The Duke of Snow and Apples (17 page)

Brighter, stronger hues began to rise around her, deep reds and rich browns. With the back of her hand, she scrubbed away the last of her tears without breaking her gaze. “So why do I?”

“I’ll let you know as soon as I figure that out myself.” The heat that rose in Frederick now had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with how the aftermath of Charlotte’s tears darkened her lips to an even more tempting degree. Holy Maiden, he didn’t
want
her to be virtuous. Other words were quite unnecessary, for both Frederick’s mouth and Charlotte’s discovered more important priorities.

She curled her fingers into his hair, an action he found burningly intimate after a decade of wigs. His hands ventured lower, down the smooth planes of her shoulders, underneath her neckline and the bones of her stays, to where softness bloomed.
So soft
.

Like a frozen limb finally thawed, the surge of sensation nearly pained Frederick in its intensity. The weight of Charlotte’s breast in his hand stole all concentration, that is, until the subtle scent of lilac perfume on the exquisite corner where jaw met throat consumed his attention. A moment later, the sound of her breath against his cheek made him forget everything else but the weight and the smell and the sound and the colors of her.

The creak of a loose stair beneath the weight of a footstep carried as much force as a scream. Frederick pulled away, angling his head up toward the stairs, but not fast enough to catch the interloper’s identity.

“Who was that?” The soft, pliant woman stiffened in his arms.

“I don’t know. Most likely a servant.”

“Most likely?”

Charlotte’s worry settled upon Frederick like a rime of frost. If she’d been caught in an embrace with a gentleman, marriage was a certainty, but if a lady was seen kissing a
servant
? No question of marriage then, or rescue from ruin.

“I-it’s probably nothing.” She tried a smile.

“I’ll make sure it’s nothing.” Frederick helped her to her feet, then made himself let go of her hand, prying his fingers off one by one, even as the lack of contact made his hand feel cold. Along with forgetting how to want, he’d also forgotten the pain of having to give up what he wanted. No amount of begging, wishing, or bargaining could alter the fact that, at some point, Charlotte would have to be given up.

Terribly easy to forget that.

Chapter Seventeen

Charlotte could practically
feel
Frederick retreating as he escorted her back to her chambers, after she admitted that she had no idea how to get there from the eastern servants’ stairwell.

She couldn’t see the colors he could, not unless he looked at her directly and concentrated, but she didn’t need skeins of frozen blue and glacial green to notice how his posture slowly straightened, his hands uncurled, and his face hardened into a purposefully neutral appearance.

Charlotte felt like a bottle of sparkling wine given a good, hard shake—she fizzed, she bubbled, with thoughts swirling around in her head, refusing to settle. In a flash of despair, she’d asked Frederick for numbness, only now she reeled from the very opposite. Her anger at Sylvia still ground within her like a painful mill, with all of her other insecurities and fears as so much grist. As she’d discovered on the stairwell, however, her heart was larger than she’d thought, with room left over for joy and pleasure.

Now all of them churned within her, and if Charlotte no longer wanted the solace of cold, it was only because she wasn’t exactly sure
what
she wanted. At the heart of this maelstrom was Frederick. Even sparing him a shy glance from the corner of her eye sped up the rhythms of her body, until she found herself blinking rapidly, as her heart pounded and her words tumbled out willy-nilly in senseless babble—about the fir-green silk from the village shop, about the chance of heavier snow, about the upcoming masquerade ball.

They finally reached the doors leading to the state rooms, and Frederick bent as if to bow, until she said, “Stop.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m not sure.” She shook her head. “Freezing my emotions seemed like a good idea at the time, but I’m not so certain about that anymore.”

“You couldn’t survive in the cold,” Frederick said. “At least not the kind I’m used to. You have too much spirit for that.”

“But what about you?” Charlotte jumped on the chance to prolong the conversation, to keep him close. His strange manner of traveling inward, of traveling to his
cold place
, as he called it, was already starting to happen. Hadn’t their encounter on the stairs been enough? “Why do you choose to survive in it?”

He turned away, breaking eye contract. “Because I have to. It’s not that I don’t enjoy what’s happening between us, whatever it is, but it’s not a cure. It’s a respite. It’s a pause. It can’t be that way forever.”

Enjoy
? He made it sound so casual. One enjoyed an uninterrupted nap or a particularly hearty meal. This was more, at least for Charlotte. “Why
not
?”

