A Breath of Frost by Alyxandra Harvey Page A

can you do,
Maman
?”
    “Anything,” she said happily. “Everything.” She looked at the forest, then at Emma, dropping her voice to a loud conspiratorial whisper. “I’m still waiting,” she sighed. “Always waiting.”
    And then no matter how Emma tried, she could not get her mother to say another word. She finally left, when Mrs. Peabody brought up her mother’s tea tray.
    If there were parents more frustrating than hers, she’d yet to hear of them.

Chapter 13

    Hyde Park was the most privacy
three girls accustomed to chaperones and a various assortment of maids and footmen were likely to get. Emma returned to London and waited for her cousins inside a small grove of oak trees, while seriously wondering if her mother’s madness was contagious. She pulled a rolled-up scrap of parchment from the reticule dangling from her wrist. She’d made a list in the carriage on the way back from Berkshire. It was everything Cormac had told her and her own account of the night. If she was going to get to the bottom of this mess, she’d have to be practical. Gretchen would advise immediate, and preferably violent, action, and Penelope would quote some dead poet at her.
    It was too late for poetry.
    Though to be honest, the poets had as much chance as she did at figuring this out.
    She rubbed her hand on the skirt of her walking dress until the skin chafed and went red. The knot looked angry but it didn’t disappear. Emma sighed. Back to her list, then.
    A deer poked her shy head between two low-hanging branches, chewing a mouthful of grass. Or whatever it was deer ate. She was delicate and strong, all muscled flesh under the red fur.
    Emma held her breath, list forgotten.
    The second deer was equally beautiful. She pushed farther into the grove, bluebell blossoms between her teeth. Her white-tipped tail flicked back and forth.
    The third deer made Emma curious. She couldn’t help a wide smile, even as her heart pounded in her chest. She was afraid the sound of it would startle them away. Herds of red deer weren’t uncommon in the park, but they tended to run away from people and horses. They didn’t gather next to them like guests at a tea party. And they didn’t bring their families, all picking their way past the oaks. She felt as though she were in a painting, as if nothing around her was quite real.
    One of them brushed past her and she smelled the musk and mud of its body. She stayed as still as she could even though some primal part of her wondered, quite loudly, if she shouldn’t be running for her life right about now.
    “I swear I don’t hunt,” she offered, her voice sounding odd in the stark peace of the grove. Several deer lifted their heads at the disturbance. Their hooves were powerful, and she remembered the stable boy who’d had his leg broken last week by a peevish pony. If a pony could be dangerous, what about wilddeer? “And I don’t eat venison.” At least, not after today. “Anyway, I was here first.”
    She was reduced to false bravado in front of placid, grass-nibbling deer.
    The moment stretched on, impossible and beautiful.
    But by the time she counted thirteen deer, Emma was decidedly nervous.
    Especially since the last to push past the oaks was a stag, with a huge rack of velvet antlers, like polished and gilded branches. His fur was thick, turning from winter gray to summer red. He towered over the rest, all muscle and primal power. Another deer shifted to brush past her, making room for the stag.
    When he bellowed, Emma jumped, adrenaline tingling under her skin. The sound was loud and ancient, wild in a way London folk couldn’t understand. This wasn’t a wildness to do with too much champagne or dancing until dawn. This was cave paintings and stories told after dark. It was primitive and as old as the stars.
    The stag turned his head to stare at her.
    She wondered if anyone had ever been eaten alive by a herd of deer.
    When his eyes met hers, she felt the connection in her