A Rogue in Winter Read online

  A Rogue in Winter

  A Rogues to Riches NOVELLA

  Grace Burrowes

  Grace Burrowes Publishing

  A Rogue in Winter

  Copyright © 2021 by Grace Burrowes

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  If you uploaded this book to, or downloaded it from, a torrent, free file sharing, or other piracy site, you did so in violation of copyright laws, and contrary to the author’s expressed wishes.

  Please don’t be a pirate.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  To my dear readers

  Never a Duke—Excerpt

  Miss Dignified—Excerpt

  Dedication

  To all the lonely rogues and roguettes (I made that word up) biding at the edge of the moor in deepest, darkest winter

  Chapter One

  “I ought not to abandon you at such a busy time, Vicar.” Mrs. Baker bustled toward the front door with an enthusiasm that belied genuine remorse. “The holidays see you run ragged, but my Eunice has all those children and another one due any day. Tell me I’m forgiven?”

  Pietr Sorenson was good at telling people they were forgiven—as any vicar should be—and the peace and quiet Mrs. Baker’s annual absence provided was in truth a much treasured holiday gift.

  “You are not only forgiven,” Pietr said, mustering his kindly vicar smile, “you are wished Godspeed, and my love to your family.” He kissed Mrs. Baker’s cheek in deference to the mistletoe she’d hung in the foyer, picked up her valise, and escorted her to the waiting coach.

  “I’ve never traveled in such style,” she said as a liveried footman lashed her valise to the boot. “My grandchildren will think the queen has arrived.”

  “They will be more excited to know it’s their dear granny, bearing gingerbread, newly knitted socks, and family tales of Christmases past.”

  Though the Rothhaven ducal traveling coach did qualify as a luxury barge on wheels. Pietr had asked to borrow it on Mrs. Baker’s behalf, because the public stage was a penance not to be borne in winter’s darkest weeks.

  And if some small part of Pietr wanted to know for a certainty that Mrs. B was well and truly off to York for a few weeks… Well, no matter.

  A man climbed down from the box while the horses stomped in the snow. He was slim, dark-haired, tallish, and attired in the height of winter fashion.

  “Mr. Wentworth.” Pietr bowed rather than extend a hand. He barely knew Ned Wentworth and would not presume any sort of familiarity with a member of a ducal household. “Good day.”

  “Vicar. Mrs. Baker.” Mr. Wentworth bowed over the lady’s hand, which resulted in a woman old enough to be Pietr’s mama simpering. “I hitched a ride into the village rather than trudge both directions in this snow. I thought winter in London was a tribulation, but Yorkshire…”

  “Worse than Scotland, some people say,” Mrs. Baker remarked. “The Vikings were right at home here. I must be off, for the light doesn’t last this time of year.”

  She dipped a hasty curtsey, and Mr. Wentworth handed her into the coach. The coachman saluted with his whip, and the vehicle jingled and clattered down the snowy street.

  “I was tempted to nip into York,” Mr. Wentworth said. “To go someplace where buildings come in a proper batch, not isolated in a sea of snow. I never thought I’d miss the stink of London’s coal smoke or the crowded walkways, but I do. The silence alone this far from civilization is enough to drive a man daft.”

  The Bible listed commandments, while a vicar developed a list of ailments of the human heart. Homesickness figured somewhere near the top.

  “Come in for a cup of tea, Mr. Wentworth. Give the shops an hour to get their parlor stoves roaring. Mrs. Baker always fills the larder with holiday treats before she departs.”

  Wentworth looked skeptical. “I truly do have errands to run, Vicar. I suspect the ladies at Lynley Vale wanted me out from underfoot while the decorating got under way. Lord Nathaniel is trying to help, and Lord Stephen is making suggestions, while the footmen have all developed bad hearing. I was one dunderheaded male too many.”

  That was a falsehood, and right now, watching the Wentworth ducal coach trot out of the village, Pietr was inclined to name it as such.

