A snowflake landed on her nose and Rosalind wiped it away, smiling with pleasure at the crisp snowy scene. Birds darted down to peck at the frozen and brittle seed heads whilst the kitchen cat hid behind the skeletal cardoons.
Mrs Reynolds would have her guts for garters if she knew Lucas was out and about, but the housekeeper was sitting with Daphne, and Lucas had promised to stay within the confines of the knot garden.
To be truthful, she agreed that Lucas didn’t need to be confined to his room. In fact, it seemed to make him worse. He’d told her that months of being incapacitated with his burns had given him a positive dislike of the sickbed: it only made him morose and melancholic.
When he’d crooked his finger at her, she’d expected to hear something naughty but his hot breath had merely whispered, “Help me escape, fair maiden, and I will kiss your sweet lips.”
She would defy any maiden to deny that request, so here they were.
Lucas was beating snow off some of the more delicate plants. He looked splendid but today his warm exuberance was having a rather different effect on her. It was making her feel glum.
Reading to him in bed, she had felt like a normal woman, even a wife, tending to her beloved. Then he’d asked about her love of Gothic tales, and she’d been reminded of the reality. She couldn’t tell him that at the age of nineteen, she had barely been able to read. Her father had barred her from learning, blaming her dreams on a vivid imagination – surely books would only make it worse? Mrs Tadlow had taught her the basics, using cooled embers from the fire to draw on the floor.
When she’d arrived at Stonebridge, Benedict had hired a tutor and she’d devoured nearly the whole library in less than two years, omitting the many shelves dedicated to horse breeding.
Lucas waved a fallen branch at her. At the asylum, the patients had been kept in during snow, lest they have an imbalance of humours. A few people in the village didn’t venture outside either, considering the snow to be some evil being, just waiting to catch an unsuspecting soul.
Rosalind loved it – the freshness, the open skies and the blinding whiteness.
She shivered; it was cold though, sitting on this bench. She should have worn her warmest green pelisse but instead had chosen the red cloak again. It didn’t quite hold back the chill and it managed to invade under her petticoats and touch its icy fingers upon her spine.
“You need to keep moving, Rosalind. There isn’t enough meat on your bones to sit still.” He stood in front of her, wearing a deep-green greatcoat, with three capes attached. His beaver hat had long been lost, but he didn’t look cold: he looked hale and hearty and utterly resplendent.
Her heart stuttered a beat. He made her feel so happy, so alive and yet, ultimately, he could not be hers.
She forced a smile. “Mayhap I need a ghoul to chase me?”
“And why would it chase you?”
“Well,” she said, standing and looking innocent. She crooked her finger at him, mimicking his earlier action.
At her command, he stepped forward, bending his head, a wicked twinkle in his eye. “Yes?”
“Because I haven’t had my kiss yet.” And with that, she brought up her left hand, bashing a snowball into his face. She never could stay glum for long.
She turned and fled before he could recover, skidding along the paths of the knot garden.
“Rosalind!” he roared from behind her. “I’m going to run my bony fingers all over you.”
“Ohhhh!” she screamed, tearing around the back of a statue. “Don’t chase me, ghoul. I might swoon.” And so crying, she plunged her hand into the deep snow on the plinth, flinging it at him.
She made a run for the pergola, but the red cape tangled around her feet, and she fell to the snowy floor with a resounding thud. She heard a skidding thump as Lucas landed on his knees next to her.
“God, Rosalind, are you hurt?” She felt him gently turn her over and she grasped snow in her right hand. “You’re so delicat–” He never finished as Rosalind stuffed snow on his head.
“A snow-white ghoul!” She went to grasp more but Lucas obviously never fell for the same trick twice. He leaned over to straddle her, grabbed both wrists and shook his head, discharging snow over the both of them.
She shrieked again but lay still, panting from her exertions.
“Are you ready to be punished by the ghoul?” Lucas whispered satanically.
“I amgravelyfrightened, but the book never said what he actually did.”
“No? I’ll have to make it up then. If I was a ghoul, I’d first remove your bonnet.”
“Hah, but then you’d have to release my wrists and I could bash the ghoul.”
“I could use my…” He leaned down, and Rosalind could feel his hot breath on her neck. The bonnet was only tied in a simple bow and Lucas was undoing it with his…teeth.
