Chapter Twenty
The snow shifted above her, weight grinding down in a slow collapse, and Maddie’s chest seized with panic.
Then there was a tug, firm and deliberate, cutting through the suffocating cold.
Air rushed back into her lungs as she was dragged free, coughing violently against the damp chill clinging to her face.
She blinked rapidly, her snow-laden lashes stinging with the effort, until his face appeared above her, pale and stark against the icy void around them.
“Maddie,” Sebastian breathed, his voice hoarse with strain. His hands didn’t leave her shoulders, as though ensuring she was fully out of danger. His lips moved again, murmuring something she couldn’t catch over the ache in her ears and the frantic rasp of her own breathing.
She coughed once more, sharper this time, and finally managed words. “Sebastian…”
“You didn’t answer! Do you know what I was thinking?” She’d never seen him sound so scared.
Her voice cracked, weighted with the enormity of what had just happened. “You… you saved me.”
His jaw tightened, and he looked away, almost embarrassed. “It wasn’t much,” he said gruffly, shaking loose snow from his sleeves. “Anyone would have done the same.”
“No,” she said, blinking up at him. Air was still barely coming to her, but she could see him clearly now, his hair plastered to his forehead, his usually precise cravat beginning to get soaked through by the snow that had melted on his neck.
His coat hung limply. He looked utterly undone, raw and unguarded in a way she’d never seen. “It was everything, Sebastian.”
He ducked his head, brushing her face, her arms, checking for injuries while avoiding her eyes. “We’re safe now,” he muttered. “Just breathe. You’re all right.”
Safe.
In his arms.
Her fingers twitched against his chest as she leaned up, struggling into a sitting position.
He offered his arm for balance, even as she felt the tension in his body.
Snow clung to him as though it had tried to pull him under too.
She glanced at his trembling hands, red and raw, and it struck her like a blow.
He had used every ounce of strength to shield her, an act so selfless it stole the breath she had just fought to reclaim.
“You didn’t have to…” Her throat tightened, and she tried again. “You could’ve been killed.”
“And you could’ve been,” he said sharply, his gaze flicking up to meet hers. For a moment, she saw the depths of his fear, the fury barely stifled by relief. Then he softened, taking a breath. “Don’t waste your strength thinking about it. Let’s get warm.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he pressed a hand against the snow beside her, readying himself to move. “Come on,” he said, his voice gentler now. “We’ve got to get out of this. Can you stand?”
Shivering, she nodded, her muscles protesting every inch she hauled herself forward.
The snow shifted against her every effort, compacting and heavy, as though it wanted to drag her down again.
But there he was beside her, pushing through with a determination that seemed impossible given what he must’ve endured.
Sebastian reached back once with surprising patience, steadying her as though she were made of porcelain. “That’s it, Maddie,” he murmured, his voice closer now, the encouragement threading warmth through the blistering cold. “Just keep going.”
She could barely see through her exhaustion and the endless white ahead of them, but he never faltered. His resilience didn’t just drag himself forward; it lifted her, carried her through the impossible until they broke free from the snow’s crushing hold.
When they finally collapsed onto firmer ground, panting and shaking so violently they could barely stay upright, she turned to him, her chest tight with more than just the cold. “You risked everything,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Why?”
The faintest smile flickered across his cracked lips as he sat back, leaning heavily on his arms. “Because you’re worth it.” His voice dropped to something softer, private. “Always will be to me.”
It shouldn’t have undone her.
Not after everything they’d endured, not after the way she’d seen him throw his body over hers without a second thought. But those words, soft, quiet, as though they didn’t carry the weight of the world, destroyed her.
Always will be to me.
Not a declaration. Not quite.
But not nothing either.
It settled over her more deeply than the snow ever had. Not cold. Never cold. It was warmth in the sharpest place. Maddie’s fingers clenched into her skirts, her eyes fixed on his profile. His jaw was tight, lips pale, but his voice had held a truth she didn’t think he meant for her to carry home.
She swallowed hard, her throat dry despite the meltwater still clinging to her lashes. No one had ever said she was worth it before.
Not truly.
Not like this.
Sebastian wasn’t a man who flung words for show. He guarded himself like a fortress, and still, somehow, she had slipped through the cracks. And he had let her. Protected her. Cherished her, even now, while pretending it meant less than it did.
A single thought blossomed in her chest, wild and unwanted.
If he dies of frost or exhaustion, and this is all I ever get of him… I will never forgive the world for letting him go.
She blinked the thought away and drew a breath.
Her heart thudded harder against her ribs as she stared at him, unsure whether her breathlessness was the cold or the sheer weight of his words.
He tipped his head forward, tapping snow from his hair, clearly uncomfortable under her gaze, but she didn’t look away.
She couldn’t. This man, drenched and trembling beside her, had given more than she’d thought any person could.
And he dismissed it as though it meant nothing, even when it was everything.
*
Sebastian’s face warmed, though whether it was from the sentiment or the way her words hung in the frosty air, he wasn’t sure.
Either way, he straightened, clearing his throat briskly.
“Come,” he said, offering his hand. “The lodge isn’t far.
We won’t be able to walk back to the castle. I’ll make a fire.”
“How are we going to get back?” Maddie looked around. The pristinely white landscape, the moments alone she’d cherished with Sebastian now twisted her stomach. This was no longer proper.
“Someone will have to come for us.” Sebastian lifted the sled with one hand and offered his other to her. “Are you coming?”
“This is hardly proper.”