  “You are not a Wentworth by blood, so you banished yourself from what you regarded as a family undertaking. Forget the tea, let’s have a tot to ward off the chill. Frequent doses of wassail are how we get through our winters here.”

  “Wassail?”

  “Wassail, toddies, a nip from the flask. Everybody thinks Yorkshiremen are tough. We’re more determined than tough, and we’ve learned to make our peace with the elements. Inside with you, Mr. Wentworth, and we will see what Mrs. Baker has left me in the way of sweets.”

  “Jane said I shouldn’t underestimate you.”

  Jane being Her Grace of Walden, a formidable woman who made duchessing look much easier than it was. But then, Jane was married to Quinton, Duke of Walden, and compared to being that fellow’s wife, wearing a tiara was doubtless a Sunday stroll.

  “You need not estimate me at all,” Pietr said, leading the way up the vicarage’s steps. “I’m a humble country parson living a placid existence in the bucolic splendor of rural nowhere.” He’d meant that observation as a jest, but it had come out sounding a bit… forlorn?

  Whiny?

  “Pour me a bracer,” Mr. Wentworth said, “and you can be my new best friend. I really am not accustomed to this cold.”

  “Has anybody given you the sermon for southerners yet?” Pietr asked, taking his guest’s hat, coat, and gloves. “If leaving home, always dress as if you’ll be outside all day, for you might be. Layers of wool are best, and that means two pairs of stockings if possible. Three if you can manage it. Forget vanity. Winter here will kill you if you give it a chance. If you are caught out in bad weather, try to keep moving at a slow, steady pace, provided you can see where you are going. If you sit for a moment to rest, next thing you will close your eyes, and Saint Peter will be offering you a pair of wings.”

  Mr. Wentworth glanced around the vicarage, which Mrs. Baker kept spotless. The place was less than a hundred years old—thus it was the new vicarage—and detached from the church, unlike the prior manse, which was now used for Sunday school, meetings, and fellowship meals.

  Like every other durable structure in Yorkshire, the vicarage was a stone edifice. The interior was lightened by whitewashed plaster walls, mullioned windows, and polished oak floors covered with sturdy braided rugs. Darkness in the form of exposed beams, wainscoting, and fieldstone hearths did battle with light, and on an overcast winter morning, the gloom was winning.

  “The Lynley Vale butler says we’re in for more foul weather,” Mr. Wentworth observed, following Pietr into his study. “I have never seen snow like you have up here. Acres of snow, waist-deep, and the sky looks like nothing so much as more snow preparing to further bury a landscape we won’t see again until July.”

  “The first winter is something of an adventure,” Pietr said, going to the decanters on the sideboard. “Brandy?”

  “If you will join me.”

  Pietr poured two generous servings and passed one to his guest. “The second winter, you realize about halfway through that it’s not an adventure, it’s a penance. You endure the third winter on th
e strength of grim resignation, and the fourth winter, you resolve to move south come spring.”

  Wentworth sipped his drink. “How long have you been here?”

  “More than four winters is simply referred to as ‘too long’ by one not born in these surrounds, though the other seasons are glorious. Would you care for a hand of cribbage? Chess, perhaps?”

  Men could not simply sit and talk with one another. Learning that had taken Pietr several years. Women, perhaps because their work was so unrelenting, had the knack of purely spending time in one another’s company. Men were more difficult to put at ease.

  “It’s damned snowing again.” Mr. Wentworth’s tone was indignant as he took his drink to the window. “Pardon my language, but it snowed yesterday and the day before.”

  “I would not want to be the bearer of bad news,”—vicars were frequently exactly that—“but it’s likely to snow again tomorrow and the next day.” Pietr considered his drink, though really, consuming spirits this early in the day, and so shortly after Mrs. Baker’s departure, was ill-advised. “To an early spring.”

  Mr. Wentworth drank to that. “I dread the hike back to Lynley Vale, and I consider myself as stout-hearted as the next man.”

