Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 59827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
‘The waltz wasn’t considered proper until the 1820s,’ she signs, her eyes bright with delight. ‘Before that, this kind of partnered dancing was considered scandalous.’
‘Scandalous?’ I sign back, smiling.
‘Imagine. Holding someone’s waist in public.’ She gives me a look that’s so mischievous it makes her look decades younger. ‘The horror.’
The crowd around us is charmed. Families, couples, Foxtown residents in their period attire, media people from the fountain pen launch who stayed for the skating exhibition. The afternoon light makes everything look gilded, the ice glinting, the Regency costumes catching the sun, the whole scene like something from a painting.
And I’ve been doing so well.
Five days since the calligraphy workshop. Five days since Veil sat behind me with his arms around me in front of forty people and cameras and whispered things in my ear that still make me flush when I think about them. Five days since that text, the one I never replied to. Sleep well.
Five days of avoiding him.
It hasn’t been easy. The estate isn’t that big, and he’s everywhere, or at least it feels like he is. Coming down the stairs when I’m going up. Passing through the gallery while I’m adjusting displays. Sitting in the breakfast room when I arrive too early because I miscalculated his schedule.
But I’ve managed. Mostly. I keep my eyes on my clipboard, my conversations professional, my interactions brief and polite and utterly, painfully neutral. When he walks into a room, I find a reason to leave. When Lady Hampton invites us both to tea, I make an excuse about inventory.
It’s not mature. It’s not brave. Dorcas would call it what it is, which is cowardice, and she’d be right.
But I can’t help it.
Because every time I’m near him, my body does things my brain hasn’t authorized. My heart speeds up. My skin prickles. I find myself leaning toward him like a plant toward sunlight, and I have to physically stop myself, physically pull back, because I cannot do this right now.
I can’t.
I just watched my fiancé kiss my cousin at an airport. The ring is still in my coat pocket because I still haven’t called Joseph, still haven’t said the words, still haven’t dealt with any of it. I’m a mess. A complete, unprocessed, emotionally wrecked mess, and the absolute last thing I should be doing is developing feelings for a duke who probably tests every woman in his orbit just to see how quickly they’ll fall.
So I avoid him.
And it’s working.
Sort of.
Except for the part where I’m now hyperaware of exactly where he is at all times, which kind of defeats the purpose of avoidance, but I’m choosing not to examine that too closely.
Like right now. I’m not scanning the crowd for dark hair and blue eyes. I’m definitely not noticing that he’s on the other side of the lake, talking to a woman in a fur-trimmed cape who keeps touching his arm.
Three times.
She’s touched his arm three times.
Not that I’m counting.
Stop it, Evianne. This is exactly the kind of nonsense you’re supposed to be avoiding.
The boy in the green scarf loops past the roped-off area again, faster this time, and something in my stomach tightens. The ropes are there for a reason. The far end of the lake, where the ice is thinner, where the spring thaw has already started to—
A crack.
Like a gunshot.
Then a scream.
Everything stops. The music, the applause, the chatter. All of it, gone in a single breath, replaced by a sound that will live in my nightmares for years.
A child screaming for help.
The ice beneath the boy gave way, and he’s gone. Just gone. One second he was there, skating in his green scarf, and the next there’s nothing but dark water and jagged ice and that terrible, terrible screaming.
People are running. Not toward him. Away. Panic spreading through the crowd like a shockwave, everyone stumbling back from the edges, security shouting into radios.
“Someone call emergency!”
“Get back from the edge!”
“Where’s the rescue equipment?”
I’m moving before I realize I’m moving.
My clipboard hits the ground. My coat comes off. I’m running across the ice, and I can hear someone shouting my name behind me, Veil’s voice maybe, but it doesn’t register, nothing registers except the boy, the water, the seconds ticking away.
My boots slip. I keep going.
The hole is right there. Jagged edges. Dark water. No sign of the green scarf.
I dive in.
The cold is a fist. It hits me everywhere at once, stealing my breath, stealing my thoughts, stealing everything except the animal need to find him, grab him, get him out. My lungs seize. My muscles scream. The water is so dark I can barely see, but I reach, I kick, I search—
There.
A shape. Small. Sinking.
I grab his coat, his arm, anything I can reach, and I’m kicking upward, fighting the water, fighting the cold, fighting my own body as it tries to shut down. My lungs are burning and my fingers feel like they belong to someone else, but I can feel his weight in my arms, and that’s enough. That has to be enough.