Page 58 of Snowbound with the Scoundrel
“D-didn’t want to b-be a b-b-bother.”
She was already wrapping his coat around his shoulders, and he was too cold to even throw a fit about it.Grabbing his hand, she surprised him by pulling him away from the road.“Let’s get you back to the castle.We’ll cut through the woods.It’s a more direct route.”
Claire was correct in that going as the crow flies would cut the distance by half.
Unfortunately, it was even darker in the woods than it was on the road.Unlike the road, no attempt had been made to clear the snow.
And there were trees.So manytrees.
Claire grunted as she tripped over yet another root.“In retrospect, perhaps we should’ve kept to the road.”
Rupert was too cold to even attempt to answer.For the third time, he walked straight into a low-hanging limb and had to grab Claire’s arm for balance.
They trudged on for a few minutes more.Claire slipped on a patch of ice and almost fell.Rupert did her one better by tripping over a fallen log and going face-first into a snowbank.
“Oh, Rupert!”Claire cried, pulling him back to his feet and dusting him off.“This is all my fault.”
Rupert’s tongue wasn’t working so well, but he couldn’t let her go thinking something like that.“S-s-s-all-r-r-right,” he managed.
“It’s not all right!You’re freezing.I feel even worse because you’ve always been so considerate of me and…” Her grip on his arm tightened.“Wait, I… I think I see something!”
“’S good that o-one of us d-does,” Rupert said, trying to look on the bright side of things.
Claire tugged him forward with new vigor.“Just a little bit farther.How I hope I’m not mistaken… but I’m not!We’ve reached the hunting cabin!”
By gum, she was right.It was a deuced welcome sight, even if the cabin was dark and cold.At least there wasn’t any snow inside or any more roots to trip over.
The door proved to be locked.Fortunately, Rupert managed to overcome this obstacle by losing his balance, stumbling into the front window, and cracking a pane.
Claire brightened.“Well, since it’s already broken,” she said, jabbing a proper hole with her gloved fist.She reached inside and had the lock undone in a trice.
They staggered inside.“F-fireplace should be… over here,” he said, tugging Claire toward the back left corner.
They promptly bumped into the sofa.“Here,” Claire said, guiding him around.“You sit down.I’ll take care of it.”
Rupert was too cold to argue.Besides, he couldn’t imagine he’d be anything but in the way, considering he couldn’t move his fingers.
A metallic crash rang out from the far side of the cabin.It took a few seconds for the cacophony to die down.“Everything’s fine!”Claire called from across the room.“That was nothing, nothing at all.”
Rupert grunted.He found a wool blanket draped over the back of the sofa.He managed to wrap it around himself with numb fingers.
He heard a great deal of thumping and a few muttered curses as Claire banged around, searching for the tinderbox.His first indication that success was nigh was a pleased sound in the darkness.A few seconds later, she managed to light a brief spark, which looked startlingly bright after being in total darkness for so long.
On her next attempt, Claire managed to light a rush.From there, she got a couple of candles going, including the candelabra she had knocked to the floor in the dark.
Five minutes later, she sat back on her heels as the beginnings of a fire took hold in the hearth.Once she satisfied herself that it was spreading nicely and wouldn’t go out, she hurried over to Rupert.
“Your shoes are soaked,” she noted, pulling them off and tossing them on the floor.“As are your stockings, your breeches, your shirt…”
Rupert laid back and enjoyed the fact that she was undressing him.It reminded him of one of those bawdy novels where a couple is forced to take shelter from a storm in a deserted cottage and has no choice but to take off all their clothes and huddle together for warmth.
As if you would be so lucky, he chastised himself.
Still, like most men, Rupert only wore drawers when he was planning on spending the day outdoors in the cold, so once Claire had stripped him of his damp things, he had only the blanket to preserve not so much his modesty as his pride.His cock was as cold as a well digger’s arse, as they said in Denmark, which meant that it probably wasn’t what you would call an impressive sight.
Once she finished hanging his unmentionables before the fire, Claire hurried back over to him.“Can you stand?I’d like to scoot the sofa closer to the fire so we can get you warmed up.”
That sounded like a capital suggestion, so Rupert wrapped up in the blanket and struggled to his feet.He even managed to lean against the sofa and help her scoot it across the plain wooden floor.
