Season For Desire by Theresa Romain Page A

fingers and tucked it gently back into the angel’s grasp.
    She resented the mistletoe, too.

Chapter Seven
    Wherein Paper Takes on a Complex New Shape
    The next day brought snow to brighten a long morning spent in the drawing room. Clouds shook a fine frost over the ground, just as Audrina shook sand over page after page of ink-dark notes.
    Page. After page. After page.
    She and Giles had met after breakfast to work at the puzzle box again, while Lord and Lady Dudley shuffled from room to room accompanied by their pack of doting hounds, servants with arms full of garland, an eager-to-help-decorate-the-castle Richard Rutherford, and an eager-to-criticize Lady Irving.
    Swiftly, she and Giles Rutherford had developed a process. They had assigned a number to each panel, and a list of notes unspooled in a neat line of cursive as different attempts were made:
     
    P1 down, P2 left
    P1 down, P2 right
    P1 down, P3 left
     
    . . . and so on. And on, for an hour and a half, as cups of tea cooled at their elbows. Pale light reflected off of clean new snow, slanting higher and higher through the tall drawing room windows as the morning drew on.
    “You don’t have to work on this with me.” Teeth gritted, Rutherford tugged at P17. “This is my father’s mission, not yours.”
    “Don’t be arrogant, Mr. Rutherford. This is my father’s mission, too. Do you not recall whose plots and schemes directed you here?”
    P17 gave a squeak of distressed wood, and Rutherford released it at once. “He directed you here, too, for that matter.”
    “I did not mean to imply anything to the contrary.” She smiled, all the more brightly when Giles Rutherford looked suspicious. “Come now, Mr. Rutherford. You must have seen enough of England by now to know that a proper English lady would never contradict a gentleman.”
    “And do I count as a gentleman?”
    “That is for you to decide. But I am quite sure I count as a lady.”
    Usually. For now. With the help of Lady Irving’s maid, she had pawed through her trunk until she found a gown to her liking: a thin, drifting muslin printed with sinuous vines, its bodice of deep green sarcenet that set off her eyes—should anyone care to look at them. For the first time since leaving London, Audrina felt properly assembled, as though she had put on all of her armor. Even if no one wanted to fight her, she felt more protected.
    “I’m quite sure you do, too,” he replied. “Though I’m not sure what name I ought to apply to the sort of person who drags a lady to a city against her will.”
    Audrina turned to look out the window. In the distance, a bird flew and swooped like a tossed stone. “I should call that ordinary.”
    “Vulgar, then, as Lady Irving would have it.”
    “I would never contradict a gentleman,” she said again.
    “So you do think of me as a gentleman.” He sounded pleased, his words tightly corralled by hard consonants.
    “I do not think of you at—” She cut herself off before she could utter a lie. Or a contradiction. “Panel seventeen was next, was it not? Have you tried shifting it first of all?”
    He didn’t reply, and after a silent few seconds she was forced to look back at him. Hands lightly clasped atop the table, he had set aside the puzzle box and instead turned his scrutiny to Audrina.
    Rather unnerving. “Panel seventeen?” she prodded, lending a cool lift to her brows.
    “You’re not as proper as you pretend to be, princess.”
    The curve of his mouth might as well have been a sickle, so much did those small words wound her. Fortunately, she had a deal of practice hiding her true feelings. “Everyone pretends. For example, you could not truly hold little hope about this quest for some forgotten treasure of your mother’s, or you would never have agreed to leave your work and travel to England.”
    “My work is with my father.” His lips pressed together in a hard line, making the thin scar through his upper lip stand out paler against his