  “You consort with Wentworths. You are more stout-hearted than most. What brings you to the village?”

  Mr. Wentworth, whose daily business put him at the throbbing heart of international commerce and whose nearest associations were one step short of royalty, made a face as if he’d been served cold mashed turnips.

  “Holiday shopping.”

  “Ah.” Pietr joined Wentworth at the window, and indeed, fat, white snowflakes were drifting down from a pewter sky. Nothing to be alarmed about—yet. Mrs. Baker would reach York safely, though if the coachman were wise, he’d spend the night in town before asking the team to make the return journey.

  “What am I supposed to give people who can buy entire counties if they so desire?” Mr. Wentworth asked.

  Pietr handed out the same advice he gave to yeomen and gentry alike. “For the ladies, something small, unique, and pretty. For the gents, something comfortable and comforting. Avoid the useful and the necessary, which should be provided outside the context of holiday tokens. If you can make your gifts with your own hands, so much the better.”

  “I make deals,” Mr. Wentworth said. “I make business transactions. I make coldly rational decisions.”

  This was the recitation of a man who’d never been in love. Of course Christmas would baffle him.

  “We have a talented wood-carver in the person of Dody Wiles, who can usually be found holding forth in the inn’s snug on a winter afternoon. For a price, he will make you birds, kittens, flowers… He can fashion them into coasters, or use a heavy wood such as mahogany to make a paperweight. His pipes are works of art, though he does require time to finish his creations.”

  “A wood-carver?”

  “He was a drover who nearly lost a foot to frostbite. He needed a sedentary occupation, and the herds’ loss is our gain. What on earth is that fellow thinking?”

  A coach and four was careering along the far side of the village green, matched blacks in the traces.

  “Fancy carriage,” Mr. Wentworth muttered. “Fine horseflesh. What is a conveyance like that doing in a place like this?”

  The vehicle rocked to a stop outside the coaching inn. A man climbed out. Youngish, based on the way he moved, dark-haired. He wore neither hat nor scarf nor gloves, though his greatcoat sported three capes.

  He had no sooner put his booted foot to the snowy ground than he went careening onto his face into the nearest drift.

  “Is this what passes for entertainment in a Yorkshire village?” Mr. Wentworth asked.

  A lady climbed out of the coach. Her age was impossible to tell because she did wear a bonnet and scarf. She was spry, though, and she alit without benefit of a male hand to hold. She marched to her fallen comrade and stood over him, hands on hips.

  He remained in the snow, facedown, unmoving.

  “This is not entertainment,” Pietr said, setting his drink aside. “This is a problem, and one I must deal with. The lady’s coachy appears to be a madman and her escort three sheets to the wind. You are welcome to bide here, Mr. Wentworth, but I must pour oil on troubled waters and speak peace unto the heathen.”

  “You can’t leave it to the innkeeper?”

  “The hostlers aren’t changing out the team, and our humble inn is full to the gills with holiday travelers. Yesterday’s clouds promise that at some point today, the snow will mean business, and that woman will be stranded on the Dales with a drunk for an escort and an imbecile at the reins. Nobody will intervene now because she’s not their problem, but I am a vicar and thus have a license to meddle.”

  Mr. Wentworth finished his drink and set the glass on the sideboard. “I have a propensity for meddling myself. Walden pays me to meddle, in fact. I didn’t know there was a profession for it.”

  “Neither did I. You figure that part out after it’s too late.” Pietr did not bother with a hat, though he did tarry long enough to whip a scarf about his neck and pull on fleece-lined gloves. He stalked directly across the green, snow crunching beneath his boots, Mr. Wentworth tromping at his side.

  By the time they reached the coach, so had the innkeeper, his wife, two aldermen, the blacksmith, Mrs. Peabody, and any number of guests from the inn.

  “Mr. Sorenson, it’s as well you’ve troubled yourself to join us.” Mrs. Peabody managed to imply that Pietr had dawdled half the day away. As head of the pastoral committee, she took seriously her duty to ensure that her vicar walked humbly with his God. “Somebody is sorely in need of last rites.”