Frederick rounded on her. “Don’t you realize what almost happened back there? We were nearly caught. I can stem servants’ gossip well enough, but if we had been caught anywhere else, it would have tarnished your reputation beyond repair.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I don’t have to.”

“What if I
order
you to?”

“If you
order
me?” Frederick’s features slowly smoothed away all traces of anger, annoyance, or even engagement—leaving a cool white mask. He spoke in a monotone free of inflection. “Because I am a footman? Because I am sheltered, fed, and paid to obey you and the Dowagers?”

“That is not”—
exactly
—“what I meant.” Somehow she’d angered him. She scrambled for something conciliatory to say.

He gestured toward the state room doors. “This is where I bid you leave.”

“Frederick, don’t do that. Don’t leave.”

“You have only to ring the bell-pull.” He turned to go, pausing only to say, “I await your command.”

Charlotte could only stand and gawk as his heels clicked down the corridor.

…

I should have done this long ago
, Frederick thought as he took the servants’ stairs two at a time toward the third floor.
We were both losing our heads. Forgetting what could happen. Myself especially.

I’m a footman. Nothing more
. What could possibly come of this…this
wanting
? There were always wants, especially in the life of a servant.

The utter failure of his cold place should have been the first sign that this shameless dependency was too risky to give in to. Charlotte had been in his life all of, what? Five days? And already she’d convinced him to awaken the magic he’d locked away for so long, dredging up all sorts of possible dangers with it. Like the Gray.

All magic, even the proper sorts, acted as a give-and-take. Magic gave one power, freedom—but sapped youth and beauty if overused. The purer one’s blood, the higher the body’s resistance, but even impoverished nobles who resorted to selling charms and glamours lost their looks to elemental scarring eventually.

However, physical deformity was
nothing
to the Gray, the curse that had ultimately shown him that his own magic couldn’t be trusted. So far, no one at Charmant Park had begun showing signs that their colors were dying out, that their emotions were being leached away, but then again, Frederick hadn’t exactly been looking for it. That was part of the problem. When he didn’t pay attention, when he didn’t impose limits—people got hurt.

His ruminations on the dangers of his curse and the unfairness of the world in general came to a sharp halt when he opened the door to his bedchamber.

His room looked like the results of an uncontrolled wind spell cast by an incompetent schoolboy. His rickety wash stand lay overturned, next to his washbasin that now boasted a new, long crack along its rim. His small chest of drawers stood with half of its drawers open while the rest had been removed entirely, their contents strewn across the floor—gloves lying about like crumpled white birds, cravats rumpled and abandoned. He lifted his foot to step gingerly into the wreckage and stepped in a small drift of white hair powder from a box that been upset during the invasion.

Worst of all, his mattress, stripped and pulled off the bed, now leaked straw onto the floor. Awareness blazed through Frederick’s mind, and he struggled past the battered furniture to reach the mattress, his fingers searching for that special tear along the side—the special small tear that someone had thoughtfully enlarged in his or her eagerness to rob a simple, humble footman.

Hopes sinking, Frederick jammed his hand into the mattress, searching futilely. The ring was gone.
Gone
. The one piece of evidence that he’d once been more than a simple, humble footman.

“
Pah!
It looks like a griffin’s nested in here.”

Frederick turned. Lamonte peered in from the doorway.

“You couldn’t have done this.” It emerged as more of a question than he’d intended. The haughty Miss Lamonte had a spiteful streak, all of belowstairs knew it, the maid who acted like a queen. Her years of teasing, her venomous little asides, her distaste for Charlotte, they all lined themselves up in a neat little row in Frederick’s mind.

Lamonte only laughed, and stepped fully into the doorway. “Do I
look
as if I could have done it?
Encah!
You are a little boy.” She wore a dress of heavy green satin with a seductive, scooped neckline, over a white underdress and white slippers. Every part of her, from the elaborately curled hairstyle to her filmy apron, was spotless—not a hint of straw, dust, or powder anywhere.

Who else could it bloody well be?
Anger sparked, sudden and combustive. He savagely kicked the washstand into a wall with a loud
bang
.

“My, my,
Frederique.
” Lamonte shot him an appraising glance, not at all perturbed. “You laugh for the first time in your life, you gain a temper, and, it seems, you’ve made an enemy. So much progress in one short week, no?”

“And what have you got to say about it?” Frederick snapped. God, but it was hard to remain empty nowadays. Every time he turned around the world found something else to fill him with until he burst.

