She shook her head. “The chickens, I must get them back—”
“Leave the door open and they’ll go back in soon enough. They don’t like being out in the cold and dark, either.”
“But a fox might—”
“Give Dorothy and Mabel and the girls a little time to return to their perches. I’ll go out later and lock the hen house door. You’re frozen and in shock. You need to get in to the warmth.”
His words made sense. Her teeth were chattering and she felt sick to her stomach. Suddenly she wanted, more than anything, to return to the warmth and security of the cottage, to shut out the vileness that had happened.
She hated being out in the open with the beast, whoever he was, watching from up there, gloating over his wanton destruction. All her hard work. . . . her bees . . .
Tomorrow she’d be angry, but now she just felt ill. Devastated. Defeated. She allowed Nash to lead her back along the path that ran through neat beds of trampled vegetables, back to the cottage that she’d once thought a haven.
Nothing was a haven anymore. She might have the money for rent, and she could start a new garden, and establish new hives, but who was to say he wouldn’t come back and destroy them again?
Who was this evil creature, and why did he bear her and her little family such hatred?
Nash led Maddy straight to the fire. She was half frozen, a product of shock as well as the cold night.
He glanced at the bed. He wanted to climb into it with her and hold her and drive the frozen look from her eyes, but he couldn’t. Despite the events of the night, he couldn’t trust himself to be in a bed with her.
He’d promised her she was safe with him. He’d failed to protect her garden and hives. He wasn’t going to make things worse by taking her innocence.
He sat her in the chair nearest the fire and piled on wood until it was a solid blaze. He wedged a couple of bricks into the coals and swung the kettle over the fire. Maddy stared into the flames, brooding on the fate of her bees.
“It would have been fast,” he told her. “They wouldn’t have felt a thing.” Did insects feel pain? He didn’t know.
He found his flask and placed it against her lips. “Drink.”
She obediently swallowed, then shuddered and gasped for breath. “What—” But she couldn’t get a sentence out for coughing. She stared at him indignantly as she gasped and spluttered.
“It’s only brandy, good quality French brandy.” He rubbed her back soothingly. “It will do you good.”
She finally stopped coughing. “It’s horrid. It burns all the way down.”
“And warms your blood. Don’t you feel better for it?”
She gave him a withering look and didn’t deign to respond, but her shivering had eased somewhat and that frozen look was gone from her eyes. A little bit of indignation was a fine, warming thing.
“I should go back out see if any of my plants can be saved—”
“You’re not moving. We’ll see what can be done in the morning,” he told her firmly.
He spooned some honey into a cup, added more brandy, and poured some hot water from the kettle. “Hot toddy,” he said, pressing it into her hands, wrapping her chilly fingers around the warm cup. “Do you the power of good.”
She accepted it gratefully and sipped its contents first with caution, then more happily. It was mostly honey, so the brandy slipped down easier this time.
Her fingers were icy to the touch. He glanced at her feet and swore silently. The hem of her nightgown and her flimsy little slippers were soaked and muddy. No wonder she was freezing.
He rummaged through the box where she kept her clothes and pulled out a clean nightgown and a woolen shawl. He shook the nightgown out and warmed it at the fire, grimly noting the number of places it had been patched. She’d finished the toddy and was sitting half curled in the chair, her eyes closed.
Swiftly he undid the fastenings of her cloak. No wonder she was cold, the damned thing was almost threadbare. He pushed the cloak off her shoulders, then began to undo the tiny buttons down the front of her nightgown.
Her eyes flew open. “Wha-what are you doing?”
“Your clothes are wet. You need to change.”
“Don’t.” She pushed his hands away.
