“It was ninety-six years and eleven months that would have passed whether or not I came tonight.”
“I saw you five days ago.”
The disparity is striking, a slap in the face. They are not the same.
Oliver slouches against the wall. “It’s not fair.”
“No, it isn’t,” Beatrix says. “But it’s what I agreed to.” She waits. He comes back to her. It is that simple and that hard.
“It was a mistake.” He closes his journal, slips it inside his coat, and for a single, gut-wrenching moment, Beatrix thinks he means to leave. But then he adds, “It was too much to ask.”
“Iasked,” she says, trying to ease the guilt in his eyes.
His brow creases. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”
He looks so sincere—so sorry—that Beatrix has to look away. “Don’t worry about me,” she says. “I can manage just fine on my own.”
“I know you can,” Oliver agrees. “But I want to see you.”
His eyes meet hers again, as bright as the fire blazing in the hearth behind her. Her heart hammers against her ribs. “And the Frost Fair. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, of course,” Oliver says quickly. “This is the last one. I had to see it for myself.”
Her heart sinks. “It’s the last one?”
Oliver nods. “The Thames never freezes like this again.”
The world has been changing around Beatrix for centuries. She should be used to it, shouldn’t be surprised some things survive while others are lost. “I suppose we better go enjoy it, then,” she says, pushing down the melancholy feeling rising like a tide inside her. Then she leans forward and drops her voice. “Is it true? Are they going to walk an elephant across the ice tonight?”
Beatrix isn’t naive enough to believe the rumor, which she suspects has been started by the watermen in an effort to drum up business.
Oliver leans in close. Beatrix catches the herby scent of lavender and the spark in his eye. She has waited almost ninety-seven years for him to look at her that way again, has daydreamed about it more than once. Her heart still skips a beat.
“Let’s go find out.”
The pub isn’t far from the Thames, where the watermen have taken it upon themselves to put on the festival, hoping to earn some money while they wait for the ice to thaw.
A jolly-looking man with a bushy black beard guards a set of stairs down to the ice. Beatrix hands him the fee, and he waves her onto the landing with Oliver.
“I could have paid,” he says as they descend.
Beatrix smirks at him. “I consider it a shilling well spent.” She pauses on the last step. “Ready to walk on the Thames?”
He offers her his arm. “Shall we?”
She wraps her arm through his, and they step onto the river together.
The ice is a maze of makeshift buildings; shacks and tents and shop stalls form crooked streets, as if London has spilled out over the ice and claimed the river as its own. But this bit of London isn’t dreary or dull or crushed under the weight of existing. It is merry and bright and alive, risen overnight from the glittering ice. It will inevitably melt away with it, vanish like a mirage. A special, fleeting thing.
“Come on.” Beatrix pulls Oliver after her. “I want to dance in the middle of the Thames.”
He grins. “I thought you wanted to see an elephant.”
“I want to see everything!”
A trio of fiddlers plays a lively reel near the base of London Bridge, and a handful of dancers spin across the ice. Beatrix stares up at the massive stone arches. She stood on that bridge more than two hundred years ago with Oliver. Crossed it for the first time, alone, a hundred years before that. And now she is standing under it for the first time. Probably the last time, too, though she has learned to never say never.
The fiddlers strike up another song. Oliver bows to Beatrix, far too formal, and she curtsies to him. A giggle escapes her. He offers her hishand, and she takes it, places his other one against her back. A familiar weight, even after all this time. He pulls her closer.
