The Duke of Snow and Apples (15 page)

“I didn’t think you were coming!” Lady Balrumple said.

“Charlotte and I wanted it to be a surprise,” Sylvia replied. “I sent a sylph with a letter her way as soon as Papa gave his permission.”

From the way a flush slowly flooded her sister’s face, Frederick guessed that particular missive had, along with a length of velvet drapes, been subject to Charlotte’s misguided fire magic.

“We wouldn’t have made it at all if not for His Grace,” Sylvia continued. “The coach we hired lost a spoke several miles from here, and we might have been stranded until Maiden knows when if His Grace and his particular friend hadn’t driven by and offered to take us all the way to Charmant Park!”

At that moment, a third passenger descended from the carriage, a dark-haired man in his early twenties, of average height and looks, a curiously blank expression on his face the only truly remarkable thing about him.

“You must let me introduce you!” Sylvia said. “Your Grace, may I introduce my great-aunt, Lady Hildegarde Vanbauten, Viscountess Balrumple? Aunt Hildy, His Grace, the Duke of Snowmont.”

Sudden fear sent ice through Frederick’s veins, collecting in his joints to bind him in place. Instinctively, he treated within the walls of his cold place, reinforced now by frigid shock. Rationally, he knew this Lord Snowmont was a man he’d never met, meaning there was little chance of recognition. The strange coincidental nature of the situation rattled him more than the peer himself.

“And we mustn’t forget His Grace’s particular friend,” said Sylvia, gesturing as the carriage’s final occupant revealed himself.

No
. Frederick’s fists clenched. The man’s hair had grayed about the temples, but the rest was the same dark brown, combed into rigid order behind his ears.
Please no
. His face remained as mathematically respectable as before, all straight edges, wide angles, and smooth lines, lacking a single curve or hint of softness to complicate the equation.
Not here
. His eyes, even at this distance, gleamed a sharp, hungry, all-too-familiar green.

He bent over Lady Balrumple’s extended hand a precise forty-five degrees. “Sir Bertram Leopold, at your service.”

Cold panic rose up his spine, and Frederick latched onto it.
Cold
. Cold was what he needed. Glaciers. Icebergs. Snow. A smile, a pulse, the natural warmth of life—all of this would only betray him, the way the body heat of prey made them glow like a beacon to a dragon’s sight.

Chapter Fifteen

As introductions circled among the newcomers, Sylvia turned and pinned Charlotte with a glance. Charlotte turned to Frederick, for support or perhaps an excuse to escape, but the footman had replaced his cool, subservient face. Unimpeded, Sylvia floated across the courtyard and swept her up in a crushing embrace, oozing sisterly affection. Charlotte felt like a cold marble statue against her sister’s warmth, unsure of what to do or say.

Sylvia pulled away, beaming. “I’ve been positively miserable without you!”

Yes, you
look
positively miserable
. Nevertheless, Charlotte felt an unwanted tug of longing in her chest. She had missed Sylvia, too, but she’d missed the
old
Sylvia, the sister she’d known before the humiliation.

“You’re—
here
.” It took all her effort just to keep an accusatory tone out of her voice. She gazed, with what she hoped was a dispassionate air, over at the last person to exit the carriage: an unfamiliar old woman in mourning purple who seemed unusually fixated on the contents of the large carpet-bag she carried with her. “What about the banns? The arrangements?”

“Oh, Mama and the aunts are doing all that,” Sylvia said. She blushed, and an appropriate and socially acceptable amount of color appeared along her cheekbones. “I mean, Harry’s mother and her sisters. They already treat me like a member of their family, so I hope you don’t take it as a presumption.”

Oh, Maiden forbid Sylvia Erlwood should be less than perfect in every way.

