“Then I’ll see you at six.” Justine turned her back to him with every ounce of willpower she had.
“Thank you, Herr Vogel.Dankeschön.”
Justine couldn’t help but give Ophelia side-eye as they descended the mountain. “Did you really thank him in German?”
“Of course,” Ophelia countered. “It’s polite. We are in Switzerland; we should do our best to learn the language of our location.”
“It’s pointless. We’ll be gone in a few months, and he speaks English.” Justine balled her fists. Why did she feel so irritated suddenly?
“We may be gone from this trip, but the German climbers are some of the most successful. If I want to continue to climb and have a decent reputation, I need to learn as many languages as I can.”
“I thought you already knew French,” Justine said.
It was Ophelia’s turn to give side-eye. “Which is helpful, but French and German are not at all alike.”
Justine shrugged. They’d gone to the same ladies’ boarding school, but Justine had always skipped French. The class was held at four o’clock in the afternoon, an hour that Justine could not stay awake for. The comfort of a drowse in the meager sunshine that landed on her bed during that time was unarguable.
Dinner came quickly after they got down the trail. The inn supplied a cup of tea and a slice of apple cake at three, and then it was seven, and they were expected to sit down and eat again. The meal felt early to her, but then, she would have to shift her waking and sleeping hours if she was to beat Karl Vogel at his own game. She eyed him at dinner. After serving everyone, he sat at another table, speaking German or Swiss, or whatever language everyone but her spoke, laughing. He drank from a tankard, which she supposed was full of ale or beer. What did she know of the drinking habits of Swiss mountain guides?
Good, she thought. Drink up. Because tomorrow morning, she was prepared to run faster and harder and make him keep up withher.
She went to bed early that night, surprising Ophelia with a simplegoodnightbefore turning down her oil lamp. Normally, she couldn’t fall sleep quickly, but with the Alpine walks combined with the lack of sleep the night before, she fell deep and fast.
Periodically through the night, she awoke, each time checking the small timepiece she’d bought to wear on her breast.The green ribbon was bright enough to pick off her nightstand, and the portable brazier glowed enough for her to see the timepiece. When it was finally five in the morning, Justine got dressed.
She crept down the stairs, her hair braided, her boots double tied, knit cap in hand. There was a creak on the third stair, and again on the fifth—she would have to learn these. After all, didn’t Karl sleep in the dining room? At least, he did last night. She wouldn’t want to wake him and alert him to her presence before it was time. At a quarter till six, she thought she was safe, until she rounded the corner to find Karl bouncing on his toes.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
A stab of disappointment hit her. Bloody hell. She’d meant to surprise him, and there he was, bright-eyed, ready to run. “I am.”
“Any others?” he asked, glancing up the stairs.
“No, just us.” Justine grimaced. Fine, he got her today, but tomorrow, she would be down there at half past, just to prove a point.
**
He took her up the goat trail first. The sky was dark, but she didn’t complain. What starlight there was reflected on the snow, and the trail they left in the crusty snow was easy to spot. Karl knew she wouldn’t get lost on the only trail, and sound travelled well on snow, and he’d hear her if she fell too far behind.
When they reached the repaired fence, he walked them along it until they got to the gate. He pushed down the latch, which moved the rock that served as the weight to keep the latch down and the gate closed.
“That’s a clever thing,” she murmured as she passed through the gate.
Karl inwardly fumed at the audacity of the English. Of course it was clever. People had been living here forever. It wasn’t just the English who invented. There were plenty of scientists and inventors and philosophers from the German provinces and Switzerland as well as other places. Without the Germans, England would have no composers, since they liked to pick their favorites from other countries and then call them their own. But as he led her higher up the goat path, and the sun crested the mountain ridge, he realized that she had only complimented a gate. He had no reason to hold centuries of history over her head, as if she alone were responsible for the actions of an empire.
He listened to her breathing growing more and more labored. She was unaccustomed to hills such as these. There was no replacement for this simple act of walking up a mountain.
With her comfort in mind, he stopped at an overlook to let her catch her breath. She pulled up short next to him, gulping in air. The wind had loosened her braids, and a dark brown strand crossed her neck like a velvet ribbon. She was very pretty with her dark brown eyes, large and searching as she took in the sight of the valley below and mountains.
She made a lilting high-pitched noise in her throat, still too winded to speak. But Karl took that as an affirmation that she found the view as beautiful as he did.
“Are you well?” he asked her, concerned at how long it took her to catch her breath. The cold air could push into a person’s lungs and make them feel icy cold from the inside out.
She swallowed hard, gulping more air before clearing her throat. “I’m well, thank you.”
“Good,” he said. “Eat some snow.”
Her breath stopped laboring as she looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.
