Melting the Snow Queen

by Mary Lancaster

  “We haven’t asked her. We thought we should tell you first.”

  Alba stood and wound her hair up behind her head, then reached for the pins. “Where have you looked for her?”

  “All over the house,” said Gerda.

  “The rose garden?” Alba asked.

  “She never goes there,” Gerda assured her.

  “She might today,” Alba said, blushing at her own reason for going to the rose garden this morning. Rose might have made an assignation of her own. Although, if she had, Alba’s money would have been on her meeting Kirkland, who had, according to the twins, just left in his carriage.

  Frowning, she seized the spencer that matched the riding habit. “You two search the garden while I go to the stables.”

  The twins trotted off obediently and they left the house together by the side door, where they went to the garden and Alba hurried around to the stables. Everywhere was quiet, even the servants sleeping late after the ball. There was no one in the stables or the coach house, though just as she was about to call, the window of the house above opened and John Coachman peered out sleepily.

  “John? Which coach is it that left? Who was in it?”

  “Lord Kirkland’s,” he replied, scratching his head. “Weren’t me who got it ready, though. His own people did that.”

  “Then you don’t know if anyone went with him?”

  “No idea. But…it didn’t pick him up from the front door. Carriage stopped at the top of the drive for him. And at the bottom, it turned north.”

  “That’s odd.” Not south to London, though, of course, the family’s main seat was in Scotland.

  “Not the oddest,” John said wryly.

  “Thanks, John.” Leaving him, she hurried back to the rose garden.

  Her heart skipped a beat, for Yuri was there with Gerda, and Kai was running across from the far corner. It wasn’t quite how she meant to meet him this morning, with anxiety overlaying her new joy. He took both her hands and kissed them, while Gerda said, “She’s not here, Alba.”

  She pressed Yuri’s hands. Her fingers clung to his lips. “I think I have to go,” she said shakily, “and find my silly little sister. First, though, twins, have one last look around all the likely places in the house. I’ll go to her chamber one more time—and then it will be time to wake Her Grace.”

  “I’ll saddle horses,” Yuri said and strode off toward the stables.

  There was no note in Rose’s bedchamber, nothing to show that she meant to make any kind of journey. Her ball gown from last night lay over a chair, but Alba couldn’t tell what if any of her clothes had gone. In any case, there was no time to waste in looking further.

  She hurried to the duchess’s apartments, which were still darkened against the day. She walked through to the bedchamber, knocked once and went in.

  Her Grace loomed up from the bed in her night cap. “What? Who is that?”

  “Alba. Where is Rose?” Ruthlessly, Alba pulled back the curtains to allow the daylight in.

  The duchess blinked rapidly, shading her eyes. “In her bed, I imagine. Did you really wake me up to ask me that? What time is it?”

  “Seven. And no, I woke you to ask you to dress as quickly as possible and follow me in the carriage along the north road. I’ll leave word if we turn off.”

  “What nonsense is…?”

  “There’s no time. I don’t know what’s going on, but it looks to me as if Rose has gone off with Horace Kirkland.”

  The duchess’s face flooded with color and then blanched almost as quickly. “No. Oh, no, she wouldn’t.”

  “She isn’t thinking at her clearest,” Alba said grimly.

  But the duchess was clutching her head in both hands. “Not Rose. Her. That woman. How dare she?”

  “Who?” Alba demanded, bewildered, ringing for the duchess’s maid who was no doubt fast asleep.

  “Cordelia Harley,” the duchess whispered.

  Alba’s breath caught. But there was no time now for explanations. “Later, you had better tell me everything. For now, we have to make this right. I’ll ride ahead with Yuri, but you have to follow as quickly as you can.”

  “You can’t go alone with Volkov!”

  Alba laughed shakily. “We’re engaged, remember?”

  ***

  “This is silly,” Alba exclaimed as they paused for breath on the road. “She has no need to elope with Kirkland! No one would oppose such a marriage.”

  “Perhaps he can’t wait.”

  “He met her last night for the first time,” Alba said dryly. “No, my stepmother is mixed up in this, as is Lady Harley, somehow.”

