Bernie gasped, her heart stuttering in the most profound relief she'd ever felt. "Simon!" She grabbed up her skirts and lunged as fast as she could in the direction of that cry. Her lantern swung wildly with her ragged progress so that when the black horse emerged from the shadows of the stark trees she didn't see it until it was almost upon her.
"Bernie-Bernie-Bernie!"
Bernie yelped, stumbled and then sat down on her bottom in the snow. Barely keeping her lantern high with one hand she looked up, and up, and up the tall midnight shadow of horse until she saw Simon's dear, pointy little face staring at her from a circle of what must've been a half-dozen blankets wrapping him about.
"Oh! Simon! You're safe! Oh, you little--" She trailed off as her gaze continued to rise higher still to meet the handsome, shadowed eyes of Lord Matthias. "--brother," She blurted.
She wasn't wrong about the quirk of Lord Matthias's lips as she hastily replaced the word she'd been about to use. She suddenly became aware of her undignified sprawl in the snow, where she must indeed look like a flour sack in boots! She scrambled up in a clumsy fashion and stumbled toward the great dark horse.
Perseus did not seem inclined to welcome this strange bulky creature with the startling, swinging little lantern and the clomping, pitching step. He lifted his head in a temperamental fashion and uttered a horsey sound of anxiety.
"Settle down, you brother." Lord Matthias growled at his mount.
Bernie was far too overjoyed to care if she was being teased. She ran directly up to the nervous horse and began patting her free hand over Simon's bulky blanket cocoon.
"Are you all right? Where did you go? What were you thinking? How could you do this to me? Where did you find him?"
The last was directed at Lord Matthias, and she fixed him with an urgent stare. Lord Matthias blinked and swallowed. "Well, I found him in the mezzanine with an empty cake plate, taking a nap."
Simon looked upward at his rescuer in dismay. "You told!"
Lord Matthias looked back down at Simon. "Yes. I did. She does that to me."
"Me, too." Simon sighed. "I guess I just hoped maybe I'd grow out of it."
Bernie, finally satisfied that beneath his ridiculous bundling Simon was all in one piece, stepped back slightly from the restive Perseus and released a long sigh. She didn't mean to make it sound so weary and long-suffering, but honestly, she was weary and terribly tired of suffering!
"I thank you very much, my lord. I cannot believe Simon was so thoughtless as to put you to all this trouble." She slid a meaningful glare Simon's direction. He snuggled deeper into his safety of Lord Matthias's care, lifting the blanket up to cover most of his face except for his large, worried eyes.
"I'm sorry, Bernie. I just wanted to see!"
Bernie shook her head. "I understand, beastie. I wanted to see as well."
Lord Matthias began to peel some of the blankets away from Simon and Bernie realize that he meant to get down from his horse. "Oh no, my lord. Please ride on with Simon to the inn, if you will. My aunt and uncle are so worried."
Lord Matthias did not listen. He dismounted after fixing Simon's grip on the saddle, although Bernie noticed that he kept Perseus's reins in his own hands. Lord Matthias rounded on Bernie. "And leave you to wander around in the woods in the dark? On Christmas Eve?"
Now that Bernie heard him say it like that, she realized how silly she was being. She inhaled slowly. "Yes." She gathered her panic-tattered manners. "Thank you, my lord. I would very much appreciate your assistance back to the inn, for myself as well as my brother."
Bernie dearly hoped he did not mean to take them both back to the manor, instead. She hadn't crossed the river yet, so surely the village was closer. The last thing she wanted to do was to return to the site of her vast humiliation.
Lord Matthias bowed slightly and held out a hand for the lantern. Bernie gave it to him and he attached it in some mysterious way to the side of Perseus's saddle. Then he held out one hand to Bernie.
There was no help for it. Bernie was going to have to let him put her in the saddle. It wasn't possible for her to get up that gigantic course on her own. And that mean that they would have to be very, very close together when he did so. And that was going to be rather too much like the dreadful waltz where he had practically fled from her presence.
And then she was in the saddle. It had all been quite merciful and quick and yet her breath had completely shut down at the feel of his strong hands about her waist and the way that he so lightly tossed her aboard when she knew perfectly well that she was no dainty reed.
But her little bundled-up beastie was right there in her arms and she wrapped him close and tight, closing her eyes and lowering her face to the top of his rotten, disobedient little head. She gave him a little shake which he probably couldn't even feel through the many layers of quilts wrapped around him. "You're going to clean all the fish. Forever. Just so you know."
"Aw, Bernie." Still he leaned trustingly back against her, snuggled in right where he belonged.
