25. February 2, 1814 London, England
The evening air stabs through Beatrix’s lungs as she hurries past the blackening piles of snow encroaching on the narrow street, her shoulders hunched against the biting cold.
Too cold to snow again. She turns the corner, and the glittering Thames comes into view.
Her heart soars and she smiles, even though her face is numb.
The river has frozen solid for the first time in twenty-five years, and that can mean only one thing.
The Frost Fair is back.
Beatrix checks the carved wooden sign hanging over the door of the pub. Not that she needs to. She has known this place ever since Oliver told her about it, almost ninety-seven years ago. She pushes the heavy door open with her shoulder and steps gratefully into the warmth.
Oliver slouches over a dark wooden table in an even darker corner. He rests his forehead on the heel of his hand, scanning the pages of the notebook lying open in front of him.
Beatrix’s heart flutters inside her chest. He is still the same man she left in the carriage all those years ago. She knows, eventually, he will not be the same man. He will return older, grayer, maybe imperceptibly so to anyone but her. But not tonight.
She takes a breath, forces herself to slow her steps, to keep her composure. He hasn’t spent nearly a hundred years waiting and hoping, longing for this moment.
She slides onto the bench across from him. “Hello.”
Oliver straightens. He looks like he’s seen a ghost. “You came?”
Beatrix unties the ribbon under her chin and removes her bonnet, the same burgundy shade as her long wool coat. She brushes a curl of her hair back into place. “You sound surprised.”
“I thought you might have changed your mind.” He takes in every inch of her.
Beatrix rests her folded arms on the thick wooden table. “Why would I change my mind?”
His gaze turns dark, horror touched by sadness. “It’s been a hundred years, Bea.”
“It was ninety-six years and eleven months that would have passed whether or not I came tonight.”
“I saw you five days ago.”
The disparity is striking, a slap in the face. They are not the same.
Oliver slouches against the wall. “It’s not fair.”
“No, it isn’t,” Beatrix says. “But it’s what I agreed to.” She waits. He comes back to her. It is that simple and that hard.
“It was a mistake.” He closes his journal, slips it inside his coat, and for a single, gut-wrenching moment, Beatrix thinks he means to leave. But then he adds, “It was too much to ask.”
“I asked,” she says, trying to ease the guilt in his eyes.
His brow creases. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”
He looks so sincere—so sorry—that Beatrix has to look away. “Don’t worry about me,” she says. “I can manage just fine on my own.”
“I know you can,” Oliver agrees. “But I want to see you.”
His eyes meet hers again, as bright as the fire blazing in the hearth behind her. Her heart hammers against her ribs. “And the Frost Fair. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, of course,” Oliver says quickly. “This is the last one. I had to see it for myself.”
Her heart sinks. “It’s the last one?”
Oliver nods. “The Thames never freezes like this again.”
The world has been changing around Beatrix for centuries.
She should be used to it, shouldn’t be surprised some things survive while others are lost. “I suppose we better go enjoy it, then,” she says, pushing down the melancholy feeling rising like a tide inside her.
Then she leans forward and drops her voice.
“Is it true? Are they going to walk an elephant across the ice tonight?”
Beatrix isn’t naive enough to believe the rumor, which she suspects has been started by the watermen in an effort to drum up business.
Oliver leans in close. Beatrix catches the herby scent of lavender and the spark in his eye. She has waited almost ninety-seven years for him to look at her that way again, has daydreamed about it more than once. Her heart still skips a beat.
“Let’s go find out.”
The pub isn’t far from the Thames, where the watermen have taken it upon themselves to put on the festival, hoping to earn some money while they wait for the ice to thaw.
A jolly-looking man with a bushy black beard guards a set of stairs down to the ice. Beatrix hands him the fee, and he waves her onto the landing with Oliver.
“I could have paid,” he says as they descend.
Beatrix smirks at him. “I consider it a shilling well spent.” She pauses on the last step. “Ready to walk on the Thames?”
He offers her his arm. “Shall we?”
She wraps her arm through his, and they step onto the river together.
The ice is a maze of makeshift buildings; shacks and tents and shop stalls form crooked streets, as if London has spilled out over the ice and claimed the river as its own.
But this bit of London isn’t dreary or dull or crushed under the weight of existing.
It is merry and bright and alive, risen overnight from the glittering ice.
It will inevitably melt away with it, vanish like a mirage. A special, fleeting thing.
