Chapter Four
THE BOY IN THE GREEN scarf is skating too close to the ropes.
I notice him because I notice everything at events like this, the small details that could turn into problems. It’s the coordinator in me, the part of my brain that never fully shuts off, always scanning for the thing that’s about to go wrong.
But right now, standing on the shore of Foxtown’s frozen lake with my clipboard tucked under my arm, I’m supposed to be watching the exhibition skaters.
They’re gliding across the ice in full Regency costume, all elegant spins and graceful movements, and Lady Hampton is signing to me about how the choreography incorporates elements of period dance.
‘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.
The surface.
Light.
Air.
I gasp, shoving the boy upward toward the hands reaching down from the edge, and someone grabs him, hauls him out, and the relief is so sharp it almost takes me under.
He’s out.
He’s safe.
Okay.
Now just get yourself out, Evianne.
Except my arms won’t work.
My legs won’t work.
Nothing works.
The cold is inside me now, deep in my bones, shutting everything down system by system, and I’m trying to reach for the edge of the ice but my body won’t obey. My fingers scrape against the surface and slide off. The water pulls at me, patient and heavy, and I’m so tired.
So tired.
Mom’s going to be so upset—
Strong hands grab me.
Hauling me up and out of the water in one violent motion, and then there’s air and cold wind and Veil’s face above mine, those blue eyes blazing with something between fury and terror.
He’s shouting, but I can’t hear the words over the roaring in my ears.
“—brEATHE, damn you, brEATHE—”
I want to tell him I’m trying. I want to tell him the boy is safe. I want to tell him a lot of things, but nothing comes out, and the darkness is creeping in at the edges of my vision, and the last thing I see before everything goes black is his face.
Those blue eyes.
Still blazing.
****
FIVE DAYS.
Five days she’d been avoiding him, and Veil had noticed every single one.
He noticed how she arrived at breakfast early enough to finish before he came down. How she kept her eyes on her clipboard whenever he entered a room. How she found sudden urgent reasons to check inventory or adjust lighting or consult with vendors the moment he appeared in her vicinity.
He noticed, and it grated.
Not because he wanted her attention. He didn’t.
He was the Duke of Veilcourt, and he did not chase women who treated him like furniture.
He did not care that she’d never replied to his text.
He did not lie awake wondering why she’d pulled away in the study, or what she’d been thinking when she wrote “This is inappropriate” on a piece of paper, or what it meant that she’d looked at him with those wide dark eyes like she was fighting herself and losing.
He didn’t care about any of that.
Obviously.
And if he happened to notice that she’d rearranged her entire schedule to avoid crossing paths with him, that was simply observation. The same way he’d observe a change in weather patterns or a shift in market trends. Neutral. Detached. Entirely without feeling.
His mother, predictably, saw right through him.
‘She’s been very busy with the exhibition,’ Geena had signed to him at dinner three nights ago, her expression carefully innocent. ‘I’ve barely seen her myself.’
Veil had not taken the bait.
‘You could always ask her to join us for dinner,’ Geena continued. ‘She eats alone in her room most evenings. It doesn’t seem right.’
‘She’s free to eat wherever she likes, Mother.’
Geena had given him a long look. The kind that said she knew exactly what he was doing and found it both amusing and exasperating.
‘You’re being childish,’ she signed.
‘I’m being professional.’
‘You’re being proud.’
That one had landed, because it was true, and Veil had enough self-awareness to know it. He was being proud. Evianne was avoiding him, and instead of confronting it or even simply ignoring it, he was matching her distance with his own, turning it into a silent contest of who could care less.
Childish, indeed.
But what was the alternative? Pursue her? Corner her in a hallway and demand to know why she’d gone cold after the workshop? He’d seen the way she’d looked at him when he stood behind her, felt her breath catch, felt the tremor in her hand. The attraction was mutual. That much he was certain of.
But she was running from it.
And Veil had been chased by enough women to know that pursuing someone who didn’t want to be caught was a game he refused to play.
So he’d let her avoid him.
He’d let the distance grow.
And he’d told himself, repeatedly, that it didn’t bother him.
Until the ice cracked.
One moment he was making polite conversation with Lady Chesterton about her foundation’s interest in vintage stationery.
The next moment he was watching Evianne sprint across the ice toward the hole where a child had just fallen through.
No.