  He looked at her, frowning. “Lady Harley is…not respectable.”

  Alba, who suspected he knew this from experience, asked with great reluctance, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the dice are loaded at her parties and she makes a considerable amount of money by charging people exorbitant interest on their gambling debts.”

  Something dropped into place in her mind. “Her Grace owes her money. Lots of money she is afraid to admit to my father. But how does marrying Rose off help her?”

  “That, I don’t know.”

  Alba frowned. “Besides, she would not knowingly harm Rose, and I could swear she knew nothing about this start.”

  “Well, we should catch up with them soon,” Yuri said, urging on his mount.

  Ten minutes later, they slowed together at a junction.

  “There’s an inn along there at the first village,” Alba said. “A quiet place not much frequented by gentry. They might stop for breakfast, imagining no one would look for them there.” Besides, they wouldn’t expect to be followed so closely. If it hadn’t been for the twins, no one would have looked for Rose before midday.

  “There are also carriage tracks in the mud,” Yuri observed. “A travelling carriage and…four well-matched horses.”

  In spite of everything, Alba smiled. “You can’t tell that.”

  “Actually, I can. It’s what we did during the French retreat from Moscow. Of course, tracks are clearer in the snow, but I can find them more or less anywhere now.”

  “You have some strange talents,” Alba observed, pulling on the reins to guide her horse along the mud road. She didn’t want to ask but she did. “What did you do with the French you found?”

  “Killed them or captured them. Freed their Russian prisoners and took whatever supplies they had.” He blinked away the dark, almost inhuman look in his eyes. “It grew wearing after the first few weeks, but it had to be done.”

  Alba thought it was just as well he hadn’t brought his sword. She remembered his violence—and his skill—when she had first seen him. And Rawley had been his friend.

  As they rode into the inn yard, an ostler ambled around from the side of the house and gawped at them. A man in a grubby apron emerged from the front door, rubbing his hands as if he couldn’t believe his luck.

  “Welcome to my humble house, ma’am, sir. How may we serve your worships?”

  Alba, who had no idea if he recognized her or not, replied, “To begin with, you may tell me if you have in your house a young couple of quality.”

  “I’d say yes,” Yuri remarked, peering up the side of the inn. “I can see the carriage from here.”

  “Excellent,” Alba said as calmly as she could. “Then you may take us to them.”

  “Breakfast for your worships also?” the innkeeper suggested.

  “Why not? We’ll be waiting here for my stepmother.”

  The innkeeper’s expression grew ecstatic.

  “Be so good as to send your boy down to the crossroads and direct the carriage to the inn,” Yuri said, dismounting. He turned to lift Alba from the saddle. Sensing her impatience and her anxiety, he held her a moment too long. “Be calm. We have her safe.”

  But Alba had no idea what they would find. Rose had been so volatile recently, and a tantrum at having her elopement spoiled was not something Alba looked forward to
dealing with.

  At the innkeeper’s direction, they marched across the tiny hall to what seemed to be a small coffee room, and there sat young Kirkland, tucking into breakfast while Rose sat stiffly beside him, her lips thin and pinched.

  She looked up haughtily as the newcomers arrived and abruptly her stiffness collapsed. Her face crumpled and she sprang up so quickly that her chair fell back with a clatter.

  “Oh, Alba!” she cried, running to her sister as though she were still five years old. “Thank God!”

  Alba seized her sister in a fierce embrace. “Are you hurt?” she demanded.

  Rose shook her head. “No, no, only I didn’t want to come, and it isn’t fun, and he wouldn’t take me home. I don’t think he ever meant to take me home!”

  Alba, very aware of Yuri’s large, threatening presence at her side, said calmly, “What happened?”

  Kirkland had risen slowly from the table, warily gazing from Rose to Yuri. He swallowed visibly.

  “I arranged to meet him this morning,” Rose confessed with a hiccup. “I know I shouldn’t have, so don’t scold me, but I did. Only, then, instead of walking as I’d thought we were doing, he pulled me into the carriage and said we were driving! I asked him to stop and let me off but he wouldn’t, not even when I shouted at him or cried, and oh, Alba, it wasn’t fun and he isn’t a good man!”

