Melting the Snow Queen

by Mary Lancaster

  “No, not up the drive,” she said suddenly. “Go past the woods.”

  Yuri hesitated, but after an instant, he obeyed.

  Gerda closed her eyes. “He’s close,” she whispered. And then her eyes flew open again. “The lake, Yuri, the lake!”

  He pulled the horses off what was left of the track and they plunged onward to the lake he had once swum in. Now, it was frozen hard.

  He drew as close to the edge as he could and wasted no time, for he had already seen the odd heap in the middle. Now, Gerda sat paralyzed with fear.

  “Wait here,” he said gently, for he had no idea who or what he would find there.

  But after a moment, he heard her skidding and scrambling to follow him across the ice.

  Alba and Kai lay together like some beautiful, bizarre sculpture. With a cy of rage and fear, Yuri threw himself down beside them.

  The boy’s frosty eyelashes flickered.

  “He’s alive,” Yuri said, lifting the still, still body of his love. Dear God, she was cold. He pressed his lips to hers, breathing into her mouth, willing his warmth, his life into her.

  Her lip twitched beneath his. He could almost imagine he heard his name, felt the curve of her smile. With a sound like a sob, he stumbled to his feet, lifting her with him and ran with her across the ice to the sleigh. There he covered her with the furs that had kept him and Gerda warm on their journey and ran back for Kai.

  Somehow, the boy had got to his feet, but he was stiff and frighteningly blue with the cold. Yuri wrapped his own cloak about the boy, hugging him against his side.

  “Is she alive? Is she alive?” Kai kept saying.

  “I think so,” Yuri replied, “I think you saved her life.” But only God knew if that was true. “Up you get, Gerda. Rub her hands and move her arms, keep them both warm any way you can. We’ll be at the house in a moment.”

  At first, the servants spilled down the front steps with delight to see the sleigh glide over the snow to the white-covered terrace. But Yuri was already yelling instructions, sending servants scurrying to prepare warming pans and blankets, and to carry Kai inside while he himself carried Alba, snarling at the footman who tried to take her from him.

  “Stay with Kai,” he told Gerda and swept past servants and even the stunned duchess on the stairs. “You,” he commanded the footman scurrying after him, “come with me.”

  “I think not!” Siddons exclaimed, scandalized, blocking the bedchamber door.

  Yuri merely elbowed her aside. “Lots of blankets and warm water,” he commanded. “She’ll need those cold, wet things off her at once.” He turned to the footman, “Bring that sofa as close to the fire as you can safely get it. Put the warming pan and the blankets there.”

  “Out!” Siddons cried.

  “I must insist,” the duchess said severely.

  He threw up his hands. “Very well, but you must do as I say!”

  “We will,” the duchess said, unexpectedly obedient. “We will. Thank you for bringing her back. For bringing them all back.”

  Yuri’s throat closed up.

  She hurried away, no doubt to see to the twins. Yuri paced up and down the passage outside Alba’s bedchamber door, watching the warming pan and hot water go in, afraid in his heart that whatever they did was simply too late. God knew how long she’d been lying there on the ice. He might even have imagined that brief twitch of her stiff, cold lips.

  Siddons and the other maid servants came out.

  “Is she…?”

  “She’s breathing,” Siddons said, “but only just. Her Grace must send for the doctor.”

  No one paid him any more attention.

  His heart in his mouth, he entered Alba’s bedchamber once more.

  They had done as he said. The whole room was warm, and Alba lay on the sofa at the fireside, covered in blankets, shaking convulsively as the heat began to penetrate her frozen body. Yuri tore off his overcoat, dropped it on the floor, and knelt beside her.

  Her eyes were still closed. He touched her pale lips, imagining a tinge of color there, and stroked her beautiful golden hair.

  “Alba, Alba, what were you thinking?” he whispered. “Forgive me…”

  Softly, he kissed her lips. He wouldn’t have long before they came and threw him out.

  He kissed the shell of her ear. “I love you,” he breathed.

  Then he rose and walked to her bed. It looked as if she hadn’t slept in it at all last night. He took the pressed rose from his pocket and placed it under her pillow. As he strode to the door again, it opened and Rose walked in, flanked by several maidservants.

