That night, I was cold when I went into my bed, and could not think of any way to warm myself. The fire was dead and the house seemed even draftier. The wind rattled my window, but when I went to look, I found that the moon and stars were covered in clouds. Nothing could be seen from the window, and there was nothing to do but wait for the sun.

Rubbing my feet together, I realized that there was one way for me to get warmer. Though I could not give the young man of the household more than the briefest of acknowledgements in my daily life, I could behave quite differently when I was in bed with my own thoughts to warm me.

And so I imagined what the scene would have been like had I been fortunate enough to have the handsome and smart Luke Barlow as an ally. First of all, I would have had Mrs. Barlow grab a broom and chase the old man out of the house. Lillian would have been sent to the servants’ quarters, where she could be safe, and Miss Courtenay could have gone to play the instrument and simper over how lovely her silvery voice was.

That would have left me alone with Luke Barlow. And with the door barred, I would have been able to work out my nervous energy by pulling the man to me and kissing him.

I had only been kissed twice in my life, and those times were just in silly alleyway games when I was too young to derive any sort of feelings from the act, other than a sense of disgust that someone’s mouth had touched mine for the barest instant.

But I was more than old enough to know that a kiss from Luke Barlow would be different. His hands would run over my body in a way that only my own hands had ever done. I shuddered, teasing the tender flesh around my nipples, plunging one hand down between my legs while the other entered my mouth to drown out the possibility of sound. Luke Barlow might pretend to be innocent of the lust driving his grandfather, but as his father’s son, surely he also had dark and secret desires. And if the desires were there, a little romp under the dining room table with a woman who could not be his wife was sure to awaken them.

Eventually, the thought calmed me instead of just exciting me, and my body shook until it was warm, tired, and suddenly quite free of lust. For years I had been using this particular method to soothe myself when my mother was away from home. It was silent and effective. At the best of times, it satisfied some of the ache that I felt when I knew that I would likely never be in a position to marry, unless I were willing to stoop to being a very old man’s wife.

And with that calm, I was finally able to sink into slumber. After all, the travel had been taxing, and so I was able to close my eyes in spite of the madness that had passed at the dinner table.

But before I had slept an hour, the door to my room burst open. If I had believed that the old man were strong as a horse, I would have found a way to place a great chest against it.

As it was, it was too late. The man was already hobbling over to the bed, and I had to leap out of it.

“Don’t fight, girlie,” he panted. “You ought to know that you have tempted me.”

He followed me until I was in the corner, with only a little table behind me. I knew that I might be able to bite him again, or even to get at his eyes, but that doing so would make me lose my place. If he were badly hurt, then I could end up locked up for years.

So I grabbed the cold candlestick behind me, but instead of using it to take a whack at the man’s skull, I simply held it over my head.

The room was dark, but the clouds must have moved, because there was enough moonlight even for him to see the glint of the metal. And for one critical moment, he shrank back.

It was enough for me to scurry out of the room. Insulted though I had felt by Mrs. Barlow’s assertion that I “must” know how to defend myself, she had not been entirely wrong. My feet were fast and I was determined to lose the old lech, and not to return to my own room while he was there.

Once I got into the halls, it was easy for me to move without tripping. I was in my shift and a rather threadbare dressing gown, which once might have struck me as shameful but was currently working well for the unfortunate situation. There were no stays to make me short of breath, no fine shoes on my feet that would have made me slow.

Navigating in the great place was more difficult. There were so many rooms on the first floor that I could not quite tell which might be the drawing room. It was not necessarily the best place to sleep, but I felt certain that what little remained of the man’s brain would keep him away from a space associated with ladies and fine instruments.

I ended up pulling open the doors to what I thought was the drawing room, and by that time, I was panting and wishing for refreshment. There was a fire burning, and though I was already hot with the angry pursuit, I ran to it and warmed my hands, only letting go of the candlestick when it grew too hot.

“Do you require a book, Miss Quinton?” asked a man behind me.

In an instant, I had turned. It was Mr. Luke Barlow, the very man who had been part of my earlier musings, and yet I wanted no part of his family.

“I require safe haven,” I hissed at him. “Your mother insists that I sleep in the room she gave to me, your grandfather insists that I not sleep at all. Books are the least of my worries.”

He set down the one that he had been reading. “Grandfather has been after you, then?”

I laughed bitterly, clutching my dressing gown about me. As the panic abated, I felt rather more conscious of my nude body underneath the gown, and the way that my hard nipples were visible even through two layers of cloth. It was far too close to where my thoughts had been earlier in the evening, when I had imagined the chill in my room to be my most pressing concern. “You do not even seem surprised. All of you talk about him as if he is a mad dog. But for some reason, you cannot bear to shoot him.”

He drew back. “Shoot my own grandfather?”

I took a step closer to the man, and he did not draw back this time. “It is not the worst idea. If he were in his right mind, he would not wish to see this monster that he has become.”

He looked at me, then looked away. “To be quite frank, Miss Quinton, he was even less pleasant when he was in his right mind. Only then, there was no getting rid of him. He was unstoppable.”

I hid my hands in the sleeves of the dressing gown, realizing that they had grown cold but unwilling to abandon the discussion with Mr. Barlow before he had come around to my way of thinking. “Well, you are all waiting about for him to die. I cannot see how that is superior to taking him behind the woodshed and letting him end his own life quickly.”

He frowned. “We are not waiting for him to die. And you need not wait for anything. If you have such a low opinion of my family, you may go, Miss Quinton.”

I smiled at him so sweetly that he ought to have seen it as a warning, though it was immediately clear to me that he did not. “Oh, so it is as easy as all that, is it?”

“You are not our prisoner here.”

I glanced over at the poker by the fireplace, wondering if I might use it to stab this maddening man. “And I could leave without a reference, and without wages? My mother would starve. Do you have any idea how much it would cost me to get back to town, particularly if your family paid me nothing for my trouble? Far more than I have.”

His voice grew quiet. “I am sorry, I had no idea of the cost. I have never been to London.”

The fight flew out of me, replaced with despair. “Well, you have been all your life in a home that is quite twenty times as big as it ought to be, so you’ll forgive me if I am wanting in sympathy, Mr. Barlow.”