  “Barely a man at all, I’d say,” Yuri drawled.

  “Well, I fail to see what it is to do with you,” Kirkland blustered, “but—”

  “Consider me a proxy for Lady Rose’s family, since I’m engaged to her sister.”

  “Are you?” Rose said, drawing back to cast Alba a startled look. “Now you will have to go all the way to Russia!”

  “Then I am prepared to offer you satisfaction, sir, on the field of honor,” Kirkland said, his face now white. “In return for your silence in this matter.”

  “My silence is assured, you pathetic little worm,” Yuri said with undisguised contempt.

  Kirkland walked quickly toward the door, skirting a wide berth around them. “My seconds will call on you all the same.”

  Yuri leapt and struck him in the jaw with enough force to send him sprawling to the floor. “No, they damn well won’t,” he growled. “I only fight men of honor, not weasels who abduct little girls from their hosts.” He looked from Alba to Rose. “Do you want me to kill him?”

  “Oh, no, you can’t kill him,” Rose said, shocked. “But I don’t want to see him again. Ever.”

  “Do you hear that, weasel?” Yuri demanded. “You don’t so much as look at her, let alone speak to her again. For the rest, understand the necessity of your silence for this business does not reflect well on you. Besides, if I don’t kill you, Oscar will. Be gone!”

  “Wait,” Alba said as Kirkland hauled himself up from the floor, breathing deeply. “Who put you up to this?”

  Kirkland’s color changed again, blood flooding into his white face. “No one put me up to it. I can think for myself.”

  “Not very well,” Alba said coldly. “I want to know who and why.”

  Yuri stepped forward menacingly and Kirkland flattened himself against the wall. “Lady Harley! She made an arrangement between the duchess and me. Quite aside from the usual settlements, I was to make a private payment to Her Grace for a speedy marriage.”

  “What do you get out of that?” Yuri demanded.

  “The release of my grandfather’s fortune,” Kirkland muttered. “Which comes to me at the age of thirty, or upon my marriage.”

  And the duchess was given, presumably, enough money to pay her gambling debts to Lady Harley. In effect, she had sold her daughter.

  Rose, to whom this was all clearly news, stepped back, stricken. “I won’t marry you! I won’t marry anyone!”

  “Not yet,” Alba said grimly. “Certainly not yet.” She turned her back on Kirkland just as the innkeeper came in with a tray of coffee and toast. “Ah, this gentleman is in a hurry to be gone. He’ll pay his own account.”

  ***

  By the time Rose, Alba, and Yuri were finishing up an unexpectedly good breakfast, Rose was calmer. She had even begun to laugh in a slightly shaky way about how uncooperative she had been with Kirkland, refusing to be in the least mollified by breakfast.

  “My stomach was tumbling so loudly he must have heard it,” she confided, “but I wouldn’t eat a morsel. I think I worried him.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Alba said. “Even at Gretna Green, they insist on consent.”

  “Listen,” Rose said nervously. “That’s carriage wheels on the gravel. It must be Mama. Will she be angry with me, Alba?”

  “No,” Alba said briskly. For although the duchess surely hadn’t meant her daughter to suffer the scandal of elopement, let alone the horror of forced marriage, her own intriguing had led to this situation and she must know it.

  The duchess sailed into the room and came to a wobbling halt in the middle of the floor when she saw the three of them together.

  “Oh, thank God,” she uttered.

  It was Yuri who went to her, preventing her from falling, for it seemed reaction and relief had stopped her legs from working. He supported her to the table and without a word, Alba poured her a cup of coffee from the pot.

  “Where is that man?” Her Grace demanded.

  “Sent away with a flea in his ear,” Alba said.

  Rose giggled. “And a bruise on his face. Yuri—I mean Prince Volkov—was magnificent, Mama.”

  “He was an abject specimen,” Yuri said with a curl of his lip. “Quite unworthy of your daughter.”

  “I didn’t know,” the duchess said, stricken. “A pleasant young man of good family, I thought. I’ve heard nothing against him.”