  Her mouth fell open. “You?”

  “I.”

  To his surprise, a relieved smile curved her lips, lighting her whole face. “Now she will be well.”

  ***

  Alba knew she had been dreaming but wondered now if she were dead.

  She had dreamed that Kai came and joined her on the ice. In her dream, she had told him to go home, but when he hadn’t, she had rather liked him being there. She had even dreamed about Yuri, that he kissed her, so warmly and tenderly that she had wept.

  And then, she supposed, she must have died, because there was all the purgatory of bodily pain and strangers poking and pulling at her. One devil had had Dr. Banks’s face. Now, perhaps, she was in heaven, for she felt warm and comfortable.

  She opened her eyes.

  Rose sat on a cushion on the floor, reading a book. On her other side was a roaring fire. She herself lay on the familiar sofa in her bedchamber.

  She wasn’t dead, at all.

  “Alba!” Rose exclaimed with delight. “You’re awake! How do you feel?”

  “Am I ill?” Alba asked in surprise. “I dreamed that I…”

  “What?” Rose asked.

  Alba shook her head. “Oh, nothing. They were horrible dreams and I never thought I’d be so glad it wasn’t true.”

  “You nearly died,” Rose said grimly. “If it hadn’t been for Yuri…”

  “Yuri?” Alba interrupted, staring at her sister.

  “Yuri and Gerda found you and Kai in the middle of the lake.”

  “Oh, God,” Alba whispered, weak tears starting to her eyes. “Please tell me Kai wasn’t with me. Please tell me I didn’t—” she broke off, gasping.

  Rose put her arms around her. “He’s fine,” she said urgently. “Kai is fine. Yuri brought both of you home, but at least Kai could walk. It was you who scared us all to death.”

  “How could I have done such a… How could I have let my little brother…”

  “You didn’t know he was there. He said you didn’t wake when he shook you. He stayed to keep you warm and yelled for help but no one heard him. Except Gerda. I think they still feel each other’s pain, you know. She knew he was in trouble and woke Yuri in the middle of the night to continue their journey. And oh, Alba, Yuri has the most fantastic sleigh!”

  Alba didn’t really understand any of it except her own unutterable, inexplicable selfishness that had put her little brother at such risk. More than that, she didn’t understand how she could have imagined that letting herself die would not have hurt them or Rose, or Oscar, or even her father. Her whole family. Siddons, and the other servants…

  And Yuri… She thought about Yuri as Rose chattered on, and when they brought her tea and then broth and then wouldn’t let her get up and dress, but let her walk only as far as the bed, which was warmed for her. They helped her into bed, left a book by her pillow, and departed.

  He must still be here. He had saved her.

  The warmth of that fought with shame that he, of all people, knew what she’d done or had tried to do. It seemed like a dream now, a madness never to be repeated.

  And Yuri was here.

  In wonder, she hugged the pillow to herself. Beneath it, her fingers touched something soft and drew it out. A pressed flower. One of the red roses from her garden. All the thorns had been broken off its stem. It was the flower she’d dropped when s
he’d seen Yuri and Lady Harley…a situation she’d never allowed him to explain, because she thought she couldn’t bear it.

  Yuri never loved Cordelia Harley. He couldn’t.

  Why was that so clear now? Just because he’d kept the rose she’d meant to give him? Just because he’d given it back to her?

  I love you… She’d heard his voice, felt his lips on hers. Surely, she hadn’t been dreaming that either.

  Tears of sheer emotion trickled down her cheeks. Oh, Yuri, I love you, too.

  Chapter Twelve

  By the following day, having slept most of the time, Alba felt much improved, though still weak as a kitten. Siddons helped her to dress in her warmest clothes and left her sitting by the fireside to entertain Kai and Gerda.

  The twins seemed so much themselves that she almost wept. Holding out her arms in a fresh flood of shame and gratitude, she hugged them to her.

  “Between you, you saved my life,” she whispered. “I will never forget that.”

  “You won’t do anything like that again, will you?” Kai said anxiously.

