How long did it take for a person to freeze to death?
Surely a pelisse, velvet lined cloak, and leather gloves all delayed the process.
Or rather, her now damp leather gloves, that was.
Flakes of snow falling about, Alice beat her hands together.
Alas, after an endless swirl of time outside the Marquess of Guilford’s grounds, she’d lost all chance to die with a proper answer to that question.
Her teeth chattered loudly. Not that she had any intention of dying out here.
And certainly not for him… the bastard.
From her position within the marquess’ copse, Alice squinted into the distance as another black conveyance rumbled forward, the crest impossible to make out as anything more than a blur of gold emblazoned upon the door.
“Bl-black a-and g-gold,” her muttering sounded inordinately loud in the winter still, and she immediately pressed her numbed lips tightly together. Yet another exactly-the-same color conveyance to amble up to the marquess’ drive. Could nobody drive in anything different? Pink, pale blue, violet? Must all the carriages be the blasted same?
Her nose dripped, and she absently brushed the moisture back, all her attention trained forward on that exactly-the-same conveyance of another guest just arriving for the holiday festivities. She stood there, motionless. The only hints of movement were the small tufts of white air escaping her lips.
Servants rushed about and then the door was opened.
Alice’s heart threatened to beat a path outside her ribcage as the liveried footman reached up.
She perched forward on the balls of her feet. She was poised to flee, but needed to stay, just as confounded as she’d been since she’d discovered who would be spending the holiday season with her.
Nay, not her.
Such implied that Henry Pratt was something to her. When he wasn’t. He was nothing more than a former betrothed, who belonged in name, body, and soul to another.
A familiar jolt of anger went through her and she embraced it. How much safer the outrage was than the pitiful sorrow that had gripped her for too long.
Would you get out of the blasted carriage, already?
After an endless stretch of time, with the help of a footman, the figure descended.
She groaned.
Lady Lovell.
One of Society’s leading hostesses and also one of the most vicious gossips.
And here, she’d been so naïve as to believe the “looks” were far worse than anything else, only to be proven so blasted wrong. Alice pressed herself against the oak and knocked the back of her head against the jagged trunk. Fool. Fool. Fool—
A blanket of snow tumbled onto the brim of her bonnet, slamming into her shoulders. She gasped at the biting sting of it. Sputtering around a mouthful, she wiped an already hopelessly sopping glove over her face.
Alice whipped her head back with such force that her bonnet blew back, and she looked up.
The limbs overhead dipped under the weight of the snow, but for one now barren branch. She glared. A barren branch whose burden now rested on her bloody freezing person, and about her equally freezing feet.
Bloody hell. Yanking the strings free of her bonnet, she ripped it off and beat the snowy brim against her leg.
Could this day possibly be any—?
The slow rattle marking the arrival of another carriage, ripped across her useless self-pitying.
Alice froze; her teeth chattering uncontrollably providing the only slight movement. “Worse,” she whispered. For she knew as she peeked out from her hiding place and spotted a pink carriage; that nauseatingly cheerful conveyance a vivid contrast to those elegant, black lacquer coaches.
Just as she knew with the same inexplicable intuition the day Henry Pratt’s letter had arrived, breaking off their betrothal.
Still, as the carriage stopped and servants rushed about, one of the occupants stepped out. The sight that met her knocked the breath from her lungs.
With the aid of a servant, a bespectacled Henry descended. A black Oxonian perched atop his head gave him a boyish look—a boy playing with his father’s regalia, when he’d never worn hats.
She cocked her head. He hadn’t. Hadn’t he? It was a silly thing to note as his young bride was handed down from the carriage and slipped her hand into his arm. Tall, statuesque, and in possession of midnight curls, she’d the look of a foreign princess.
Unlike Alice who’d been cursed with the same insignificant blonde hair as every bloody miss in England.
Just then, fate proved her hatred for Alice once more.
A gust of wind yanked at her red velvet cloak and set it whipping in the breeze.
Henry glanced over… at her thinly concealed hiding place.
Their eyes locked.
Heart racing, she dropped to her stomach, behind a slight drift.
Bloody, bloody hell.
The cold, damp snow instantly penetrated her garments and a painful hiss slipped from her lips. She welcomed the stinging pain of it to the humiliation at being caught gawking.
Alice burrowed deep inside the folds of her wet cloak, again motionless on the ground. Frozen. Concentrating on the little puffs of white air blowing from her mouth with her every breath, Alice leveled herself up on her elbows. The iced snow crunched noisily under that slight depression as she stole a glance from her hiding place.
The gentleman with blindingly bright blond hair, alongside the Spartan-like beauty, climbed the steps of the marquess’ family’s estate. Free to study them unobserved, Alice stared blankly after them.
Flipping onto her back, Alice stared through the snow-covered limbs to the grey sky threatening more snow. Her lips chattered noisily in the winter quiet. She’d always loved the winter. One of the only benefits to having grown up a child without a mother, and an indifferent (now dead) father and previously hardhearted brother, was the freedom it had permitted. How many times she’d ambled through the snow-clogged hills of the English countryside, making snow angels and engaging in snowball fights with an imagined foe.
As much as she’d long loved the cold and snow, with it now soaking through her garments, she’d a newfound un-appreciation for the stuff.
A sharp gust of wind rippled over the countryside and set the branches swaying overhead. She glanced up and grunted, rolling out of the way as snow tumbled from overhead. It landed with a noiseless thump beside her. Picking her head up, she glowered at the now sloppy blanket of white. “Bloody hell,” she hissed in the quiet. “Th-that is b-bloody f-freezing.”
Raising shaking glove-encased fingers, she brushed the dampness from her numbed cheeks and nose.
Another gust of wind rolled through the countryside. Alice ducked out of the way as another batch of snow tumbled from the branches and landed with a wet thump in the drift.
Her numb lips turned up in a smile, just imagining the eulogy that would be delivered.
Poor Alice Winterbourne, died as she lived, unwed, surrounded by her former betrothed, who’d invariably chosen to make another woman his bride.
***Note, the bride was stunning in a masterful pink creation by Madam Lisette’s.