“I’ve never cared for weddings—it’s the marriage I’m looking forward to. Besides,” she added with a wink, “Stepmama would not have enjoyed making the arrangements, and Mrs. Peever was always planning to wrest control of it from me at the first opportunity. Imagine her delight when I voluntarily surrendered.” She hugged Charlotte again, and even Charlotte felt a bit of her iciness melt. For all her anger when she was alone, it was difficult to bring that displeasure to bear while face-to-face with Sylvia. Was it any real surprise Mr. Peever had chosen her over Charlotte?

Maybe Charlotte, after all, was an envious creature with unrealistic expectations from the start. Maybe she’d misconstrued Mr. Peever’s attentions as something else the entire time, out of wishful thinking.

Sylvia cocked her head to one side. “Aren’t you happy I’m here?”

Charlotte inwardly smacked herself for acting like such an embittered thing. She tried a smile. It wobbled across her face, bolstered by weak emotions, but it was more than she’d expected to give Sylvia.

Her sister’s rosebud lips pursed in concern. “Are you all right? Hasn’t Charmant Park been agreeable?”

“Oh, quite agreeable,” said Charlotte. “I’m just a bit chilled from my trip to town. Shall we go inside?”

“A marvelous idea.” Sylvia beckoned to the woman in purple with the carpet-bag and they all entered the house together. Charlotte cocked her head to one side, but Frederick had disappeared. She’d swallowed her lemon-drop, and already that stolen, wanton kiss felt as if it had happened years ago.

“Charlotte, this is Mrs. Templebaum, the estimable lady who is now to be our chaperon and soon to be my beloved aunt.”

“Charmed,” said the old woman in purple.

As soon as they were inside, with salamanders dancing in the sitting room grate and a company of Dowagers and guests all around them, Charlotte felt thawed enough to ask, “
Our
chaperon?”

“Well, of course,” said Sylvia, now sandwiched between Aunt Hildy and Mrs. Templebaum on a periwinkle-upholstered settee. “It was very naughty of you to fly off like that, with barely a word to anyone, but ultimately brilliant—for it provided me with the perfect excuse to return to Charmant Park. That is, bringing Mrs. Templebaum to protect our reputations.”

Sylvia’s impeccable manners smothered her. Now Charlotte wanted to move and fidget and scratch herself, when before she’d been perfectly comfortable. Where was Frederick? She craned her neck toward the wigged servants standing guard outside, but she recognized no one.

“Now it falls to me to repay your good turn.”

“What?” Charlotte started as Sylvia rose from her settee and took her hand, pulling her to her feet as well. “What do you mean?”

“The Duke of Snowmont is what I mean.” Sylvia tipped her head toward the other end of the sitting room, where the party’s newcomers conversed with the Ladies Enshaw and Leighwood. With gentle tugs of her hand, Sylvia led her reluctant sister toward the group.

“What about him?”

“I took the opportunity to make his acquaintance as he drove us here.” Sylvia lowered her voice to an excited whisper. “His Grace is visiting an older estate not too far from Charmant Park, and is here with his friend Sir Bertram to appraise it. I naturally grasped every chance I could to tell him all about you, and I dare say he was most attentive.”

Dread weighted the bottoms of Charlotte’s feet, as they dragged themselves ever more slowly across the carpet. “Why would you do that?”

“He is
unmarried
. And a
duke
. Is that not reason enough?”

“Surely that renders him far too high for a lady of my expectations.”

“Oh, no, no, no! While he holds a great estate, he was born of humble origins. For the greater part of his life he was a mere
Mr
. Charles Littiger, until a lucky twist of fate made him the sixth Duke!”

“Not quite so lucky for the fifth Duke.”

“
Do
try to focus, Charlotte. Snowmont may legally be a peer, but his heart remains with the gentry, I’m sure of it.” Sylvia stopped to drop a curtsey in front of the fortunate Duke of Snowmont. After a moment’s hesitation, Charlotte followed suit, a little surprised at her own reluctance.

