Leo stilled. “I beg your pardon?”
“The Matterhorn kills people. That company of women might very well die this summer. Are you willing to let Prudence Cabot fall to her death thinking that you don’t care about her?”
“That’s ridiculous! Of course she knows how I feel about her!” Leo’s gut churned again. The Matterhorn was an abstract. The venture equally as mythical. But the letter said she’d already left for Switzerland. A panic started to rise in him, deep, as if manifesting from the earth beneath his feet.
“Does she?” his mother asked coolly. “Because you may be too late. She is traveling, which means she had no address. We don’t know where she’s staying in Switzerland, so you cannot send her a letter expressing your affection.”
“Are you trying to make me go to Switzerland?” he demanded.
“I’m asking if you want to go to Switzerland,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
His eyes wandered to the window, again looking at the tree, looking dead in winter, knowing that in a few months it would spring to life once again.
“I’ll leave you to think on it,” his mother said, and hoisted herself out of her chair. “But be honest with yourself. I’ll not have you moping around this house for nothing.”
*
THE FERRY TOFrance was choppy, but settling into the south of France was lovely. Prudence enjoyed the warmer weather and the time to relax with Georgie, Eleanor, Tristan Bridewell, and Lady Rascomb. It was the aristocratic name that opened the doors for them, and Tristan Bridewell’s arms that carried the luggage through them when a porter was not available. Georgie kept her mouth shut most of the time, not even conversing with Prudence. They stayed in little hotels along the way from Calais to Paris, from Paris down to Marseilles.
Not every hotel was equal. Some were as lavish as the hotel she’d stayed at in London, fit for a foreign aristocrat. But somewere small and full of holes in the mortar, desperately poor, having never recovered from the Reign of Terror that ravaged France almost a century before. While they were extraordinarily generous with those inns, usually run by an elderly couple, they moved on quickly, as February was not a month one stayed in drafty rooms.
Over the trains and carriage rides, Prudence had gotten close with Lady Rascomb—Joanna—which she was grateful for. Eleanor and Tristan were a giggling mess most of the times they managed to leave their rooms. But Joanna regaled Eleanor with her climbs of this mountain or that mountain, and her wistful tone made it clear that she wished she were ascending the Matterhorn as well.
Prudence often wondered if Georgie listened to Joanna’s tales as well, but it was impossible to tell, given the woman’s constant placid demeanor and lack of facial expression. She always had a book open, and given how slowly she did everything, it was unclear if she was reading or listening.
But despite Joanna’s stories and the beautiful snow-covered countryside that gradually melted into fallow southern French fields, Prudence was restless. She wanted to see the mountain, which she was gradually feeling ownership over. The Matterhorn was quickly becominghermountain in her mind. The mountain she shared with Eleanor, Ophelia, and Justine. Their lives were so intertwined in this goal, living and breathing it, training, looking at maps and potential routes up the mountain, Ophelia scouring newspapers and journals for any mention of the next party attempting its ascent, how could they not feel close to it?
And now, she was in France, and she could see the French Alps. Joanna spoke of their ascent of Mont Blanc, where she’d injured her leg, how Tristan had carried her down the mountain after the avalanche had buried her. How she’d have died had itnot been for her son there when she needed him. But Prudence didn’t care about Mont Blanc.
Prudence needed to be at the Matterhorn. Waiting any longer was impossible. It had been a month since they left London, but it was only February. They had planned on taking the Strasbourg-Basel railway to pass the miles into Switzerland. But now, they were in the south, as far from Strasbourg as they could be and still be in France.
At the breakfast table one morning at a quaint inn fifteen miles outside of Marseilles, Joanna noticed. “Did you sleep well, Prudence? It looks as if something is bothering you.”
Prudence smiled her expected American smile. “I’m fine.”
But Joanna, perhaps it was her experience as a mother, perhaps as a mountaineer, peered closer. “You are restless. Would you like to get on with it?”
“On with what?” Prudence asked, distracted momentarily by Eleanor’s giggle—a noise that she only made when she was near her husband. Tristan was gallantly buttering her toast.
“Going to Switzerland. We could attempt the St. Cenis train around the Alps.” Joanna’s offer was considerate, but Prudence had to be equally considerate.
“But how will we get through the other passes in February? I’d be concerned about cave-ins and then the long journey through the mountains to get to Zermatt.” Prudence didn’t want to mention that traveling with Joanna, given her leg injury, would make things exponentially harder. As hale as Joanna was, she was twenty years older and had not been training as they had.
Still, the older woman grimaced, knowing that she was the slowest link the in the chain of their expedition. Well, Prudence considered, Georgie was not known for her speed either. “So we take the Strasbourg train as we’d planned.”
Prudence nodded. The trip to get back to Strasbourg would take a week in the winter. But she would be one step closer to the Matterhorn.
“Tristan, Eleanor,” Joanna called down the table. The couple looked up, red cheeked, as if they were naughty schoolchildren caught smearing mud on the walls. “We will be departing today for Strasbourg. Please see that your belongings are ready.”
They both nodded and then hastily excused themselves from the table. Prudence wanted to roll her eyes. It wasn’t that she begrudged them their happiness, it was that neither of them could acknowledge the world around them.
“Newlywed couples,” Joanna said with a wistful smile. “I’m sure you once felt like that, too.”
Prudence winced. She had, but not when she was newly wed. Gregory had never been that entranced by her. They were at arm’s length most of the time, if not further. They chatted as academics and polite acquaintances across his dinner table. They were proper and distant. And the nights were dark and perfunctory.
But she had felt that giggling effervescence with Leo. The day they’d shopped on Bond Street, pretending still to dislike each other. And those days in the cottage, just the two of them, before Granson had appeared and ruined it all. They had been so swept up in each other. She knew that her irritation with Eleanor and Tristan stemmed from not having that feeling herself.
But in her very marrow she knew that his threat to leave her in the English countryside alone was unforgiveable. If not unforgiveable, it would at least take a reasonable apology to forgive. Something he still had yet to offer.
