Tessa tugged at his sleeve again. “Papa, look! There’s a dog with a ribbon, too!”
Before he could stop her, the girl darted two steps forward.
“Tessa—slowly.” Panic sharpened his tone.
She slowed, but barely.
“Your Grace,” Mrs. Hayward murmured, “she won’t float away.”
“In my experience, she might.”
Tessa whirled around with a grin. “I won’t float. I’m not a feather!”
“She is correct,” Mrs. Hayward whispered. “She is decidedly heavier than a feather.”
Wilhelm inhaled deeply, equal parts exasperated and fond. “Both of you, behave.”
He stepped forward, and then the crowd shifted. A group of young men shoved past them with careless energy, jostling the air and creating a sudden gap between father and daughter.
“Tessa!” Wilhelm surged forward.
But the men had closed the space behind them, severing his line of sight.
“Papa?” her small voice called, muffled through the crowd.
Something inside him snapped. He pushed through the slow bodies, craning his neck to find even a glimpse of her bonnet. He caught a flash of a blue cloak, but it belonged to another child.
Another step. Another shove. His heart hammered against his ribs with brutal force.
“Tessa!” His voice was loud now, unmistakably edged with panic.
Mrs. Hayward clutched his sleeve. “Let me try to?—”
“No.” He tore free because no one moved fast enough when it mattered. “I’ll find her.”
He pushed into the crowd, his height giving him only brief illusions of advantage.
Faces blurred past him in streaks of color. Lanterns swung overhead, and the music felt distant now, hollow under the rising roar of fear in his ears.
Not again.
He saw the pony accident every time he closed his eyes.
Her small body flying, the crack of bone and ice, her stillness on the ground. The physician’s voice telling him that healing would come, but scars would remain on her face. The first governess who quit within the hour after seeing her. The next made Tessa cry.
“Papa?” Her voice called out to him again, but it was too faint.
He shoved past a cluster of market-goers, murmured something terse enough to silence them, then craned his neck toward the ice tent. It was the only direction Tessa would move, toward light and excitement.
He pushed forward.
Mrs. Hayward hobbled behind him, breathless. “Your Grace—please—she can’t have gone far?—”
Wilhelm ignored everything but the pounding drum of his own pulse. He cut through the crowd, his coat snapping behind him, snow crunching under his boots, fear clawing inside his chest in a way he despised, a way he had not felt since the day Leah died.
The tent entrance loomed ahead.
He lunged inside and warmth enveloped him instantly, filled with the blended scent of ice, wool, and lantern smoke. The light flickered across the skating pond, illuminating countless figures gliding, stumbling, laughing?—
