Yet he showed no signs of waking.

After his ill-advised excursion, he’d lapsed back into unconsciousness, if anything deeper than before. Bad enough, but what was truly worrying was his still chilled flesh. Even the spots that should by now have warmed remained icy cold.

At least she now knew his eyes were dark blue. So dark she’d originally thought they were black, but then he’d looked directly into her eyes and she’d seen the blue flames in the darkness.

So he was a fallen angel with black hair and midnight eyes-and despite the four changes of hot bricks they’d applied, he was still too damned cold for her comfort. Too unresponsive, too close to death. And she couldn’t shake the absolute conviction that it was, somehow, vitally important that he lived. That, somehow, it was up to her to ensure he did.

It was ridiculous, but it felt as if this were some God-sent test. She rescued people all the time-it was what she did, a part of her role. So could she rescue a fallen angel?

She paced, scowled, and paced some more while about her the house, her house, her home, slid into comfortable slumber. Edgar and John both helped about the manor house; after dinner, after the usual sitting and chatting in the parlor-tonight mostly speculating about the wreck and their survivor-the pair had retired to the cottage they shared with Vincent, the head stableman, and Bright, the gardener. Mrs. Pennyweather, the cook, and Molly and Prue, the two maids-of-all-work, would by now be snug in their beds in the staff quarters on the ground floor.

Muriel and Buttons-Miss Lillian Buttons, the children’s governess-had rooms on the first floor, in the opposite wing to Linnet’s large bedchamber. The children had rooms in the extensive attic, on either side of the playroom and schoolroom.

As the manor house of the estate encompassing the southwestern tip of Guernsey, Mon Coeur was a small community in its own right, with Linnet, Miss Trevission, its unquestioned leader. Indeed, she was more a liege lord, a hereditary ruler; that was certainly how her people saw her.