Lord Matthias began retracing Bernie's steps, sensibly using her broken trail to ease his own path through the snow. For several long moments it was enough to feel the relief of Simon safe in her arms and also the relief of not having to walk all that way back in the snow, by herself, in the dark. What was it about being rescued that made one like someone despite all previous strange and unpleasant behavior?
Except that he hadn't been unpleasant. She'd already known how he felt about his former wife. She'd read those letters so very many times. It was her own fault for thinking that she could ever gain the attention of such a man when she knew perfectly well that his heart belonged to someone else.
All that dark confusion and pain in his face had been her fault. And the way his grief had overwhelmed him and the way he looked around at the crowd of his own people, who loved and revered him, as if surrounded by a pack of wolves? Her fault.
Well, she knew precisely how he felt, didn't she? She remembered the way normal sounds had startled her like thunder, and ordinary lights had stabbed her eyes. She recalled clearly how every sense had become as raw and naked as her battered soul in a world where nothing made sense the way it had before.
"It can overcome you that way," she said, just loud enough to be heard over the horse's snow-muffled tread. "It can carry you off like a flood, and there's nothing you can do about it until it passes."
Lord Matthias stopped in his forward march. He didn't turn but stood still for a long moment. It seemed as if there were no noise at all except for the creak of the saddle as Perseus shifted and his waffling breath as he nosed his master's collar in a horsey question. The midnight forest around them was as silent as the grave.
"I do not deserve your understanding." The words are hardly more than a whisper but Bernie heard them clearly.
She shook her head, although she knew he could not see her. "Of course you do. It is, after all, perfectly understandable."
He turned his head so that she could see his slanting cheekbone and strong jaw in the lantern's meager light.
"How is it that you can see so deeply within me?" His tone had gone husky and urgent. "How is it that you can see more clearly than I can see myself? What is this strange connection, Miss Goodrich? I have spoken to other people who have lost a loved one. Never have I experienced such true understanding with any of them."
Oh. Bernadette swallowed hard. In that moment she understood two things very clearly; one was the depth of her own foolishness and willful disregard for another's privacy and her entire culpability in upsetting and confusing this good man, and the other was that it was time to stop doing that. She'd been silly, and grasping, and ludicrously self-involved. She could not bear the pain she's caused in him.
For I love him so.
That hurt, oh heavens, how it hurt. To know it now? It was nothing like her obsession with her imaginary author of the letters. The force of that knowledge ached, and burned, and very nearly sickened her with the thoughtless damage she had done. Done by not realizing that her winter's tale storyteller was a real man whose lovely wife and dearest child had died and left a great torn and aching hole where his heart should've been.
He was kind, and wonderful, and the lord of the manor, a man so far out of her reach that she should be shipped off to Bedlam immediately for even wishing he wasn't. She was in love with him, the real Matthias, not the fantasy.
Let him go. Let it all go.
She knew how. She had done it before, sending her mourning on its way so she could be the sister Simon needed.
So because she loved him, she must tell him the worst possible thing of all.
"Lord Matthias, we have no special connection," she said quietly. "I am not the person you think I am. Although I did not intend to be, it seems that I am a liar and something of a cheat. For I come from Green Dell, which lies a few miles downriver from Havensbeck. And for several years now, every year at Christmastime, I have fished a bottle or three or five from the river."
She saw him jerk slightly at her words and heard his long indrawn breath. She couldn't stop there. He deserved to know everything. "I have read your letters so many time I think I may know you better than anyone, with the possible exception of Jasper. And although I hardly realized it myself, it seems that I have made myself privy to your deepest pain, which I have most surely used to gain far more of your attention than I deserve."
He didn't turn. She was glad, for she was a coward indeed. In the circle of her arms she felt Simon jerk and lift his face toward her, but she squeezed him and shook her head, signaling him to be silent.
She knew everything. Matthias kept his silence for quite a while after Miss Goodrich's revelation. It made him feel quite peculiar to think that she'd read his letters to Marianna and Simon. He tried to distill his exact opinion of that.
Should he be angry? At what, truly? It wasn't as if she'd climbed in his study window like a sneak-thief and pried open the drawers of his desk to find them. She had not taken anything from him that he had not freely tossed into the river himself.
In all honesty, he was astonished at himself for never having considered that an actual living person might lay hands upon the bottles and read their contents. He could possibly excuse himself by claiming to have believed the bottles would smash upon the rocks downriver, and the waters wash the ink from the pages. That would be a very handy defense, yet he had never given it a single thought at all. It had been the only expression he could make of his grief and so he had done it again and again, although it had never done more than temporarily ease his agony.
The fact remained that the bottles had washed up, presumably at Miss Goodrich's very feet, and she had, as anyone would, extracted the letters and read them.
Then he did have a troubling thought. He stopped very still and without turning, asked, "Did you show my letters to anyone else?"
She hesitated, then answered. "I did. One person."