His Grace sat in an oddly loose-limbed fashion in an armchair close to the fire. He looked pleasant enough, with dark hair carelessly brushed back from his face, pale gray eyes, and a nose that tended more toward prominence than not. As a descendant of the one of the first eighteen Pure Blooded families who had married Fey royalty, he wore the famous Fey-blessed ruby on his right hand—although the actual ring seemed rather paltry close up, a thin gold band and a discreet arrangement of jewels far too modern in style to be five hundred years old. Dimly, Charlotte recalled that some scandal or other had happened to the original bauble, but she couldn’t remember the details.

However, His Grace’s lips never moved more than slightly upward or downward to display pleasure or dismay at a person’s comment. He tailored his replies to fit a dozen words or less, in a very soft and toneless voice. He had a strangely diluted bearing.
Diluted
, yes, that was the word, as if the essence of a gentleman could be bottled and someone had watered down the duke’s share.

Charlotte struggled with her own apathy as she and Sylvia settled themselves around the duke and Sir Bertram and the Dowagers. Snowmont displayed none of the characteristics of arrogance, indolence, and insipidness that Charlotte might have expected from one of the upper Pure Blooded—which should have made him her first choice. However, the strange young man seemed incapable of embodying any sort of characteristics at all, good or bad, and as to
why
this bothered Charlotte so much, she hadn’t the least idea.

Charlotte dared a surreptitious glance at Sylvia. Surely she wasn’t subconsciously dismissing a duke out of hand simply because her sister had suggested it?

He was a duke. Marriage to him would jettison Charlotte to the very top of Society, below only royalty in status. No humiliation, no social faux pas, no misstep or slip of the tongue could ever take away her duchess’s coronet. All the catty Glenson misses who had smirked at her, all the dull country boys who had made cow’s eyes at Sylvia from over her shoulder, would have to kowtow or be brushed aside like so many buzzing flies.

Still, something about the slow way Snowmont’s eyes swiveled to follow another turn of conversation, his strange languor, sparked an itch in the back of Charlotte’s throat.

“Have you ever had an opportunity to participate in a mud hunt, Your Grace?” she blurted. A sharp, secret jab in her side from an otherwise ladylike elbow indicated Sylvia’s displeasure at her lack of manners.

Snowmont’s pale eyes tracked an arduous path from where they had been placidly engaged in watching Sir Bertram’s discussion of the Queen Regent’s penal reform bill, to Charlotte’s face. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

“It’s a glorious sport, Your Grace.”

“So I’ve heard it said.”

“Haven’t you ever wanted to try it?” Charlotte maintained her smile despite another warning jab from Sylvia.

“I dare say I have no opinion one way or the other.” The duke’s gaze listed, as if their conversation taxed him.

Strange that someone so smooth and featureless could scrape against her like rough bark. “Surely you must have an opinion.”

Another jab, followed by a pinch, and a whispered, “Stop testing the
duke
!”

“Perhaps he simply chooses to reserve his opinion,” said the man seated across from Charlotte, his voice as cold, authoritative and hollow as a church bell. Sir Bertram, Snowmont’s companion, lifted his eyebrows in what was not quite a glare, but pretty close. His hair was dark, except for two streaks of gray at his temples, and his face was an uncompromising square. His eyes, though, caught Charlotte’s attention, as a bright lure attracts a fish—an unsettling, piercingly bright green, like a flash of sunlight off a bottle.

“I didn’t mean to pry,” she said, a trifle defensively.

Sir Bertram blinked in response, his eyes gleaming like jewels, hard and too bright. “Of course you didn’t.”

Charlotte forced herself not to shrink back from the cool implacability of that stare. There was something heavy, something looming about his look that kept her from making any sudden movements.

A loud
caw
shredded the silence as Dorothea entered the room, a footman on her arm and one of her many crows on her shoulder.

Sir Bertram froze as if hit with an ice curse, his eyes veering to focus on the bird, his lips flattening into a thin line. When the crow cocked its head and cawed again, Bertram’s hands slowly curled into fists.