  She shook her head vehemently, releasing the twins to sit on the sofa close by. “No, I can promise you that. But as for you two! Fake toothache, Gerda? The stagecoach?”

  “Oh no, it was the mail coach,” Gerda said earnestly. “And I knew Yuri would follow.”

  “So, it was all staged to bring Yuri here?”

  The twins looked at each other and nodded.

  “You are wild and unprincipled and very sweet,” Alba told them, and they grinned at her in a way that moved her heart. How could she have so forgotten the simple pleasures, the simple beauty in everyday things like her siblings’ smiles? She smoothed her dress in her lap, afraid to ask. “And is Yuri still here?”

  “No,” Gerda said, and Alba tried very hard not to care so much. “He wouldn’t stay at the house because neither Papa nor Oscar are at home, but he’s taken a room at the inn in the village. I expect he’ll come up later.”

  Her struggling heart beat with excitement, though also with fear of what he thought of her. Had he come just to bring Gerda home? Or did he think of her still? She could not let herself imagine the future, let alone plan it. Nor could she change the past, but she could at least try and make that more acceptable, more bearable to them both.

  “How is he?” she asked.

  “Well,” Gerda replied. She shrugged. “He frowns more and has less fun. He wouldn’t have dinner with Oscar. But you must ask him for a ride in his sleigh!”

  Alba smiled painfully. From the bedchamber window, she saw the clear, blue sky and sunshine glinting on the fresh snow that had fallen during the night she almost died.

  She said, “Do you think you could help me down to the rose garden? Just for a little. I would like the fresh air.”

  The twins looked doubtful.

  “The doctor said you were to stay in your room for several days,” Kai reminded her.

  “We could get Jeremy—the tall footman—to carry you downstairs,” Gerda suggested. “Then you are still resting. But we’ll have to wrap you up like a Christmas goose.”

  Alba laughed, and that felt good, too.

  Siddons, the excellent maid she was, had cleaned and brushed the furs so that they looked as good as new. Gerda helped her on with them while Kai brought her boots and fastened her feet into them. Warm gloves beneath the muff and the matching tippet wrapped closely about her throat, almost reaching to her hat, completed her garb. Delighted, the twins ran off to find their own outdoor clothes and to summon Jeremy, the tall footman.

  It felt rather odd to be carried like a baby, particularly by a servant, but he seemed to be a strong young man as well as a large one and made little of his burden.

  The bench in the sheltered corner of the rose garden had been cleared of snow, and Kai spread a thick blanket over the seat before Jeremy lowered Alba on to it. With a sigh of relief, she thanked him and he blushed and bowed and returned to the house.

  “I feel something of a fraud,” Alba remarked. “I’m sure I could have walked.”

  “But this way, you keep the doctor and Mama happy,” Gerda said.

  “Talking of making people happy, should you not be with Miss Ellington?”

  “Oh, no,” Kai insisted, jumping into the pristine snow with both boots. “She said we could spend the morning with you and go back to the schoolroom this afternoon.”

  “Listen,” Gerda cried, holding him still and cocking her head toward the front of the house. Alba heard a faint jangling sound, amid something that sounded a little like cow bells. “It’s Yuri’s sleigh! We’ll bring him round to you!”

  Before Alba could speak, they dashed off, leaving her more nervous than she had ever felt in her life, even when, as a child, she’d awaited her father’s punishment for some misdemeanor. Her heart beat so hard, it seemed to climb up her throat.

  The distant, laughing voices of the twins came closer again, punctuated by a deeper male voice that made her whole being tingle. She didn’t know whether she wanted to run to him or away from him, though, in fact, she seemed to be rooted to the bench.

  The three rounded the corner together and she couldn’t breathe.

  He looked just as she remembered, only with slightly barbaric looking furs covering the bright gold and white of his uniform. He paused and his wary eyes searched her face as she searched his. Perhaps it was the cold, but she thought there were fresh lines between his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. But he was well, he was here, and walking toward her. Just as before, his sheer presence threatened to overwhelm her.

  As though afraid he would walk right past, she threw one hand out to him. Wordlessly, he took it and sat on the edge of the bench, facing her.

