut on your Mr. Iverly’s face. It is a ... a knack that I have, that I have never been able to explain ...”

He thought of the soft words she had murmured to wake him. Incantation, indeed, he thought. Yet she seemed shy, even fearful, about openly discussing her so-called knack of healing.

“You mean to try ridding me of this sword-cut – as you took care of Iverly’s hurt?” he asked. The words did not seem strange as he said them. Wildly illogical, perhaps, but not ...

“It is a very complex wound,” she said, looking and sounding as grave and somber as only a black-clad little governess can.

“Complex?” His mind, he feared, was losing the ability to follow her explanation. He was being pulled down into the red haze again.

“I fear it may have been inflicted partially with ... with magic.” Her voice was the barest whisper. “It is important that you know.”

Alexsei’s eyelids felt unbearably heavy. He let them drift shut. “You aren’t going to take a knife and try to gut me like a fish, are you?” he murmured. “Like the last wretched quack that visited me?” The memory of that incident – the fear that had come along with the pain – was still as sharp and cold as the doctor’s knife-blade had been in his flesh. “No more cutting,” he growled, his eyes still closed.

“No cutting,” she whispered. Her voice seemed to waver a bit. “I promise. I’ll do nothing of that sort. No cutting. No bleeding. Nothing so ... brutal.”

Alexsei expelled a long breath. He was slipping back into the clutches of the fever. Soon his words would not be sensible at all. His mind would rattle around in his head as he drifted in and out of sleep. Gods, he only wanted it all to end.

Still, what could it hurt to trust her – this innocent with the soft, warm eyes and softer looking lips? This thin little governess who claimed to be a witch? What could it hurt?

He managed to move his lips to speak before slipping over the edge and into the haze.

“Do as you will with me, Miss ... Charlotte ...”

****