'What's your name?' she asked him. 'I'm Hope. Hope Evans.'

'Andreas,' Andreas delivered grimly, watching her attempt to climb a farm gate with incredulous eyes. With purposeful hands he lifted her down from her wobbly perch on the second bar so that he could unlatch the gate for their entry.

'Oh, thanks… ' Wretched with cold as she was, Hope was breathless at having received that amount of attention and shaken that he had managed to lift her without apparent effort. But then she could not recall anyone trying to lift her after the age of ten. She would never forget, however, the cruel taunts she had earned at school for the generous bodily proportions that had been the exact opposite of the fashionable slenderness possessed by the most popular girls in her form.

As she lurched into a ditch by the hedge where the snow was lying in a dangerously deceptive drift Andreas hauled her back to his side. 'Watch where you walk.'

The numbness of her feet was making it well nigh impossible for her to judge where her steps fell. The natural stone building ahead seemed reassuringly close, however, and she tried to push herself on but stumbled again. Expelling his breath in an impatient hiss, Andreas bent clown and lifted her up into his arms to trudge the last few yards.

Instantly, Hope exploded into embarrassed speech. 'Put me down, for goodness' sake… you'll strain yourself! I'm far too heavy-'

'You're not and if you fall, you could easily break a limb,' Andreas pointed out.

'And you don't want the hassle,' Hope completed in a small voice as he lowered her to the beaten earth floor towards the back of the dim barn, which was open to the elements on the side closest to the road.