Scarlet in the Snow by Sophie Masson Read Free Book Online Page B

stairs.
    And that’s how I found myself writing, my pen loosened at last. About those funny old childhood memories, Liza and Anya and I united in our glee and Papa, standing there with his colour high and his moustache bristling as he told that killjoy exactly what needed to be said. When Mama came back from her outing, we told her what had happened, and she had looked at him with such love and gladness!
    Tears sprang to my eyes. How she must miss him, even more than my sisters and I did, though to be sure that was hard enough. But to lose the man you love when you are still deeply in love must be so much worse. And for some reason, as I wrote those words down, the dream I’d had the night before came back to my mind, the sunlit garden, and the girl in her summer clothes, laughing merrily with someone who was just outside my line of sight, but who I was sure now must be her beloved. And a strange feeling crept over me, a feeling that something bad had happened to that girl and her lover.
    I put my pen down and stared at what I had just written. It was almost, I thought uneasily, as though they were somebody else’s words. As though some spirit had been whispering them into my ear . . . No, stop that, Natasha,I scolded myself. You have enough to worry about without being spooked by your own runaway imagination!
    I didn’t feel like writing any more. Shoving the notebook back into the desk drawer and out of my sight, I got up and went to the window again. The
abartyen
was no longer to be seen, and the lawns were deserted. The sky, bright blue now with a hard frosty gleam, was empty of cloud. I watched as a tiny speck of black on the far horizon drew closer to resolve itself into a single circling crow, its melancholy cawing audible even from where I stood. It was the first outside sound I’d heard since I came here, I realised suddenly. Normally, a crow’s call would not figure high on my list of favourite sounds, but today, cut off from everyone I loved and everything I understood, it rang in my ears like the most silvery of bells, and I reached for the handle of the window to open it, wanting to hear the sound more clearly.
    ‘Step away from there at once.’ Luel’s voice made me jump. She must have a footfall as silent as a cat’s, I thought, as I spun around and glared at her defiantly.
    ‘Why should I?’ I muttered.
    ‘Just do as you’re told and don’t argue.’ She tugged the curtains across, but not before I’d seen her swift glance out of the window, and the anxiety that leaped into her eyes.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, not expecting an answer.
    ‘I don’t think he can see you,’ Luel said quietly, looking at me. ‘I hope not.’
    Instantly, my heart started banging against my ribs. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I took a risk with you. I hope I’m not wrong.’
    Exasperated, I burst out, ‘Why do you always talk in riddles? For once, give me a straight answer! Who is
he
?’
    ‘Better you don’t know,’ Luel said after a silence. ‘You are safe as long as you don’t.’
    I glared at her. ‘I’d hardly call my present circumstances safe, locked up in a magic cage and threatened with death or enslavement!’
    ‘Nobody is threatening you with either,’ she said with breathtaking cheek. ‘You have been given everything you might wish for – beautiful clothes and a comfortable bed, delicious food and an end to your family’s financial worries – and still you complain!’
    I clenched my fists, trying to stop myself from yelling. ‘You have taken my freedom and my family from me, and you think I should be grateful? Are you mad, or just plain evil?’
    I realised too late what I’d said, and stood there aghast, certain I would pay bitterly for it, but all Luel did was shrug her shoulders. ‘Think of me what you will, it matters little to me. Whatever I do, it is for my lord, who awaits you in his sitting-room.’
    I stared at her. ‘But he . . . but I thought it was after lunch