  Alba caught her gaze. “Or any of the other ‘Friday faces and loose screws’—to quote Oscar—that you invited here to court Rose?”

  “Marriage is marriage,” the duchess said desperately. “I was sure Rose would like one of them and enjoy doing something better than you, for once.”

  Alba stared at her. “She had no interest in doing anything better than me until you made it some kind of competition to her. The competition is in your head only and neither of us will play anymore.”

  The duchess’s eyes flashed fury at being spoken to in such a way, but then they fell, defeated. “You are right,” she admitted. “I have been foolish in this. Perhaps I was justifying the mistakes I was making to get myself out of previous mistakes. I’m so sorry it came to this, Rose. I meant it for the best.”

  “Well, at least it did not come to the worst,” Alba said briskly. “How much do you owe Lady Harley?”

  “That harpy,” the duchess said with venom.

  “How much?” Alba repeated.

  The sum was staggering enough to make everyone blink.

  “She charges daily interest at exorbitant rates,” the duchess pleaded.

  “I can’t quite rise to that,” Alba said, deflated.

  “I think I can persuade her ladyship to a small discount,” Yuri said with a curl of his lip.

  “Really?” Alba said at the same time as her sister and stepmother.

  Yuri nodded, and although Alba didn’t want to know details, she accorded him a smile of approval.

  “But,” she said, “there are conditions. No more balls or coming out for Rose until next spring, at the earliest.”

  “Longer,” Rose said with a shudder.

  “Or longer,” Alba agreed, “if Rose wishes it. No more gambling.”

  “Never,” the duchess said fervently. “I don’t even like it! I merely got so drawn in—”

  “People like Lady Harley are past masters of that art,” Yuri said.

  “And you won’t tell your father?” the duchess said anxiously.

  “No,” Alba said, “but I think you should. At the right time,” she added with a silent acknowledgement of her father’s temperament.

  “Can we go home now?” Rose asked.

  Chapte
r Eight

  Although it wasn’t quite the ride with Yuri in the sunshine that Alba had imagined, the journey home was unexpectedly fun. With Rose safe, and anxiety over her and the duchess’s behavior relieved, Alba relaxed and enjoyed Yuri’s company.

  They rode in front of the carriage or behind it, occasionally beside it, talking, teasing, laughing, sometimes including the carriage passengers in their bubble of joy. Once, Alba found Rose gazing at her fixedly and smiling.

  “What?” she asked. “Have I smut on my nose?”

  Rose shook her head, still smiling. “No, it’s just that I’d forgotten. You used to be like this.”

  The observation gave her pause. The ghost of Harry seemed to rise up in front of her. But as she glanced at Yuri, she knew Harry would never be angry that she had found happiness with someone else. He faded from her vision almost at once, leaving only the very physical, solid presence of the man she now loved. She could never compare them, but secretly, she had the suspicion that in Yuri she had found a deeper, more adult love.

  There was no point in castigating herself for the self-indulgence of her long mourning. It had, perhaps become a habit, a shield, an icy shell that Yuri’s sheer love of life had penetrated. Her new freedom was euphoric.

  And she was glad Yuri had been with her at this recent family crisis, protecting them all. It bound him to all of them.

  Soon after midday, they arrived at Winbourne. Some of their house guests had emerged and were breakfasting or strolling in the grounds.

  “It’s such a lovely morning, we have been for a drive already,” the duchess said gaily as Yuri handed her down from the carriage.

  Lady Harley emerged on to the front step, her eyes narrowed at Her Grace’s happy tones. Alba watched her as Rose stepped down after her mother. Although her facial expression never altered, the venom was there in her eyes. She had been thwarted, deprived, as she saw it, of the chance of her money and fresh food for future extortion.

  Lady Harley’s gaze moved to Yuri, and then, almost reluctantly, to Alba. Her lips curved into a smile, but it wasn’t pleasant. She knew who had spoiled her plan.

  “Let me deal with her,” Yuri said below his breath. “The woman is dangerous and I want her nowhere near you.”