Page 33 of Holly & Hemlock
The thought propels me into motion. I shove my hands into oversized gloves, throw on the least-sodden coat in the foyer, and dig a scarf from the detritus of the coat closet. The boots are already ruined, but I lace them tight, double knot.
I hesitate at the door. The wind shakes it on its hinges, slaps the glass with fistfuls of sleet and hail. For a moment I am tempted to retreat, to barricade myself in the Blue Room and pretend the problem will resolve itself if only I ignore it long enough. But that instinct belongs to another era, another Vale. I wrench the door open and step out.
Snow has erased the familiar contours of the grounds, replaced them with ghost shapes and the shadows of buried things. The wind is worse out here, raw and immediate, ablade at the throat. I stagger against it, one hand braced on the balustrade, the other clutching the scarf to my mouth.
The walk to Lane’s cottage is a few hundred yards, give or take. Tonight, it might as well be miles. The path is obliterated, the drifts knee-deep and getting deeper. Every step is a contest, a wager that my boot will find solid ground and not the hungry void beneath.
I fall once, then twice, the second time landing on my wrist hard enough to make my fingers tingle. I keep moving, breath coming in hot bursts that freeze before they leave the air.
I round the corner at the hedge—what used to be a hedge, now a series of cryptic mounds—and see the faint, jaundiced glow from Lane’s cottage. It’s an anchor, and for the first time since stepping outside I feel the hook of hope in my gut.
The walk to the door is the longest hundred feet of my life. The wind drives me sideways, fills the space inside my collar with shards of ice. I think of all the times my mother warned me to dress for the weather, and how even then I’d preferred to do things my own, idiotic way.
By the time I reach the stoop, my teeth are chattering so hard I bite my tongue. My coat is soaked through; the gloves, useless, cling to my fingers in wet, slumping shapes. I pound on the door, once, twice, but the sound is eaten by the storm.
I don’t wait for permission. I wrench the handle and stumble inside, slamming the door behind me with more force than is probably necessary.
Lane is at the table. A book is open in front of him, its pages turned up at the corners; a glass sits half-full beside his hand. The air inside is pungent with woodsmoke, resin, and the faint tang of whiskey.
He looks up, and the line of his jaw goes even more rigid than usual. He stands, chair grating on stone, and for amoment I’m certain he’s about to yell at me—for what, I don’t know.
Instead, he closes the book and moves to the wall, where a battered army blanket is slung over a radiator. He grabs it, crosses the room, and throws it around my shoulders before I can protest.
“Sit,” he orders.
I do, falling into the nearest chair. The blanket is scratchy but instantly warmer than anything I’ve felt all day.
Lane disappears into the back room—bathroom? pantry?—and returns with a towel. He drops it on the table, then pours an inch of whiskey into a glass and slides it my way.
“For the cold,” he says, deadpan. “And for the shock.”
I imagine what I look like to give him that idea, but tip the glass and drink. It burns, but in the best possible way, heat radiating out from my chest to the edges of my numb skin.
“Thank you,” I say, voice thin and brittle.
He nods. “What happened?”
I open my mouth, but the words come out stuttered, each syllable wrenched from a jaw that only now is thawing. “East wing roof collapsed. Took part of the corridor with it. I tried—” I gesture helplessly, and Lane seems to understand.
He sits opposite, elbows on the table. His gaze is analytic, but not unkind. I see the map of old scars across his knuckles, the blue splay of veins at his wrist.
“You could have died out there,” he says, not as a scold, but as a fact.
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
Lane’s mouth twitches—approval, or something like it. But it was truth. I didn’t even know where Larkin’s room was, or Whitby’s for that matter. Even if I rung the bell three times for her, what would the two of us done together to fix it in the middle of thenight?
He refills my glass, then his. For a minute, we just sit, the silence broken only by the tick of the old clock on the shelf and the storm bellowing outside.
“I won’t be able to get to the ladders in the storage shed tonight,” Lane says, voice low. “But I’ll get it tarped in the morning at least. You did the right thing coming here.”
I want to say it was just desperation. But I don’t, because it wasn’t. Not really. There was a problem and I wanted Lane. Even after what happened with Larkin. I still wanted Lane.
I just let myself be warm for the first time in hours, the whiskey and the blanket and Lane’s presence a barricade against the storm.
Outside, the world is white, and all sound is muted. In here, it’s just the two of us, and the question of what happens next.
For a while, there is only the noise of the storm and the heavy, echoing drip of meltwater from my hair onto Lane’s table. He says nothing; he only moves around the room with a patience that is neither hasty nor slow, each gesture calibrated to the crisis at hand.