“It’s an emergency. Where do you want to go?” Sebastian gestured grandly around them. “Nobody can see us, hear us.”
“Find us? Oh, they’ll find us. Thomas knows where we are.”
“Did you tell him?” Maddie’s eyes grew wide for she couldn’t hide the surprise, shock, embarrassment—or a strange combination of the effects of the scandal she was about to suffer. An avalanche could unleash much, but the Ton’s scandals left avalanches much to learn.
“Nobody knows where we are. I didn’t say a word. But Thomas will know when he realizes which horse was gone and came back without the rider or the keys to the lodge. Don’t worry; he’ll know how to be discreet.”
“So you do this often?”
“Getting stuck in avalanches because Swan runs off? No, can’t say I’ve ever done that.”
“But seducing women in secluded lodges?”
Sebastian stopped and gave her a once-over. He pressed his lips into a flat line as if he had to suppress a laugh and quirked a brow. “Would you,” he cleared his throat, “Miss Madeleine, like me to seduce you in the lodge?”
Maddie forgot to breathe. She couldn’t tell if he was jesting or offering to make this… this… absurd suggestion reality. She ought to be scandalized. That was for sure.
Except that she wasn’t.
This is what I want.
She shouldn’t; it wasn’t proper. Yes, yes. The handbook would go up in flames if it knew what she was about.
And yet, there was plenty of snow to put that fire out.
Except not the one in her chest.
She was burning for Sebastian, and there was no denying it.
Maddie glanced behind her, at the distant trail Swan had taken, before placing her gloved palm in his. Her steps blended with his as they began the walk back up the hill.
“You do know,” Maddie said as they crunched uphill, “that if the lodge isn’t actually nearby, I shall stage a dramatic collapse in the snow and make you carry me the rest of the way. It might not even be dramatic because it will be true.”
Sebastian glanced at her. “Please don’t. You’ve already collapsed once today. My heart won’t survive another one.”
“Oh? This will be a survival strategy. I heard men can’t resist a woman fainting into their arms.”
“Careful, Maddie,” Sebastian teased. “That sounds suspiciously like you’ve been thinking about falling into my arms.”
She sniffed. “I think about a great many things. Bread. Books. Potions. Doesn’t mean I’m about to swoon over one.”
“A book has never kissed you senseless.”
“That,” she said, slightly breathless, “is an unverified claim.”
“You should be worried,” she said pointedly, “that if we’re found out here alone together, my reputation will be toast.”
He stopped walking and turned toward her. “Then let me be clear. I am the sort of man that takes responsibility.”
Her steps faltered. “Good. But let us hope it doesn’t come to that, because if I’m going to be ruined, it should be for something glorious. Not a cold walk and a lost horse.”
“Glorious?” he murmured. “That sounds dangerously like a challenge.”
“Only if you’re the sort to rise to it.”
“Oh, I do rise—”
“Sebastian!”
“—to challenges,” he finished smoothly, entirely unrepentant.
She huffed, but her cheeks flushed and her smile betrayed her. “You’re insufferable.”
“And yet,” he murmured, his hand brushing hers, “you haven’t let go.”
By the time they reached the lodge, the distant sunlight gave way to shadows, and the cold air had grown sharper. Sebastian led the way inside, immediately heading for the hearth.
“It’ll be warm soon,” he assured her, crouching to stack wood from the corner pile. Within moments, the beginnings of a fire flickered to life, and he carefully fanned the flames until they grew strong, their glow casting soft light across the room.
Maddie, who had been untying the ribbon beneath her chin, shrugged out of her cloak and set it aside. “I don’t think I’ve felt my toes in half an hour,” she admitted with a small laugh, already tugging at her damp boots.
Sebastian turned just as she slipped the first one off, exposing her stockinged foot to the warmth of the hearth.
For a moment, he watched her, the sight strangely intimate.
The act was unadorned, completely natural, and yet something about the way she unfolded her movements drew him in.
She leaned back slightly on her hands, angling her feet closer to the fire with a soft sigh.
“I’m not saying this was your plan all along,” Maddie said, stretching her legs with a satisfied sigh, “but if it had been, I would be impressed.”
Sebastian glanced over from where he was stoking the fire. “What, get stranded in an avalanche with you and risk frostbite for the pleasure of your company? Sounds exactly like something I’d arrange.”
She gave him a sidelong look. “Oh yes. Nothing screams romance like damp stockings and nearly dying.”
He leaned back against the wall, one knee raised lazily, his shirt slightly askew from his rushed dressing. “You know,” he said, voice low, “you could sit here sulking about propriety and scandal and your snow-ruined plans…”
“Or?”
“Or you could admit that part of you is glad the horse ran off.”
Her brow arched, but her lips curved too. “That’s an outrageous accusation.”
“Is it?”
She turned her face toward the fire. “I should be scandalized. Appalled. Marching back to town with righteous fury.”
“And instead?”
“I’m warm. You’ll have to revive me if I fall asleep,” she teased lightly, her head tilting toward him.
Sebastian, rooted where he stood, found only one response necessary. “I trust you’ll manage to stay awake, Maddie.”
Her smile, framed by the firelight, flickered briefly up at him before she turned her eyes back to the flames. And Sebastian, for all his effort to think of something practical or useful, found himself sitting back on the hearth’s edge. Close, but not too close. Or just close enough.
For the first time since entering the lodge, silence claimed them—not out of awkwardness, but because neither wanted to disturb it. It was, as the snow, something simultaneously inevitable and more powerful than either of them alone.