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The back of the house had turned into a fairy landscape. The garden was usually a delicate stretch of trees and rosebushes. But now ice gleamed from every branch, even the tiniest twig. Moonlight skittered and danced from silver point to silver point. Even the window was decorated with hoary ferns and flowers of ice.

“Frost fairies have been here,” Henrietta said, touching one with her finger. “Oh Simon, how beautiful.”

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“Mmmm,” he said, kissing the delicate bone that topped her shoulder.

“It makes me want to cry,” she whispered. The garden looked unearthly, like a wedding cake decorated for giants. His warm body crowded behind her. She knew that hardness now and leaned back against him, welcomed it as a glutton does a feast.

“Crying seems to me an unnecessarily glum reaction to a chilly night,” he said. His voice was shot through with desire, and his hands were on her breasts, so sure and knowing that her head fell back against his shoulder and a whimper escaped into the quiet night. He rubbed his fingers against the icy window and then ran an icy trail around her nipple. She gasped and squirmed. It felt too good. He rubbed the window again and trailed ice down her tummy, down to her sleek folds, burning for him, bucking against his finger.

Where his fingers had melted the frost, the window turned black as pitch, reflecting only the long line of her flank back into the room. She knelt on the window seat, trying not to wake the whole house as his icy fingers slipped everywhere. He pressed his lips to the glass and then kissed her neck, laughing as she squirmed away.

Later, she heard no laughter, only the breath rasping in his chest, as hard warmth replaced chilly fingers. His strong body bowed behind hers. At some point she even bumped her cheek against the icy glass but it didn’t matter because she was burning, her body consumed with the feeling of him, with the hundred points of liquid fire that flew throughout her body at his every stroke.

He carried her back to the warm nest of their bed, afterward. As she curled into his body, she felt him rise against her belly again. She reached down to touch him, to bring that strength and warmth to her.

312 Eloisa

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He was kissing her, cupping her face in his hands, and kissing her eyes and her mouth and her cheeks.

“I love you,” she gasped, in between his kisses. “I love you, Simon.” His mouth took hers and stifled her voice, but her heart sang with the truth of it.

She dreamed that she had a child, a little boy. He had ringlets just like hers, and Anabel’s high joyous laughter. She was having tea with the vicar, and ladies from the sewing circle kept wandering through the room carrying flowers for a funeral. Finally the vicar left and she went to retrieve her baby from the nursery, but the nanny hadn’t seen him. And Henrietta couldn’t remember leaving him there in the morning. She began running, searching through piles of old clothes, trying desperately to find him, but he was so small. She couldn’t find him. Her heart thumped against her ribs. She was too frightened to weep, too breathless to scream.

She woke. Lack of air gripped her ribs.

She spent the morning staring at the lace canopy of her bed. When there was a little scratching noise at her door, she sat up wearily, expecting her new maid, Keyes, with a hot bath. But it wasn’t Keyes. It was Josie.

“Hello,” Josie whispered loudly, slipping into the room.

“Hello!” Henrietta said, smiling.

“Nurse Millie says you’re ill. Are you going to lose your breakfast?” Josie said, hovering near the door. Henrietta could understand Josie’s reluctance to enter. In a mere month as Anabel’s mother, she’d seen enough vomit for a lifetime.

“Not a chance of it,” she said reassuringly, holding out her hand. “I just have a little cold. Come tell me what you two did yesterday.”

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lost her breakfast milk.” She clambered up on the bed. Henrietta wound an arm around Josie’s shoulders. “Do you think Anabel’s stomach is getting stronger?”

“No,” Josie said, after considering the issue for a moment.

“Well, she’s bound to stop soon. I don’t know any adults with her peculiar habits.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” Josie said, with that solemn combination of adult behavior and a childish voice that always made Henrietta long to laugh.

Keyes scratched on the door and entered, followed by two footmen with hot water.

Josie pulled on Henrietta’s sleeve. “May I stay? Please don’t make me go back to the nursery.”

“While I take a bath?”