“Come on.” Beatrix pulls Oliver after her. “I want to dance in the middle of the Thames.”
He grins. “I thought you wanted to see an elephant.”
“I want to see everything!”
A trio of fiddlers plays a lively reel near the base of London Bridge, and a handful of dancers spin across the ice.
Beatrix stares up at the massive stone arches.
She stood on that bridge more than two hundred years ago with Oliver.
Crossed it for the first time, alone, a hundred years before that.
And now she is standing under it for the first time.
Probably the last time, too, though she has learned to never say never.
The fiddlers strike up another song. Oliver bows to Beatrix, far too formal, and she curtsies to him. A giggle escapes her. He offers her his hand, and she takes it, places his other one against her back. A familiar weight, even after all this time. He pulls her closer.
“Careful, you’ll cause a scandal,” she teases, though she’s not sure they can count anything that happens on the ice as scandalous, judging by the raucous laughter and shouts in the air. “Do they dance this close in the future?”
Oliver laughs. “Oh, just you wait.”
He leads her in the steps, easy and quick. He twirls her across the ice, spins with her until she is dizzy, breathless and giddy with the rush of it all.
“What next?” Oliver asks as they step away from the dancing, faces flushed and breath clouding in the frosty night air.
Beatrix grins. “Everything.”
Oliver takes her hand. “Everything it is.”
They try skating next, and both agree they prefer dancing as they wobble around the cordoned-off ice, trying and failing to stay upright. Beatrix’s bruises heal as quickly as she gets them, but Oliver is not so lucky.
“Have you had enough of skating on the Thames?” she asks, the last time she lands on top of him with a thud on the unforgiving ice.
Oliver winces. “For a lifetime.”
They try several games but lose every one. Beatrix insists they’re rigged.
Oliver laughs. “Some things never change.”
He’s surprisingly good at ninepin bowling. He wins their first match and the rematch Beatrix challenges him to. “Beginner’s luck,” he claims with an easy grin.
They warm themselves by a bonfire burning on the ice.
Beatrix watches the flames dance, mesmerized by the flickering orange light.
Now that she has stopped moving, she could fall asleep standing right here.
But she doesn’t want the night to end. There is so much left to see and do, and as long as there is, Oliver will stay.
She buys them each a coffee and she savors the heat, clasping the mug with both hands.
When their drinks are finished and their insides warmed, she leads the way toward Blackfriars Bridge, where it seems the rumors were true.
An elephant lumbers across the ice to the cheers and shouts of a gathered crowd.
Beatrix shakes her head, sure she’ll never see a stranger sight in all her life.
The printing presses are what make her heart leap with joy, more than the dancing or even the elephant. So many of them had burned in the Great Fire. She can’t help but smile at the sight of the printers at work, selling souvenir poems to commemorate the rare occasion.
“Print your name for tuppence, my dear,” a stout gentleman manning a press calls to her.
“All right.”
He pulls off his gloves and peers over his wire-framed glasses at her. “Missus?” he asks, glancing between her and Oliver.
“Miss,” Beatrix quickly corrects him.
“Miss…?”
“Beatrix. Beatrix Lancourt.”
The man goes to work. He pulls tiny metal letters from a shallow, segmented tray sitting on a table next to the press, humming to himself all the while.
“Good, good, now your birthday, dear.”
She glances up at Oliver. Her eyes meet his. “July nineteenth.”
“Perfect, perfect,” the man mutters as he lays the numbers into place. “And the year?”
Her mind goes blank, as if she has suddenly lost the ability to count. Her heart races.
“Seventeen ninety,” Oliver says.
The printer places the digits, then turns his attention to inking the words.
“Thank you,” Beatrix whispers. Oliver squeezes her hand.
The printer presses the inked letters to the page, then presents it to Beatrix with a flourish. She holds it by the edges, taking care to avoid the shining ink as it dries.
“Are you hungry?” Oliver asks, drawing her attention from the paper.
He nods toward a particularly loud makeshift tent standing on the ice behind them. She follows him inside, though referring to it as “inside” is a generous use of the term. The tent is nothing more than a ship’s sail propped up by oars.
If Beatrix still picked pockets, this would be the type of place she’d frequent.
Everyone is more than a little drunk, and there are so many people crammed together they can’t help bumping and jostling each other.
And it is dark. It would be easy to slip in and out of the shadows, with no one taking any notice. She’d make a killing.