Caroline shivered, blinking as she woke up. She raised her head, only to find that it was dark all around, with only the faintly luminous glow of a winter night. She heard the bubbling of water nearby. The saint’s spring! She tried to get up, but discovered that her wrists were tied behind her back, and her ankles were crossed and bound together. Even if she could manage to stand up, she couldn’t walk.
“Hello?” she called out. Her voice was shaky at first, so she called again, hoping someone would hear her.
“Hello, Caro.” Francis stepped into view. He was dressed in a bulky black greatcoat and wore black hessian-style boots, so his figure was mostly a cut-out against the mist billowing up from the well.
“Francis! What are you doing? Let me go!”
“Can’t do that, Caro darling. Would defeat the purpose of taking you in the first place.”
“What do you want?”
“The formula, of course.”
“Don’t you already have the notes?” she asked.
“Yes, but I’ll get far more if I can supply a sample of the actual solution.”
“What?”
“I need to raise the price. Ever since the Russian campaign, Napoleon has been desperate to find some way to prevent it from happening again. After all, you can’t lose hundreds of thousands of soldiers every winter! It starts to hamper recruitment. So when the French got wind of your father’s experiments, they very much wanted to share in the bounty.”
“But…you’re not French! You were born ten miles from here.”
“True, but I do have some debts to be paid, and French gold will do just as well as British.”
“Francis, you can’t do this. It’s wrong. If you need money, you can borrow—”
“No reputable lender will extend me anything now, Caro. And the less reputable ones…you don’t want to know.”
“Everyone will come after me!”
“By everyone, do you mean your icy lordling? I assure you, he’s sound asleep—I gave him the same treatment as you when he came to the laboratory door. Left him in the snow there. Ha! Very appropriate, since you made a snowman that practically looked just like him.”
“Wait, what? How did you know Estelle and I made a snowman?”
“Oh, I saw it all. I’d been following you, hoping to get you alone for a short time—I really did hope to persuade you to consider marriage. But Estelle never left your side. So I hid in the trees, and I heard your list of demands for the perfect gentleman.” His voice grew bitter. “Didn’t sound much like me, I’ll admit. I just wanted to…obliterate that thing. And then, when I met Snowdon at the house, all I could think was that he showed up after you made your idol. So the idol would have to be destroyed. While you were dressing for dinner, I walked back to the clearing and dismantled the whole snowman. But carefully! I removed it bit by bit, carrying the snow into the trees and spreading it around. Then I took a pine bough and swept the whole clearing, in case anyone might see my boot prints and point the finger to me. I didn’t want to lose your opinion of me, Caro. But in the end, I lost you anyway.”
“I never belonged to you, Francis. A fact you still have to learn, for you stole me just now, and brought me all the way out here. Why? It’s so cold.” She wrapped her arms around her body.
“The spring should keep you alive until they get here. And then we’ll negotiate.” He pulled out a silvery pistol.
“Francis, please think of what you’re doing. It’s not too late to stop—”
The sound of muffled hoofbeats made him look away. “Damn, they’re here already? I thought Snowdon would be out longer than that. Why are there so many of them?”
Caroline grinned, even as she huddled against the dubious warmth of the wellspring. Snowdon must have gathered everyone in the house and stormed after them. Francis had evidently done a very poor job of hiding the horse’s tracks.
Mist puffed up into the winter night, joined by the steaming breath of a half dozen horses and more people running up behind, the two more athletic footmen in the lead.
Snowdon dismounted first, then assisted Mrs Garland down from her grey. Timothy sprang off a roan as if he did it every day, and then helped Estelle down, who’d been riding with him. Mr Garland remained astride, surveying the whole scene with worry, until he saw Caroline huddled in nothing more than her nightclothes.
“What in Heaven’s name is this? Caroline is going to freeze!” he declared with more anger than she’d ever heard.
“I’ll get her, sir,” Snowdon said. He strode toward the spring.
Francis pointed the pistol at Snowdon, who stopped short. “Stop right there, my lord. You may have Caroline and the rest of the household eating out of your hand, but that doesn’t matter now.”
“Let me take off my coat. For her. I’ll toss it over, I won’t come closer.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind, my lord.” Francis sighted along the barrel. “Or I’ll take great pleasure in shooting your head off.”