Lamonte looked upon him with perhaps the softest expression her face had ever held in her life. “Poor
Frederique
. Everyone belowstairs thinks you’ve buried your heart on some wind-blasted mountain. You’re
elable
, dependable, they say. Solid. Trustworthy. Rational solid
Frederique
, what would everyone say if they could see you now?”

He had expected disdain from Lamonte. An icy glance of hauteur, maybe, or a razor-edged quip. Not sympathy—and certainly not pity. “Who’s to say I have a heart now?”

“Who indeed? The moment you get it back you give it away. Poor
Frederique
.”

Denial and acceptance both warred in the back of his throat, so he hedged his bets and said nothing.

“Should we tell Mr. Gelvers, or Lutter the steward?”

“No,” Frederick said. So far he’d only noticed one thing missing, and mentioning it would only bring up too many questions he couldn’t answer. He was better off without his ring, anyhow.

“Someone should at least help you, to set your room to rights.”

“I can do it myself.” Work he understood. Labor and strain he recognized. Perhaps in setting his room to rights, he could organize the wreckage of his own mind.

Chapter Eighteen

Charlotte woke to the sound of soft tapping at her window. She blinked, her mind still fuzzy with sleep, trying to remember what day it was.
The masquerade
. Oh yes, the masquerade was today. She remembered a brief moment from the night before when she’d made a solemn and sobbing promise that nothing and no one could make her attend such a farce.

However, while her hurt with Sylvia hadn’t gone away, now she felt she had a better hold on it. She owed it to her great-aunt to attend. She’d already chosen her butterfly costume, something pretty without being too gaudily original. There was no sense remaining in bed, doing nothing. She hissed when her feet touched the cold floor, and she tiptoed over to the window, trying to touch the cold wood as little as possible.

Pulling the curtains aside, Charlotte startled two ice-sprites, frozen undines, tracing delicate spirals of frost on her windowpane. Squeaking, the spiny creatures dove off the window, down, down, to land in a protective drift of snow.

Snow
.

She pressed her face against the glass to get a better look. While the sun released streamers of orange and violet into the eastern sky, the earth glowed with the reflected light of miles and miles of smooth, uninterrupted whiteness. Pure. Unblemished.

Charlotte’s sleepiness evaporated. She returned to the bed to yank on the bell-pull, but paused. It was abominably early. Would Lamonte even be awake yet?

Two days ago, Charlotte wouldn’t have given a thought to whether her lady’s maid had a good night’s sleep. Now…

I can dress myself, can’t I? Surely it can’t be that hard.

Half an hour later, Charlotte stumbled out into the snow, nursing a pulled muscle in her shoulder.
Which dressmaker came up with the brilliant idea to have stays that lace up the
back?

Nevertheless, she’d managed, although she’d only been able to tie the laces up halfway. Eventually she’d have to summon Lamonte to unravel the unspeakable knot she’d made of the laces, but by then it would be a reasonable hour.

She dashed along the path, her boots punching holes in the snow. Her laughter shattered into a thousand pealing echoes in the freezing air. Out here in the early quiet, she didn’t have to pretend. She didn’t have to think. She kept to the side of the house, the creaking of snow crushed underfoot the only sound.

Winter had crept in on silent Fey feet, lining the bottoms of windowpanes with sparkling white powder and weighting the branches of trees. More water elementals, frozen into sharp, pointed ice-sprites, skittered across the surface. Gazing to the south, the former mud hunting field, Charlotte saw only flat, unbroken white. Within the span of a night, all the churned, dirty chaos of the field had been buried beneath winter’s cold perfection. Despite the beauty of the scene, Charlotte felt a twinge of disappointment.

When she turned a corner, she spotted another trail of footprints. Upon closer inspection, the trail was larger, clumsier, and more packed—the result of one person closely following behind another. The day was young, the landscape new, the morning empty. If ever there was a time to set out on a small adventure, it was now.

She followed the path alongside the manse, the honey-colored stone giving way to the red brick of one of the house’s newer wings. The ruddy walls resembled nothing so much as fresh gingerbread, iced with snow.

The raw winter air caught and magnified every sound. Charlotte heard the beginnings of conversation long before she found the speakers.

“…how did you find me?”

“This is where you always come to be alone.”

“Funny how it never works.”

Charlotte crept closer toward the sound.

“Have you told Mr. Gelvers yet? About your room?”

“Who says something happened in my room?”

“Gossip is air belowstairs—it creeps under doors and between windows. Useless to stop it up.”