“It’s only a bird,” Charlotte said.

“Sir Bertram doesn’t like birds,” Snowmont said.

“That’s enough.” Sir Bertram’s words emerged like a hiss from behind clenched teeth.

“How are you planning to spend your Firemass this winter?” Sylvia broke in, defusing the tension. When Sir Bertram turned to respond, Charlotte sighed as if a weight had been lifted. She shifted in her seat, newly embarrassed by her behavior, especially in comparison to her sister. Even beneath Sir Bertram’s basilisk gaze, Sylvia glowed and prattled as easily as she’d always done.

More than anything, Charlotte no longer wanted to be here, in this room, trading nothings with a duke. Instead, she wanted to feel the winter air on her face and taste lemon-drops on her tongue.

…

Just before dinner, Charlotte entered her great-aunt’s drawing room to hear laughter and the tinkling of musical notes. Sylvia sat at the center of the small crowd of guests, as cozy as a jewel in a velvet box, as her elegant gloved hands coached a melodic ballad from the pianoforte.

She finished the tune with a flourish that Lady Enshaw’s musical family loudly appreciated—Earl Enshaw inquired if Sylvia knew the music for Aldicio’s Lament from the opera
The Flower Garden
, a piece he particularly favored. His son Elban moaned in disapproval, suggesting a sprightlier number. Aunt Hildy tapped her fan smartly against the instrument and demanded an encore.

Before she could, however, Sylvia glanced Charlotte’s way and cried a welcome. A chorus of greetings followed that suddenly, to Charlotte, felt forced and false, or at least duller than before.

Sylvia launched into another merry tune, and once again all eyes turned to her. The familiar feeling of being a fraud, an impostor, a social climber riding her sister’s train crept over Charlotte. She swallowed its solid, spiny mass down her throat to throb painfully in her belly. How she hated this, had always hated this, feeling like the envious ugly sister. It was easier to bear when Sylvia had been kind. Then she could at least be happy for Sylvia, if not for herself. Now Charlotte didn’t know how she felt, other than miserable, lonely, and overlooked. Again.

Even as she made her way to join the crowd at the pianoforte, Charlotte’s mask wouldn’t stay on. She wanted to be the gracious lesser sister glowing dimly in the shadow of Sylvia’s radiance, but she couldn’t quite manage it. She tried to keep her thoughts to herself and forget how blithely Sylvia had barged in and stolen her hopes, all without a care.

Sylvia turned to her, eyes aglow. “Charlotte, do come and join me in the duet!”

“I couldn’t possibly,” she demurred, eyes down. “My fingers are far too clumsy.” She decided now was the time for a harmless giggle, while she hid her hands behind her to disguise how they trembled.

Sylvia’s smile wilted a fraction, and she didn’t avert her gaze until old Lady Enshaw volunteered and sat down beside her on the bench, brushing the keys with a tinkling ease born of long practice.

Conversation soon turned to other things, like the successful mud hunt.

“It sounds delightful,” said Sylvia. “I’m so sorry I missed it. Charlotte, do you remember that time when we were children and we found our first gnome in the garden?”

“Oh, I’m sure I do not recall.”

Sylvia’s expression froze in place, as apprehension overtook her countenance. “You don’t?”

“Memory can be an appallingly untrustworthy thing sometimes,” Charlotte replied.
Like some people I could name.
She tempered the barrenness of her reply with a careful laugh. “But do tell us the story. I’m sure you would be the better teller of it anyway.”

Her sister’s mouth sagged down in uncertainty. “All right. Well, th-there was a tree, a large apple tree, in the back of the…”

Charlotte let her attention wander away and unexpectedly caught Mr. Oswald’s eye. The man who, previously, had been nattering about the acidity of northern soil to an inattentive Dorothea, now fixed his gaze on her with a strange keenness.