But she knew that it was. Desperation lent her the strength to take a few more tentative steps before she lost her footing and plunged full length into a deep bank of snow. Fear swamped her, weak tears of despair trickling damply down her cold face. Then a sound that was not simply the harsh keening of the wind seemed to reach her, and she strained to catch it.
Hope flared inside her—Slade must have come after her. Struggling to get to her feet, she found to her horror that her right ankle wouldn’t support her.
‘Slade!’ She called his name until her throat was hoarse, unable to believe she simply hadn’t called him up out of her imagination when he suddenly materialised at her side, the shoulders of the heavy dark jacket he wore thickly powdered with snow.
‘Oh, Slade, thank God!’ Chelsea was crying and laughing at the same time, not caring what she betrayed in her relief at seeing him.
Even his rough, ‘You crazy fool, what the hell do you think you’re doing?’ didn’t have the power to frighten her.
‘Where are we?’ she asked him when he reached her. ‘I’m completely lost.’
‘About a mile from the house,’ he told her curtly. ‘And next time you decide to pull a stunt like this you might at least wait until I’m adequately dressed for it. Come on.’ He leaned down to help her out of the drift, frowning when he felt her body sag. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘It’s my ankle,’ Chelsea admitted ruefully. ‘I’ve twisted it, I think. It keeps giving way every time I try to put any weight on it.’
‘God, that’s all we need!’ She was caught off guard when Slade bent down and picked her up bodily.
‘It’s the only way,’ he told her harshly. ‘Oh, I realise how much you hate the thought of me touching you—you’ve made that abundantly plain. Didn’t it strike you that a simple “no, thanks” might have done just as well?’
‘I’d already tried that, remember?’ she snapped back at him, wincing as he almost stumbled, jarring her ankle.
‘You might have mouthed the words, but there was damn little conviction behind them,’ Slade claimed. ‘Quite the contrary. But you’ve made your point now all right.’
There was an odd inflection to his voice that might almost have been pain, but Chelsea told herself that she was letting her imagination run away with her.
‘Didn’t it occur to you, the danger you were risking?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘Running out like that with nothing for protection but a thin coat and a pair of fashion boots?’
His scorn scorched her already tender nerves.
‘I just wanted to escape,’ she murmured painfully, without adding that her flight had been from her own emotions as much as from him.
‘Thanks a million. You do wonders for my ego!’ He paused, bracing himself to support her weight, breathing deeply, and Chelsea felt ashamed of goading him when he was risking his own life to save hers.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered huskily. ‘I didn’t think. I meant to go to Darkwater, but somehow I lost my way and…’
His savage, ‘You’re damned lucky you didn’t lose your life as well!’ cut across her apology, and his mouth was grim with anger as he trudged through the steadily deepening snow. ‘You realise that even someone who knows these hills like the back of their hands wouldn’t risk going out in a blizzard like this? Familiar landmarks can be wiped out faster than you can turn round. It’s a mercy you hadn’t gone any farther.’
‘I stopped when I couldn’t see the elms any longer,’ Chelsea admitted. ‘I was terrified, and so cold—I just couldn’t feel my fingers and toes.’
Slade came to an abrupt halt. ‘Can you feel them now?’ he demanded, watching her.
Chelsea shook her head slowly, fear spiralling up inside her, not needing to ask why Slade suddenly increased his pace to a degree which she knew must be punishing.
The snowy shape of the Dower House suddenly materialising out of the blizzard was the most welcome sight she had ever seen. Slade carried her into the study, disregarding her protests about their snow-covered clothes and the resultant damp puddles, simply reaching for the phone.
Chelsea heard him swear.
‘Out of order,’ he said heavily when she looked enquiringly at him. She had been trying to remove her boots with her strangely white hands, but they simply refused to move. ‘Let me look.’
She flinched as he examined the dead white flesh, his face darkening.
He flung out of the study, returning within seconds carrying a bottle and a glass.
‘Drink it,’ he urged her when he had poured a large measure. ‘It will help, in more than one way,’ he added under his breath as she dutifully drained the dark amber liquid.
Fire burned its way down to her stomach, followed by a delicious warmth.
‘Brandy,’ Slade told her briefly. ‘Unfortunately we’ve yet to train our sheepdogs to carry it to snow-beleaguered tourists. Now just sit there while I get those boots off.’
He didn’t waste time on the zips, and Chelsea winced as he cut through the expensive leather with a knife he had brought from the kitchen.
‘I don’t believe this,’ he said softly when he had cut away her jeans to reveal the smooth flesh of her leg. ‘Surely common sense warned you to wear some additional form of protection, such as socks?’
‘There wasn’t room,’ Chelsea admitted feebly. She had contemplated wearing a pair of thick socks she had brought with her, but when she put them on it had been impossible to zip up her boots.
She winced as Slade started to rub life into her numbed feet. Her toes remained completely unfeeling, but her ankle were she had turned on it was throbbing painfully.
‘By rights you should see a doctor,’ Slade told her, ‘but seeing that we’re unable to summon one right now, you’ll just have to force yourself to suffer my ministrations. Of course,’ he added suavely, ‘I could always leave you to your fate; I might almost be doing myself a favour if I did,’ he added under his breath, as he bent to lift her out of the chair.
The brandy had made her feel muzzy and lightheaded, and it seemed too much of an effort to protest when Slade carried her into his room instead of her own. Even the sure touch of his fingers on her clothes failed to awaken any instinct for self-preservation. Her eyelids felt curiously heavy and she kept longing to close them, but every time she slid towards unconsciousness Slade shook her.
Every bit of her body apart from her fingers and toes ached. She watched Slade examining them with detached interest, aware with a careless floating indifference that he was frowning.
‘Can you feel that?’
She shook her head as he touched her toes, wondering at the expression of grim determination in his eyes.
He also examined her swollen ankle. ‘I don’t think it’s broken, more likely sprained.’
Chelsea shivered, suddenly terribly cold, an odd nausea rising up inside her. She managed to quell it, but nothing seemed to be able to stop the increasingly violent tremors gripping her. She tried to sit up and was instantly overwhelmed by a terrifying dizziness.
‘Lie down,’ Slade cautioned her, and disappeared in the direction of the bathroom.
Chelsea could hear the sound of running water, and when he returned his sweater had been discarded, his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow.
‘Chelsea!’ She responded instinctively to the incisive note of command in his voice. ‘If we don’t do something about these,’ he tapped her feet briefly, ‘you could be in real danger from frostbite. We can do two things—wait and hope that circulation will return as your body heat builds up, or try to speed matters up a little.’
Chelsea grimaced. The brandy he had given her was making her feel decidedly odd, and yet curiously not even the gravity of what he had told her seemed to have much power to affect her.