  “Looks to me,” Mr. Wentworth said, “as if somebody needs a bit of hair of the dog.”

  Mrs. Peabody drew in a breath, like a seventy-four gunner unfurling her sails. “Sir, I don’t know who you are, or why you feel—”

  “Excuse me,” Pietr said, bending over the prostrate man. “This fellow needs help. Mr. Wentworth, if you’d assist me to get him to his feet.” Many a Yorkshire wayfarer had frozen to death while sleeping off the effects of drink in the cozy embrace of a fluffy snowdrift.

  Pietr took one of the fellow’s arms, Wentworth got the other, and they eased the man to his feet. He was flushed and bore the scent of spirits.

  “What do you think you’re doing with my brother?” The traveling companion’s voice cracked like river ice giving way under a winter sun. What she lacked in stature she made up for in ire.

  Jolly delightful. The situation needed only jugglers, a dancing bear, and a learned pig. Alas, Pietr would have to manage as best he could without those reinforcements.

  As usual.

  The air was so cold, inhaling made the lungs shudder. Joy Danforth had not felt her feet for the past five miles, and she’d rejoiced at the sight of this snug little hamlet at the edge of the moor.

  More fool her. The local welcoming committee had been ready to leave Hiram facedown in the snow. Then some hatless Viking, his coat flapping open, had stalked across the snowy green, probably intending to toss Hiram right back into the coach.

  “Ma’am.” The Viking managed a slight bow while holding Hiram up. “Pietr Sorenson, at your service. I have the happy privilege to be vicar in these surrounds, and I hope you will allow your brother to accept the hospitality of the manse. Our inn is full of holiday travelers, and your sibling needs shelter.”

  The tone of those words was so civilized, so erudite, that had Joy not been staring at the man, she would not know a bitter wind whipped the speaker’s fair hair and turned his lean cheeks ruddy. A dark-haired fellow not quite as tall as the vicar had Hiram’s other arm. That one had Bond Street written all over him, while the parson…

  Impervious to the elements, slightly weathered, and as calm as a cathedral. Like one of those great edifices, he radiated substance—intellectual, physical, and moral substance—and Joy had little choice but to trust him. He
was a vicar, albeit a more robust variety of vicar than Joy had encountered previously.

  “I will accompany you,” she said, though this provoked a mighty sniff from the broody hen with the atrocious bonnet.

  “We will send over soup,” the large woman on the steps said. “If the man is sick, he needs soup.” She spared Hiram a baleful glance, came about like a frigate laden to the waterline, and disappeared into the inn.

  “John,” Joy called up to her coachman as the vicar and his companion started off with Hiram between them, “have my brother’s valise sent along and get yourself something to eat.”

  The coachy nodded and signaled the team to plod forward.

  Joy followed in the vicar’s wake, keeping to the path already cut through the snow, and still the going was difficult. She nearly landed on her backside twice and silently cursed her lady’s maid for insisting that Joy travel “in style.” Style was silly little half boots. Style was only two lawn petticoats, lest the drape of embroidered skirts be disturbed. Style was no sturdy muff or proper scarf and only the thinnest of kid gloves.

  “To blazes with style,” Joy muttered as a frigid snowflake smacked her straight in the eye. “When I am Lady Apollo Bellingham, I will venture forth swaddled in old quilts if I please to.”

  By the time she stomped up the steps to the vicarage her ears were freezing, along with her nose, cheeks, and lips. The door opened, and the Viking motioned her inside.

  “Please do come in, Miss Danforth. Mr. Wentworth is showing your brother to my study because the fire in the guest parlor hasn’t been lit.”

  Mr. Sorenson exuded brisk hospitality and his sapphire-blue eyes conveyed genuine welcome, as if stranded travelers were all in a day’s vicar-ing. Perhaps for him, they were.