“And you can’t live without it.” The tone of weary humor awakened a physical recognition within Charlotte, like the plucking of a string.
Frederick
.

The brick wall curved away from her, leading to a round bowl of a courtyard that sheltered what looked to be a potiongarden.

In the center of the potiongarden, some pious gardener had planted an apple tree, especially favored by the Holy Maiden. Frederick leaned against it, his dark head bent in contemplation, rolling something round and red between his hands.

The unfamiliar questioner stood with his back to her. He wore the blue overcoat of a footman, albeit loosely, and without a wig. Whereas Frederick moved his rangy frame with a nimble fleetness, this footman, broader and more solid in stature, paced with a slow deliberation, as if every move he made was the product of several minutes’ planning.

Charlotte hung back, unwilling to reveal herself. Frederick had
touched
her, yesterday, in a way that went beyond physical. It’d felt like he’d placed a warm, long-fingered hand over the growing bruise on her heart, soothing her even as it pained. When she’d reached out in return, she’d met only snow, cold and damp and melting beneath her fingers.

“I’d ask you keep your…air…to yourself, John,” Frederick said. “It’s no one’s affair but my own.”

“At least tell Mr. Lutter. If you’re afraid of scandal by accusin’ the lackey of a guest, you can at least trust Mr. Lutter to be discreet.”

“I have no idea who broke into my room.” He tossed the red object into the air and caught it again—an apple. The gesture indicated a playful indifference, a notion weakened by the tense, hunched posture of his shoulders.

Someone broke into his room? What for?
Perhaps his shock at the theft was responsible for his cool demeanor the night before.

“You know it couldn’t have been one of us.”

“If you’re already such an expert on what I know and don’t know, then why are here bothering me with questions?” Frederick snapped.

John’s broad shoulders rose, then slumped. “Well. Good luck to you, then, Freddy.”

Frederick pushed off from his tree. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I have work to do,” John said, turning away. “
You
have work to do.”

“Whoever it was, they didn’t take anything…important.” His voice caught, once, before that final word as if he’d almost said something else.

“Of course.” His friend turned up the collar of his coat against the cold and strode away.

“John…”

“I’m busy.”

“John!”

“I’m…” John halted mid-sentence, as he caught Charlotte in a bold attempt to blend into the red brick wearing a green coat. “Miss Charlotte!”

Caught by surprise, he bowed on instinct, and Charlotte caught only the glimpse of a small russet shape hurtling toward her over John’s descending back before her world turned into a whirl of red brick, white snow, black branches, and blue sky. She had a very vague sense that she was falling, but by the time her muddled mind summoned enough focus to formulate a thought, she wasn’t falling at all, but flat on her back on something soft, cold, and damp.

She blinked, dazedly, as pain bloomed underneath her forehead and sent roots snaking down around her temples and jaw.

Black, white, and blue returned to her world, only this time they remained fixed in one place—the dark, worried slant of Frederick’s eyebrows; the pallor of his shocked face; the deep, divine blue of his eyes.

“Are you all right?” Warm hands gripped the sides of her face. “It was an accident! Does it hurt?”

“D-did you hit me with a
rock
?” she asked, fighting the impression she’d had this conversation before.

“No. An apple. Only an apple.” His voice shook. “I’m so sorry.” His face tightened, but inevitably broke with breathless laughter.

“An apple?” Giggles rose in her like lemon fizz bubbles, despite the throbbing ache in her head. “And how does revenge taste, may I ask?”

“It was an accident. I’d meant to throw it at Tall John.”

“I only have your word on that.” Pain faded into the background as her body responded to his looming presence above her, promising such delicious weight and tempting heat. “You could be world champion of apples, having planned this very shot. Lord of apples. Duke of apples. Prince of…”

“No,” he said, a bit sharply.

“Just the Duke of Apples, then.”

“That’s not what I…” He rolled his eyes. “Fine, yes. Duke of Apples. Can you sit up?”

“I can try, Your Grace.” She pulled a face, then winced. She accomplished a sitting position, although her head pulsed around the point of impact. She brushed her forehead with tentative fingers, pulling away from the bruised heat. “Ouch!”

“Here.” Frederick shifted away. He gathered a handful of snow in his hands and crushed it into a solid ball. With remarkable tenderness, he pressed some of the cold against Charlotte’s forehead. “Does this feel better?”

Water trickled down Charlotte’s face to bead on her eyelashes, but it felt good—both the snowball and Frederick’s hands.

