Page 3 of The Valentine Skates
Even in this remote country parish a child like Emily had heard exaggerated tales of her life in the harem. Shutting herself away from the rest of the world hadn’t worked. For the remainder of her days, wherever she went, there she’d be.
What harm could there be in a few hours of escape on a frozen river in the moonlight?
“Of course, if your father doesn’t mind,” Lilianne said, without giving herself a chance to change her mind.
“He won’t mind. He said I can do whatever I want today, because it’s my birthday.” Her voice wobbled, and she stared down at her boots. “It’s the day my Mama died.”
Tears welled unbidden in Lilianne’s eyes. Tonight was the thirteenth of February, the eve of St. Valentine’s Day, a celebration for lovers.
As promised, Frederick Meredith and Emily appeared exactly at eight in a farm sleigh pulled by two sturdy work horses. Lilianne slung her old skates over her shoulder and hauled herself up onto the seat beside the small girl, avoiding Frederick’s help.
He ignored the slight and pulled an old woolen blanket from the box behind the seat, covering their laps and knees. When he tucked the blanket beneath Lilianne’s feet, he looked into her eyes and mouthed the words, “Thank you.” In that moment she regretted all the times over the last four years she’d had the servants tell him she was not at home when he’d tried to call at Wembledon.
He returned to his seat and retrieved the reins from his groom. Clouds of steam huffed from the stamping horses’ mouths, and the reins jingled.
At a crack of his whip, the team plunged off the drive and headed across the snow-covered field toward the distant river.
Lilianne snuggled her arm around Emily and wished she could see beyond the stern expression in profile on her old friend’s face. A whiff of pipe tobacco and shaving soap swirled around her senses, a stark reminder of what she’d missed.
Lilianne had sent Dodds earlier to help a Meredith farm worker build a bonfire on the bank where she and James had spent so many hours in their childhood warming fingers and toes after each long skating sweep along the river.
As soon as Frederick guided the sleigh beyond the fire’s reach, the groom at the back of the sleigh jumped down and took charge of the horses.
Frederick came around to Lilianne’s side of the sleigh and lifted her to the ground, the warmth and strength of his hands pulsing through his gloves and her heavy woolen pelisse. Once he’d placed her on the snowy bank, he brushed his mouth close to her ear to whisper, “My deepest apologies for my daughter’s naughtiness. I beg you to forgive us for intruding on your privacy.”
Ah, Lilianne thought, the mischievous, bundled-up angel gazing anxiously at the two of them had been caught out for fibbing to everyone responsible for her safety.
Lilianne glided easily along the river’s solid ice, remembering the madcap pace of the whirling feats of their childhood when they’d vied to out-do each other. Eventually, one or all of them had ended up in a laughing heap with her older brother Howick pretending to keep order.
With each lap up and down the river, her closed heart opened a little wider. She breathed in the crystalline light of the winking stars in the clear, black cauldron of the infinite void above. It was hard to believe these were the same stars that had whirled above the silken desert prison she’d escaped. Lilianne knew she could never return to a normal life, but she had her freedom.
And she could pretend the man and child skating alongside her were the family she’d been denied.
Chapter Two
The Promise
Valentine’s Eve 1820
Frozen River Wey, Wembledon Park, Surrey
“Papa,I’ll race you to the bank.” Emily’s excited voice floated back to them while she flew ahead to warm her fingers and toes near the bonfire. Lilianne’s footman, Dodds, and one of Squire Frederick’s tenant farmers had kept the roaring flames banked high in the night sky.
A steaming pot of cider swung on an iron tripod over a smaller fire.
“Emily—wait.” Frederick skated away at a frantic speed to try to catch up to his five-year-old daughter. Lilianne’s wolfhound, Tiber, loped along beside her while she struggled to catch up to Frederick. Just as Emily neared the edge of the river bank where their servants waited, an ominous crack destroyed the calm of the night air. With a flash of silver skates and water breaking above the ice, the little girl disappeared into the icy river.
Tiber raced ahead of Lilianne and then Frederick, his long legs eating the distance, until he skidded to a stop over the place where Emily had fallen through into the inky depths. Lilianne refused to accept the possibility that Frederick and Jane’s precious child might have slid beneath the ice, beyond their reach.
The wolfhound, her constant companion the last four years, had run away from her, an elegant streak of white and silver, when Emily fell. Without the dog’s light-colored fur, she would not have been able to follow his trajectory in the night as he raced toward Emily.
He’d been wary of Emily’s attentions earlier that night, since he’d never been around children, but after much mutual sniffing, touching and staring, they’d come to an uneasy truce.
The child had met the dog just that evening when the sleigh had delivered them to the river bank. He’d followed Dodds when the footman had gone over early to help build the fire.
When she finally caught up to Frederick, both he and Tiber were stretched across the jagged hole in the ice. Lilianne could not look for a few seconds because fear and cold had frozen her will.
She unbuckled the skate blades from her boots and threw them onto the bank before pulling herself up by hedge-like branches. They tore at her gloves and pelisse, but she didn’t care. She had to run to the sleigh to collect the blankets she knew Frederick kept in the chest behind the seat. Dodds and his helper scrambled down the bank to assist Frederick in pulling Emily free from the deadly cold water beneath the ice.