Page 30 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

Joseph could not imagine Prudence Lovedy becoming so impassioned she hunted down anyone. However, he could, and frequently did, imagine her giving Joseph license to touch her breasts and perhaps even kiss her.

“I’m at the well to make a wish, you ninny,” Joseph said with irritation. “A wish that you’d go away and give me a moment of peace.”

Amaranthe took off her mitten and dipped her fingers into the cold, clear water of the well. “I hope Miss Rebecca’s cough goes away,” she said, naming one of the spinster sisters who lived on a farm nearby and who, after their brother’s death, subsisted mostly on the kindness of strangers who helped them reap the wheat that could pay their tithe, dropped gifts of food at their doorstep, and, in the case of Joseph’s mother, brewed her special remedies whenever one or another of the sisters took ill, which it seemed they were always doing.

Amaranthe had been allowed that summer to help their mother collect honey from the beehives in their small garden, and it was just like Amaranthe to use her wish for the benefit of the coughing elder for whom she’d been making honey drops all winter and not for the benefit of herself. Joseph felt he would burst from the aggravation.

“We can’t cross Diggory’s Field!” Amaranthe called as he cut east with angry strides. “You’ll anger the rams.”

“I’m not crossing Diggory’s Field,” Joseph tossed over his shoulder. He knew that Mrs. Lovedy frequently visited Rowan Cottage in Tremar Coombe, and he could take the much-used Well Lane to circle about, or he could take a shortcut through the Penhale farm and possibly discourage Amaranthe enough that she would go home. The shorn fields and hedges lay tucked under a white brim of frost, and his boots left satisfying prints as he strode along, as if he were finally leaving a mark on something. It felt overdue.

He forgot, and so did Amaranthe, that the Penhales had recently found china clay on their land and had constructed a clay pit nearby, which was used to separate the richer deposits from the mud by suspending them in water. Jocko Penhale thought it would be great fun to keep the pond and stock it with ruffe and loach, and provide the family with stargazy pie the year round.

With the hard freeze and the gentle snow that followed, the landscape looked like any other piece of land bitten off the edge of rocky Bodwin Moor and tortured into something arable. For all he knew, Joseph weakened the sheet of ice over the new-made pond when he stormed across it.

So when Amaranthe crossed in his wake, stepping where he had stepped so as not to soil her new boots, a thunderous crack rang out.

There wasn’t much of a rise for it to echo from; the church and cemetery and consequently the vicarage lay on slightly higher ground, and the land sloped gently down from the Holy Well to Tremar Coombe, which meant the frozen top of the Penhale’s pond had begun to soften with the warming days.

And with Amaranthe standing upon it, the thin crust of ice gave way. Joseph turned to face one frozen moment where his sister stared at him, her eyes round as guineas, and then she simply slid from view as if the trapdoor to the hanging scaffold had swung open beneath her.

“Joseph!”

Her cry would echo in his ears for days. The shriek of his name, reproaching him for putting her in harm’s way.

A mittened hand emerged from the dark hole that had swallowed her, and then her head broke the surface. He’d be haunted ever after by the expression on her face, white and terrified and, he was sure, accusatory. He felt the crush of ice giving way, an odd softening beneath his feet as he crossed the smooth stretch that he now realized must be frozen water, hidden under a dusting of snow.

But frozen no longer. A musical cascade of cracks sang in tune, and spider webs appeared in the snow.

Joseph reacted out of instinct and threw himself onto his belly. Snow tipped down the collar of his waistcoat and the tops of his boots. Anth’s damp wool mitten slid across his leather gloves as he reached for her. He clamped onto her wrists with both hands.

“Climb out.”

“I can’t.” She wriggled, her feet fruitlessly kicking through the cold water. She began to sink. “It’s too deep. Pull me out.”

He wasn’t strong enough. He didn’t have the leverage. There was no way to brace his feet for purchase, and nothing to hold against so he could take her weight.

He stared into his sister’s face, her pale red lips edged with blue, her eyes dark pools ringed with violet. He could not lose her.

He could not be the reason she was hurt.

God, give me strength, he prayed, and said, calmly, “Three. Two. One.”

She lunged, and he heaved. It must be that angels helped him, given the weight of her sodden wool coat and dress. But there was Amaranthe, gasping, on the ice beside him, rolled in snow that clung to her like a glaze of powdered sugar.

“The ice is c-c-cracking,” she observed through chattering teeth.

They crawled toward shore like spider crabs on the summer sand, hauling themselves forward by their elbows until tufts of grass poked through the snow, the stiff blades ticking Joseph’s wrists. His mind was blank with stupefaction, his body a mechanical toy as he tugged her home. He didn’t know how he was to explain himself to his parents. He was supposed to look out for his sister, and he’d been too busy brooding and fretting and biting himself over all the things he didn’t have, he nearly lost one of the most important things that he did.

“Aree fah, what is gone with the cheldern?” Cook cried when Joseph gave a soggy knock on the kitchen door. His damp gloves had frozen in the shape of hands and he couldn’t feel his feet. He’d pulled Amaranthe under his arm and wrapped his great coat about them both, and beneath it he could feel the shudders that racked her body.

Pulling her from the water had only been the first step, he realized. Now the goal was to keep the icy water from freezing her blood and bones.

“P-p-penhale,” he managed.

“I knowed it! I knowed they’d let the pullan frizz over and not put a quoit up to mark ee.” Cook pulled the kettle over the fire and sent the maid running to fetch water from the scullery. “Get those sloshy things off ee both, then, dreckly.”

His mother’s face had resembled Amaranthe’s, stiff and bloodless, until she managed to unwind the sodden cloak and saw her daughter was intact. She whisked off Amaranthe’s mittens and rubbed her pale fingertips between her hands, then pressed Amaranthe’s fingers to the back of her neck as she knelt to unlace her boots. Joseph kicked at his own boots, heavy stones clumped around his feet, feeling the heat of the kitchen like a bite on his skin.