“Can you hold this to your head for a while?”

“Yes.” A chill that had nothing to do with winter crept into her bones when he took his hands away, to root around nearby in the snow, searching the white until he came up with red. He turned to her, and a quaint, singing pain like a snapped wire pinned her in place at the sight of such unexpected beauty. Such simple ingredients for loveliness—the inky, tumbled darkness of his hair, the unblemished fairness of his skin, the glossy ruby peel of the apple.

Anyone else would see a boy with a fruit, but when Charlotte looked, she couldn’t break her gaze until she’d had her fill, until the vision filled her so tightly no words could escape. Duke of Apples, indeed.

He held out the apple. “Here, have it. You’ll feel better.” He turned toward where a shocked John stood, and said, louder, “She’s fine!”

She could only nod, uncertain whether she could swallow anything. Her teeth bit through the peel, filling her mouth with cold juice. An ordinary apple, red peel and white flesh and sweet, sweet juice.

Frederick stared, one eyebrow quirked. “And how
does
revenge taste?”

“Sweet,” she murmured.
Too sweet
. She couldn’t fathom a world where she couldn’t have this taste forever.

…

Frederick held out a hand. “Here. Let me help you up.”

Charlotte nodded. An ugly patch of darkening red marred her forehead, promising a nasty bruise before the day was out.
His fault
.

He pulled her to her feet. She swayed for a moment, but quickly righted herself.

“How do you feel? Can you walk?”

Charlotte dipped her head in assent.

Sweet Maiden, what had possessed him to throw that twice-cursed apple at Tall John to get his attention? He could have called. He could have shouted. He could have done the
reasonable
thing, but instead he’d acted like a petulant child.

From Charlotte’s stiff posture and determined silence, he should have been able to tell whether she was angry at him or not, but there was no categorizing the strange light in her eyes when she looked at him, a look furtive and fervent, like she wanted to smuggle him away in a pocket to keep for herself.

What does that mean? Why is she looking at me like that?

He couldn’t return to his private world of secret colors, to judge Charlotte’s feelings by their exact tint of peacock or cerulean. Bringing that world brought the Gray with it. He patted down her arms, examined the curve of her elbow, as if checking for other injuries, but really because he needed to touch her, as if he could determine her feelings toward him that way.

“Do you need me to escort you back to your chamber?”

Charlotte pulled away from him. “I’m fine.”

Frederick wrapped an arm about her shoulders, preventing her wobbly escape. “I insist.”

“I’ve never encountered a more disobedient servant,” she muttered. “You’re a disgrace to the profession.” Nevertheless she leaned into his touch, her head fitting just beneath his chin. Maiden above, he could feel every inch of her pressing against him and turning his insides molten. He started walking, leading her back inside, hoping sharp, sudden movement would lessen his burgeoning reaction to her.

They passed dozens of side passages, alcoves, private nooks. Just one sharp turn to the left, one moment of privacy, and the things he could do to that lopsided smile and satin-smooth skin would make her forget all about the pain of her forehead…

The steady clatter of Tall John’s footsteps following him kept those ideas firmly in place to torment him from the inside out. As they reached the doors to Charlotte’s rooms, she turned, lips parted, a moment ripe with swelling opportunities, but a glance over his shoulder quelled her back into false hauteur.

“I said I’m
fine
, Frederick.” She nodded to Tall John, who regarded them open-mouthed. She entered her bedchamber with only a hint of wobbliness and shut the door on the footmen and their respective astonishment.

“Frederick,” John murmured, after Charlotte had left.

“What?”

“She called you
Frederick
.”

“That’s my name, isn’t it?” Unease prickled the back of his neck, and Frederick turned away. When, exactly, had he come to rely on his power again, to the point where everything seemed bare and colorless without it? Looking at Charlotte with his magic locked up was like staring at her through a dirty, darkened lens.

Strong hands shoved Frederick’s back, nearly sending him sprawling. He stumbled forward, windmilling his arms to steady himself.

“What the
blazes
…?”

“Don’t start, Freddy! Don’t you
dare
start. Not with me.” Tall John grabbed his arm in a punishing grip and dragged him away from the guest rooms, down a dank, lesser hallway where there was less chance of being overheard.

“What are you talking about?” Frederick asked.

“Whatever excuse you’ve cooked up this time. She’s the one, isn’t she? She’s the girl behind your smile.” He didn’t wait for Frederick to answer. “Do you have any idea what you’ve got yourself into, eh?”