Snowdon seemed unruffled by the threat. “Think of Caroline. Christ, she already survived one ordeal by freezing today. She shouldn’t be out in the cold at all, let alone without warm clothing and shoes.”
“I know that!” Francis spat. “I planned that. I could have given her my coat, you know. But there’s a reason I haven’t. If her family wants her back before she freezes to death, they’ll need to hand over the formula. Now.”
“Papa, d-don’t,” Caroline called, a message that would have been more forceful if her teeth hadn’t been chattering.
Estelle wrung her hands. “Mr Foster, please think of what you’re doing.”
“Estelle hates f-fighting,” Caroline told him, more loudly. “Just the other day, she refused to even have a snowball fight with me!” Her gaze slid to Estelle as she spoke, and Estelle’s eyes widened.
“No one has to fight if they just do what I say,” Francis retorted, sounding exasperated. “I want the formula here, now.”
Estelle collapsed to her knees, her hands plunging into the snow as she made a sobbing sound. Timothy, now attuned to her moods, did the same, murmuring to her.
Francis ignored them. “Where’s the formula? I know one of you has it—I searched the lab and the house and I never found it! I’ll give Caroline a dose to keep her alive, and then we’ll be taking a horse and leaving here.”
“We will?” Caroline asked suddenly, fear cutting though the numbing cold.
“I’ll let you go when it’s safe for me,” he said. “I don’t trust your lordling here not to try to follow me. Or send a mob after me.”
“You can’t steal my daughter as well,” her mother said in exactly the sort of tone that she used when they were children. “Have you no shame, Francis?”
“No, ma’am. Nor money, hence my predicament. But I have something you all seem to want, and she’s getting colder all the time.”
Snowdon instinctively moved toward her.
Francis refocused on him, and his finger went to the trigger of the gun.
“Wait! I’ll marry you!” she shouted.
Francis looked over at her. “What?”
“Let me go, and don’t hurt anyone, and I’ll marry you,” she told him. “My dowry will surely cover your debts.”
Estelle gasped. “Caroline, no!”
“Hush,” she warned her friend. To Francis, she gave a wobbly smile. “After all, why shouldn’t we get married?”
“You didn’t want me. You’re chasing after this lordling.”
“I hardly know him!” Caroline said, not risking even a glance at Snowdon. “I couldn’t even tell you his given name. But we’ve known each other such a long time. It would be very natural, wouldn’t it?”
Francis had half turned, captivated by this new way out. “We need to get married quickly.”
“Certainly. Can Estelle be my bridesmaid?” she asked brightly.
“Whatever you want, I don’t care.”
“Perhaps you should care,” Caroline whispered.
“What?”
That was when the first snowball hit him. And the next, and the next. Estelle and Timothy had formed a pile of them, and were now throwing them like cannonballs.
Francis instantly ducked, bringing his arm up to protect his head. The move meant that he was no longer aiming the gun at anyone.
Snowdon took the opportunity to lunge toward Francis, but the man was preternaturally edgy and must have sensed the attack, because he moved to the side, evading Snowdon’s arms.
Timothy and Estelle were still hurling snowballs at Francis, the shy Estelle shouting curses that would have done a sailor proud. Timothy proved to have wickedly good aim, and one projectile smacked Foster in the arm so hard that he dropped the pistol. The heavy weapon fell into the white blanket at his feet. He bent down to retrieve it, and got hit again with another snowball that exploded all over his face.
“Christ, who did that?” he sputtered.
“I did!” Estelle cried. “And I’m not sorry! You deserve far worse for hurting Caroline! And being a traitor! And…a very bad friend!”
Caroline wondered how Francis simply didn’t shrivel into nothingness after that condemnation.
“I am not,” he said quietly, childishly. Only Caroline heard him.
“You are,” she told him. “You’d better run, if you want any chance at all.”
He looked at her, and then swung around, preparing to flee.
He took half a step and ran smack into Snowdon in his white coat. Snowdon grabbed him and flung him down into the snow.
“Someone kindly keep him there,” he ordered, stepping over Francis to get to Caroline.
He was already pulling off his coat and swinging it around her when he knelt down by her. “I’m tied up,” she whispered.