  “I have to thank you for saving my life,” she said a little hoarsely. “And Kai’s, for he would never have left me.”

  “It was Gerda who found you.”

  She had the impression he was just saying anything while he gazed and gazed at her, wondering, perhaps, what he had ever seen in her.

  “I know,” she said, noticing, at last, that the twins had melted away. “But she couldn’t have done it without you, and I am grateful.”

  His brow twitched. “Are you?” Suppressed violence lurked in the depths of his dark eyes and yet he didn’t seem to be angry with her and his voice, so gentle, almost made her weep. “Why did you do it, Alba?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “It was so beautiful and peaceful…and I think I was just a little mad.”

  “But you did not mean to die?”

  She closed her eyes. “I just wanted peace and it seemed I could sleep there. I couldn’t sleep at home anymore… Somewhere, I knew I could die and I didn’t much care. It was vile and selfish and terrible of me, and Kai—” She broke off, unable to speak.

  “Kai loves you. Everyone does.”

  She blinked away tears. “I think everyone is an exaggeration,” she managed with a watery smile. “But I shall endeavor to be worthier.” She met his gaze. “I would never do anything like that again.”

  He squeezed her gloved hand. “Please don’t. The world would be dark without you.”

  She wanted to lay her head on his broad shoulder. Instead, she blurted, “I should not have let you go without seeing you.”

  “I should not have gone.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it, and then tucked it back into her muff. He smiled. “You look beautiful in all your furs. Almost Russian.”

  “And I hear you have taken the neighborhood by storm with your sleigh.”

  “I have certainly been transporting them in it. Most of the roads aren’t cleared yet.” His eyes held hers. She couldn’t look away, but the rest of the words she wanted to say stuck in her throat.

  “Are you friends again?” Gerda asked cheerfully as she and Kai skipped back into view.

  “Yes,” Yuri said. “We are friends.”

  Again, tears started to Alba’s eyes. She seemed to be very weak.
r />   “Maybe you should go back inside,” Yuri suggested. “It’s still very cold.”

  Alba nodded. Kai spun around, his coat knocking against the plants and dislodging a shower of snow. A flash of color caught Alba’s eye and she stared at the miraculous red rose bud.

  “Look, it’s still here,” Gerda said, amazed. “I expect it’s just been damaged, but it looks as if the petals are beginning to open. Shall I pluck it?”

  “No,” Alba said. “I like it where it is.” She began to rise, but Kai stayed her with his hand on her shoulder.

  “No, no!” he exclaimed. “I’ll fetch Jeremy to carry you back in. Otherwise we’ll get it in the neck from Mama.”

  “I’ll carry you,” Yuri said, standing and lifting her in one flowing movement, one arm around her waist, the other under her knees.

  Warmth flooded her, along with the sheer comfort of being held against his chest. For the barest instant, she allowed her head to rest against his shoulder, and her hand on his neck. But she was afraid to look at him and as they left the garden, she straightened and let her hand slip to her lap. “Thank you…”

  “Where do I take you?”

  “To my own rooms, if you’d be so good. On the second floor.”

  “I know. I carried you there before.”

  “I thought I dreamed that.” She’d dreamed he kissed her, too, and said he loved her.

  The children led the way, avoiding any accusations of impropriety. As they entered her sitting room, she said, “I could just sit here by the fire. Gerda, ring for some tea.”

  Yuri deposited her in the chair by the fire and, after throwing off his outer garments, he unfastened her cloak. His fingers at her throat made her blush, but there was nothing amorous in his attentions. He was merely making her comfortable.

  When Siddons appeared in answer to the bell, she glowered at Yuri. “You’re here again! You must wait downstairs until the duchess—”

  “Don’t be silly, Siddons,” Alba said briskly. “Have them send tea—and perhaps a little luncheon?—up here. The children will stay, too.”

  Siddons sniffed but retreated to obey.

  “Please, sit down,” Alba said to Yuri who stood by the mantelpiece. And as he took the seat closest to her, she suddenly wanted to know everything. “Why are you back in England? Oscar was sure you left with the Tsar.”