Her aunt, presumably. Or perhaps the vicar?
"I read them," Simon blurted behind him.
Matthias tilted his head. "You let a child read them?"
"My lord, when the letters first came I was but sixteen. I should hope you would excuse a young girl from sharing such a curiosity with her little brother."
Matthias nodded. That did seem reasonable. He began to walk again his boots taking on more wet than he would like. His step grew heavy. It was very cold. Simon was quite thoroughly bundled, but Ms. Goodrich was not.
"Is it much farther, my lord?" Bernadette's voice sounded strained and very quiet. Yes, she would be cold now that she was no longer stomping her way through the snow, charging about in the dark alone. Contrary creature.
It was as he had begun to suspect. She was quite mad, particularly on the topic of her little brother.
"It's not much farther now." He was correct. Soon they crested a small rise where they could see lights before them like a chain of diamonds down the road through the village. At that moment, a soft snowfall began. The feathery flakes shimmered in the light cast from the village windows. It was lovely. Simon made a noise of appreciation but Matthias said nothing more as they continued.
Perseus, sensing shelter and possibly oats, began to pick up the pace and Matthias walked faster as well. It was time to get these two into the warm inn.
"Are you feeling well enough?" he asked Miss Goodrich as they left the wood behind them and began to make their way down the village lane.
"Fairly so, my lord," she replied, her tone thoughtful. "It was rather painful to admit out loud to what I did. However, I do feel much lighter by the telling of it."
Matthias felt the corners of his mouth quirk slightly. "I meant, are you warm enough?"
"Oh yes, my lord. Perseus is a most satisfactory source of heat."
Matthias walked them straight to the inn, for he knew the elder Goodrich's would be beside themselves with worry. The stable-hand came running as Matthias was helping Miss Goodrich slip off the horse. The boy took the reins and then Bernadette's aunt and uncle emerged and converged on Simon. Matthias handed the child to his Uncle Isaiah while his Aunt Sarah fluttered over him very crossly indeed, which Matthias suspected in hid her extreme happiness at his well-being.
Their attention temporarily on the little boy, Matthias turned to Bernadette and gazed down at her. She looked back at him. Her gaze was level and somber, but by no means crushed by their conversation and her confession.
Matthias exhaled slowly. "I am not angry at you for reading the letters. I am the one who threw them into the waters. I should not be surprised that they were found. Furthermore, I am glad they were read by someone who understands."
She folded her arms and hunched her shoulders slightly against the chill but her gaze never left his. "I shall not presume upon our unfair intimacy any further, but for one thing. You need not stay lost, my lord. I know it is hard, but you must concentrate on all the best things, like the people who smile at you, and the music and the children," she waved a hand at the sky, and then went on in a rush, as if she had to get the words out before he fled her, "and a perfect snowfall on Christmas Eve! There will come a day when your world will seem just a bit brighter, and brighter still the day after that. You should know that the people who are gone want you to enjoy the life still left to you. If I passed, I should be furious with Simon if he attempted to live his life in the shadow of death!"
This was not comfort. This was criticism. No, not comfortable at all. Matthias shook his head, "I don't know what to do with you. You dismay and alarm me, Miss Goodrich."
Over the shoulder of his uncle, who was even then carrying him into the door the inn, Simon lifted his head sleepily. "She does that to everyone."
Miss Goodrich continue to look him in the eye. "I even alarm myself sometimes." Then she smiled at him and he felt his pulse stutter again. "Now, I must thank you for saving my Simon, once again."
She went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. Without even realizing he did so, Matthias turned his head to catch her lips in his. What am I doing?
Her lips were cold but giving. Sweet, soft and full of life. No still and silent painting here. She stayed there on tiptoe for the length of a breath. Matthias dared not press the kiss further. She did not draw away.
When she dropped slowly back onto her heels, her smile was gone and no laughter remained in her wide gaze. Instead, her eyes shone strangely in the dim light of the inn lantern.
Were those tears? Why?
Before he could ask, she stepped back once, turned abruptly, then ran quickly into the inn without looking back at him again.
Matthias stood there in the cold night. The village grew darker by the moment as people, no doubt hearing that the missing child was safe home, begin to settle back down for the long winter's night. Finally even the lanterns in the public room of the inn were snuffed out. Matthias was alone in the inn-yard. The stable boy had taken Perseus to the barn so Matthias walked slowly into that warm and horsey stable.
In his borrowed stall, Perseus was still saddled but his bridle had been removed to allow him to enjoy his reward of a handful of oats. Matthias crossed his arms on the top railing of the stall and dropped his chin upon them.
"Now I am entirely confounded," he informed Perseus. Perseus shook his head and then lipped tenderly at Matthias's hair. This was less helpful than one might imagine.