“Not for long.”
A thin silver blade produced from nowhere made quick work of the ropes. Snowdon held her close, lending her his warmth.
Her parents rushed up, her father pulling a tiny vial out of his pocket. “I need something to dilute it,” he said frantically.
“The saint’s spring,” her sensible mother said, scooping some up in her slender hands.
He dripped a few ruby-red spots into her hands. Then her mother offered it to Caroline, who drank it as if it were a rare wine. Moments later, she felt warmth rushing along her veins. “It’s working.”
“Thank God,” her father said. “But I don’t want you making this a habit, child. We’ve not tested repeated exposure.”
“Yes, Papa.” She felt herself laughing, the absurdity of it all suddenly hitting her.
“Come,” Snowdon said. “We need to get some answers out of Foster while we can.”
The quartet walked to where Francis still lay facedown in the snow, with Timothy’s knee digging into his back. Estelle remained nearby, another snowball in her mittened grip.
“Don’t move,” the young man warned. “I’m sure all of us would just love an excuse to beat the tar out of you.”
Caroline wasn’t familiar with the American phrase, but she guessed everyone agreed with Timothy.
“Flip him over,” Snowdon said. Timothy and the two footmen did so, holding tight to his arms to prevent any surprises.
Snowdon reached over and began to pat him down. He pulled a packet of folded paper from a pocket.
“Papa’s notes,” Caroline said.
“There’s more.” Snowdon reached out again. Francis tried to twist away, but Snowdon held him firmly by one shoulder.
He pulled a long and glittering strand from some hidden place, like a magician.
Caroline gasped. “My necklace! How did you know it would be in his pocket?”
“I didn’t know,” Snowdon said. “It was a hunch.”
“But…it fell off when I crashed through the ice!”
“No. Francis was glad you assumed that’s what happened. But in fact, he probably snatched it off you as he pushed you into the damaged spot…which he’d prepared ahead of time.”
“What!” Caroline spun toward Francis, looking in horror at the man she so recently called a brother.
“It’s true,” Snowdon went on. “After I got you to the house, I returned to the pond to find out why you, a woman who knew the pond very well and would have known about any natural warm springs or thin ice, fell through the ice when Foster didn’t.”
Francis refused to look at her. He mumbled, “I thought I might need the rubies, if I couldn’t sell the formula quickly. I didn’t plan to steal them—that was impulse.”
“But you did weaken the ice in that spot.”
“You wouldn’t have been hurt, not really,” he defended himself. “There were so many people about. And I needed someone to be cold enough to spur your father to try the formula on them.”
“On me, you mean. Oh, Francis, how could you do that?”
“Take him away,” Snowdon ordered quietly.
Francis was led off by Timothy and three grim-faced footmen.
Snowdon handed Caroline the necklace, who took it in one trembling hand.
“I never thought I would see this again,” she whispered. “I don’t deserve to have them, after wearing them when I shouldn’t have.”
“He led you into a trap and then stole them from you when he sprang it,” Snowdon said, his tone rough. “You were the victim twice over.”
“You got the rubies back for me,” she said. “Thank you.”
“It was a pleasure, Miss Garland.”
“Oh, goodness, Caroline!” Estelle flung herself at her friend and embraced her fiercely. “I was so scared. You can’t leave the house again for the rest of winter, do you hear?”
“A fine idea,” Mrs Garland said. “And now, we should all get back to the house. Mr Foster can spend the rest of the evening locked in the root cellar, and in the morning a magistrate can be called.”
“Tomorrow is Christmas,” Mr Garland reminded her. “No magistrate will come.”
“I’ll arrange for someone to take him off your hands,” Snowdon said. “But let’s get Caroline where it’s warm.” Snowdon lifted her onto his horse and mounted up behind her. He put his arms close around her shoulders, and she felt the cold ebbing away.
She cast a look back at the saint’s fountain, the water bubbling up from the rock, and the clouds of mist clinging to the surface of the water, until further away from the spring’s warmth, it turned to frost and then dripping icicles. The whole scene was eerie in the moonlight, more like a dream than anything, elusive and soon to be forgotten when the dreamer woke.
But Caroline was wide awake now, and she’d never forget what happened.